Winter Tubing Fun at Copper Mountain

Winters here in Colorado can be kind of hit and miss.  Some months are milder than normal and then some are colder and snowier, thus making for some real nice levels of cabin fever and stir crazy attitudes ;)  We'd had a few heavy snowstorms recently followed by some pretty cold temps so it kind of made playing outside long enough to burn some energy off a little difficult.  We were all itching to get outside and do something but it was clear going to the neighborhood playground for 10 minutes before we froze to death was not going to cut it.  

The husband was going out of town for a few days and I thought it would be a perfect time to hang out with a good friend of mine and get the kiddos together.  Kiddos playing together = tired kiddos = happy moms :)  One of our local ski areas that I love (and was a former employer of mine) has a fantastic tubing hill, as well as something for the little ones.  So off we went to Copper Mountain!  

While Selah is tall enough for their big tubing hill, Harrison was not so we decided to take them all into Critterland.  Okay, I'll admit that I was bummed we wouldn't be visiting the real tubing hill but this ended up being pretty cool too.   For $10 for the entire day (yes, you read that right), the kids got to play in this 'playground'.

There's even a mini tubing hill.  Good thing I've been working out because walking up and down the hill at 9700 feet above sea level tests the ol' lungs out!

A tubing carousel is perfect for those kids that want to be pulled on the tube...and mom doesn't want to do it ;)

I was a little worried that Harry would not be a fan of being in the snow given his first attempt earlier this year (complete and utter meltdown.  I'm talking 'neighbors checking to make sure I wasn't stealing someone else's kid' type meltdown).  However, you can see he was loving it.

Still loving it.  Maybe not loving the fact that I made him wear a pair of his sister's old boots because I kept forgetting to order him his own pair.  Well, the kid hates shoes period so it was a given he wouldn't like the size too big, pink argyle boots I shoved on his feet.

Mountain girls. 

I'm not sure why the random sinkhole is in the snow but I do know I had to haul Harry out of it a good dozen times.

The day could not have been more beautiful weather wise.  That's the thing I love about (some) winter days in Colorado.  It was in the 30's up there but it was so warm that we were all shedding layers early on and no one was have a hypothermic meltdown.

Seriously cannot recommend Copper Mountain enough, especially for families.  It's not as big as nearby and more well-known Breckenridge but it's top notch and still my fave all these years later.

2...really???

**I was planning on posting this yesterday but instead was dealing with the misery of pregnancy-induced lactose intolerance.  I can't say no to mac 'n cheese.

Two years ago today at 2:34pm (thank you for giving me a time I can easily remember), we were blessed with the arrival of one Miss Selah McGinn Brown.

Granted we weren't expecting her for another 5 weeks and certainly didn't entertain the idea of me delivering her in triage on a stretcher because someone was not waiting one more second to get here but I digress!  She has been such a delight to parent.  Well, we know that's not true all the time; rewind to this morning when she got into my MAC eyeshadow compact and decided to finger paint herself and our carpet in a lovely dark purple.  But 99% of the time, I'm loving being her mama.  Slowing myself down to see the world through her eyes and what gets her excited is humbling.  If you think work is too important, stop and watch to see what a 2 year old thinks is awesome and you might think twice about things.  I love my polite little lady, 'pease' and 'kank you Mom'.  I love how she comes up to me, arms stretched out asking, 'hold you?'  Um yes, of course I'll hold you because I know there's going to come a day when she's too cool for boring old Mom and won't want to be held.

I don't know why this birthday is making me a little sad more than her 1st birthday did.  Maybe it's because she's definitely not a baby anymore and she's speaking in sentences and very clear about what she does (and certainly doesn't) want.  This past week I've been watching (and rewatching) old videos I have of her on my phone that I still can't seem to delete to make room even though they're backed up on the computer and on 2 hard drives.

In the meantime, I hope that her little 2 year old self feels all the love we have for her on her special day!

Oops We Did It Again!

So now that you have the awesome 90's Britney Spears hit stuck in your head (you're welcome), it does look like we will be adding another little bambino to the Brown clan in 2014.  We found out the night before my birthday so I'll just say it was on my birthday because, ya know.  I'd been having a couple symptoms that led me to believe that just maybe somethin' may be going on in the baby oven.  Symptoms that I didn't have with Selah until well into the pregnancy but apparently they decided to grace me with their presence nice and early.  Things like being awake in the middle of the night for no earthly reason and not even Pinterest or Facebook will put you back to sleep.  Or the complete eruption of pimples on my chin so awful I could feel them coming days beforehand.  You know the ones...the kind you accidentally bump and they bring tears to your eyes.  Hello 15 year old me all over again! 

So the night before my birthday, I was at an appointment about 45 minutes away and on my way back I realized that no I could not wait until the morning to find out whether or not I was preggo but also that I didn't want to drive 10 miles out of the way to the grocery store to pick up a test.  So I did what any sane and completely rational woman would do...I stopped at the 7-11 near my house.  I'm 34 years old for crying out loud and I was so nervous to walk up to the counter and pay for the stupid thing.  I stood in the aisle for way too long, contemplating whether or not I should make some witty remark about my purchase or point out that I had a ring on and was in fact married.  Thankfully some shred of common sense smacked me upside the head and I said nothing other than 'thank you' and 'good night'.  I get home and Dan had no idea that I had a pregnancy test stuffed in my pocket.  Why didn't I tell him what I was doing?  Well, I'm apparently super immature at 34 but I've also taken my fair share of tests in a moment of panic since Selah's been born that I wanted to make sure this wasn't another waste of $8 before I said something.  I hadn't even flushed the toilet and that bad boy was positive for shore. 

 

 I was excited coupled with OMG I'm gonna have 2 kids and we're not just trying anymore.   We told a couple close friends right away that we see frequently and might be wondering why I wasn't paying attention to their conversation and instead talking myself through not barfing all over them.  Morning sickness with your first child and morning sickness with your 2nd are totally different.  With Selah, I worked from home so I could sleep my nausea and exhaustion away.  With this one, you don't really get that luxury when you have a toddler getting into every possible thing in the house and inhaling animal cookies like they're going out of style. There may have been more than one occasion of head against the shower wall, praying to God to just get me through that day.  And thankfully I'm on the other side of the death warmed over days.  While I'd had something more elaborate planned when it came to the baby announcement via the Internet (because you know you can't have some lame-o announcement to your friends and 'friends'), we decided to go with this announcement that I came up with while Selah and I were in California recently.  And I think it's way better than what I had planned.

 

So let the fun begin again!

The Formative Years

This year's winter has been a little bipolar to say the least; weird at best.  With no real measurable snow 'storms' and a few 60 degree days thrown in, it left me putting my sweaters away and then pulling them back out, all in the same week.  I'll be the first to admit that I love winter.  I love cold, close-the-roads-down blizzards.  Bare ground and 50's in January...not a fan.  This is Colorado...act like it!  But now that spring has officially sprung, I've given up hope for any huge blizzards and am reluctantly embracing the warmer weather.  Every year around this time, I get these small yearnings to go back to my former lifestyle.  Now before you raise an eyebrow and get wild ideas of what I mean by that, it's nothing too out of this world.  Long before my days were filled with diaper changes and sippy cups, I was a river rat.  From early May to early September, my days were spent up in the mountains...in the sun, by the river, on the river.  It was heavenly and was a big part of my life for many years.

Growing up in the mecca of Colorado river rafting, it was kind of a given I'd end up working for one of the dozens of companies one day.  I started off as a whitewater rafting photographer, sitting on the banks of the river; shooting rafting trips as they went thru the rapids.  It killed 2 birds with one stone...being outdoors and using a camera.  And I had a killer tan.  You couldn't spend enough money at a tanning salon to get that kinda tan.  And I'm paying for it these days but that's a minor detail ;)  With working at that job for 4 years, I came to know a lot of the rafting companies in the area and realized that that was where I really wanted to be.  So I then started working for one of the local rafting companies...in the office booking trips and checking customers in for their trips and then guiding trips down the river on my days off.  And if you were wondering where I lived during all this...it was in a pickup camper at the back of my company's property.  No, not some cushy RV or even an apartment in town.  A bonafide, 1970's, goes-in-the-back-of-a-pickup-truck-camper that I could just barely stand up in.  There was an apartment over the office with a living area, kitchen and bathroom that all the employees shared lest you think I wasn't getting regular showers or cooking for myself.  I loved it.

This was during my checkout run.  Checkout run meaning this is where I was taking legitimate paying customers down the river and being cleared to take other customers down without a training guide in the boat with me.  Mildly terrifying for me as some rafts from another company collided with some of our other boats in the canyon and there were people swimming and overturned rafts; I got sucked under our raft trying to help drag an unmanned raft to shore.  I walked away with massive bruises and also as a commercial raft guide.  I'll call it a win :)

I'll go on record as saying this trip scared me to death.  Taking my family down the river.  Nothing happened...I was just scared I was going to dump them in the river and kill them.

This was my last trip of the season so why not wear a bright red wig?!?

Just hitting the river with a couple of friends.  Those were the best trips :)

My trusty sidekick, Finley.  It's been a long time since this girl has seen a raft but she still freaks out whenever she sees me pull her lifejacket out.  A true mountain dog and girl's best friend.

Would I ever go back to being a raft guide.  No way.  That's definitely a job that takes a beating on you physically and I'm too geriatric to try steering uncooperative tourists down the river again ;)  But I will say it's one job that I was extremely proud to have had.  I have asthma and a heart condition and my doctors didn't think it was a good idea to do it but I wanted to try and see if I could do it...and I did.  I got to raft some of the best (and scariest) rivers around the country and it was a fun thing to add to my former life.  Even if just thinking about it makes me want to call the chiropractor ;)

Sweeping the Dust Off

Needless to say, my personal blog was seriously neglected.  Like, if it were a dog, I'd be in jail serving a sentence for animal cruelty but not before making a cameo on Animal Cops as a dog neglector.  Looking back on my last post over there, I was pregnant with our daughter, Selah, and was reveling in all the pregnancy glory.  Not really.  I was a bit of a hot mess emotionally for a large chunk of the pregnancy due to losing my dad when I was about 4 months along.  I tried to keep it together as best as possible for the sake of the baby I was carrying but lemme tell ya, some days it was really hard.

So what's happened since the last time I posted on my personal blog?  Well, my daughter (in true form to this day) was tired of life on the inside and decided that she wasn't going to wait 5 more weeks and out she came after a very fast ohdearlordmakeitstop 2 hour labor; with me never making it to a room and having her on a stretcher in triage.  And no I didn't get a discount for that...I checked ;).  I adjusted to becoming a mom and thankfully God blessed me with a great baby who slept through the night early and to this day is a pretty great sleeper.  Mama loves you extra for that kiddo ;)  We bought a 5 bedroom house in east Denver (plenty of room for more kids the husband said with a smile when we bought it) and while I wasn't initially sure I'd like living where it's flat with very little trees, I've really enjoyed it.  It's quiet, we're surrounded by hardworking ranching families and for the most part, people are a little less hostile, shall we say ;).

While I've had my photography business since 2007, I was seriously considering putting it on hold indefinitely after a very slow year 2012 and early 2013; part of that was my own doing by not taking several bookings while I was on maternity leave.  But apparently God had other plans because the second half of 2013 has kept me more than busy with family portrait sessions and I finally realized that focusing on these types of sessions is where I'm happiest.  I'll still do a handful of weddings a year but I'm not going to focus on them like I had in years past.

So now I'm a work at home mom to a now 18 month old (holy cow where has the time gone?!?), working on DIY projects around the house and satiating my shopping appetite on eBay.  I'll be posting all sorts of things, lemme tell ya :)  Mama and baby fashion, must haves for parents (i.e. moms really), and whatever else strikes my fancy that day.  So with that, I bid you adieu!