Two year anniversary and new start

Today marks the two year anniversary of the day the Simmons Family lives were forever changed.  Brad was diagnosed with a brain tumor and 24 months later, it's still quite a bumpy "ride".  Today is also the beginning of Meredith and Carrie's new jobs.  At this post, the two of them are en route to Denver to begin their jobs with Kaiser.  Wishing them the best!  It certainly is nice to have a positive spin on a memorable day.  Did I mention that Sarah went to the Bronco game last Sunday, along with Amie and Rory?  She sent this picture the following day, commemorating the game (and a few beers!)  I know I don't say it enough...."We love our California family and every visit!"

It's been a pretty uneventful week. It began with Gabi's birthday, with her Mom and Dad surprising her after school with a new kitty, whom she promptly named "Cupcake".  She and Cupcake have been getting to know each other (including a tea party).

 

We went to Sophie's 3rd grade concert Thursday night, where she a few solo lines.  Cute concert.

 Friday night, Brad and I had a date night and went to a dinner playhouse, given tickets by our friends Tony and Erin.  Had a great time (although the play was a little corny) and a good dinner. While we were there, Gabi celebrated her birthday with a trip to Ft. Fun in Ft. Collins, then a sleepover afterwards. Surprisingly, they slept!  (Gabi wanted fruit kabobs for breakfast the next morning)

 

 Saturday night was the 80's Halloween party, with Carrie and Spencer the only representatives from the Simmons family (the rest of us couldn't quite get our 80's costumes together!)

 

 

Brad and I and Gramma went to Denver Saturday to visit Mom while our house was being shown.  Had a nice visit and it was a beautiful day. She is going to a Halloween party this week, and had to show us the wig she was wearing to the party!  That long hair really makes her look younger, huh???

She had spent time with Nick while he was in the hospital (being evaluated for seizures (poor guy)) ,giving Pam a break. I know it's been a tough week for her.  Nick was released, and put on new seizure meds. Hope they prove to help.

Hard to believe that I picked the yellow roses out of our yard this weekend, with it being the end of October!  Happy Monday!

Birthday, veggies & Cali visitors

Today is Gabi's 8th birthday, and it's so great that her other Grandma is here again this year to celebrate that day, as she was when Gabi was born!  Who knew that the tiny little Gabi who dropped below 6 pounds a few days after birth would be the spunky, creative, and super strong willed person she is today?  We started the celebration on Friday when she and Corbin came to spend the night at our house while Carrie was having her own celebration for the end of/beginning of her job.  Emma came along and visited after babysitting for the Frost kids that day. She sure is good with them!

Carrie & "besties" going to celebrate

Emma amuses her cousins

We went to Target that evening so that she could pick out the birthday gift that she wanted.  Her list consisted of about 50 different items, so I thought it would best  to let her pick.  She selected a horse and some accessories for her American girl doll.

On Saturday, we made Mickey Mouse pancakes and bacon before  the kids were picked up.  Gabi said "Gramma, you're a natural." (at making "eared pancakes").  Later we picked her up from her dance practice in Windsor and went to Carrie and Spencers' for a family birthday dinner (Gabi modeled her Halloween costume for us).

 

birthday "spanking"

The evening ended with haircuts and colors for all, compliments of our California hair dresser!  How awesome is it that we have such an amazing stylist, sister in-law, aunt, daughter comes to us every few months, bringing one or both kids to visit their cousins?  Sarah, we LOVE your visits!! (as does our hair). Yesterday, we drove to Platteville to the Miller farm, riding the hay wagon around for a couple of hours, gathering vegetables.  And although we were at the end of the season, we were still able to get plenty of veggies.  (It was especially amusing to watch the boys get potatoes!)

 

 On the way home, Sophie (who went to a slumber party Saturday night and clearly never slumbered) fell asleep moments from the farm.  Farming is hard work!

 Afterwards, Amie, Brad, Sarah and Rory went to the Bronco game.  I'd say we squished all that we could into the weekend!  (By the way, Brad's MRI was negative for cancer growth again. Yay!!!!)

A Lazy weekend

Not much to report this week....(maybe that's a good thing, huh?)
Seemed to be the weekend of appliance mishaps.  Does anyone know why appliances only last a maximum of 12 years?  Our dishwasher went out over  the weekend, after just spending $150 to get it to a point where we could sell it with the house.  The control board went out and it would be $250 to replace it... Yeah, a trip to Lowe's seemed like a better plan.  Brad and I went in and asked which white dishwasher was available to put in our car and take home.  Yeah, that's the one we bought.  Lowe's also delivered a new washer and dryer to Curt and Amie's house after the washer leaked (one too many times and was consequently pushed out the back door into the garage) and the dryer had collected enough lint to start the whole block on fire.  Hey, glad Lowe's had a good weekend!  I'm sure Amie was as happy to catch up on the laundry as I was on the dishes.
This Fall has been the prettiest we've ever had.  I couldn't help myself but to wander around the neighborhood taking pictures of trees yesterday.

As I was admiring it all, I came upon my only rose bush, ready to bloom!  Don't think that's going to happen as we were expecting frost last night and it's currently 33 degrees as I'm writing this.

My friend Ramona dropped by on Saturday, bringing me the biggest cabbage I've ever seen, so I got busy yesterday and made kraut burgers.  Wow, I've got to give kudos to those who make them frequently- what a giant pain!  Time consuming, but worth the trouble in the end.  All of that and hours and hours of football games as well....Yeah, that's when I decided to hit the craft room.  I had packed up all of my stuff (and that's a ton-o-stuff), thinking I would wait until we relocated to craft again.  Well, clearly that's not happening real soon, so I hauled out just enough to make a gigantic mess.  I've missed it!  And speaking of not selling our home as quickly as we had thought, the owners of the one we had a contract on contingent upon the sale of  ours, terminated the contract. I did feel disappointed, so now,

when and if the time comes, we will be faced with finding another suitable place.  Got the Halloween decorations up and you can see who was pooped after all the decorating (just kidding!)  This is really a result of too many ballgames!

This weekend we had our traditional Sunday Supper at the Frosts, with the deliciousness of Roma's . (By far the best caroli's in town).  We followed that with a rousing (?) game of Mexican train while the kids played Perfection, a game that Meredith had in the 80's.  Luckily, Gramma had a good tutor on either side of her, because after  playing this domino game a zillion times, she still doesn't get it.

 

 Brad has an MRI this week, with the results on Friday.  Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers!

Fall Love

This weekend we

tried to take advantage of the beautiful Fall weather and have a Simmons Family picture taken.  I'm not sure that it would be something I would orchestrate every year, as getting everyone together, dressed, happy etc. did prove to be a smidgen challenging!  Although the photographer wasn't as creative as I had hoped, it was somewhat miraculous to get pictures of all of us done in a half hour!  We will see how her efforts panned out in a few days.  I was just so thrilled to get all of us in one big picture!  (The picture you see is one I took with my cellphone, which was just about out of power).
As for the rest of the week, congratulations to Meredith and Carrie on their new jobs with Kaiser, beginning in a couple of weeks.

Saturday seemed like a blur.....we moved Gramma's hair appointment to 8:00, so the day began with that, then on to Sophie's soccer game (taking Gramma along) which was made so enjoyable by the warmth of the autumn sunshine.

 

 (Not to mention, eating a pixie stick that Grandpa got at the concession stand!)

Then we picked up Carrie and the kids, dropped Brad off to help Curt and Spencer at a job in Ft. Collins, drove back to Windsor to grab some lunch and drop Gabi off at her Saturday "Jungle Book" dance practice, then back to Ft. Collins for the Grand Opening of Costco. Apparently, all of Northern Colorado thought of the same thing!  Anyway, we met Amie and the kids there and loaded up on some bargain stuff.  Then, it was back to Windsor to get Gabi from dance, then back to Ft. Collins to get shirts for the kids for the Sunday pictures.  While we waited for Carrie, the kids had my camera and took a couple (?) of shots of one another...Photographers in the making....

 

On Sunday, Amie ran a race in Denver, and the kids came to our house.  Sophie (chef in training) wanted to help by preparing the spaghetti sauce, so she chopped all of the veggies, then got some seasoning advice from Grandpa.

 

Later, as we met at Carrie and Spencer's for dinner, the three older kids had a chance to do the same.

preparing brussel sprouts

The really big news of the week was that Brad got hearing aids and is loving the difference (well, most of it anyway!) in his world.