snow.

tomorrow is the first day of May. This afternoon as I was leaving work it was snowing. I am not even kidding. I really don't get the weather here in Colorado. 2 days ago it was almost 70 degrees, and today we had snow. this place is CRAZY!!
We had a pretty nice week, in spite of the weird weather. Cris took the girls to teh zoo for the day. Juneau has always amazed us with her perceptiveness. We haven't been to the zoo in ages, and yet as Cris was driving, and was still a good distance from the zoo, Juneau said "we're goin' to the zoo!" There were, of course, squeals of delight at that realization, and also at the appearance of the wagon.

You know Cris has truly "arrived" as a stay at home dad when he can totally do Nova's hair in double ponytails...and it looks really cute :) I was so impressed with Cris' little outing. He had the girls dressed all cute, their hair done, and had packed a delicious little picnic lunch! Does he rock or what?!

Our Little Monkeys

The Girls took turns pulling eachother in the wagon
yesterday a much anticipated package arrived in the mail...the huskies official sled dog harnesses. We were excited to finally hook them up and let them go to work. It is amazing how natural they took to pulling when Cris got them all hooked up to the stroller. Denali, still just a puppy, had a little bit of "trot.trot.trot.trot.BUTTERFLYBUTTERFLY.trot.trot.trot.trot.PILEOFPOOP.trot.trot.trot.trot.BIRDBIRDBIRD". But sherpa did well to keep him on the trail.
Overall we were very impressed with their first attempt at pulling a "sled", and the girls got a real kick out of it. They love to play "dogsled" in the livingroom. They will get blankets, and wrap themselves all up in them like we did when went on the actual dogsled adventure.

Finally, a cute little picture of our 2 year old techie. Juneau has become an expert traveler, as you can see in the picture of her on the airplane on our recent trip back from Ohio

cute JBug store: Cris has been recovering from a really bad ear infection. Somehow he actually perforated his eardrum, so i have been monitoring the healing with an otoscope. Oddly enough, Nova is OBSESSED with the otoscope. She loves to have me look in her ears, and every time i look in Cris' ear she wants me to do the same to her. Last night she asked me to look in her ear, and i didn't have the otoscope, so i just kind of pretended to look in it. Juneau piped up with "no, mommy, use the Doctor Phone to look in her ear". It cracked us up to think of the otosocope as a "doctor phone", but i guess it is a reasonable description :)

i am hoping the weather gets a little nicer tomorrow, because it is the Post-Wide Garage Sale, and you know i LOVE a good garage sale...not to mention 100 good garage sales all bunched up together. I can hear Cris sighing at the mere idea of a post-wide garage sale. He's a good sport though :)

looking for an excuse to visit Hawaii?!?!?!

Then we have just the excuse for you!!! While i am deployed (Oct through Apr) Cris will be moving back to Hawaii with the girls so he can teach at UH. The Oct through Dec plan is still a little hazy, but starting Jan 1 we are looking for volunteers to visit Hawaii to help Cris with childcare. We have added a link on the right side of the blog to check out the "availability calendar" to see if there is a time that just might work for you. Being deployed is going to be pretty awful in so many ways, and it will be such a relief to know that the girls are being cared for by people who love them. Our families have both already been sooooo amazing, and we think we can actually cover all 4 months of my deployment with visits from friends and family. So keep us in mind, and consider a vacation to Hawaii this winter!

Now, back to the end of our vacation. My mom picked us up from Toledo, and we headed over for more family fun at Grammie's house. The girls were THRILLED to get to spend time with my adorable neice and nephew, Secily and Micah.
My mom takes her role as Grandma VERY seriously :) Her house if filled with all kinds of crazy toys, including these little electric bumper cars. These provided the kids with endless fun....well, endless until the batteries needed charged.

Baby Micah figured out how to work the cars pretty easily! Nova and Micah "bumpin'"
This was my girls first experience with PlayDough....until now i have avoided the inevitable pink playdough ground into cream carpet. But the girls loved it so much we just might have to get some of our own.

Cheese-ball Nova

My mom has cut all five of the kids hair for pretty much our whole lives. Now she cuts all 6 grandkids hair too. It's pretty much an assembly line of haircuts whenever we visit. She's a nurse, not a hairdresser, but we don't care :)

Bathtime with cousins....Nova was being a bit of a chicken and didn't want to venture in for cousin bathtime.

But as soon as the tub cleared out of the other kids, she hopped right in.

the girlies hepling Gram make french toast

Nova, the little helper baby.

so, that pretty much wraps up the last 2 weeks!!! Now, it's back to the old grind :( It's going to be tough to go back to work on monday, but I am looking forward to my mom visiting in a couple of weeks!

Don't forget to consider a trip to HAWAII!!!!

did you miss these two smiling faces?????

Because we sure did!!!! by the time we left Costa Rica we were absolutely dying to see these two little sweethearts. It was after 1 a.m. when we finally made it back to Cris' sister's house, and we resisted the urge to wake them up :) Juneau did wake up in the middle of the night and mass hysteria broke loose. she was so confused and it took her quite a while to settle down. but in the morning, all was well, and we had two very excited little girls on our hands.

Our last couple of days in Costa Rica were amazing. we were able to truly relax and really enjoy hanging out with eachother, and with our friends. I can't tell you how awesome it was to truly be able to sleep in without a care in the world for 6 days in a row. this was our first vacation in years where we didn't feel like we needed "vacation from our vacation". we left costa rica rested and refreshed.

dinner on our last night at the resort

"Gyno Girls"

our husbands being goofy

The drive home was nothing short of adventurous. We did get to cross one big thing off our bucket list --- Get a Speeding Ticket in a Foreign Country. ok, ok, that wasn't really on our bucket list, but we did get to have that fabulous experience. In the end it wasn't all that bad. Our 40,000 colones ticket somehow dropped to $40 u.s. dollars when the upstanding police officer found out we didn't have 40,000 colones on us, and we were leaving first thing in the morning.

It's shocking that we were actually able to speed during our drive home, as a good portion of the main road looked like this...

and we often encountered these guys roaming the main roads....

Eventually we finally made it to Arenal Volcano, which was definately worth the drive. We unfortunately didn't have much time to hike around the area, as it was already starting to get dark. but we did enjoy a wonderful dinner with a beautiful view of teh volcano.

The girls had pretty much the best time ever with Aunt Coral, Uncle Ed, and cousins Alex, Lyndsey and Brent. They even had a guest appearance by Grandpa and Grandma Stickley, and Great Grandma Nova over the weekend.

In this first picture of Nova you will see the much beloved "Baby Bear". When Nova is traveling Baby Bear does not leave her side. He is a little backpack with rollers, and she absolutely loves him. There is nothing cuter than shrimpy little Nova pulling Baby Bear through the airport. While she was at Coral's house Baby Bear went everywhere with her...even the playground.

Nova was sooooooo worn out after a long day of play she fell asleep mid-frenchfry-bite

Jbug and Nova picked a bunch of dandelions....and then decorated a pine tree with them :)

The girls had an amazing week with their cousins, and it made our week even better to not have to worry a bit about them.

Before heading back to colorado we got to spend the day and night at my parent's house. My brother and sisterinlaw brought their kids over for the night as well, and the 4 cousins had a fabulous time....I'll post some pics of that craziness tomorrow.

meanwhile, we are glad to be home, and starting the massive unpacking project.....

special special thanks to the Matus Gang, Stickley Grandparents, Saccenti Grandparents, and Mammaw for making this amazing week possible for us. we love you all, and we are so thankful that God blessed us with the greatest families in the world.

a whole day of lounging around :)

today was super awesome and relaxing. We ate a delicious breakfast, then went for a horseback riding trip along the beach, then pretty much just lounged around the pool all day with our friends. we have done really well up to this point not getting our glowing white colorado skin completely burned. Today we did get quite a bit of sun, but still not a true sunburn, so i am pretty happy about that.
first, some pictures of our ziplining adventure. There were a total of 8 or 9 ziplines, and the longest one was 1,000 feet. it was pretty awesome.

near the end of the tour we hiked down to a waterfall with a swimming area. Cris was quick to jump in, and he and some of the guys on the tour had a great time with this rope swing.

a view from the zipline.

Ahhhhhh, it was so amazing to see these girls again. It has been almost 5 years since we started our Ob/GYN internship. We have spent SOOOO much time over the last 5 years laughing, crying, complaining, and surviving! Even after being out of residency for almost a year now, we still email almost every day. Sometimes multiple times a day! it is so great to have these awesome friends, and it was amazing that we were all able to actually coordinate a trip together!

We set out early to for the stables at the resort to start out horseback riding adeventure. Here you can see the husband's are duly entertained watching us girls try to mount the horses.

the horses were very beautiful, and quite well behaved....for the most part.

We had a lovely little trot along the beach

tomorrow we will say goodbye to our friends, and head up to the active volcano a couple of hours from the resort. Then down to San Jose later in the evening, and then a long long day of travel on Wednesday.

we are DYING to see our crazy, sweet little girls.

We ventured out of the Resort today to explore some of the nearby countryside and wildlife. We are in kind of an isolated area of Costa Rica, along the Nicoya Peninsula. Fortunately, there was still lots to explore in the nearby jungle! We headed out to the Curu Wildlife Park. Our first stop once there was to see a few of the monkeys that have been rescued from bad situations as pets. These little guys were sooooo cute. They were in an enslosed region in the wildlife park, partially to help protect them from the other animals since they were not raised in the wild. They were super cute and friendly.
We left the enclosure, and headed around the rest of the park, hoping to catch some monkeys in their natural habitat, and we quickly found a grove of mango trees that had tons of monkeys just hanging out and munching on some mangos. This little guy wasn't scared of us at all, and as you can see, he was thoroughly enjoying his mango treat!

We continued the hike up an ledge, and found a beautiful trail overlooking the deserted beach below.

Cris was pleased to find his very favorite kind of trail....steep incline, and very rugged. He hiked up quite a way by himself, after those of us in flipflops had to abandon the trail due to very slippery leaves and roots. He was headed in the direction of some VERY noisy Howler monkeys.

The other crazy thing we encountered on our hike were billions of these little brightly colored crabs. We first noticed them closer to the beach/sand, so it kind of made sense, then we continued seeing them all the way up the trail! The ground was literally covered in them. It was so funny when a loud noise startled them, and the whole ground started scattering with the little crazy crabs.

our view from the lookout on the trail

The obligatory "cris skipping rocks" picture in Costa Rica!

Just as we were leaving the park this little Lemur scampered across the trail!

It was so great to get out into the beautiful countryside to explore a little. It has been a fairly difficult for us to communicate, with our extremely limited spanish, but tonight 4 more friends join the party at the resort, and 2 of them are fluent Spanish speakers, so i expect that to help out quite a bit! Even so, we are having an amazing time, and we are so grateful to have the opportunity to explore this beautiful country.

Today our adventure continued on a supersweet zipline tour. I have a few pictures from the tour that i will post tomorrow. tomorrow is our last day at the resort, and then on Tuesday we are heading up to see the Volcano. We are loving our time here, but we miss the girls like CRAZY!!! Both of the girls really like Iguanas (aka "scary guy"), and there are some crazy super sized iguanas all over the property here. Every time we see one we think how much they would love to see all these "scary guy's". We are looking forward to getting the biggest hugs and lots of kisses when we finally get to see our sweet girls on Thursday.

Hola From Costa Rica!

We have arrived on our much anticipated vacation, and we are having an amazing time celebrating our Fifth Anniversary (a month early :)

Our first entire day was pretty much chalked up to travel. Our brother-in-law Ed drew the short straw, and got up at 4 a.m. to drive us to the airport. We were actually looking forward to the travel portion of the trip, because after hauling 2 toddlers, car seats, luggage, and strollers through a billion airports over the last two years we were really looking forward to a nice smooth trip, where we could watch the airplane movie, and drink a soda without having it dumped all over us, and take a little nap on the plane if we wanted to. It was all we had imagined it would be. :) when we finally arrived in San Jose we met up with our very dear friends Tracy and Jeremy (tracy was a resident with me in Hawaii). With our very limited spanish (cris and i both took high school spanish, tracy and jeremy took high school french) we somehow made it to the Avis counter, and then the real adventure started. Cris talked me into paying the 8.95 for the GPS, and let me tell you, i married a very wise man, because we NEVER would have made it anywhere without the GPS. We twisted and wound our way through the city of San Jose, and then onto the highway, where we drove for another hour, and then made it to the Ferry.
Over the Ferry, and then another 1/2 hour of driving at night through the jungle (rather terrifying), and we arrived!!!

We had a fabulous day today, we laid by the pool, explored the resort, and just relaxed! I am afraid we are just a tiny little bit sunburned, but i hope it is the kind of sunburn that when you wake up in the morning it is brown instead of red. time will tell, though :)

In spite of the wonderful day, there is also the hint of sadness, as today was the day my tiny little nephew, Ethan Thomas Alford, met Jesus. You may remember my post from August about Ethan's sister, Ellianna. Ethan also was born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. When Ethan was born no one in our family had even really heard of Spinal Muscular Atrophy (Werdnig Hoffman's Disease). His diagnosis was made when he was only about 6 weeks old. Ethan was a beautiful, beautiful baby (like all the Alford kids!) We didn't have much time to get to know this precious boy, but the time we did have we will all always cherish. One of my very favorite memories was getting to spend a night in the PICU with Ethan (there was ALWAYS someone by his side) , waiting for him to open his eyes for a few minutes so i could smile at him, or sing one of his favorite songs. "He's turned my mourning into dancing again, He's lifted my sadness. I can't stay silent, I must sing for His joy has come" - one of our favorite songs to sing to Little E.

Please consider a donation to the Families of Spinal Muscular Atrophy as we search for a cure for little ones like Ethan and Ellianna.

Check out these AMAZING matching outfits!

I have to take just a minute to fill you in on some of the AWESOME auctions my mom has going on ebay right now. My mom has always been an amazing seamstress.
When we were a little family living in rural West Virginia she used to sew little hippy clothes for my sister and I. She taught us to use a sewing maching at a young age, and even though i'm not much of a seamstress myself, i do enjoy sewing a little outfit for the girls every once in awhile. She is incredibly creative, and really has an eye for well-made piece of clothing. she has taught me the beauty of a hidden zipper, a wide hem, a dress made on the bias, and all the things that make a beautiful article of clothing. she is just starting out on a really cool little venture, which started out as a way to keep her grandbabies stylin'.
My mom purchases beautiful, high quality dresses, and then alters them to fit little girl sizes. She has always been an expert at altering our dresses to fit us just perfectly, and now she has taken that to another level by completely altering dresses and skirts to fit little girls and their moms :)
I love these dresses because the mommy dresses are my favorite brands, like Ann Taylor. The little girl dreses are the same high quality fabrics and stitchwork, but just altered to fit little girl sizes. I am including a few pictures of her current auctions. Her current auctions range in mommy size from 4-24. If you have a special order you would like her to work on, i'm sure she could make arrangements! just leave me a comment with your email address!
She is working on expanding her store, and will soon have a nice Etsy store up as well, but i wanted to start getting the word out in case you see something just perfect for Mother's Day! Once her store is in full swing i'll try to talk her into doing a giveaway on my blog for my first ever giveaway contest!You will absolutely love these beautiful, adorable dresses, and the high quality work that goes into them.
Check out her Ebay auctions, her username is JKSaccenti.
follow THIS LINK to see her current items for sale

p.s. if your litle girl loves American Girl, My Twin, or Bitty Baby, she makes awesome matching outfits for little girls and their special babies....her same technique (purchasing high quality chilren's clothing, and them altering them to fit the bitty babies) insures beautiful, quality dresses for both your little girl and her special doll! she can even make a coordinating baby doll sling!

toledo and chicago

we have embarked on our big trip....unfortunately, the trip starts with me in chicago, and cris+girls in toledo. I am attending a 5 day OB/GYN Board review course, while cris gets the girls settled in with Aunt Coral and the gang before we head to Costa Rica. it's actually working out to be a perfect plan because the girls will be all settled and comfortable when it is time for us to leave them for the first time. I would be extremely nervous about leaving them for a week, except as of now it appears that they are having such an amazing time with their cousins i don't think they will even know we are gone. yesterday i tried to skype with them, and juneau was like "hi mom.....uhhhhh...i gotta go play". so, it appears that all is well :) which i so sooooo nice, because it means i will really be able to relax in Costa Rica without having to worry a bit about them.

the board review is good. as good as sitting in a hotel conference room listening to lectures for 11 hours straight can be. Today we had to get out of there a little early and go shopping at target b/c we were about to die. hopefully that rejuvinated us enough to make it through all of tomorrow's lectures.

i guess that's about all the excitement for now. not sure if we will be ableto post from costa rica or not, but i am sure we will have lots to post when we get back.

He Must Be Here With His 13 Year Old Daughter...

...or else he's an undercover police nark.

I'm assuming this is what people thought when they saw me last night as I sat at the Pepsi Center in Denver watching...

...wait for it...

...the Taylor Swift concert.

I've never really been a country music fan and I'm obviously not a teenage girl who recently had her heart broken by a "mean boy" but as it turns out, my friend Amos is Ms. Swift's bass player. So, when the tour brought them to Denver for 2 nights, Amos got me a hook-up on some sweet tickets and carved out some time for dinner before the concert so Emilie and I channeled our inner 15-year-old girl and headed off to the show.

Let me back up briefly and tell you about my friend Amos - Amos was one of those people God brings into your life just when you need them. I met Amos back when I was living in Cincinnait and we quickly bonded over our mutual love of Monty Python. Amos was my dearest and closest friend at a time when I needed a close male confidant and some of the deepest and most meaningful conversations I've ever had about life, philosophy...you name it...have been with Amos...Thanks Buddy!

About the time I moved to Hawaii, Amos moved to Nashville to try to make it big as a musician. He had always been an EXTREMELY talented bass player and played with various bands around Cincy that were regionally famous. I always said that if there was anyone I knew who was talented enough to be a big time professional musician, it was Amos...and I was right! Now, he plays every night in front of 20,000 people with the biggest name in pop/country music today.

Back to our night...

When we started making plans, I knew immediately where we needed to go for dinner...the world famous (thanks to Southpark) Casa Bonita. It is kitsch, retro, short on sanitary measures and serves mediocre Mexican cuisine...but it is bursting with ambience...and I knew it would be right in Amos' wheel house. We always describe it as a Mexican version of Chuck E. Cheese but with more 1970's overtones and less class. If you've never been there or seen the Southpark episode, this clip very accurately portrays the experience, including the cliff divers, Black Bart's cave, the strolling Mariache band and the yummy sopapillas.



Me and Amos in front of Casa Bonita...
We totally lucked out and got a cool table overlooking the waterfall and cliff-diving pool...
Amos' face pretty much says it all...

Though I was concerned that my dinner suggestion might single-handedly shut down the Taylor Swift concert for all of Denver if Amos was suddenely struck by uncontrollable vomiting, we headed back to the Pepsi Center.

Outside the Pepsi Center just before the concert...

The opening number was the ubiquitous "You Belong With Me"...

...which meant Amos got to don his high school band uniform from the video. If you haven't seen the video, Amos is classic (and believable) as a trombone playing High School Band Nerd...

Our seats were sweet...

Amos' rad upright bass...loved when you played it with the bow dude!

What a rockstar!!

We were close enough to the stage for Amos to be able to pick me out of the crowd and give me this super-mug pose...I was easy to find...I was the guy aiming his camera at someone other than Taylor :)

Though Amos isn't one of my oldest friends, since I've only known him for like 8 years, or no longer one of my closest friends, since we live very far apart and I haven't seen him in person for several years, he is absolutely one of my dearest friends and I love him dearly...he worked his butt off in crappy gigs for years to get where he is now and I couldn't be happier for him. If you are a Taylor Swift fan, go check her out when she's in your area...they put on a really good show and sound great...especially that rhythm section!!

It was great to see you, man! Let's try to make it less than 4 years between visits this time!