Sydney's First Sunburn :-(

OK, we feel like the worst parents ever, because our dear little Sydney got a nasty sunburn at the Castle Rock Kite Festival this weekend.

Her nose has blistered and her arms are pretty red. :-(

Now we're clear that Sydney has Mommy's skin coloring! Lucky Sally and Daddy have that olive toned skin that can withstand the harsh Colorado sun! Mommy and Sydney have to be covered up or at the very least buttered up.

So if anyone knows of a good sunhat for babies that hat haters can live with (Sydney cannot STAND wearing a hat -- even the ones that tie or attach under the chin are gone in seconds) then please do let us know!

The backyard is coming along nicely...we now have a platform (I still cannot believe the guy at Wal-Mart built the model playhouse in 4 hours by himself...this project has taken days and countless manpower hours by 3 adults! But I did build the bench all by myself, which was quite satisfying. However, at this point, I'm wishing we had just paid the Wal-Mart guy on the side to assemble ours. I mean, really -- he can't make more than $12 an hour at Wally World, don't you think? So we could have paid him around $60 to do ours, and saved the hassle. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that.

At any rate, it looks great and both girls LOVE it. This week we are driving up to the landscaping place to get some flagstones (one of those places where they weigh your car, and then you load up and they weigh you again, and you pay by the pound -- very cool). We'll use those to make the slope on the gate-side walk-able, and also to pave a nice area through the mulch from the concrete pad (same level as the walkout basement -- under the main level deck...can you picture, if you've been to our house?) to the playhouse platform, and to Sydney's swing.

Our neighbor is putting in a deck, so we're getting a quote from those guys as well. And we still have our sights set on a sweet hot tub this summer :-)

this past Friday we went to the Colorado Gem show, which was pretty cool. Got some nice stones including REAL cinnabar, which I have been looking for everywhere. Andy got a flat of blue flourite pieces, very nice.

Saturday Sally had a birthday party at Sir-Bounce-A-Lots (the jumping place with a bunch of indoor space walks) so that was a nice break for the rest of the fam.

It's nice to have the playhouse done (and we hung a swing for Sydney) but we are supposed to get SNOW this week. Yikes!!

Getting Over a MAJOR Tummy Bug

Mommy was sick as a DOG on Thursday -- it came on like food poisoning, but we had eaten at home that day, and no one else was sick.

And then when it resurfaced Saturday night so horribly, it was time to hit the urgent care clinic in Castle Rock. Thank goodness for that place! We love the PA there, he is really great.

Said he has been seeing this a LOT lately, there is a nasty intestinal bug going around. Highly contagious, and lasts anywhere from 2-7 days. NAturally, as soon as Daddy heard it was contagious, he pretty much came down with it straight away, so we had a couple of miserable days. Only Sally managed to escape -- even poor Sydney got it (thank goodness she's still in diapers!) and when we took her to the doc, they said it's most likely something called Rotovirus, which can last up to 10 days. Yikes. But she said Syd was well-hydrated, so we should keep doing whatever we've been doing.

Meanwhile, amidst all this, we managed to landscape the yard with a friend's landscaping labor crew this weekend. Just the bare bones (mulch; no exposed dirt) plus raising the retaining wall a couple of feet (did you know we have a 28% grade in our backyard? Makes it virtually un-usable without a deck, which we hope to have in place by September). Just enough to keep the HOA off our backs.

Next plan is to build a platform (think mini-deck) for the playhouse we built for the kids, and create a nice area for a sandbox. It will be a bit piecemeal, as we are planning to do it ourselves, and we've set goals around getting the deck done (that looks like a $22k project, so it might take us a couple of months to pull the funds together).

Busy Busy Busy Times

Daddy hosted a booth at the local Biz Bash Expo this weekend, and Mommy joined him for awhile. And did we mention that Miss Sydney started walking? Talk about taking her sweet time -- 16 months old! But the interesting thing is that she started talking the same week she started walking. I guess she's been saving it up!

So now we're really on our toes...we've got an official "toddler" on our hands! :-)