More Spring

Once my brother got here from Idaho we headed up to Fort Collins to a family favorite, New Belgium Brewery, never mind the fact that Paul and I were there the Saturday before.

If you've never been you definitely should. They do free tasting, the atmosphere is fun and from what I hear the tours are pretty good too. I've been numerous times but have never gone on a tour, maybe this summer. You can also send your friends a postcard. Paul and I have a fun time sending our co-workers postcards at school.

(Just ignore the 17 on the picture, it was my picture of the day for April 17th.)

Once we finished our tasting we headed to another Fort Collins favorite, Coopersmith's. (Paul and I were also there the Saturday before.) More great food and beer for some was consumed. When the waitress asked about dessert we weren't about to turn her down but decided to go to the Chocolate Cafe for dessert instead. We ran through the pouring rain and managed to stay mostly dry or at least our hair wasn't dripping wet. We gawked at some prom goers thinking that it must stink to have it rain so hard on your prom. The dessert was great. We headed home for a serious game of Nerts. (Paul and I won, we're the family Nerts champions!)

-On Saturday morning we got up and Paul made cottage cheese pancakes. I know they sound gross but if you have ever had them they are delicious! I guess my mom started making them to trick us kids into eating more protein, and it worked. We then played more Nerts... do you see a theme here? Everyone headed home that afternoon, oh after we had Spoons (yes, another Fort Collins favorite) and cupcakes from the cupcakery in Fort Collins.

-April 22: Earth Day...We water colored at work. I'm trying to do more art with my class and they seem to be enjoying it. I have a few really awesome artists in my room. They drew their globes free handed. My teaching partner also decided that we needed a solar oven at work so he made one and tried to cook hotdogs in it. (It wasn't warm enough...BUT the kids ate them cold anyways.)

- April 25th: Amanda, Maddy and I ran the Fast and the Furriest at CSU. This is a 5k that benefits the CSU vet school. We were supposed to run with our family but the date got changed. It was still freezing and wet. I ran my best 5k yet, I'm still too ashamed to share my time. Maddy does a good job once we start running but she is a HUGE pain while we're waiting around. She gets way too excited. I decided to do the race because I enjoying running around the CSU campus, it brings back good memories.... I loved college. Once we were done I took a spring picture of the oval. My goal is to take one every season.

Spring!

Well I haven't posted anything lately and I'm not really sure why. I have been thinking maybe I'd come up with something really creative to write about but... that never happened. So here is what I've been up to since March 26th:

-March 27th- After our snow day, which turned out to a beautiful day that we could have gone to work but I'm glad we didn't, we went up to Rocky Mountain National Park and snowshoed for the only time in CO this winter. After spending a day up there we always wonder why we don't go more often. My teaching partner, Mike, and his wife, Melinda, went with us. Unfortunately their son who was at a birthday party at a skate park broke his wrist while we were on our way back to the car. That night we helped Paul's teaching partner celebrate her 50th birthday. She had been planning on taking part of Earth hour so we turned off the lights and continued talking and drinking in the candlelight.

-April 1st: We finished giving CSAPs, Hurray!

-April 9th: We had our all school musical. The music was great, the attempt to entertain 55 fifth graders in a half a classroom, not in our own building for 1 1/2 hours was not fun at all.
-April 10th: Paul's sister, brother-in-law, and their three kids get here from Indiana. They stayed for about a week. We had a great time hanging out with the kids and them while they were here. Paul's brother was also in town so it was a family reunion of sorts. Here are some pictures:

While they were here we also celebrated Easter, Allison's 3rd birthday and Shaelyn's 2nd birthday. We attempted some family pictures outside on Easter. It was pretty cold but it was good to get everyone together.

-April 16th: Paul's family left for Indy and my family arrived. My brother, Kevin, started toward Colorado at 8:00 Thursday morning but didn't arrive until 5:00 on Friday. They started closing roads once he got to Larimie. My parents came up on Thursday because of the predicted snow so they just hung out at our house while we were at work on Friday.

That is all for now... I'll keep updating tomorrow.