We hosted the annual Oscar Pool viewing party again. It was a good turn out and a lot of fun to see friends again. I even came in third second!
Missing Brian hard though. Love you, Loophole. We did our best to keep the pool true to your terms (even when we disagreed with your system!)
It took almost a year, but Taiwanese Snow Ice has come to Denver!!!
Near Colorado and Evans you can find Snowlabco and get your snow ice on. It’s squeezed in between a marijuana dispensary, a rental car shop, and under a Brazilian capoeria studio. They were running out flavors that night so we couldn’t get the basic sweet we wanted, but it was still very tasty.
The kids were at the Apex Center for tonight’s date night. Prior to snow ice we found another gem in a sketchy strip mall, Ambli. I saw their menu on the Denver Restaurant Week site and it looked good. If I had known it was near a McDonald’s, a Dollar Store, and a power station I might not have gone (I was searching in the “Cherry Creek” neighborhood). But the restaurant actually had great ambiance and a delicious variety of foods. One of the better places we have tried lately. We spent most of the meal discuss the Cosmere, as I had finished the latest Brandon Sanderson book* last night. Ben has me hooked. I’m thinking of going back to the beginning of Mistborn now that I know the whole trajectory of that world.
Date nights are the best 🙂
*Whoops, not the latest. Daaaaang. That dude is prolific.
Jack is now a full day student! I didn’t want to pay tuition all year (especially during the holiday and sickness season). I wanted to start him in January, but musical rehearsals complicated things. Well, rehearsals are over for me. So for the last three months of Kindergarten I enrolled Jack in full day. His class was blended half and full day. All that changed is he no longer leaves at 10:50 in the morning. Instead he goes to lunch in the cafeteria (scary!) then a second recess (woo!) followed by alternating classes in art, PE, computer lab, science, and social studies. Basically all the FUN stuff in school. At the end they have free time, what you might typically think of as Kindergarten play time, but has been relegated to preschool and day care in today’s education world.
Wednesday was his first official day, but it happened to be an early release day. His teacher shares pictures on the ClassDojo app and included one of lunch – I like to think she did it for me 🙂
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Oh, I should mention that on that first afternoon, Sam was excitedly running around the asphalt play area and biffed it hard. He fell onto this front and flipped feet over head. He got an impressive bump! Poor kid. He seemed to forget about it by the next day though. Kids are tough.
Thursday was a real full day, going all the way until 2:55. He came out happy and proud!
His main complaint is that lunch is too short (20 minutes) and he doesn’t get to watch TV. Ben and I laughed at him. We’ve known that it would be a tough day when he had to stop his Roman siesta style lunches with 1+ hours of TV and second (and third) helpings of food. I make it up to him with an after school snack and no more quiet time.
Sam and I had a spectacular day together. I felt less rushed without squeezing errands into school time. We had more play time together and he helped me make S’mores tarts. I put him down right after lunch for a nap and, as I suspected, he took to the early time very well. When I had to wake him to pick up Jack he was in a better mood than usual. I’ll find out soon if the lack of post-nap grouchiness is because of the new time or was a fluke. The weather was nice so we bundled up to walk to the school. I think he liked the extra time to snooze.
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Here’s a video from today:
Here’s a fairly recent video:
And here’s a bonus old video:
I’m 34 years old today! I love February and I love it when my birthday falls on a Saturday.
Ben gave me a splendid day. I got to sleep in – a particularly precious gift because we were out late at A Gentlemen’s Guide to Love and Murder last night. Birthday presents were opened with breakfast and I got many lovely things. The kids went bonkers for the balloons my German pen pal sent with her package. 
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We took the boys to a park to enjoy the warm weather and meet some friends from Jack’s school. Then Ben took the kids to McDonalds while I escaped for a long, quiet lunch alone with my book. Ah, bliss.
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I went home to tuck Sam in for a nap and Amanda came by. I always love seeing her! She was in the middle of high hunting season for musical props. I found some odd things they can use and we rehashed the show from last night and did some shop talk.
In the afternoon our friends the Arcands came over for the big event. I had arranged sitters for our kids all together at my house while we adults went downtown for a puzzle room and dinner. Jack, Nora, Henry, and Sam play so well together and Jack declared it was the BEST babysitting time EVER because his friends were there.
We had fun in our puzzle room. It wasn’t too challenging, but we still had a time crunch in the end, finishing in a mild adrenaline rush. The host said our total time was 26.5 minutes, putting us in first place on their current leader board. It was a little confusing how often they reset all scores, but she said the all-time record is 21 minutes. So we are pretty proud of ourselves! After the game we walked to 16th Street Mall and had dinner at Mellow Mushroom Pizzeria, then picked up ice cream in Milkbox Ice Creamery in the new Union Station building. 
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At home we treated all the kids and sitters to ice cream and cake before saying good night and putting reluctant kids to bed.
Now I have to decide whether to start my new sock yarn project or my new cardigan project, or to finish my shawl project! So much beautiful knitting and sewing is queued in my craft baskets!
Sometimes Ben gets frustrated with work, like any person. The last two (four? six?) weeks have been very busy for them, and an employee just gave his notice to leave, which will make things even crazier for Ben.
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