A much needed respite

After the sudden adjustment to our family life with Jim's resignation from his position at DAI - whoops, if you haven't heard, more on that later - we treated the last two weeks as Family Time before jumping into the next phase of job searching and assessing the future. We have needed very much to reconnect and spend daily life together, without pressures of busy schedules and travels. What a privilege to have such time (and gratefully DAI is continuing Jim's salary until the end of the year), particularly after a long, intense fall season. Some wonderful family friends from the Wheaton area have a second home in the mountains, about 2 hours northwest of us, and they offered to let us stay for five days last week while it was vacant. 

The house itself is on a large piece of land, with a beautiful overlook to the mountain range. It's very peaceful and quiet. We loved being able to just wander around in the woods and climb on the rocks and explore.

The owners have grandkids that frequently stay, so the house is STOCKED with toys. It felt like Christmas for our boys! Timo was so excited to wake up every morning and start playing with the cars and trains and action figures.

Billiards, toddler-style: rolling balls and aiming them into the pockets. Note that father and son are both sticking out their tongues...

The house is about 20 miles from Boulder, Colorado and at the top of a ridge with a long, steep driveway (4x4 required). We were very grateful that we arrived midday on Tuesday, in advance of 6 inches of snow and strong, blizzard winds that night and all day on Wednesday! First snow of the season for us to experience!

Timo LOVED it. He didn't mind the cold and the winds.

Back inside, more playtime. Mattias's favorite thing was to go up the stairs, from the basement to the main floor and then up another flight to the second floor. Boy though those open stairs made me nervous...

Discovering some dress-up clothes.

We invited some friends from church, Brian and Mandy and their 4 month old baby Millie, to join us for the weekend. Great to have some friends there and stay up way too late at night chatting about life! Millie was a star happy baby on the trip, although she didn't much care to go out into the snow. And Timo talked to her very sweetly and kept giving her kisses.

Timo's absolute highlight of the weekend with the Caves was reading Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day? What a great book!! I think he spent about 3 hours on Saturday reading it (with Mandy, then Mom, then Dad, and then on his own).
 

Time to go back outside! There was still snow on the ground but the weather was warmer and sunnier on the weekend.
 

Family photo! Thank you, Brian!
 

Mattias's first rock climbing experience. Unfortunately, a few minutes after this photo he took a tumble and scraped up his head.