Snowboard for a 2 year old

2HaffEpic gets a Snowboard from Stacey Barch on Vimeo.

Happy Holidays!

We started a new Christmas tradition- family bike ride after Christmas Eve breakfast! It was a blast! Merry Christmas everyone!

Getting ready for "Sanka"

On Christmas Eve we are going to see Sanka (Santa) and his rerners (reindeers) and Maximus is going to ask him for a sowburn (snowboard). He's going to be at Copper Mountain and Maximus is pretty excited. I made some whole wheat dark chocolate and mint cookies for Jesse and Maximus told me to give one to Sanka. I packaged it all pretty and we will deliver it to him and leave some out when we go to bed as well.
Maximus on Jesse's snowboard. He's just a little small for it.
Jesse has 2 snowboards, so guess who's going to use his older one? Merry Christmas to me!
Today we went to Keystone Resort and scoped out the mountain. OH MY GOSH I want to ski. We live 5 minutes away! Look at this little happy mountain boy.

2010 Winter Games

Each morning between the hours of 9am and 11am, the games are on. Jackie sits at the back door waiting for a bird. Not just any bird, I'm talking about ravens and hawks that are at least her size. They perch on the fence and look at her as she sits on the other side of the door. Once she sees them, she starts to run and because the kitchen floor is wood, she spins in place for a few seconds before she bolts out the doggie door.

The other morning there was a large hawk sitting on the fence. She flew out the doggie door, bursted through the snow and barked at it until it jumped off the fence and pecked her. I mean, c'mon, you're asking for it. She got SO mad and scared that she literally jumped straight up in the air, ran to the side of the house, hit the wall about 6 times and managed to run back into the house via the doggie door. Of course she sat at the glass door barking at the bird who WAS STILL LOOKING AT HER from the fence. She couldn't take it any longer. That bird was on HER fence looking through HER door of HER house. Oh heck no. Once again, she ran out the doggie door and practically screamed at the hawk who screeched back. It's like they were yelling at each other. She barked, "get off my damn fence!" He goes, "I'll eat you old lady!" On and on.

Guess where she is now? Yep, sitting at the door waiting to see if he'll be there today.

And then she boldly went out to the deck and waited.

Hard Work

Maximus learned to say "hard work" from Thomas and Friends. So when he climbs the stairs in our home, he goes, "whew, harr wuk" in his little English accent that lacks the sound of "r".

Yesterday I needed a good workout, so we shoveled a foot of snow off the driveway. Yeah, it was total "harr wuk"! Here's a picture I snapped with my cell phone. Notice how tall the snow is where Maximus is standing.
We live in a culdesac, so there isn't much traffic. As I shoveled the driveway, Maximus shoveled the street...all the while saying, "whew...harr wuk."

Winter Wonderland

SNOW from Stacey Barch on Vimeo.

It's been snowing for four days straight...so we decided we're going to make a bike ramp out of snow in the back yard.

The New Place

Our House from Stacey Barch on Vimeo.

Here's a video tour of our new house for our families and anyone else who wants to see! We've only lived here for a bit over a week, so excuse all the messy moving boxes. Hopefully I can get through them all within the next week.

The New House

We moved from Lincoln to Silverthorne, CO last Sunday. I wanted to post a few pictures for my side of the family who aren't on Facebook. (If you're on Facebook, you've already seen these) I took all these pictures with my cell phone, so they aren't the greatest quality.


This was the first night Jesse was home. He was gone for a week finding us a place to live in Colorado. Maximus was so thrilled to have his "Dessie Pops" home.

One of the 2 tunnels we have to go through to get to our home from Denver.


I woke up the first morning in our new house and looked out the window to this:

I really like my kitchen.

Poor Goog is trying to learn the doggie door technique. She's almost got it down. This picture was taken after nearly an hour of her sitting outside wondering how to get in. IT'S RIGHT THERE GOOGOO! C'mon!

Our new place decorated in moving boxes. Ugh.

Mom, this is what I saw when we were on the phone! See why I freaked out?! Now I worry about Jackie in the backyard. Jesse informed me that if an eagle did swoop her up that it would take her to it's nest before killing her...and not do it in our backyard. Thanks honey.

Let's Go Live at a Ski Resort!

So...we're moving. To Silverthorne, Colorado. It's near Breckenridge and Vail. People keep asking us, "what on earth can you do for work up there besides be a pro skier?" Well, after 9 months off, Jesse is going back to work. He's a heavy industrial electrical foreman (I think I got all that right) and he's building a processing plant on the Climax Mine in Leadville. It's one of the places I'd kill to live in. Absolutely beautiful. The elevation is so high, so there's no air...but it's still breathtaking. (haha, that was a good one!)

He left Sunday and went up to find us a house. I started the packing.

Packing really blows when you miss your man and your son is spazing out because dad isn't home. Maximus and I are both down in the dumps. Today his speech therapist mentioned that the massive wall of boxes we had in our livingroom may have been causing Maximus stress, thus causing him to act out. I removed them. All this was in our livingroom!
We still have about 20 more boxes left in the house. But getting this stuff out and putting up a tiny tabletop Christmas tree made us both feel better. I really can't wait to move so we can actually set up for the holidays and it feels like home. (Great time of the year to move, eh?)

I am SUPER bummed to be leaving Lincoln. I never thought I would this place so much. We've met some of the greatest people we've ever known and we're fortunate to have them in our lives. We are minority shareholders in the bike shop, so those ties will keep us returning to Lincoln several times a year. The people here are warm and real, I loooove the humidity in summer, the cycling community and trails are epic and we love the city of Lincoln itself. Okay, that's enough...I'm actually starting to tear up.

As I was finishing the above paragraph, our friends Jason and Sarah stopped by to see how things were going. Jason even wore Maximus out by tickling and wrestling with him like Jesse does. Sweet people.