Our winter has been just as busy as any other time in our lives. We enjoyed our Christmas visit with Elizabeth, Zak, and baby Lucy, and will miss her dearly in the coming months… but that is the road we have all chosen. Just as they could never leave Kentucky, we could never leave Colorado. Home is home.

The new semester has begun, and we’ve enjoyed some beautiful outings and adventures. Mythili, Isabella, sixteen other Girl Scouts, and seven other parents joined me in mid-January for Girl Scout troop camping just outside of Estes Park. WE watched movies (that MacBook and LCD projector come in handy!), sewed, made crafts, sang songs, snowshoed and sledded, and had an amazing weekend without a tear in sight!

Snow has been lingering in and out since the first of January, somewhat hindering my bicycle commuting. Fortunately, my dad gave me his trainer so I can ride in the family room. I’ve been trying to ride at least fourteen miles a day and take longer rides on the weekends in preparation for the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic that I will participate in on Memorial Day weekend with a co-worker. If you’re too busy to look at the web site, it is a race against the Durango-Silverton train, with an elevation gain of 5600 feet (we’re climbing a mountain!!), that is fifty miles long. Should be a challenge! I’ve been trying to put the trainer on the highest resistance for at least half the time I’m riding. Going from that to the bike is like putting on wings, enabling me to ride the Vittetoe Express all the way to the zoo and back last Saturday with all three girls (thirty miles). More about that here.

Meanwhile, both Isabella and Mythili are taking ballet class after school once a week, and Riona has begun gymnastics (finally). She just learned how to complete a forward roll, and has been endlessly showing us, she is so proud! Now, of course, Isabella and Mythili want to take gymnastics again, so we have reluctantly agreed to sign them up for the spring course.

The last bit of business is selling Girl Scout cookies, which is quite another job within itself. Perhaps I should have been an accountant! Keeping up with all the orders and money is time-consuming, but just thinking about all the fun ways our troop will spend it (we’re already planning a unit camp in July) makes it worthwhile. Both girls sold 75 boxes this year, and they have already written thank-you cards for all their customers. I’m so proud of their commitment to Girl Scouts! It’s such a great organization, and I hope they stick with it all the way through high school.

As parents, our March Madness looks a little differently. First of all, our girls don’t seem to show any interest in sports, which is fine with me. I even took them to a Hoops for Heart basketball tournament at my school a few weeks ago, thinking it would be a relatively easy way to pass the afternoon. Not five minutes after we arrived, all three were whining, “When is this thing going to be over?” I can’t say I was disappointed.

On the other hand, when we went to see the musical Mary Poppins last week at the Buell, the girls were thrilled. As usual, Isabella couldn’t wait to get all dressed up, and had a minor tantrum about her lack of fancy shoes. They loved watching Mary Poppins fly across the stage, and even up into the audience at the end, and were singing the songs and practicing their tap dancing moves for days afterward. I think we might just have ourselves a house full of artists!

This March is especially crazy because I am training for a half marathon, so running like crazy four days a week, still keeping up with all the Girl Scout work, and the girls have just finished their skate lessons in time for all three to begin swim lessons again. Since we’ll be gone all summer in Kentucky, we had to slip the lessons in at an indoor pool starting at the end of March. Meanwhile, we have been filling our days with bike riding, visiting the park down the road that has a new “train” playground, and trying to keep the antsy-sick-of-winter girls busy and happy on cold, snowy days that always plague us at this time of year, just when we think spring has sprung!

And now that all three girls are mobile (truly mobile–able to walk long distances without dragging their feet or complaining too much) and potty trained, I must admit that trips to places like the zoo, museum, or mall are actually more pleasurable. No longer do we have to lug a stroller or a diaper bag every time we go out. I thought for sure I would miss the baby years, and in many ways I do, but I must say, I am enjoying being able to take my girls to places and not having to worry about all the things we must carry. That right there is the best way to handle March Madness: ignore the basketball scores and be thankful for what really matters. And we all know what really matters: kids who can wipe their own butts and walk up four flights of stairs to your balcony seats.

We’ve been busy with activities almost every weekend since Christmas. Besides the snowshoeing, we finally renewed our membership at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and have already visited three times including today. I have taken the girls twice so that Bruce could work on homework. One of the times, we went to the Planetarium for the first time, seeing some Zulu animated adventure to learn about the planets. Mythili’s career goals at the moment, heavily influenced by her favorite exhibit, Space Odyssey, are to be an astronaut/painter. She wants to paint while she’s in space. Isabella wants to be an artist like Grandma. Needless to say, they all loved the show there and the neverending round screen.

We also participated in the Martin Luther King, Jr. “marade” for the first time this year. Marade is a combination of the words parade and march, and was actually coined by the former mayor’s wife, Wilma Webb. The Denver marade is the largest MLK event in the country. We decided to participate this year because the temperature was 65 degrees. We met at City Park next to the MLK statue and walked downtown along Colfax Avenue to Civic Center Park, 2.1 miles. This time, I just took Mythili and Isabella and the umbrella stroller, so they took turns riding in it. It was a beautiful day, full of friendly faces of all colors and walks of life, and happy onlookers cheered us on. As we walked, I told them all about Martin Luther King and his influence on history, as well as pointing out a bit of Denver’s historical buildings and the importance of Colfax, the longest uninterrupted city street in the nation. The girls didn’t whine a bit, especially when I piled them on top of each other for the 2.1 mile trip UP capitol hill on the way back and bribed them with a stop at Lik’s, the SECOND best homemade ice cream in the city (nothing can beat Bonnie Brae). I have to admit, after the beautiful walk and the subsequent trip to the zoo that was having a free day, it really made me miss living in Denver. I miss all those old neighborhoods and being so close to the huge parks with their gigantic trees, the cultural facilities, and just… the urban atmosphere. Despite my early childhood upbringing in a small town, I have really decided that I am a city girl.

Yesterday and Friday, we celebrated Isabella’s sixth birthday, though the official date is Tuesday. This year, she had her neighbor friend Kiara spend the night. We took everyone out to Cici’s Pizza, not my favorite place, but exorbitantly affordable. The kids love the buffet and the balloon lady. Then we came home, they watched the new Tinkerbell movie, and went to bed SUPER late (10 o’clock). The next morning, they went over to Kiara’s for chocolate chip pancakes and then came back for us to go to Skate City. Isabella, an amateur skater, just liked to dance around in the middle of the rink underneath the spinning mirror ball. We then came home and had a nice crockpot meal of smoked paprika chicken with broccoli and acorn squash on the side. Grandma and Grandpa joined us for lunch and the “red” Waldorf cake. Isabella loved her presents of dresses (especially the “spinny” dress Grandma bought), the colored pencil drawing of the little girl under an umbrella, and some over-the-shoes roller skates which she put on promptly this morning, rolling across the main level floor and waking up Bruce and I.

So, she’s six… soon to be fifteen! She’s already full of sass, independence, and is not afraid to talk back. But she also still likes me to read her stories, cuddle with me on the couch, and is still a bit frightened about going to a friend’s house alone. I just can’t believe how quickly they grow.

Meanwhile, Bruce and I have been super busy. He is taking 11 credits and has class 3 nights a week. I recently started training for a new part-time job at the University of Phoenix Online. My evenings are now fully dedicated to online forums and assignments, while he is either gone or working on homework. We’re both looking forward to the end of the school year when we can just breathe… gotta love the teaching schedule.

Our winter wonderland has hardly felt like winter at all. Can’t wait till spring, especially since in Denver, March is the snowiest month. Gotta love the paradoxical city of my heart.