Fall is here!

My blog assistant has been a bit tired the past few weeks so we are a week behind, but never fear!  I'll get you all caught up on the Life of Jordan!  Last weekend was busy and fun.  Mom ran in her second half marathon on the 22nd and had a great time all the way around.  She loved the pre-race packet pick up expo.  Their was so much stuff to see and buy.  She was able to stock up on a few running basics (jackets, shirts etc.) that she had been needing and in the process, spent enough money to earn a "Potty Privilege" pass.  This pass earned her the use of special potties on race day that had heat, running water and flushing toilets!  She didn't end up actually using it, but it was nice to know it was there.  Her most favorite purchase by far though was her zombie apocalypse shirt.  She snapped that up without even thinking twice.

Race day was an early, early one for mom.  She was out the door by 5 AM to pick up her friend Margy, who had talked mom into this in the first place.  It ended up being a beautiful day for a run and mom discovered how much easier it is to run with a friend.  She was feeling no pain and even knocked 10 minutes off her last half marathon time.  Woot- woot!

My day, however, was not quite so successful.  My soccer team, while we didn't lose, tied and did not look very good at it.  The only reason we scored is because the ball bounced off Hannah's back and into the opposing goal.  Not because we did anything special.  Oh well- the snacks were good!

That evening, we all headed down for the Rockies baseball game and met some of dad's co-workers.  As usual, I ate my way through the game and had an extra good time because my favorite co-worker, Mr. Franco, was there too.  He ran the 1/2 marathon that morning too so he and mom swapped war stories.  We finally got home about 10:30 and everyone collapsed into bed.

On Sunday, we were up and at it early.  We packed a picnic lunch and headed to the high country for our second annual "Fall Aspirin Drive".  I just love the "aspirins" and it was another beautiful day.  The colors were gorgeous and the only damper on the day was that these beautiful colors mean snow isn't far behind....

Sunday night started Dad's incredibly busy week.  He put together a supplier conference for his work and had to meet some of the attendees that were coming in from Norway for dinner.  At 9:00 at night.  Not a good way to start the week especially since the same thing happened Monday night as well.  Needless to say, dad was a tired puppy this week.

Nana D and Mr. Walker rolled into town on Friday afternoon for a weekend of fun and adventure.  We started off with a rousing game of Operation.  Personally, I think Nana and Mr. look pretty flexible for being grandparents.  While we were busy with that, mom and dad headed out for a date night.  They are kind of lame because they never really know what to do with themselves- they went out to dinner and then wandered around the mall for awhile.  Woo-hoo!

On Saturday, mom had to work for a bit, so Nana and Mr. were in charge of getting me ready for my soccer game.  Thankfully, it was right at the park behind our house, so it wasn't too bad.  We lost yet again 0-3 but we did look a little better today so maybe a win will happen before the end of the season.

In the afternoon, we headed to the Wildlife Experience......

 And then Mr. Walker and I worked on building the Lego dinosaur that he brought me....

Mom also happened to notice that all of the Walker clan was wearing the same shoes.  The family that shoes together.......

Before all of our Saturday fun, we had to bid Dad farewell as he left for yet another business trip.  This time it is a 12 day jaunt to Norway.  This trip may be more tolerable for him though since he bought a "break away bike" for all his travels.  This bike breaks down into pieces, comes with its own case and then goes back together in a jiffy.  He got in a great ride and took in some beautiful scenery around Oslo.

Sunday was a quiet day for mom and me.  I watched a lot of movies, we went grocery shopping and shopping for Halloween decorations.  We spent the afternoon putting up the decorations and wrapping up our weekend.  We were all in bed early to make sure mom wasn't crabby for the upcoming "single mom" slog.  She has the week all planned out with lots of stops at the Whole Foods salad and hot food bar for dinner.  It should be a banner week!

Quite the Week

Mom and I had quite the fun filled week while dad was busy working away in Washington D.C.  He left Monday morning so mom thought it would be a good idea for me to have a friend over Monday after school because she had big plans to start painting the living room.  I had my friend Camryn over but mom got nothing done mainly because we kept asking her for stuff every two minutes.  By the time Cami went home at 6:30, mom was exhausted and had nothing to show for it!

Tuesday was soccer practice and chicken nuggets for dinner.

Wednesday is mom's short day so she came home and baked some Cake Pops for us to decorate.  I have been begging mom for a Cake Pop maker for months and now that she has a real job with a real income, she went crazy and bought a Cake Pop pan.  They were not nearly as easy as the commercial promised and not as pretty but we sure had fun and man, they tasted good!  I see lots of Cake Pops in our future.

Thursday was Girl Scouts and Ms. Chris (the other leader) and mom got smart and had us all meet at the park.  They thought we would be able to get our willies out and actually be calm enough to listen for a bit.  That wasn't quite the case but we had fun anyway.  We earned our "Keeping the Earth Beautiful" petal and "Respecting Authority" petal.  Ms. Chris and mom aren't sure how we earned the "Respecting Authority" patch as we listened to them for precisely zero seconds.

Friday was a dinner out and relax on the couch kind of night.

Saturday, I had my second soccer game of the season.  The Pink Jets are not looking so good this season.  We lost again 0-4 and none of looked like we knew where we were.  It was not pretty.
In the afternoon, mom worked on her painting project that she had to put off and then we went to my school's Fall Festival.  I won a whole bunch of prizes at the carnival games but the best prize was the 6 pack of cupcakes I won in the cake walk!  They are awesome and I'm not really sharing them.
I also spent a lot of time swinging with dad.....

Sunday, mom finally finished her little painting project and in the afternoon, we headed down to the Nature and Science Museum to watch the IMAX movie "Space Junk".  It was a beautiful day here and we are gearing up for the week ahead- hope everyone has a good one!

The Season Opener!

We'll just dive right into it here- we had a fairly busy week and mom found her inner Tiger Mom.  

I had soccer practice on Tuesday which makes for a long day anyway and then you add dinner and homework on top of it and it just seems endless.  Mom also picked this day to head to my school to ask my teacher why my reading assignments were so easy.  Mom tends to be fairly lazy in the "check in with teacher/find out if there are any difficulties in the classroom" area of parenting so this was a big deal for her.  So she marched (meekly) into my classroom and demanded ( in a really quiet voice that involved a  lot of "Whatever you think is best Mrs. V!") that I be given harder reading assignments.  Turns out mom was right and that was the direction Mrs. V was taking me anyway, mom just didn't have the patience to wait.

So Wednesday evening was "Back to School" night when the parents visit the classrooms and meet the teachers and find out what we have been doing.  Mom and dad decided Mrs. V knows her stuff and I'm in good hands.  She was using all kinds of big words that mom and dad had to use a dictionary on when they got home.

The rest of the week passed pretty quietly but that was a good thing because I needed my rest for Saturday.

I had my first soccer game of the season.  We are still the Pink Jets and have our full team returning from last with two new additions.  The big change is that we are now on a bigger field, we keep a real score  and we have a goalie and have to play offensive and defensive positions.  We didn't play too bad but I think we need a few more practices to really get the feel of things.  We lost 3-0 but I came close to scoring twice.  I'm getting to be a kind of aggressive player which makes dad very proud.

Waiting for kick off

And we're off!

My very best friend Camryn is on my team this year (which creates all kind of problems in the paying attention to coach part of practice) and so after my game her family and ours headed out to lunch to celebrate the first game.  It was a quick lunch because then Camryn and I had to get ready for a birthday party that afternoon.  It was a "Rock Star" birthday and it was the most awesomest birthday party EVER!  I have not stopped talking about it.  We had to dress up like rock stars and then we got to give each other make overs.  We had crazy colors sprayed in our hair, sparkly eye shadow and lip gloss, I have multiple tatoos and I have spent the last two days rocking out on my key board singing mom songs about coconuts and swimming pools.
We all hit the hay early- it was an exhausting day for us.

Sunday, we slept in until 6:45, dad went for a bike ride, mom made muffins and cleaned the house and we spent the rest of the day relaxing, watching football and enjoying the last few days of warm weather.  It was a great day and we wrapped it up with family movie night on the couch.
Hope everyone has a great week!

Mom's Birthday Extravaganza!!

Ah, yes!  Here we are at our favorite time of the year- Mom's birthday month!  Woo- hoo!  It has been quite exceptional but before we get into that, I'll fill you in on my week.  Not a whole lot to report but I did have my first soccer practice on Tuesday.  It went pretty well but mom doesn't really know because she spent the whole time yapping with the other moms.  She did pay enough attention to watch me trip and fall in the first two feet of our first drill.  We have high hopes for the season.

The rest of the week went VEEEEERRRRRYYYY slowly, probably because mom and dad both took Friday off to get the weekend started early.  After our last camping trip, we decided we needed to get one more in before the season ended here and the only weekend we could swing was Labor Day.  We NEVER go camping on the holidays because all the crazies are out but we bit the bullet, reserved our spot at  a campground and headed out.  We were very pleasantly surprised.  Traffic was nothing, the campground was beautiful (if a little crowded) and the other campers were relatively quiet.

We got to our campsite about noon on Friday, got set up, popped a beer and were sitting on our tooshies by 12:30.  It rocked!

Our campground had a nice little playground which I dragged mom and/or dad to multiple times.  That tire swing was the coolest thing and I got to where I was doing all kinds of balancing, twirling and other things to make mom nervous.

We finally decided to head out to try our hand at fishing again.  We found a kind of pathetic little lake and made a pathetic little attempt to catch something and gave up pretty quick after that.  We headed home for beef stew, hot dogs and s'mores.

On Saturday, we slept in until 7:00!  Dad bought us a camp oven for this trip and he made us some cinnamon muffins for breakfast.  So yummy- hit the spot perfectly!  After sitting around some more (until 1 in the afternoon!) reading magazines, playing dinosaurs and cards, we decided to head out for a drive.  We found a dirt road and took it and it was a great discovery.

The road dead ended at a beautiful hiking trail that headed up into the mountains.  The aspens are just starting to change, the sun was out and it was a great trail.

At the trail head, there was a huge train tunnel that went under the entire mountain and we saw a train come out of it- very noisy but very cool!

We got back to camp about 4, headed back to the playground for awhile and then mom and I headed to a nature talk given by the park ranger on how plants and animals get ready for winter.  Did you know black bears have to eat 20,000 calories a day to get ready for hibernation??

While we were gone, dad was busy whipping up birthday cupcakes for mom in our new camp oven and they were  just about the best birthday cupcakes ever!

Sunday, we slept in until 8!! Can you believe it!  After a leisurely breakfast of pancakes and eggs, I dragged mom to the playground one more time and then we headed home.

Now, you may think Mom's birthday fun would be over by now but no!  As if camping and mountain cupcakes weren't enough, mom had presents waiting for her at home!  I got her a yummy pumpkin candle and a cool doorstop (which we really needed) and dad got her the Joy of Cooking cookbook (which mom has been wanting) and a pasta maker.  We are expecting big things from her!  After that excitement, we headed out for a birthday dinner.

Monday was even more fun but had nothing to do with mom.  Dad and I headed to Elitch Garden's for one last summer hurray.  We rode all the rides, won a bunch of prizes, got soaked, ate chicken fingers and then headed home.  It was a fabulous last weekend of summer and I'm kind of bummed I have to go back to school tomorrow.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Bicycles!

We have a had busy, fun week around here- I don't even know where to begin!  We'll start with Wednesday.  We are gearing up for fall soccer season so my team had a pre-season get together at my absolute favorite yogurt store- you know, the one I drag mom and dad to every single Friday night.  Anyway, they loved having 8 screaming 6 year old girls running around their establishment for an hour.  We had a ball and it should be a good season.

We are now two weeks into school which means it is time for Assessment Day.  We didn't have school on Thursday but we went in for an hour and a half to have our knowledge assessed.  Mom signed me up for the 10:15 slot and dad took the day off.  Which means.......Daddy/daughter day!!  He picked me up from school and we headed to Dave and Buster's to try and  finally win my big Scooby.  Only bad thing was, we got there and they had no big Scoobys left.  Kind of a major disappointment so dad being dad, drove us all the way to Westminster, which is like an hour from our house, to the other Dave and Buster's where they had big Scoobys!  And thank goodness they did because I finally earned enough points to win him!  And he is awesome!  

He barely fit in the back of dad's jeep but we made it home just fine.

He's so huge that he scares mom every time she comes around a corner because she thinks it is a person.  He is pretty much the most awesome thing ever.  For right now anyway.

Dad and I came home and dropped Scooby off and then headed to the airport to pick up a friend of ours from Tucson.  Dan and dad were bike team mates in Tucson and Dan came up to watch the Pro Cycling Challenge for the weekend.  After THAT, Dad and Dan dropped me off for my first girl scout meeting of the year.  It was good to see all the girls again and good to see mom and Ms. Chris (the other leader) try to be a bit more organized this year.  We'll see how long it lasts.

On Saturday, I got to go with dad and Dan to Golden for the start of stage 5 of the bike race.  They spent more time keeping me entertained than watching bike racing but I think we all had a decent time.  I got to have a parrot sit on my shoulder,

do some hula hooping ( and I did quite well I might add),

and try my hand (or foot) at an old time bicycle.

 Mom spent her time shopping so I think we got the better deal!  We all got home around 2 and spent the afternoon watching movies and watching the race on TV.  We headed out for pizza/beer/yogurt and then dad had the great idea of a sunset hike.  It was a beautiful night for it and just what we needed after stuffing our faces!

On Sunday (yes, there is more!) we all got up early and headed to Snooze for an early breakfast.  I devoured my eggs and half of dad's french toast.  Mom didn't share one bite of her "coffee and doughnut" pancake or her blueberry streusal pancake or her pineapple upside pancake.  Hmmpf.
Dad and Dan headed out for one last bike ride and then down to the time trial while mom and I hung out at the park and then the grocery store.

A very fun weekend and we are all off to bed early.

First Day of School! (Kind of)

Last I checked in, I was dealing with some "plumbing issues" and was not having a good time of it.  Sunday night rolled around and I was still feeling pukey but was so excited about starting first grade (can you believe it?? first grade??) that I had my outfit all picked out and told mom exactly how I wanted my hair and what jewelry I was going to wear.  I even got up early Monday morning so mom could curl my hair.  I felt OK but not great and managed to force down a little food before I had to lay down again.  I managed to drag myself out for pictures and then went inside and threw up.  But I still wanted to try to go to school so we packed up and headed out.

I barely made it to the front door of my school before I decided I needed to go home.  So as everyone was happily running into school with their new backpacks, saying "hi" to old friends, I was heading back to the car and back home for my first day of school.  Mom had full load of patients and dad can work from home, so he got the call and dad and I spent the day quietly on the couch.

Dad had to head out of town again on Tuesday and thankfully, I felt much better.  I insisted on wearing the same outfit as the day before since technically, it was still my first day of school.  We also got another really great "first day of school" picture.  Mom especially loves the well written school sign.  Believe or not, Heritage is one of the best schools in the area.  Which may not being saying a whole lot...

 

My first day went really well and I loved catching up with all my friends.  Of course, I was a basket case that night and mom had me in bed by 7:15 Tuesday and Wednesday both.  It made for a relaxing evening for her!
Dad got back into town late, late Wednesday night and we laid low until Friday when we dragged ourselves back to Dave and Buster's.  They have a ginormous Scooby Doo stuffed animal that I am dying to get.  He costs 8000 tickets (really) and I have patiently saved and saved and we now have 5000 tickets so mom and dad are hoping one more really long night at D&B and I'll have the damn Scooby and we can stop going there.  Mom is very proud at how well I've been saving and staying focused on the end prize though.
Saturday was quiet again as I was still recovering a bit but Saturday night, we headed over to some friend's house for a bar-b-que.  There were about 8 of us kids running around like crazy, the adults were deep into the margarita pitcher and a great time was had by all.  Dad decided it was time to go when he found me passed out asleep at the bottom of the stairs.
Sunday was spent recovering from Saturday.  It was a beautiful day and after my 2 hour nap, we rode our bikes to the park and played for awhile before coming home and hitting the hay early.

Hope everyone has a fabulous week!  P.S.  Only 13 days 'til mom's birthday.  Not that she's counting.

Poop! There It Is! And Other Things

No pictures this week but it turned out to be a pretty fun week, just not picture worthy fun.  Dad had to fly out to Washington D.C. for three days again.  He hasn't had to travel since his big trip to Norway in May so we have gotten kind of used to having him around again.  But he is back into the travel rotation and is very excited about it!
Mom has been very grump the past few weeks with no real explanation and I have been more than sassy and smart aleky so Dad was glad to get out and mom was not looking forward to the week.  Everything ended up being OK thanks to one of her patients though.  She went to see her last patient of the day on Tuesday afternoon.  It has been HOT, HOT and yucky here in Denver and this patient and his wife were sitting out by their pool, drinking a glass of white wine.  Mom sighed and made a comment about how relaxing the whole scene was.  Well, wouldn't you know it?!  They invited mom to stay and have a glass and stick her feet in the pool and just hang out for a bit.  Mom gave it some truly serious thought and then because she is the consummate professional, declined the offer.  Boo-hoo!  She just didn't think it would look good to come careening up to my day camp with wine on her breath and chlorine on her toes.  She did however, make a quick stop at the liqour store before picking me up and got two bottles of Reisling.  Mom was in a MUCH better mood that night and I've started calling it her "Happy Juice".  It was good for both of us.
Because we didn't have to wait for dad to get home to eat dinner, we ate extra early and spent some time after dinner on Tuesday and Wednesday practicing cartwheels at the park.

(Oh wait.  I guess I do have pictures!)

On Thursday, we had a busy fun afternoon.  Mom picked me up a little early and we went out for frozen yogurt and then we headed to my school for Lemonade on the Lawn.  We got to drop off my school supplies, get my desk organized and meet my teacher.  I am in a 1/2 blend classroom this year and my teacher is Mrs. Voeglie.  Mom and I love her already.  I told mom she reminds me of Ms. Barbara, my most awesomest preschool teacher.  Mrs. Voeglie seems very warm and caring- just what I  need!
On Friday, dad was home so we headed out for our usual Friday night party and then came home for more cartwheels at the park.  That is when our weekend took a nose dive.  I started feeling pukey and nauseated Friday night and just wanted to go to bed.  I woke up Saturday feeling the same but now was having pretty severe abdominal pain.  Because mom and dad are who they are, they waited until 9 O'Clock at night to call the pediatrician.  He recommended going to the ER to make sure it wasn't an appendix.  So we headed out around 10 PM and spent 2 hours in the ER to find I have a fecal impaction.  Awesome.  The ER worked some of their magic, I had a big poop and felt better.  Not great but better.  I spent most of Sunday on the couch again but at least I was eating by the end of the day.  It's a good thing too since I start school tomorrow!  Mom took advantage of the down time and made meatballs and dad mowed the lawn.  Not the day we were planning but OK, I guess.

Tomorrow is my first day of first grade and if I felt better, I would be very excited.  I'll let you know how it goes!

Rivers, Beaches and Mountains, Oh My

Well, here we are in the home stretch of summer vacation.  I have one more week of freedom and then it is back to school for me.  I'm kind of ready, kind of excited but I won't admit it!

Mom has been working four longer days and taking one day off a week so we could spend some quality time together.  This week, we went to the Wildlife Museum on Wednesday and saw a photo exhibit on ants which grossed mom out but I thought was pretty cool.  There was also a camping exhibit with a photo op of the Grand Canyon.  I look like I'm really kayaking, huh?

Wednesday night, dad's work had a company party at a place called The Islands.  It is a huge indoor beach volleyball place and we had a darn good time considering it was a work event.  They had tons of things for kids to do from sand castle building, to treasure hunting to hula hooping to my favorite, face painting.

I waited for 45 minutes and boy was it worth the wait!  I looked awesome and it was quite the battle to get me in the shower that night.  I spent a huge amount of time staring at myself in the mirror and took no less than 20 pictures of myself with the camera.  I know what I'm going to be for Halloween now!

The rest of the week was pretty quiet but on Saturday we drove up to Evergreen to meet our old neighbors Patrick and Nicole for lunch.  They are STILL on vacation (mom is so very jealous of their 3 week vaca!) and believe it or not, wanted to hang out with us one last time.  We met them at a really great little restaurant right on Bear Creek and got patio seating overlooking the creek.  It was like a mini-vacation for us.  It also happened to be the Dam Ducky Drop fundraiser for a children's hospice here in Denver.  You buy a little yellow ducky, it gets dropped into the creek upstream and whichever one crosses the finish line first, wins.  We amused ourselves during lunch watching the thousands of duckies float downstream, get caught in eddies and stuck on logs.  It kept me occupied and that was a good thing.

After lunch, we went down and played in the creek for awhile and then headed on home.  Everyone was tired and we slept hard that night!

Sunday was a quiet day.  We spent the morning lounging around and watching the Olympics.  I have been practicing my hand stands and cartwheels and have decided that my path to a gold metal is to be the girl that yells at the rowers to "stroke! stroke! stroke!"
We went shopping for some back to school clothes in the afternoon and spent some time at the park.  All in all a good week.  Hope everyone has a great week!