Fullness

I sit here on a Saturday morning, with our big fluffy snowflakes trying to turn into rain as the day grows warmer. We have a foot of snow in our yard, and I'm sure it will be a big, slushy mess by evening. We have no TV (our satellite is laden with snow), and we've been busy baking...snickerdoodles, banana bread, etc....enjoying this (most likely) last snowfall of the spring.

But this is why we live in Colorado...because we love weather. I was planning to take Ryley to Nebraska to visit my grandma for the weekend, but yesterday I decided we had better postpone our trip to a few weeks from now. Good thing I did....We had a tornado, thunder, hail in some parts of the city, rain, sleet, and big, chunky snowflakes that left parts of the foothills with two to three feet of snow. Very odd weather day.

I am looking forward to the snowmelt tomorrow. Muddy yard + energetic puppy = just lovely. Fellow dog owners, do you have any tips for me????

Also, how do you keep her out of chocolate that is already on top of the piano AND out of Miracle Gro that is on the patio table? This is going to be such a fun summer with all the lawn chemicals, the water hose, the garden....Oh my.

The last few weeks have just been jam-packed for us. So many thoughts in my head and so many pictures to share! I think we'll start with the present and work backwards....

The snow early this morning. We've received a few more inches since then:


Yesterday:



Easter was a beautiful, rainy day!


Coleen and Paul came over, and we had a delicious ham dinner, followed by naps and indoor eggs hunts.

We attempted to give Juliet some bunny ears (courtesy of Aly and Justin), but this is the best we could do!!


The night before Easter, we were so excited to see our good friend Jeremy Marchbank and meet his wife Becky and daughter Reagan. They are seriously the nicest people in the world...the kind of people that have such a sweet spirit and good hearts and that you know you want to stay in touch with the rest of your life. We had a lot of fun reconnecting, talking about old high school days, etc. Funny little bit of trivia: Jeremy was my only other date in high school besides Ryan!! He and I also went to Washington D.C. together our senior year, and he and Ryan were good friends throughout high school too. They live in Iowa and were visiting family in Denver, so we felt really blessed that they would call us and take the time to come over for dinner.


I love this picture of the two old friends and their little girls:


When we have warmer weather, Ryley and I have been trying to take Juliet on walks to tire her out.


Ryan's dad and his wife Linda left Denver and moved to Florida last week. We helped them get out of town. It was really sad to see them go. They moved to Denver the same month that we moved here from Montana.



Ryan gets stern with Puppa:


Painting eggs:



We tried to dress up Juliet again, but the shirt got all muddy within a day's time.


And here's a sweet shot of Ryley reading a book to herself. It makes our hearts glad!!!


One of my biggest struggles of the last few weeks has been getting enough sleep. Ever since college, I have made it my routine to stay up until midnight or later. I guess I feel that it's an improvement on my college days when 1 a.m. was considered "early." But I think it's starting to catch up with me! My 31-year-old body is starting to wake up with headaches if I get less than five hours of sleep. I honestly don't know how people get everything done when they go to bed before 10 p.m. I mean, I'm still going strong until about 11, and then we start to wind down with some Tivo'd programs. Every morning I promise myself that I will go to bed early that night, but by evening, I can't justify losing more precious hours to get things done, so I just stay up. I have to somehow adjust my mindset, but it's really hard when this has been my lifestyle for 13 years, you know?

Our lives are so full, and maybe I need to back it off just a little bit...cut some things out. Like housework. If I got a maid and a cook and a dog-looker-after, that would help a ton. Anybody think they can convince Ryan of this for me??? ;-)

I'm just whiny, I know. My final magazine deadline is in two weeks, and then things should slow down until fall. That alone will help tremendously.

It feels good to blog. Writing has always been therapeutic for me...clears my chest and head of the thoughts that are bogging me down. And once they've been written, I'm free of them. And now that I'm all caught up on blogging our lives, I can get back to folding laundry, doing some editing, cleaning up muddy paw prints, and enjoying this wet, wet day.

Dog aside, it's still my favorite kind. :-)