Sky sox and Family on the 4th

Cousins Ethan and Lexi

 Hmm... This is not working out so well....

 Ok, that's a bit better!!!

 Little Lexi on Cayle's bike with the seat too high for her!

Cronies....

Made plans to go see Cousins Ethan and Lexi this weekend. Cayle is going to spend an entire day with them while Mommy and Daddy and Lindy go to the baseball game on Saturday night, and out for lunch with one of the players on Saturday afternoon. Cayle and Ethan will have plenty of time to be wound up and be mischievous!

So Thankful!!!

So thankful for my family! My wonderful wife, superior son, and blissful baby (who we got to see on the ultrasound yesterday!)

Natalie had her ultrasound yesterday, and we found out that she really was pregnant! Despite her not feeling pregnant at all. She had been thinking for a couple weeks now how weird it was that she never felt the baby move. Well, we found out why. The baby is laying in the transverse plane... laying horizontal across her belly with the placenta facing her belly button. In which case the placenta absorbs all the movement and she feels nothing. We found out though on the ultrasound that the baby is moving bunches! The ultrasound tech let us know that the baby has everything he/she needs and looks to be healthy! So exciting to see, and Cayle actually seemed interested and kept saying, "mommy, baby, mommy, baby, daddy, mommy, baby..."

Got down to CO Springs yesterday to spend the holiday with Natalie's brother and his family. Spent the day hanging out and planning for the big day. Today Natalie spent the morning slaving away in the kitchen to prepare our awesome meal with the help of her little brother Ronald. It all turned out fantastic. Had all the staples plus some... green bean casserole, jello, turkey, stuffing, mashed and sweet potatoes, wine, gravy, cookies, and pie... apple and pumpkin! Spent a bit of time outside this afternoon, and laying on the couch and watching football and drifting in and out of sleep.... :-) Very filling and relaxing!

Cayle is loving it here! There are so many toys to play with! He really just loves the basketball hoop though! He has shot hundreds of baskets today... he just focuses in and doesn't stop... it's kinda freaky really how focused he is on making baskets... Reminds me of his uncle Bob with his ability to focus on one thing until he has it mastered. Definitely doesn't get that from me... Thinking Santa may have to bring him a basketball hoop...On the agenda for tomorrow: Just a little bit of shopping and not sure what else? Nothing crazy though that's for sure!

Great Grandma

Stole this picture from my cousin Jodi's blog.

Great grandma Pruemer had come out a while back with Cheryl and Tony, Jodi's parents, and we went out to the DAM Brewery in Dillon for dinner, and were able to grab a picture after of all of us. Turned out pretty fantastic!

Brothers

Last week, I got the chance to hang out with my youngest brother Michael for an entire week. I can't tell you the last time we got to spend that much time together. I wasn't around much while he was growing up, college, work, Colorado, you know, life basically. But now he is in college at the U of I, and has a few more breaks, so he was able to come out with Anne Marie and Mom for a week of just chillin... (and sleeping) It was awesome to get to spend some time with him! We went snowshoeing, for a few runs, and shared some good meals. The pic below is of him CONCENTRATING while trying to beat me in shuffleboard... which he succeeded in doing once of 3 times.
In a span of 2 weeks, Natalie and I both got to hang out with our youngest brothers. Hers is a bit younger than mine, still being in high school. It was a great opportunity for both of us! We are both blessed to have such great families and siblings!

Snowshoeing with mom, Michael, Anne Marie, and Cayle

On Friday before Anne Marie left to visit her friend in Denver, we were able to get out for a couple hour snowshoe on my favorite trail up Valley Road in Gypsum. It was a beautiful day, around 45 degrees and sunny, and everyone was over dressed! The snow was fantastic and so wonderful! Cayle slept the whole time in his Chariot. Good exercise and fun had by all! It's fun showing the family what fun things we do out here!

Gall Bladder, Appendix, and Many Thanks

This past Friday, Natalie was in to the Vail Valley Medical Center (which by the way has been FANTASTIC every time we have been there) to have her gall bladder removed. It has been giving her some grief for a while now. Long story short, upon looking at her innards with the scope, the doctors could see something that was up next to her gall bladder that wasn't supposed to be there. Turns out it was her appendix. It had somehow shifted up into her upper abdomen area. So when they removed her gall bladder, they also removed her appendix to eliminate any future problems with it. 2 for the price of 1.
I took her to the hospital at 7 am... the question leading up to this was what to do with Cayle? Natalie had it set up originally so Jess would stay the night on Thursday and then take him to daycare at 730. Melinda would pick him up at 1230 since it was a friday, and he only stays till 1230 on fridays. Then when Melinda had to leave for x-country practice, Alana would come stay with him for the evening.... That was if everything didn't go according to pan. We were planning on being home by early afternoon.
So after all that was planned, my cousin Jodi, who lives in Denver, offered to come out with her just over a year old son Nathan and watch Cayle. We took her up on it and it was FANTASTIC! Thanks so much Jodi! Natalie ended up not recovering very quickly from her anasthesia and decided to spend the night in the hospital. It was so nice for me to be able to come home for a bit and hang out with Cayle and Nathan, then to be able to go back to the hospital to be with my wife. So much better for him to be able to stay in one place with one person, then to have to be shipped all over the place with different people. Jodi coming to watch him definitely made it much easier on us!

Natalie is feeling well now, and is ready to return to school. She spent Monday just being a mom and staying home with her baby boy.

The last two weeks...give or take

Here's the deal...the computer broke and blogging is difficult -actually impossible - without a computer. We do still have the work laptops, but neither of us really has the complete hang of Macs yet and we can't upload pictures on the Mac, which takes a lot of the fun out of the blogging experience. So, anyway, we have had a broken computer which should be returned to us shortly. And then there will be some awesome pictures to send out on the blog :-)

A drama:
A few weeks ago we had the oil changed on the car. One week after that, we were driving in to Denver to get Anne Marie and Cathy and suddenly, going up Vail Pass, the car was lurching and going about 30 mph. So we (mostly just me) were freaking out because I am not a big fan of semis riding right up onto our bumper, especially when the only thought going through my mind is how easily they could push us over the side of the mountain! The car reacted much the same way getting up to Eisenhower Tunnel. I only cried once :-) Nick managed to get the car down to the flat-lands, where it performed perfectly, of course. We considered getting a rental car but were hopeful the car issue was just a fluke. Unfortunately, the car freaked out going up the foothills as we were coming back home, so we had to drive back across Denver to the airport (for the 2nd time that day) and get a beauty of a rental. The car did get fixed by some super-nice mechanics in Golden at Planet Honda and we now have new front brakes, a flushed transmission and clean fuel injectors.

2 visits:
Nick's sister was in Denver for an interview with FOCUS, a missionary group she is looking at being a part of after graduation. We spent the day with her on Sunday after her work was done. So we got to hang out with her, eat at Woody's (fire-grilled pizza!) and just spend time catching up. We picked up Nick's mom, Cathy, when we had Anne Marie with us, then left Anne Marie in Denver to catch her flight home, and brought Cathy back up to Eagle.
Cathy came to stay with us for 5 days. She found something to do most days on her own since we were in work, but I think she was really able to explore the area. She did lots of hiking and walking and even spent a day working in Nick's classroom with him. Nick took a day off and went hiking in Minturn with her; they started in Minturn but made it to the back bowls of Vail. It was a lot of fun to share all of the things we like about the Eagle area with her!

Thanksgiving:
We had a great day spending time here at home with some of our new friends. It all started waking up to a slight dusting of snow, which we hoped would stick around but was gone by 12. Church was nice, but we didn't know we were supposed to have taken our bread and beverage for lunch to have our meal blessed by Father Bob. One little boy brought his Capri Sun up to the altar as his drink for Thanksgiving meal! It was cute :-) We had all of the traditional fixings, plus the Macy's parade and lots of football. Tiffany and Niles brought some awesome stuffing and sweet potatoes. I hear the apple pie was also superb! Deb & Kent brought little weenies for appetizers. Poor Kent had to make these silly appetizers to make Nick happy; what they didn't know is I had already made some too! Jeff and his lovely girlfriend Jess (who was visiting Eagle from California) brought rolls and jalapeno artichoke dip with some awesome bread garlic crackers. They also did all the dishes and I will be eternally grateful to them for this! We talked lots, played Scattergories and just had a great time.

Now what???
Well, now that Thanksgiving is over, I can put up Christmas decorations. I'll get started on that today. I'm sure Nick is very excited to carry up all those heavy boxes for me! We will be getting a real tree, so I'll also go down today and get our tag for the tree. Only $10 to the forest ranger for our tree permit, which will allow us to go out in the forest and cut down a tree to haul back. Torrey and Alana will be going on that trip with us, so we'll wait to get the tree til next weekend when they are home.

Also, today is our deadline for ordering the new house. Nick's going to call on it later to make sure everything is a go. The interest rates dropped earlier this week and we signed on to a great rate. So, after today, much more house information to come!

And.........pictures to come once the other computer is fixed :-)