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 teenage and older) 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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Entries from December 1, 2011 - December 31, 2011

Saturday
Dec312011

Things I learned in 2011...

  • Thankfully, broken arms on 8 year old boys heal pretty quickly.
  • Creating your own country is cool (and a fantastic learning device).
  • Boys appear to come by pyromania naturally.
  • The hike to Delicate Arch is totally worth it, especially if you follow that with a trip to the Moab Diner.
  • Four hundred calorie meals are better for me and doable.
  • Running isn't as bad as I thought. ;)
  • There are a LOT of Star Wars books.
  • There *is* such a thing as too many Legos.
  • Working with glass is complex but awesome.
  • Squirrels will eat pumpkins.
  • Plastic sun tea jars melt in the dishwasher.
  • Hail storms are loud.
  • Cupcakes can be used to buy off Micah from an entire season of soccer. 
  • Toothpick bridges can hold a lot of weight.
  • Prep work for the holidays always takes longer than I anticipate.
  • Archery is expensive but very fun.
  • Always test new skincare products on your hand or arm first. (I had a lovely allergic reaction to an eye cream sample on Christmas eve and spent the past week with a face swollen and covered in hives. Fun.)
  • Buying new running shoes is almost as much fun as buying new boots. ;)

And plenty of other stuff... ;) Will be back next week with follow ups on Christmas, our anniversary (which is today!...woohoo, 15 years!), New Years and my one little word for 2012...

Hope everyone's enjoying this last day of 2011!

Monday
Dec262011

Quote #52.

Last week, last quote:

Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.Minor Myers, Jr.

Once upon a time, community service was a very much larger part of my life. I volunteered at day shelters and low income apartment delivery services. I studied nonprofit organizations and city law and how to help the two work together. I was on course to work in the City Attorney’s office and shape policy. And then. We moved to Colorado and I became a stay at home mom of two sweet boys. And life took a different turn. ;)

Don’t get me wrong. I have no regrets. None. I know that being a mom and a homeschooler is what I’m meant to do right now. I know that shaping my boys into men the world needs is a worthy job. As they're getting older, though, I’m realizing that I’m not doing the best job of modeling the importance of community service. Here’s to rectifying that…

Saturday
Dec242011

Merry Christmas...

...and a happy New Year! Wishing you and yours the happiest of holiday seasons!

Saturday
Dec242011

A lego story.

First, I'm going to ask you to revisit this post from about 18 months ago. Have you read it? Good. Now, fast forward to the present. Imagine that same room, with those same shelves and those same drawers only now the shelves are even *more* packed (at least three times as much stuff, honest) and there's a large contingent of sets along the long wall on the floor *and* there's that full size folding table in the middle of the room that is literally overflowing and has all of the floor space beneath it packed with lego sets as well...like this:

(This was taken two months ago, though. It's gotten more crowded since then somehow.) You'll have to imagine the rest of the room, as I neglected to take pictures this week. Sorry. ;)

And then, yesterday, we had a Christmas miracle of sorts. ;) We decided to attempt to *clean* the room. Our reasoning was that it was embarrassing how many legos the boys have and that obviously Santa and grandparents wouldn't be inclined to bring them any more legos for Christmas if there wasn't any space left in the room, right? 

(Also, because we're wanting to add yet more shelving in the room to get rid of the table in the middle so that the boys can actually play *in* the room, rather than just using it for storage and then bringing legos all over the house. And we'll need to clean out the room in order to get in there to put up the shelving.)

So. For hours (yes, many hours), the boys and I sorted and sorted that room. The boys managed to weed out pieces that they'd been hoarding in "their" areas (each boy had a few designated areas in the room) and consolidate their collections to fit mostly on the shelves in the closet only:


Noah still has a good swath of floor space covered as well, but I suppose he's been collecting slightly longer than his brothers. (He's also more of a hoarder, lol.) But, look! You can see the floor and not with a big table filling the middle of the room:


(By the time I went to take pictures this morning, the boys had already begun construction on a few new creations...) The left portion of this picture represents about half of the length of the room (the rest of which is similarly lined with legos).

Beyond the shelves and the floor space along the length of the room, we also have this:

Yes, there are six tubs filled with "extra" pieces (not counting the box of lego train sets, the box of lego mindstorm pieces and the two lego sets in two gallon bags (a soccer set and a safari like race track)) along with a tray of just minifigure pieces. And, yes, the boys will be getting more legos for Christmas (we did try to scale back this year and were mostly successful, but each boy also shops for each brother and, thus, legos were purchased despite our attempts to avoid that, lol). Whew.

And, just because, here's a fun little picture from this morning:


It's the Santa Yoda from this morning's Lego Star Wars advent calendar (how cute is he?!) and the *single* pink lego piece I found in the entire lego room last night. (Yes, I'm crazy like that and actually did dump out and sort through all six of those tubs of extra pieces to make sure non-lego things weren't in there and to pull minifigure pieces out.) I find that funny. ;)

In any case, thus ends our little lego story for the time being. Embarrassing but true. And there is once again space in the lego room for new additions...just in time for Christmas. ;) 

Also, does anyone know of something cheap that sounds like legos when shaken? I've pretty much given up on trying to disguise the fact that there are legos inside the package when wrapping gifts...but at least they have no idea which legos, right? ;)

Friday
Dec232011

Random thoughts...

...just crowding my head...

  • Please, folks, you live in Colorado...learn how to drive in the snow. Primarily, if there's snow (not ice) on the road, sure, slow down a little...but not all the way to 5 mph in a 30 mph zone. And, if the 45 mph zone has been completely plowed and is totally fine (no ice or snow), there's absolutely no excuse for driving less than 30 mph. Really.
  • Also, turn lanes. They're for turning. If you're going to turn, use them. If you're not turning, don't. Simple. 
  • I have no idea why, but the boys are watching a show that was just talking about frying up and eating turkey testicles. Yes, they checked with me to make sure the show was talking about what they thought it was talking about. Lovely.
  • I've thankfully never been to a grocery store before that had lines like Whole Foods did today. The lines were all the way down the aisles to the back of the store! Whole Foods, fortunately, had planned ahead and staffed for it...with staff at every aisle directing people and even offering free cookies. We very much appreciated the smoothness of the visit (but were still amazed at the crowds...wow). 
  • We miss the "Christmas house" in our neighborhood. There's a house in our neighborhood that used to go all out with the outdoor lighting displays. We looked forward to it every year and even took the people cookies a couple years in appreciation, though we didn't know them at all. But. They moved last summer. Apparently the new people don't know that they're supposed to be the Christmas house, lol.
  • Thinking about it now...why are the boys watching shows about turkey testicles when we should be watching "The Polar Express" or something? Excuse me a moment... ;)
  • Got all our holiday baking done yesterday (15 loaves of dark chocolate zucchini bread (for neighbors and swim team coaches and archery instructors), three dozen gingerbread ninjas (for karate instructors) and numerous chocolate karate suckers (again, for the karate instructors)) and delivered yesterday and today. Whew. ;) So thankful for all the people who touch our lives...

Okay, told you it was random. Hope you're all enjoying this Christmas Eve eve... ;)