School's Out For Summer!

Only because predicting spring weather in Colorado is like nailing Jell-O to a tree, the city of Castle Rock's Adventure Club Preschool last-day-of-school picnic had to be held in the gym due to an awful lot of drizzle. We all brought picnic lunches, made crafts, played on, in, and under parachutes, and told everyone to stay cool during the summer. Gracie is going to miss Ms. Amy, the teacher for whom she prays every night. She's had such a great experience in that classroom, we all hate to see it end.
Ms. Char has also been such a big part of Gracie's first school experience...we hope she'll be with her for Pre-K come fall.

Close-up of the artist as a young girl.

The joy of parachuting!

Baby, Take A Bow

"Baby, Take a Bow" was mom's first tap-dance recital number when she was 5, and watching little Gracie-Lou-who-is-twice-as-much-as-two in her first costumed recital brought up all kinds of memories...the 2009 version of tap dancing joy came on the strains of "Mickey Mouse's Birthday Party", complete with tap-tap-taps, boogie-woogies and shouted lyrics to "come along with me: it's Mickey Mouse's Birthday Party, what a sight to see!" It was.
I wish they could have this amount of sass forever. And that they'd always fight for their proverbial little dance square in the world, wouldn't be pushed out of place by anyone or anything.
The arabesque-ing wonder, a conscientious objector to tights.

Big thumping bass, metallic pom-poms...So, you think you can dance? Next to this, fuhgeddaboutit!

The crew with Grandma K, en route to a Dairy Queen celebration of all things dance.

And she's back, ladies and gentlemen!

Evie's always had a gift for swimming: the right build, speed, great natural technique (so the coaches say: mom doesn't swim, and is perfectly oblivious). After last summer, during which she swam for two teams, we had to circle the wagons a bit and avoid knocking all love for this sport clean out of her. She rejoined the year-round club team again in January, and this is her first meet since July of '08; just watch her rock on wid her bad self!
Freestyle is always her best stroke; she beat her best time, which was a big pat on the back for her after such a long break.
I always love the pictures of take-off, something about those splayed arms...
Touching the wall after breast stroke; her least favorite, but always game to try. Fun for the whole family to be a this emphatically "away" meet (about 1 hour each way): Uncle Gordon, visiting from Virginia, not only sacrificed is vacation time to spend hours poolside, but furnished us these nifty pictures courtesty of his "real" camera. The genuine treat of any meet is the concession stand (whose selection was off-the-charts great), and the obligatory Playland stop on the way home. The littles had been so patient...

Yeah, Boy-eeeeeeeeeeee!

The after-effects of a too-zealous romp down the stairs wrapped in blankets and comforters. They only did this one or maybe 14 times. Lost count.
Adding a sister is always a plus; a fresh body to pin spruces up a bout of death-defiance better than anything else I know.

If you saw this outside of your tent on the Father-Son's campout, wouldn't you turn tail and drive on home?

Dad braved it nonetheless. Matt Crawford's no pansy!

The Polson's ranch was beset by countless tents, filled with long-suffering men and obnoxious boys whose mothers are not present to tell them to "mind their manners" and "keep it down". Rumor is that all survived rainshowers and what seemed to be an hourly train whistle. Most slept off the after-effects on Saturday.

The downside of our neighborhood is the absence of other families. The upside: still lots of construction, and mounds of dirt for the only consistent playmates the Crawfords have: each other. This particular romp halfway down Candleglow Street took hours.

Again, no actual injuries. We are an odds-defying gang.

Hey, Ladies! Get funkay...

Think Beastie Boys. Paul's Boutique. All caught up?

Springtime finds the Crawford girls all sassy...Gracie, with the first of many seed-and-soil-based experiments in the miracle of new life. We'll be taking wagers on how long these new life forms survive. They very well may, if...
the following look doesn't just snap the life right out of them.
Sassy to bored. In the snap of a finger.

Eve's heavily into self-portraiture lately. Wouldn't you be, if you had a camera at the ready and you could put forth cheese like this?

Eve, flaunting the fact that she, at nearly 10 years of age, can successfully fit into a dance cosume her mother filled out aplenty at the tender age of 7. Mom's not bitter! Ahem!

Gracie, on the other hand, calms the matriarch's nerves by wearing a more-modest-than-would-be-typical-Tinkerbell costume. They still look like candidates for Clown College.

Eve's first piano recital was a smash...here, receiving her Tchaikovsky statue and a certificate from teacher Miss Tasha.

The prodigy. Eve always amazes: pubilc performance opportunities that would still make her mother vomit come second-nature to her daughter, which we all admire and envy more than a little bit. We thought we were looking at a 7 p.m. performance time, and at 6:30, when a panicked teacher called and asked if we were on our way, you've never seen 6 Crawfords and a Grandma hustle fanny quite so spastically. No fancy dress, no quiet time to gather her composure, and barely time to digest her KFC. But was she a pro? You betcha.

Eve and dear friend Emily after Clear Sky's First Annual Sock Hop. She wore mascara and danced with a boy! Dad's not supposed to know.

Eve and Mom Do History

We don't do it enough, but every so often Evie and I venture out for a girly date...this time, we toured the Historic Molly Brown House in Denver. Eve's been begging forever to see the "mansion" the Unsinkable Molly Brown lived in for portions of her adult life (don't know about Molly Brown? Seen the movie musical with Debbie Reynolds? Then get on it!)
It's not that the house is huge by modern standards, but she and her gold-mining husband were so rich at the turn of the century, their quality of life must've been above and beyond normal. Indoor bathrooms, gas lighting, electricity! Evie was amazed at how small the beds were, which is evidence of how small the people were...in our non-historic mansion, with the exception of mama, NOBODY's small.
Trying on the fancy hats brought immeasurable happiness. Price tags on those sold in the giftshop? Not exactly priceless: $250.00 on up. We were all urged to be VERY careful.

On My Honor...

Since joining the church Cub Pack last October, Ty's had THE best time; the pack at school had more bells and whistles (read: more budget), but this group has his friends, which is the real selling point. This pic could be the dictionary entry for "Cub Scout Pack Meeting": during the flag ceremony, Bryson's doing a bang-up job reverently reading through the proceedings, and his fellow Wolves?

The results of the time-tested and kid-approved activity of drawing a dinosaur on the top of your head.
Because Ty's got the best dad in the world, every time he comes up for awards they have to block out a good 10 minutes to account for all the patches, belt loops and pins he and dad continually earn. Tonight he earned his Wolf badge, in just under 6 months, and proud mama actually got to be there: no Mutual!

Because he knows the Prophet's sage counsel to avoid multiple piercings, Ty's being super-cautions while pinning the mother's wolf pin on yours truly...

Storm Watch '09

One of the things Matt and I miss most about SoCal was the panic caused by a good winter rain; news flashes by concerned anchormen and women, breaking to on-the-street reporters interviewing people, asking their subjects when they "knew" they would need their umbrellas...

here, there's actual weather patterns. Funky, nonsensical weather patterns. But no Storm Watches.
After that amazingly mild winter, spring comes in like a lion...2+ feet down here in Castle Rock, complete with school and work cancellations. Gorgeous views, fantastic to snuggle before the fireplace and watch the madness unfold, if you were lucky enough to get the groceries beforehand. And we were.

Ty, knee-high in frozen precipitation, standing in our newly-cleared Zeke path. Watching that poor pooch navigate his way through chest-high snow just to do his business, pathetic. But we laughed anyway.

A not-so-funny shot as he ascends the stairs...