A certain little someone had a  "Pink Princesses and Ponies" celebration her third birthday this August. 

My little princess was very happy:

There was a "Pin-the-tail-on-Unicorny" activity:

Pink applesauce and pony sandwiches for lunch:

And a pink unicorn cake:

(In a fit of rationality, I decided to go ahead and let the ladies at the store take care of this cake rather than making an attempt at this one.  I tend to go for the more insane option of trying to either match (or out-do) all of those other moms on the birthdaypartyideas.com lists ... I'm glad I decided to be sane on this occasion.  [Note to self:  I have a lot more fun when I'm not all stressed out.])

Lia is really enjoying ponies right now, if you can't tell.  She's outgrown the Strawberry Shortcake phase, which is sort of a sad moment for us all as she's already starting to outgrow things ... Time flies!

Happy 3rd birthday, Lia!

And so on Wednesday, after returning from Wyoming on Sunday, we were off again on the trip to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. 

My Mother-In-Law (Teedy) came into town from Massachusetts on a Wednesday, and by Saturday we were packing up the suitcases and picking up the rented minivan for me, the Big Sweetie, Teedy, my mom (Sandy), and the two kiddos to travel up to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  We'd been planning this trip for several months, and it was pretty cool that my mother invited us all along for the trip.

We took to calling this trip the "Grand Trip," because we stayed at a condo in Wilson, near the Grand Tetons ...

... with the grandmothers ...

...and the grandchildren...

The city of Jackson itself was pretty cool, albeit a bit kitschy.

We saw a tremendous amount of wildlife the Grand Teton National Park, as well as in Yellowstone Park.  (Or, as Conor called it, wild life.)

We saw moose ...

a real live bear cub ... (look closely for the dark spot in the trees)

a not-so-live-bear ...

bison ...

and more bison ...

and of course the usual antelope, squirrels, eagles, etc.  It got to the point that we didn't even take pictures anymore when we came across amazing wildlife, we just saw so many types.

We had a great time visiting Old Faithful ...

And I must admit that the parking lot itself was an event, as here we were in the middle of nowhere and then suddenly we came upon a parking lot worthy of Disneyland ...

Jenifer even got to visit a cute little yarn shop, called Knit on Pearl. 

And that's the Wyoming trip in a nutshell!  We drove home on a Sunday, and packed our bags for Massachusetts as we were setting off again on Wednesday to accompany my  MIL back to her house.  So, keep your eyes peeled for Part Two:  The Cape Cod Trip. 

Here we are -- we're back in blogland!  I've got so many entries to update for the hordes and hordes of Farrell Family fans out there ... but I've got to start somewhere.  So, I'm starting here --

Conor's New Room. 

Some of you may know already that Conor is infatuated with space, and all things to do with outer space.  Well, look at what we did recently ....

The kids were invited to two more birthday parties this November.

Party #1 was at Optin's house.  Optin is a preschool friend of Conor's, and he lives in nearby Superior, although he is originally from Iran.





He had a pirate's party, completely with bouncing tent, treasure boxes, and a face painter.  Much fun!  I'm sure Optin (in the middle below) loved his presents.




And who was Party #2 for?





And what kind of party did Jordan have?





Jordan is our baby friend, although we'll no longer be calling her Baby Jordan as she is now officially one year old!  She comes over to our house and plays, which is great for Lia who then gets to practice being the older child.

We had a great Halloween this year.

We first went to Boo at the Zoo in Denver, a very fun and very crowded event.  I was a blond for the day, while Conor was an astronaut, and Lia decided to not be her "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," (the planned matching costume to Conor's astronaut), but instead a ballerina.  (My mother doesn't wonder where she gets her independence!)





We shouldn't have been surprised at the crowds, as it was about 70 degrees F, and a lovely day to be out and about.






We went with our friends Laura and Chris, and their daughter Jordan.  Jordan dressed up in Lia's costume from last year, Piglet.





We went lion watching ...





We saw the little lion cubs playing ...





And we had a lot of fun!


The weather turned to snow just in time for Halloween night.  Here are the two trick-or-treaters that night:





Luckily we were invited to a fun birthday party thrown by Eben, in Lia's 2-yr-old playgroup. 




Conor enjoyed the planet Earth that the face painter gave him.





Lia enjoyed the special face jewels the fact painter gave her almost as much as her balloon.





And we also saw our little friend Mikey, the pumpkin.





In the end, we managed to trick-or-treat a few houses in the sleety weather, and then we had some yummy apple cider, or as Lia calls it, "apple spider."  Hope your trick-or-treating was as successful!

Prologue to today's entrey:  ALERT NOTIFICATION: If you'd like to be alerted by email when this blog is updated, enter your email in the form to the left (on the sidebar) and you'll be alerted automatically!

And now for today's programming:

Lia has been lucky enough to meet several nice little two-year-olds ...

Our friends Laura and Mike have little Mikey, who will be two very soon.  Through Laura's mommy group, we met Jonna and Stan, who live in the exact same model of a bi-level in our neighborhood, and their son, Spencer.  (Remember Spencer from Lia's party?)

Well, Lia went to Spencer's house last Saturday ...



To celebrate Spencer turning 2!

Happy Birthday, Spencer!

"I dropped my Ponies!" (said when I went in to quiet her one night)   

"Momma's sleeping too!" (in response to Dave telling her that Conor was already asleep one night when I had a meeting)  

"Are you ready to go?" (Asking me when I sit at the computer for too long)

September is a wonderful month in Colorado, perhaps one of my favorites.

The air has the leftover warmth from summer, so that we can still often wear tank tops and shorts, and there's enough of a crispness to the morning to remind us of the sweater-wearing weather that will be soon upon us.  It's the perfect time of year to get out of the house and enjoy living at 5337 (Louisville's elevation). 

Last weekend, we went to the Farmer's Market in Boulder. 





This is one of our all-time favorite things to do.  We ran into our friends Katie and Chuck, with (almost-2) Dillon in tow, ate our favorite Ginger Spice Cookie from the Brillig Works (incidentally, the coffee store on the Hill where Dave and I had our first date!), and strolled around browsing through all the wares.

I bought some new perennials to put in our "berm" in the front yard:




Dave always takes Conor and Lia to visit the choo-choo train parked nearby:




And here's a great close-up of Dave and Lia:




And of Lia and me:




What's that button I'm wearing, you ask?  Being September of an election year, there were of course many volunteers out and about trying to deliver their own message.  Lia and I took advantage of some John Kerry volunteers and picked up this button:




Yes, Dave and I are Democrats.  If you have decided that you are a Bush supporter, and that no amount of information can change your mind, and you still want to remain our friends, then you can go on and skip ahead to the bold section further down. 

Anyhow, Lia and Conor actually have their own buttons that Grandma Sandy gave them, and I'm either very proud or slightly embarrassed that Lia and Conor both not only recognize John Kerry's name, but that when Lia sees a button like this, she actually says: "My John Kerry!"  As I'm writing this, she is looking at this picture and is saying, "John Kerry!  John Kerry!"  Ah, the joys of parental indoctrination.  (We better enjoy it while it lasts.)

Dave and I are both ardent supporters of John Kerry.  I guess we sort of fall in the camp of ABB (Anybody But Bush) supporters, but I really believe that John Kerry would make a fine president.  And as the latest polls are showing Colorado as (sort of) a swing state, I really hope that my vote will count.  Here are two great sites for projecting the election, one slanted left, and the other slanted right:

Election Projection and Electoral vote

My greatest fear is that Bush will once again be re-defeated, but end up as president.

Don't get us wrong -- if you're reading this, and you're a Bush supporter, then you are certainly welcome to your opinion, and I hope that your vote counts the same as ours.  But to have a president who wasn't elected by the majority of the popular vote, who thanks to the Supreme Court was given the votes in Florida (which I believe were Al Gore's), and then who proceeds to act in the way he has acted, really upsets me.  When he was first elected, I have to admit that I said to myself -- he won't really be that bad.  We've got checks and balances.  This is a democracy. 

Then GW began his tenure, and he has proven to not be a moderate Repulblican like his platform portrayed him to be, but a far right wing conservative.  But to have a country that is ruled by the values representing 30% of its constituents (the number of people who claim themselves to be Very Conservative) makes me feel like I'm not represented.

Here's a list of the reasons that I hope John Kerry is elected:

1.  My safety.   I don't think that Bush has done anything to secure our borders.  I supported the move into Afghanistan to find the terrorists.  I support anything to do to keep our own borders safe.  But Bush misled us into Iraq, and is only creating a situation in which more and more Iraqis feel that they are right to fight us.  We are, after all, the invaders!  If someone invaded our country, killed thousands of Americans, wouldn't we do anything necessary to get back at them?  Oh yeah, that did happen -- September 11 -- only it wasn't the Iraqis that attacked, it was terrorists.  So why did we occupy Iraq and why have 30,000 Iraqis died?  Don't you think it will just make them madder at us? (And breed more terrorists?)  Here's what even the Republicans are saying about Iraq:

Senator Chuck Hagel (NE), a Republican, says: "The worst thing we can do is hold ourselves hostage to some grand illusion that we're winning. Right now, we are not winning. Things are getting worse." ^[2] "The fact is, we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in Iraq." ^[3]

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) also supports releasing the NIE ^[4] and says: "We made serious mistakes right after the initial successes by not having enough troops there on the ground, by allowing the looting, by not securing the borders." ^[3]

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), says "he believes the situation in Iraq is going to get worse before it gets better, adding that he believes the administration has done a 'poor job of implementing and adjusting at times.'" and says "We do not need to paint a rosy scenario for the American people...." ^[3]

[1] New York Times: U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future
September 16th, 2004

[2] Washington Post editorial: Mr. Bush and Iraq
September 18th, 2004

[3] Washington Post: Three GOP Senators Urge Refocusing of Iraq Policy
September 19th, 2004

This comes from moveon.org, an admittedly liberal website, but one that offers information that shows how Bush has overstepped his boundaries for his own purposes.  Enough about Iraq.  All that I can say is that if Bush is re-defeated, but ends up as president again, I wouldn't be surprised if he reinstated the draft and sent both men and women to Iraq.   Osama who?

2.  The budget.  Hello?  Didn't we already pay off the federal deficit in my lifetime?  And now Bush, for Iraq and other reasons, has decided to practice "borrow now, pay later" strategies to run our economy.  By the way, the federal deficit is now:

The estimated population of the United States is 294,341,268
so each citizen's share of this debt is $25,097.40.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$1.69 billion per day since September 30, 2003!

Wait a minute!  Aren't Democrats supposed to be the ones who spend, and Republicans the ones who practice fiscal responsibility?  I think that if I were a Republican, I'd be so mad about this.  Even as a Democrat, I'm mad about this.  And then Bush has the nerve to CUT TAXES, netting in an estimated $169 to the average family per year.  Yippee, now Dave and I can afford health care!  Which brings me to another point ...

3.  Health care.  With Dave and I practicing the "family values" that conservatives love to talk about, we are living the reality of spending almost $500, or almost 20% of Dave's salary on healthcare.   Do you spend 20% on health care?  Can you imagine doing that?  (And maybe you do.) I honestly really don't care about the expense that much, because I see it as a no-brainer.  Without health care, what's the point of living in a country with the best health care money can buy?  My friend Laura, on the other hand, is about to have her second child as a home birth, only because she can't afford the $10,000 bill that she had to pay for her first child when she had an emergency C-section with no health care.  Having had the C-section once, she has no choice at the hospital to avoid it the second time.  Her husband, by the way, just was riding his bike on a street and hit a cat -- leaving him with a broken collar bone, two broken ribs, and a collapsed lung ... and 4 days of hospital time. I don't have the courage to ask them how much their hospital bill will be.

There are over 41 million people in this country with no health insurance!  What's the math here ... at a billion dollars per week, how many people could possibly get even subsidized health insurance in this country?

4.  The environment.  I'm tired of Bush's official indifference to the environment, and his hand-outs to corporations that give them convenience and profit at the expense of our natural resources.  I know, a lot of people either don't care about the environment, or they see it as simply something to be exploited.  I just simply don't agree with that ... especially when it's the corporations who are profiting from it all.

5.  Education.  With Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, he has continued to underfund schools while creating standards that are impossible for many schools to meet. 

Okay, off my soapbox.  I am just amazed that the people in this country who are wealthy and privileged seem to care so little about the rest of the world, the Iraqi citizens, and the less fortunate citizens of their own country.  I really think that this country has seen its golden age, and that we are becoming a country of selfish, apathetic and/or ignorant individuals. (Or maybe we always were like this, and I'm just idealizing my own country.) Well, I guess we get what we deserve. 

Anyhow, we also went to Ned (Nederland, home of the frozen dead guy) ... and we had fun playing at a park there:





We also got a great photo of the four of us, a rare occurrence in our life:






And we drove through the mountains ...  visited the turning aspens (this, by the way, was a photo I took while Dave was driving!) ...





And saw the Moffat Tunnel, where the Big ChooChoo train goes under the Continental Divide.





That's it for now!  Hope you're having a nice September wherever you are!

Last Friday, the kids and I took a trip ... where to, you ask?

On Sept. 1, Conor started his second year of preschool at our neighborhood Fireside Elementary. 





While we are indeed paying tuition for Conor to go to preschool this year, we feel quite lucky that he can go to our neighborhood public school for an excellent preschool program.  Conor has one teacher, two paraprofessionals, and a variety of other specialists (speech therapist, occupational therapist, social worker) who work with the five "peer model" students (of which Conor is one), and five "special needs" students.  The kids themselves only know that they are all there to have fun -- and they do a good job with their mission!

Every day the children line up as their teacher Ms. Colleen excuses them one-by-one.



Here's Conor!





Conor loves to play with his best buddy Brandon after school. 




And let's not forget Angie, either!




Conor is very excited to have both new and old friends at preschool this year!