Saying goodby to Colorado and Hello to Massachusetts

Lucy left with Cheryl 2 weeks ago and is already in Massachusetts - but she misses Blanche as much as Blanche misses her little sister. So it's time to fly to New England to be a family again.

This is Blanche's "I don't like the flight bag you put me in to fly on the plane" look - she's a princess and wants to fly on my lap - but Southwest doesn't agree so we'll spend a little time sleeping in the bag to get used to it.

The last week before we left Colorado I spent time enjoying Tyler and Ethan.

Tyler spent the last few of her softball games in the Catcher's position.

Getting used to catching the ball without it hitting the face mask takes practice - but she's getting better with every game.

Her team won their final game and loss only one game the entire season.

Tyler turned 7yr old on Aug 10th this year and we spent a couple of weeks celebrating her big day.

Tyler's mom got her a couple of packages of the "Friends Leggo" kits - which she has been asking for.....

Ok Package looks cute - then you dump the contents to make it and you get a zillion little leggo peices to assemble with a direction book.  So for the first kit grammy and Tyler only took 2 hrs to build a great set up.

And the end result of our efforts..... very cute and Tyler loved building it. 

The car moves and kids can add their own creativeness as well.

Tyler built most of the 2nd and 3rd set by herself once she learned how to patiently read the easy to follow illustrated directions.

On her birthday Denise gave Tyler a Tie-Dye birthday party with her summer camp class at the local park.

Some of the kids spent the first part of the party enjoying the park playground while we set up the Tie-dye tables.

Even Tyler's friend Tristen came from another school to attend the party.

Here are all the kids (wrapped in white trash bag aprons) with their wet white t-shirts - ready to tie dye.

Denise gives some of the kids directions as they apply the die to their shirts.

Tyler and her friends had the most fun applying the colored paints to the shirts

As you can see one of the boys had a very interesting coloring pattern.

The teacher is holding shy Tyler as the kids sing happy birthday.

And of course there was cake - on in this case cupcakes.

While still wet - I saw this big glob of black on Tyler's shirt and thought it may not come out very good.

But as you can see it's great - all thanks to Mary Nebel for teaching us how to make great Tie-dye shirts so we could teach others....

And because my feeling is you can never have too many birthday parties.... we had another birthday party for Tyler just before I left Colorado - a BBQ at Denise & Gary's new home.  Here brother in law Pete fires up the grill.

Tyler's cousin Violet came to the birthday party with her folks Gary's brother Scott and his wife Katie - yes it was dress up time for the kids.

The kids enjoyed a game of ball toss in the back yard.

Ethan puts his whole self into hitting the ball.

And of course there was more cake - (sorry this was taken with my phone)

And on her birthday - Tyler loss another tooth... her 2nd teeth are pushing her stubborn little baby teeth out one at the time....

Ethan is still finding good uses for those moving boxes - we made him a house to hide in.

Finally - it's time to fly out to MA and Blanche has to go into the bag....

Ready for take-off.....

Blanche remembers the walks along the the waterfront in Newburyport.

Here we are finally in New England - where we will gorge ourselves on fresh seafood and look at the ocean as much as we can.... we'll take you all with us on each adventure.... stay tuned....