HELLO

Hi. I'm Amanda...a happy wife and mom to three awesome guys. We've lived here in Fort Collins for more than 20 years and are proud to call it home. Before moving to CO, I worked at a city attorney's office, making use of my law and Master's degrees from Duke. After settling in Fort Collins, I homeschooled my three (now grown) sons and was delighted to experience music classes, soccer, karate, swim team, archery, Science Olympiad, First Lego League, parkour, and climbing (not all at the same time!). From 2005-10, I was also a contributing editor for a national scrapbooking magazine, authoring a book and a couple of monthly columns. From 2009-10, I founded and ran the Good Grief Blog. I enjoy learning new things, spending time with my family, volunteering with The Matthews House, traveling and indoor rock climbing.

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Tuesday
Jan112022

Ten on Tuesday: Portraits!

Apparently it's been about 16 years since we last had any professional portraits taken as a family. Who knew? We've taken plenty of pictures on our own but haven't had official portraits taken. So, we scheduled portraits with Wild Bliss Photography for just after Christmas...rescheduled once on account of wind and lack of sunshine...and ended up with a gorgeous day with fresh-fallen snow. It took us a few minutes to get comfortable with the process, but we ended up with a plethora of great shots...very happy! I can't pick a favorite so here are ten that I particularly like:

And, in case you were wondering, here's a bonus...that last family portrait we had taken:

It was just at one of those photography places at the mall but look at how adorable those boys were! (This was December of 2005.) 

Now I just need to figure out what to do with all these wonderful shots... ;) (If you have any good recommendations or suggestions, please let me know!)

Monday
Jan102022

Starting 2022

Yes. Somehow it's already January 10. Stuff's been happening. :) I have additional blog posts to create and share so will just do a simple list here to catch up...

1. New Year's Eve. We celebrated the end of 2021 and the start of 2022 with what's become our traditional charcuterie and fondue. Thanks to The Fox and the Crow for the meats and cheeses...yum! (Yes, our fondue spread has become less fancy and extensive as we've added the charcuterie board. Four-fifths of us would prioritize the charcuterie over the fondue, though we still all enjoy both.)

2. Escape room. The next day, we tried our first escape room. (It was actually Asher's second experience since he'd done one in Omaha, but it was a first for the rest of us.) We tried out Somewhere Secret in Old Town, completed the challenge with time left to spare, and had a great time. 

For what it's worth, Asher says he enjoyed this experience more than his escape room time in Omaha because there were more physical sorts of challenges. We'd recommend this escape room!

3. Spider-Man. Over the course of winter break, we've worked our way through all the past Spider-Man movies...the three with Tobey Maguire, the two with Andrew Garfield (which we'd actually never seen), the animated Into the Spiderverse movie, and any recent MCU movie where Tom Holland appeared as Spider-Man. And then, finally, we went to see the latest Spider-Man: No Way Home movie...having waited until it wasn't brand new and until the local schools started back for the semester so that the matinee showing was mostly empty. There has been much discussion and debate...plenty of conversations throughout break. Hooray for Spider-Man! (For what it's worth, we're in favor of having a whole new MCU of just Spider-Man movies and stories from all over the multiverse.)

4. CEC started. CEC started classes again on January 5. Two of Micah's four classes this semester are on the CEC campus. (So, he's actually only scheduled to be there three mornings each week.) His other two classes are through FRCC online so won't start until January 18.

5. Covid. Micah didn't go to his classes last week, though, on account of having tested positive for Covid. Yup, Micah started 2022 in quarantine. Fortunately (thankful for sure!), he had only mild symptoms...sore throat and loss of appetite...only had a slight fever one day. Micah and I waited more than 2.5 hours to get him tested last week at a drive thru testing site (which wasn't the most fun but turned out to be some quality conversation time so I'm not complaining) and were honestly surprised when his results came back positive. Following his results, the rest of us (who hadn't distanced from him at all and weren't experiencing any symptoms) went to get tested as recommended. (The line was sooooo much shorter.) All of our results came back negative. So. Thankful that our vaccines and boosters seem to have worked and incredibly thankful that Micah's vaccines last summer seem to have worked. 

(That's been our primary concern...not knowing whether Micah's vaccines had elicited any sort of effective immune response given his auto immune disease and being on immuno-suppressants. We'd been treating him as unvaccinated since his rheumatologist was worried about that and the unknowns for people like him. So, big sigh of relief. It's a weight lifted to know that, at least with this current variant, Micah seems to be okay. He's hopefully in that small portion of immune-compromised people whose vaccine seems to have worked. Whew.

And, for what it's worth, if you haven't gotten your booster yet, please do. Our best guess is that Micah tested positive while the rest of us didn't because he's the only one of us who hasn't had a booster. (He isn't eligible yet given the date of his last shot...which was actually a third dose last August when they approved third doses for immune-compromised people in hopes of increasing the immune response.))

6. Today. So, that brings us mostly current. Micah was approved to go to classes today so collected his textbooks and officially started the semester this morning. (He'd been in contact with his professors last week and apparently didn't miss anything important.) Noah will head back to his apartment later this week and start classes on the 18th. (He'd been set to go back last week but had to stay until we got the test results back. CSU will require him to get tested again before classes and is also now requiring booster shots.) Asher's classes don't start until January 24, so we'll drive back next week.

It's been a good break...lots of games together and watching shows together and just being together. It'll be nice, too, to get back to a bit more routine...with people not sleeping past noon, fewer groceries needed, people not staying awake until early morning, etc. LOL. :) 

Okay, more to come...

Friday
Dec312021

Silver Anniversary

Whoa. Today is our silver anniversary! Twenty five years since we exchanged vows and started this journey. I'm so very blessed to have Nathan as my partner, my friend, my heart. 

It's kind of crazy to wrap my head around, honestly. Silver anniversaries seem like something older people celebrate, lol. I remember when both of our parents celebrated theirs. It seemed so far away and so momentous, and now it's here and it feels weird. ;) We aren't having a big party or doing anything in particular today. (It's snowing finally and Covid numbers have skyrocketed here lately and we like celebrating New Year's Eve with our boys.) But, we're hoping to do something on our own after boys are back in school. :)

In the meantime, here's a quick and abbreviated look at our journey...

Yup, 25 years...10 cars...7 moves/homes...4 states lived in...4 countries visited...3 amazing sons...countless memories. So incredibly lucky in love and in life...and even more fortunate to fully recognize that. Here's to whatever comes after the silver anniversary...and to making even more memories!

Friday
Dec312021

Wrapping up the month...

Happy New Year's Eve! I'm not ready to wrap up the year quite yet but figure I should at least wrap up the month, before it's 2022. :) 

So. We had a lovely and quiet Christmas...just the five of us home together. To start Christmas morning, I sent the boys on a hunt for their "Santa" gifts this year. It was just a simple set of clues and was met with mixed responses. (Micah may have started out grumpy because I may have forgotten one letter in his first clue, lol.) We then opened the rest of the gifts and snacked on the delicious box of goodies my mom sent...the always delightful box of cookies my brother and sister in law sent...and all the candy in the house, supplemented largely by the bags of candy Nathan's parents sent. ;)  

In the last couple of weeks, we've also played lots of games...Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride Rails & Sails, Mind the Gap, Relative Insanity, Jackbox games, Ransom Notes, video games, Betrayal at House on the Hill and probably more. Plus, yesterday, Nathan and the boys tried out Asher's new Spike Ball game...

They're not great at it yet, lol...but it was a beautiful afternoon, if a bit chilly. 

Beyond all that, we've also been tidying up financial things, renewing Asher and Micah's passports, putting up my annual display of holiday cards from friends & family, making a very poor attempt to build a graham cracker house (no one wanted to help me so I ended up just playing around and eating most of the candy, lol), sorting through the pile of clothes in Micah's room, and watching lots of movies and shows. 

Yup. It's been pretty chill here. Nothing overly exciting and boys have been sleeping a lot, lol. But it's so nice to be all together. I know I'm running out of years like this so appreciate it now. :) 

Hope your end of 2021 has been warm and happy!

Tuesday
Dec212021

Evolving Traditions, part 2

Remember when I was talking about holiday traditions evolving? Yup. Just keeps happening. Primarily, for instance, here's our tree this year...

Let me back up...

So, a couple weekends ago, Nathan, Micah and I went to get our tree...

We went to the same tree farm we've been going to for years. Unfortunately, we left it a bit long and the year isn't the best for trees here after all the wildfires recently. We found a tree or two that would work but they didn't excite us at all and were about twice as expensive as last year. Given the lack of enthusiasm, we ultimately left the lot without a tree. Sad. Instead, we made a plan to hang lights on our climbing wall. That decided, we spent the rest of the day hanging outside lights and putting up our inflatables...

(Two days later, we brought all those inflatables back inside preventatively due to the high winds forecast for last Wednesday. ;P Fortunately, our little section of town didn't get slammed by the heavy winds that other areas got, and we've since put everything back out. Of course, as I type, I can hear the wind gusting outside again. Oy.)

As I mentioned, all boys are now home so this past weekend we executed our climbing wall tree plan, baked a LOT of cookies (found a yummy new recipe for eggnog cookies), and put up the rest of our indoor decorations.

We're strangely happy with our climbing wall tree, though it did make for many fewer ornaments this year. Perhaps we'll evolve this in coming years to add more strings of lights so that we can put up more ornaments? Who knows?