happy halloween from the meyer diner!

The girls came home and changed right out of their uniforms in to pj’s. They weren’t quite ready to get costumes on, but didn’t want to hang in their uniforms. (I assure you this exactly why we have piles and piles of laundry ALL.THE.TIME.!)
Checking out the Halloween spread
We had vegetarian chili and the girls put together mummy pizza bagels for their friends. 
And then it was finally time to trick or treating. Isn’t the waiting just the hardest part???
The girls chose a diner theme. 
I was pretty shocked that they wanted to match, but loved every minute of it! 
I tried to get them to go out on roller skates. They looked at me like I was completely nuts. I guess that wouldn’t have been the safest in dark, but it sure would have made for cute pictures. 
The servers and the chef! Love this!
We were joined tonight by two families of friends and the girls were just over the moon. Their friend Kierra and her mom joined us, in fabulous costume, and our dear friends, the Billeras, came on over too. 
I didn’t get a family pic of the Billeras. I was able to get a pic of Gwynny and her buddy Ruby. 
We had such a lovely night. The dads took the kids out trick or treating. The moms stayed home heading out candy and we had Hocus Pocus playing in the background. A little candy, a lot of love. I couldn’t have asked for a better Halloween! 

halloween dances and parties

Oh boy, these are the days! The days that are just filled to the brim. They are fast-paced, and a bit hectic, and quite exhausting! They are filled with school, and work, and dance, and dinners in the car on the way to Girl Scouts. B and I have to split up and we’re dashing about town running children everywhere. 
And then at the end of the night….we all ‘jam up, and grab our books, and sprawl on the couches in our family room, and read together. We share blankets and I have little smelly dance feet in my lap and we all just slow down. 
Annabelle helping out in the kitchen before Gwyneth’s dance performance. 
Off to the Girl Scouts Halloween Party!

sunday funday | football, symphony, bowling

We have one day off a week and it is sacred for this family! The Bronco games are a big part of that day and they have really brought us all together. We have a common interest that gets us all pretty excited – even though, those Broncos have been making us pretty sad lately. 
A day like today is my favorite. I love to fill a day with fun and be busy, busy, busy. I love the adventures! The Broncos are out of town so we watched the game downtown along with other disappointed Bronco fans. Man, we need a quarterback…one who can scramble and throw touch downs and perhaps a back up who creates more action on the field than off. Oh Broncos, you make me nuts! 
After the game we headed to the Colorado symphony for the Halloween Spooktacular. 
I love the symphony. It is definitely one of my happy places.
We weren’t quite ready to call it a day so headed over to Lucky Strike and bowled two games. 
What a day! Days like today make all the busy days during the week worthwhile. 

pumpkin sparkle

I am not a fan of Halloween.  I don’t like anything spooky. No surprise – I scare easily. 
I do love fall! I  love the pumpkins, and the colors, and the sweaters, and mostly importantly the cool fall weather. We have not done much decorating for Halloween, but we did pull a few things out this weekend and started to get in to the fall spirit. 
This fabulous wreath made it all way to our house from Chicago. 
My mom got it for us and it successfully survived the plane ride home. 
Our trees are bare and the girls can’t resist a pile of leaves. 
I stepped outside this morning to this gorgeous view from our front porch. Those mountains are breathtaking! 
The girls and I discussed carving pumpkins. We didn’t want to do it. We didn’t feel like dealing with the mess. We decided to make sparkle pumpkins instead. We cruised over to get some craft supplies and boy oh boy did we bedazzle some pumpkins. 
This girl loves nothing more than she loves some sparkle!
We bit off more than we could chew and those pumpkins are going to take a lot longer to decorate than originally planned. Someday we hope to get them done, but I have them proudly displayed from my office anyway. I look forward to pulling out the glitter again with my gals. 

george’s first birthday party

Another day, another birthday celebration for this guy! 
The party was at the Kohl’s Children’s Museum. It was a great location and a fun time for all. My girls were thrilled to follow George around all day and play with him. They can’t get enough. 
My sister, Becky did such a cute job with the decorations. It was all baseball themed. The highlight for me was the donut wall. Yum! The party was at 9:45 am in the morning so it was perfect. The kids all had a wonderful time snacking and playing. We were so glad we could be there to celebrate with the one year old! 
Trying sprinkles for the first time. 
We had planned to go to a fall festival that afternoon but it was way too cold. We ended up at the movies and saw Small Foot. The girls seemed to enjoy it – I fell asleep. 
That night we hung out at Becky’s house and watched Baby George open his presents. The biggest hit was the wrapping paper, naturally!

chicago

All the stars aligned and we were able to go to Chicago for Baby George’s first birthday party. We were not sure it was going to happen, but it all worked out in the end and we were extremely grateful to be there. 
Friday we surprised Lily at school. We were the mystery readers for the class. 
She was so surprised to see us!

Then we swung by to pick up George from daycare. We woke him up from his nap to take him home so he was a bit out of sorts.

Everyone got glammed up and off we went for dinner at Morton’s. This has become a bit of a family tradition for the Pazes. Don’t all babies celebrate their first birthday at Mortons??? Ha!
The meal was delicious, as usual, and I took tons of pictures of these little cousins together. They adore each other and love to spend time together. It makes my heart happy. We all live so far apart. Thankfully the distance doesn’t get in the way for these kiddos. 
We opened gifts and enjoyed desserts and had a wonderful evening celebrating this little guy. 
B won’t be thrilled that I posted this picture, but he was giving Gwyneth a hard time about her chocolate cake and it made me laugh. 

annabelle’s school pictures

We got school pictures back and Annabelle’s are awesome. Braces and long hair and looking so very grown up. Gwyneth hated hers so she’s going to get retakes next month. I didn’t think they were bad, but she wasn’t happy with them so retakes it is. 
6th grade, in just a blink of an eye

broncos vs ram

Oh man, those Broncos will just not give us a break!
While B was away enjoying some fun on the beach and golfing in the sunshine, we woke up to a yard full of snow and 20 degree temps. We were not jealous of that beach time (ok, maybe just a little…), because us Meyer ladies were pumped for the Bronco game! 
We put on our Bronco gear – over a few layers of leggings – and under a few layers of coats, gloves, and scarfs! We were bundled up for the elements and then off we headed to the game. 

Not once did my girls complain about the weather. We even parked far and walked to avoid traffic after the game. I told them I would splurge and get a pedicab, which they typically love, but they said no. They wanted to walk. 
We got to the gates to find the longest lines we had encountered all season. Again, the girls didn’t complain a bit. They laughed at the drunk people all around us and were so very patient waiting to get in the stadium. 
We finally made it to our seats with snacks and hot chocolate in hand. It was COOOLD! We had to clean the snow off our seats but we were ready to root for our Broncos. We hooted and hollered but it didn’t seem to do much good. The Broncos lost in the end. 
We made it home – just a little sad, just a little frozen. I think we were all feeling pretty proud of ourselves for surviving the cold and feeling like some legit Bronco fans. I sent B some pics and I think he was pretty impressed with us for braving the cold!

ballet | sleeping beauty

We had the laziest of mornings. We watched the first Harry Potter movie and then waited way too long to get up and ready. We were scrambling to get out the door and didn’t even have time for lunch. It took us almost an hour to get downtown which is twice as long as normal. We were pretty stressed getting to the theater. Traffic was a nightmare!

We arrived to the doors of our section 5 minutes late. I always get to the theater early so I was so incredibly disappointed and anxious. The usher informed us we couldn’t go in for 30 minutes!! I laughed because people are always showing up late and climbing over us. We had box seats right by the stage so we had to wait.

I started laughing and our afternoon instantly turned around. We cozied up to the bar and ordered some drinks and snacks (which was kind of a blessing because we didn’t have lunch).  We watched the ballet on the tv at the bar and giggled and acted silly and didn’t care at all that we lolly-gagged this morning and missed the beginning of the show.

Annabelle bit into a Mike and Ike and out popped her tooth.

Our amazing seats!
The show was beautiful! We had such a lovely time.
We grabbed an early dinner at Corner Office. 
The many faces of Annabelle…
The food is just ok. It’s all about that cotton candy. 
We headed to our friend’s 50th birthday party and then back home for a Harry Potter movie night. We were exhausted from a long, busy day. 

while dad is away….

B headed off for a long golf weekend with his family and let me tell ya, I’m so grateful for the kindness of friends. I do not have typical work hours so we don’t have typical help with our girls. B and I try to work our schedules around their school schedules and activities and of course, spend as much time all together as possible. 
B left on a Friday morning and came back super late on Monday (it was actually Tuesday by the time he got home!). I had my weekend pretty well covered, by my Aurora manager was still on vacation so Friday was a bit of a challenge….oh and I had a field trip planned at my Westminster studio. No biggie, just a full studio of kiddos! 
My staff really stepped up and did a great job and my dear friend, Jackie offered to pick the girls up from school and take them to the pumpkin patch. I didn’t even ask for the help, she just swooped in and offered and absolutely made my day. The girls were thrilled to spend the day with friends instead of at work with me and I could let go of some of that working momma guilt. I’m forever grateful for wonderful friendships. 
The girls requested dinner at Hu Hot which is one of B’s LEAST favorite places. We also watched Mamma Mia. I guess it was a night of things that B doesn’t like! Ha!
We knew snow was coming so we decided to enjoy a little bit of fall. The girls biked around and then we went for a little walk. It was a relaxing and quiet night at home. We enjoyed the girl night.