Our first campfire of the year!

We love everything about the area we live in except for the lack of moisture. I suppose when you have a lot of sunshine that means you have to give up the precipitation that comes with clouds. However, since we've been getting an unusual amount of rain/snow these past few weeks, our fire danger is low! That being said, we decided to take advantage of it and have our first camp fire this week...in our front yard! 

Last year, Nick had to cut down a pine tree that was near our deck because it was destroyed by bugs (sad). Since then, we've had this perfectly round spot with no grass and it worked perfectly for us to put a fire pit there! 

This was Addison's first campfire and she loved it. For the longest time, she was just mesmerized by it! We were a little worried that she might want to get close to it but she was content as can be sitting in the chair.

She would hardly even look at the camera so that mommy could get a picture with her! I must say that I rather enjoyed having her sit still on my lap though. We got to cuddle under the blanket together and let daddy do all the work!

Having a campfire was completely his idea and he even ran into town (which is a 15 minute drive by the way) just so we could roast some marshmallows!

YUMMY!

It really was very relaxing to just sit out there as a family and enjoy each other's company. I hope the fire danger remains low so that we can do it again soon!

Homemade Playdough

Would you believe me if I said I had never made homemade playdough until this week? It's true! I may have made it with my mom when I was a little girl but I don't remember it if I did. Anyway, I decided it was time for Addison to be introduced to playdough and what better way to do that then by making it together?

The recipe I used was found on the Skip to My Lou blog. 

I set her on the counter (with her light up Easter bunny) and we set to work!

She liked to help me dump out the ingredients. She discovered that the best way is by using her fingers to scoop it out. What fun!

She then took it upon herself to help me stir. It was really cute to watch her try!

I chose not to add the food coloring in with the rest of the ingredients because I wanted a variety of colors. Instead, I cooked all of the main ingredients and after it had cooled, I took out the dough, divided it into sections and then (using rubber gloves and wax paper to cover the counter) I added drops of food coloring. 

To make it even more fun, we added some pretty sparkles! I have some fine colored sparkles and they worked perfect for this project!

Here are four of the colors that we made. We used neon food coloring and regular food coloring and created our own combination of colors. 

 To store the play-dough, I bought these cute little containers that came in a set of 10 from the dollar store.

Now let's see if she approves!

I think she likes it!

We will definitely be playing with playdough all summer long!

One thing I do want to mention, Jill's recipe only calls for 1 tsp of oil and I have seen others that call for at least 1 T. I kind of feel like this playdough is drying out faster than I would like and so next time I am going to try adding more oil. I'll let ya know if I do!

Thanks for joining us!

We Love the Park!

One thing is for certain, we have a little girl who is a thrill seeker! She absolutely loves being tossed in the air, held upside down, and twirled around so we knew she would love the park too! We have been to our local park numerous times but it's always fun to check out a new park. That's what we did the other day!

 Obviously she really enjoys the swings.

She could literally spend hours in them! Her favorite thing is when daddy pretends she kicked him. He throws himself back and makes an "oof" noise and she thinks it's hysterical!

Just check out this video and you will understand what I mean!



Addie does love a good slide too though.

Her problem with them is that she can never seem to keep her balance!

Whoops! Let's try again!

Much better!

It's also fun to go down the really big twisty slide with daddy!

I think one of her absolute favorite things about the park though, is playing in the rocks!

I know there will be many more trips to the park this summer...

because who can resist this sweet face?

"Dee!"

The weather has been extremely crazy here lately! On Mother's Day we had gorgeous weather in the morning and by afternoon we had marble sized hail, rain, thunder, tornado warnings, and then finally, more snow! It's nuts I tell ya! That being said, when a nice day rolls around, we take advantage of it and head outdoors!

Addison has taken quite the interest in the wildlife recently and one of her newest words is 'deer' only her version sounds more like "dee". It's adorable! We constantly have gobs of deer either in our yard or the neighbor's yard and so every time she seems them she gets really excited and yells "Dee! Dee!", making sure we have heard her so that we will pick her up and let her get a better look. 

We really love to watch her grow and develop. Every time she learns a new word, we are just so proud! I wish this growing process would slow down just a bit though because it feels as if it's going way too fast! 

Let's Go Fly A Kite!

I literally hadn't flown a kite since I was a little girl so about a month or so ago, we bought a kite at the local dollar store and had been dying to try and fly it! Since the weather was almost perfect for flying a kite recently, we decided to go take advantage of it and headed to the park where we knew there would be lots of space! 

Addison really enjoyed helping daddy "hold" the kite and we were impressed with how tightly she actually held on to it! She just giggled and oh'd the entire time. So cute!

We were amazed at how well the kite actually flew! You never would have known it was only $3 by the way it soared!

Of course, daddy, being the man that he is, had to let all of the string out so he could see how high it would go. The problem with that was, we then had to wind the string back up once he was done! :) 

What we've been up to this week.

So I FINALLY downloaded Instagram for Android and I thought I'd share some moments from our week!

We watched the snow.

And swung outside the very next day!

We spent time cuddling our favorite toys. 

And we got acquainted with some pretty hummingbirds!

Most importantly, we had fun spending time together, just the two of us!

I hope you don't mind seeing camera phone pictures because that's what a lot of our spontaneous pictures are taken with. They give us a chance to catch a moment when it happens instead of running to find a camera. The great thing about Instagram is it spices those moments up and I am so happy I finally  had a chance to download it!

Thanks again for stopping by and enjoy your Thursday!

Crazy Colorado Weather!

The title of my blog is 320 Days of Sunshine, right? Well obviously we don't get sunshine EVERY day otherwise the title would be 365 Days of Sunshine (or 366 for this year). Yesterday was one of those sunless days.

Here is what we woke up to. 

Yes, that is a lot of snow. On May 7th. YUCK!

It was a really wet, sticky snow and a lot of it melted as soon as it landed but we probably had a good 8 inches that actually accumulated. It literally snowed all day long and when we went to bed it was still coming down.

Here is what it looked like outside when we woke up this morning. Still quite a bit there!

 

The great thing about Colorado though, is the ridiculously powerful sun! Now, less than 8 hours later, this is what it looks like outside! 

 

Yup, except for the shady parts, the snow is completely gone. 8 inches in less than 8 hours, gone! That is CRAZY! So yes it was a bummer that we had a snowstorm yesterday but honestly, we are grateful because we badly needed the moisture. And seriously, who can complain when it's such a gorgeous day today??? :) That, my friends, is why we love Colorado!