Snake!

Friday night we were out and about, and stopped by the mall for our usual "shopping-play". Our goal is to get the girls to expend all energy possible, in hopes of sleeping past 6 a.m. on saturday. Anyway, usually after we play for awhile, we stop by the pet store to see the animals. The girls LOVE the animals, and it is always a highlight of their little day. Juneau, who is currently obsessed with all-things-potty, always shouts at the top of her lungs "I wanna see some poop!" as she runs back to the puppy kennels. cris and i just usually look at each other like "whose kid is that?!"
anyway, after the puppies, we always head over to see the reptiles. The girls' favorite reptile is the Baby Bearded Dragon. They call him "scary guy", and they talk about him all the time. Unfortunately "scary guy" was recently sold, so there has been much disappointment recently in the reptile dept.

The disappointment was gone yesterday, however, when we went to the reptile section, and the pet store worker had the big snake out for someone to hold. Nova kept her eyes on the snake, and very, very slowly started walking backwards until she was standing right next to Daddy. Juneau, however, wanted nothing more than to touch that snake. She went right up and touched him, and when he turned to look at her and stuck out his tongue she got very excited and said "he's talkin' to me, he's talkin' to me". She has been talking about the snake non-stop since yesterday. And just for the record, there will never be a pet snake in this Stickley household!

Today the girls and I left Cris at home, and headed out to attend a 3 year old birthday party. I have a few pictures of nova at the party, but mostly i spent the day running from the Bounce House (where Juneau threw herself right into the middle of the crazy/wild play of a group of kids 10 years older than her!) to the Sand Box (where Nova discovered that Sand makes the perfect "project").

The girls had so much fun. Here Nova is showing her favorite way to go down the slide...Little Einstein's Style "Raise your hands high above your head and say 'BLASTOFF'." The highlight of Nova's weekend was finding these 2 little babies to play with. She carried them all around the restaraunt/playroom. She LOVES babies.
Here you can see that Nova has decided that Sand has sooooo much to offer for a girl who loves a good "project". I think Nova will be excited to see the sandy beaches in Hawaii in a few weeks!
I don't have any pictures of Juneau at the party, because I don't think she held still for more than 5 seconds all day! She had soooo much fun at the party. She is kind of obsessed with Birthday's, and loved it that we were actually at a real birthday party instead of one of the pretend ones she likes to host in the living room. Unfortunately, Juneau's enthusiasm transformed her into "that kid". You know, the one who wants to sit right next to the birthday girl (and practically ends up on her lap!), and then tries to help the birthday girl blow out the candles, and wants to put her finger in the biggest icing flower on the cake. It was like she just couldn't contain her excitement!

gearing up for some plane rides....

i LOVE planning trips. love it.

i've kind of been in planning overload, however. We have 2 big trips coming up, and i am excited!

In a few weeks the whole gang is headed back to hawaii for a week. Cris has some stuff at the University to do, and we are all tagging along for the ride. I can't wait to get the girls back in the land of 70 degree weather and white sandy beaches :) especially now that they are actually getting big enough to enjoy the beach. hopefully nova has forgotten her severe aversion to sand! I don't want her to have to sit in her little inflatable floatie all week.

Next up is a big trip in April - i have a Board Review Course in Chicago, and then Cris and I are leaving the girls for a week and heading to Costa Rica for our 5th Anniversary! I am already trying to prepare myself for an entire week away from the 2 cutest girls ever... luckily i know they won't miss us too much since they will be spending the week with Alex, Lyndsey and Brent!

i haven't been taking too many pictures lately b/c of my camera lens being broken and i haven't gotten around to sending it off yet. however, i will post for your viewing enjoyment my recent "DA Photo" :) I think this is probably only the 2nd time in the last 5 years that i have worn my Class A's :)

i feel kinda funny putting this picture on here, but i thought one day in 10 years when the girls are reading through this blog they might get a kick out of this :)

weekend fun!

I think Juneau and Nova had their "Dream Weekend"! First of all i didn't have to work at all (well, except for a few minutes to make inpatient rounds). Secondly, we had friends come visit! We had initially planned to go to the Cripple Creek Ice Fest this weekend with our friends from Pho For Five, but due to the 8 inches of snow that was expected in Cripple Creek on Saturday, we had to make a slight adjustment to our plans. i don't think either of our minivans are really equipped for 8 inches of fresh snowfall! Juneau and Nova were thrilled when i told them Jackson, Shane and Finley would be coming to our house to play!

A picture of the girls on a lazy morning at home with daddy

juneau thorougly enjoying her Valentine's Day treat from the Matus cousins! Giant Marshmallow PopPop
Between the Pho for Five crew, and our crew, we had 2 one year olds, 2 two year olds, and a 3 year old! Let me tell you, those 5 kids know how to have some fun! We went from the upstairs playroom to the basement playroom, to decorating cookies, then back to the upstairs playroom then the downstairs playroom again! These kids played hard for 6 hours straight! Part of what works so well for our kids is that not only are they basically the exact same age, but they also have siblings that are the same interval age difference, so they all interact really, really well together.

Here you can see "the sissies" (as juneau calls them) decorating cookies together.

Nova is small for her age, and Fin is smaller than nova (and 6 weeks older!) so you can imagine she is just an itty-bit of a thing. but she is a firecracker! she has crazy personality like you've never seen :)"the bugs" - Shanebug and Junebug, decorating their cookies

Jackson found the most efficient way to eat his cookie was to just go for it - no hands needed

after all the other kids had bored of the cookie decorating, juneau was still traveling from plate to plate eating the leftover sprinkles with her spoon. ha!

One of the GREAT things about the play marathon was the girls were wiped out, and slept until.....drumroll please....7:15 the next morning! this is a new record, especially for a weekend, when they tend to move up their normal wakeup time from 6:15 to about 5:3o. We were soooo happy for the extra hour of sleep, and even an extra long nap today!

and finally, here is a picture of our little sweetie getting ready for bed tonight :)

special princess...

tonight i was rocking juneau before bed. she LOVES to be rocked before bed.
I told her i loved her, and that she was my special little girl.
She looked me right in the eyes, and as serious as could be said "Mommy, you're my special little princess"

those are the things i'm tucking away to keep me going during 6 months in Afghanistan.

more valentine's day

This afternoon Carson came over to watch the girls so cris and I could go out and enjoy a fancy Sunday Brunch at the Broadmoor Hotel. The Broadmoor is a very cool, old, famous hotel in Colorado Springs. We had driven by it a few times, but never actually been to the hotel or any of the restaurants.

"The Broadmoor"

Sunday brunch was indeed fantastic. I have a certain technique that i use at fancy buffet's... basically i scope out the "big money" items...you know, the crab legs, shrimp, etc., and try to skip the basics (no cesear salad for me at the broadmoor buffet!)
Cris, however, does not subrscribe to my theory. His brunch consisted of an Omelet, sausage links, a few pieces of bacon and some other little sides...basically a $6.99 Grand Slam from Denny's. :)
We had a great time together, and it was fun to have a few hours of baby-free time

My mom had bought the girls some Christmas Dresses for next year at the after-christmas sales. I decided to get a little extra use out of them and let them wear them for valentine's day this morning (the hat was nova's own addition...she loves that thing!)

They loved having pretty new dresses, and kept saying they were wearing 'princess dresses'

This evening i made a big bed on the living room floor, and we all snuggled up and ate popcorn and watched "up". Nova was excited about all hanging out together, but didn't really care too much about the movie. Juneau was pretty in to it, and narrated along with the whole thing..."look out for the scary guy!" "oh, the grandpa's ok, the grandpa's ok".

Juneau enjoying her popcorn.

Great news also to report...Juneau is basically potty trained! This whole week she wore either her 'big girl panties' (which are actually 'big boy panties'...its rather tough to find Nemo and Lightning McQueen in the girl's section) or her Dora Pull-Ups. She is obsessed with keeping Dora clean "so she doesn't cry". We never said anythign about keeping Dora clean, or Dora crying, but she has created this little scenario that she obsesses over all day. It is certainly working, and she has had only a couple of accidents...she is even dry 90% of the time at nap and bedtime. We are soon to have only 1 in diapers, and we are excited!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We have been having a fantastic weekend! It's a four day weekend for the me, thanks to the Army's fabulous tendancy to make the Friday before a Monday holiday a "training holiday", which basically means no work! Yesterday I spent the morning playing with the girls. We tried to go to the Focus On the Family center...there is a great indoor play area with a big curly slide, and lots of stuff the girls love. Unfortunately once i got up there, i found out the play area was closed for the week for maintenance. So we headed over to the trusty "shopping play" - indoor play area at the mall. The girls had a blast, and it gave Cris a few hours to video chat with some students at UH.

Our delicious Valentine's Day treat - Cris favorite "3 layer dessert"
This morning the girls spent some time playing princess...
Then we got ready to try out their first Gymnastics class. Juneau warmed up with some splits before class.
The gymanstics class is at a Trampoline/power tumbling gym, and the girls had a blast! they started class by jumping around on the trampolines, then they both took turns hooked up to a bungee system that allowed them to stay upright while doing jumps and flips. Juneau took right too it, and loved every second. Nova was still a bit to little to grasp the concept, but had a great time anyway.

This evening they put on their new pajamas Grammie sent in the mail, and got into their usual spot in front of the fireplace for a picture :)

The whole crazy crew
Tomorrow we have a babysitter! We are headed to the famous, old Broadmoor Hotel for a delicious Valentine's Day Brunch. We will have to see if it can compare to some of the fabulous Sunday Brunches we had in Hawaii :)

Afghanistan

yesterday at about 10 a.m. i walked into my office after seeing a patient and found a sticky note on my computer. It said:

"Em,
see me,
Bri"

"Bri" is actually Colonel Crisp, who is the department chief for OB/GYN. the note made me just a tiny bit nervous, so i hightailed it over to his office. apparently "see me" actually means "you are going to afghanistan".
apparently about an hour before the note was placed on my computer he got a memo from the 'higher ups' somewhere requesting the name of an OB/GYN physician who would be deploying to afghanistan in April (as in 2 months away) for 15 months. There are 12 docs in my department, 5 are military, 2 have already deployed, 1 is deploying this summer, so that leaves 2 of us to potentially fill the slot. Me, and the other girl who just graduated from residency.
So, the solution is that she and I will split the deployment.
Technically the deployment is from 4/12/2010 - 7/12/2011. Only 12 months of that will be in Afghanistan, the other 3 months are a little unclear....it will likely be spent somewhere here in the states, "debriefing" with the unit or something like that.
So, she will go 4/12-10/30, and i will go 10/16-4/12. not sure what 4/12-7/12 will involve.

The other bad news is that the deployment is as a GMO (General Medical Officer) which basically means i will have a little tiny primary care clinic that sees "sick call". I was really hoping to deploy in a surgery spot so that i could at least be in the midst of the major medical action while i was there, but unfortunately i will be seeing ingrown toenails and seasonal allergies.

i knew deployment was in my future, but now that i have an actual date it is feeling a little surreal.

Sled Dog Adventures

The trip to Steamboat Springs ended in grand style today as we headed out early this morning to enjoy my birthday adventure. Emilie had arranged for the whole family to enjoy a morning of mushing with Grizzle-T Dog & Sled Works. Located on a 20,000 acre ranch that serves as open range for cattle during the summer, the setting is perfect for a winter adventure mushing through the snow along the 12 mile trail through the heart of the Rocky Mountains.

Though it was only 25 degrees when we left the hotel this morning, everybody bundled up and headed out, anxious for an exciting trip.

The main guide, Kris Hoffman, is a veteran of the iditarod and runs a kennel of over 100 Alaskan Huskies. He still races and raises dogs that are world class sled pullers.

All of the dogs are "Alaskan Huskies" which is a fancy name for a mutt that has been specifically bred for various traits that make them tireless balls of aerobic energy that love to pull, pull, pull...

The thing that makes Grizzle-T the best option for a mushing adventure is that on their tour, you are the one driving the sled by yourself. Most of the mushing tours allow you to sit in the sled while a guide drives you around the countryside...Boring!! Grizzle-T is the dog sledding version of those baseball fantasy camps that 45 year-old men pay thousands of dollars for the chance to play against their childhood heroes. If you've ever dreamed of experiencing mushing, don't settle for going along for the ride when you can hop on and take control of the sled.

After a 20 minute briefing on how to control the sled, where the brake is and how to get the best picture of your team if you fall off the sled and they are disappearing into the distance, it was time to get ready to go.

As soon as the dogs see the proprietors making preparations with the sleds, they all start howling like crazy in anticipation of hitting the trail. With all of the ruskus, Nova wasn't too sure she was ready for the trip...

...but Juneau was ready to go!!

Once they are on the lines, the dogs are balls of energy just waiting to explode. If not for the sled being tied off to those metal pulls, they would be off and running immediately.

The first group of 4 sleds head out...

As our group of 2 sleds got ready to head out, Nova and mommy bundled into the sled (Nova is still skeptical)...

...but Juneau knew EXACTLY how cool she looked and was more than ready to ride in the front seat.

Loaded and ready...

On the trail...

A quick stop along the way, about 15 minutes into the trip. By this point, Juneau had fallen asleep but Nova was hanging on...(she was asleep about 5 minutes later)

The 12.5 mile trail snaked around mountains, up and down a winding trail, through a canyon and along a ridge that had us looking down onto some low lying clouds in the valley below...

...and eventually through the clouds.

At the few stops along the way, it took all I had to keep the sled stopped. These dogs want to GO!!! I had my entire weight down hard on the metal claw brake, leaning backwards down a hill and the sled would still be slowly (or not so slowly) sliding forward as I strained.

The view of my sled from the pilots stance - Juneau and Nova are out cold...

Juneau out cold and covered from head to toe..(she's actually in the mass of clothes and hats)

Heading for home...the dogs know when they are getting close and start to pick up the pace

Back at base...

The trip was amazing and I can't recommend it strongly enough. I couldn't wait to get home, hug my huskies and start measuring them for their harnesses...they'll be pulling Nova and Juneau up and down the block in no time!!!

The pictures don't do justice to how amazingly cool it was. Even the video doesn't do much better but still a little taste of our adventure...

We LOVE Steamboat Springs!

We are having an awesome, snow-filled weekend in Steamboat Springs! Although it has been icy cold this winter in Colorado Springs, we haven't really had too much snow. and the snow we have had is usually melted within a day. The girls haven't really had a true snowy experience until this weekend!

We started off the weekend at the Disney Live Rockin' Road Show in Denver. All of the girls favorite characters were there. It took them a while to figure the whole thing out, but by the second half of the show they were up and dancing in the aisles.

The girls at intermission
Nova bouncing to the Tigger song

Juneau thinks that if you really, really like a song you should clap above your head. She really really liked the Tigger song too!

After the show we spent a few hours in the car driving to the little ski town of Steamboat Springs! This weekend is the winter festival (which turned out to be both good, and bad). The local high school students had carved ice sculptures all along the main street.

Catching snow on their tongues!

June-bug was really into trying to catch the snow flakes. She walked all around town with her tongue hanging out.

For the festival the town actually brings in tons and tons of snow to cover main street. then they shovel it out each night, and do it again the next day! Here you can see Main Street is sut down, and completely covered with snow.

The primary event of the day was Skijoring, which basically means the contestant gets pulled around on skis. I was hoping they would be using Sled Dogs to pull the kids, but they used horses for this competion. Nova and Juneau both loved being right up close to the action when the horses came running by pulling the kids behind them!

After hanging out on Main Street we headed up to the natural Hot Springs that are located downtown. This was clearly the best days of Nova's little 21 months of life. Her original best day was when we found the perfect curly slide while traveling from California to Colorado. I think the hot springs might have actually topped the curly slide.

The springs are 102 degrees, and they have built a wonderful pool (with waterslides and a rock climbing wall) around the springs. It was so weird to be in swimming suits and playing in the pool while snow was literally falling all around us.

most of these pictures look a little blurry due to all the steam coming off the water

Nova's favorite part was the Hot Tub that had built in waterfalls

She loved every single second of the Hot Springs!

My big plan for the weekend was to go tubing in the afternoon after the hot springs. However, due to the festival in town, the tubing company was shut down for the afternoon. i had already promised the girls we were going to play in the snow, so instead of tubing we spent a bunch of time outside throwing snowballs and running around in the snow.

"Fubu" isn't Nova's normal style, but i guess that's what you get when your momma buys your snow suit at a garage sale! :)

The girls had soooo much fun playing in the snow! Here they are making snowballs to try to throw at Daddy

Snowballs!

The little ski hill and Tubing area

Snow Angels!

Juneau wanted to be completely covered up in snow. After we covered her up she told us she was just going to lay there and go to sleep...she is our little Husky.

she really couldn't get enough of the snow!

Nova was quite pleased when she discovered you could actually eat snow

mmmmm.....delicious Dad and Bug

Dad and the girlsof course we had to have a picture of Cris skipping stones on this trip....except with no stones to be found he had to skip a snowball.

he got 4 skips out of it :) After running around in the snow for a while we decided to make an all-out baby day, and took the girls to the McDonald's Playplace.

Daddy even slid down the slide with them!

The girls loved making a "choo-choo train" to ride down the slide with daddy. So, i guess you could say we are learning to have fun in the snow! The weather has been very beautiful, and it hasn't been to cold. Tomorrow is the big even of the weekend when we try our skills at Mushing! I think we are all going to love the Dog Sled trip!