Merry Christmas

We have had a tremendous year filled with many blessings and adventures. Sofie is growing like crazy, It's like every time she gets out of bed in the morning she's grown another inch from the night before. As her parents we can honestly say that we have treasured every minute we've been able to spend with her.
Not that any of you need it, but it can't hurt to be reminded in the midst of the "holiday shuffle" that it's not about what gifts you may find under the tree on Christmas morning, but more importantly this season is more about how well Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos are going to do during the playoffs this year! Ha, just kidding :)
Because the main branch of Holly's company is located in Washington D.C. they flew us out there for their Christmas party. We had a great time taking a trolley tour of the monuments by moonlight. For me the experience was beyond description, something I'll never forget and hope to do more of in the future.
The company I'm with, Blazer Electric Supply, is growing rapidly and has already opened a few doors of opportunity in my short time of working there since April. Seeing God's hand move in our lives the past year by providing new employment for both of us and getting us back into our town-home was awesome to watch. When it comes to life's "peaks and valleys" I'd say that we've come through a valley and climbing a peak. Our intention is to create consistency by avoiding extreme ups and downs, but we are aware that God uses both in the process of molding and shaping our lives.
That being said, no matter which road you find yourself on this holiday season it's important to remember there's things we've all been through that help us to relate and connect and the Lord is the author of them all.
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
Love,
Bo, Holly & Sofie

Happy Mother's Day

Today for a great mother's day present Sofie made an explosion in her pants for mom to clean up...I know what you're all thinking, the proper thing for me to do since it is mother's day would have been for me to handle it, and I did to some extent, but Holly was more equipped to handle this particular "load" because I was about to vomit and would have if I had to take care of a majority of the mess. So thanks goes out to Holly, I love you so much. This is your first Mother's Day and I couldn't be more proud of the way that you take such good care of Sofie.
Next I have a special shout out to my mom :) I love you so much! Thanks for the awesome way you raised Mandy & I. Even though I am now a parent myself the relationship I share with you is irreplaceable.
I would also like to send out a Happy Mother's Day Shout Out to Gail. I know you have done an incredible job raising Holly and it pays off for me on a daily basis...thank you for including me in your awesome family!

Happy Mother's Day to you, Candy and Denise. I know all your kids love you guys so much!! I hope you enjoy the video of Sofie getting cleaned up after her big mess this morning. I also wanna quickly say whats up to Danny and Pete!! you guys aren't mothers so this entry is probably pretty boring, so I'll make it up to you in my next one.

The Nearby

Tonight Me, Holly, Sofie, & Mandy ate at Il Vicino's, a favorite pizza place of ours located downtown. Literally translated, it means The Nearby. When we decided to go there we didn't give any thought to how busy it would be because it's Tuesday night, a slow night for any establishment downtown or anywhere else around Colorado Springs for that matter. Except we didn't take into account that Tejon (pron Tay-hone) and the surrounding streets would be overrun (pun intended) with members of the Jack Quinn's Running Club, a local Irish Pub that apparently has quite a following. At first we made our order "to go" with the intention of going for a ride through the mountains while we ate in the car because the tiny restaurant was packed from wall to wall with hungry pizza lovers and even hungrier joggers. But a table opened up so we changed the order "for here". The manager seemed to think that our order was still "to go" so I tracked him down shaving Parmesan on some peoples food who had just gotten their plates. He changed our order, but neglected to do the same for Mandy so when we got our food me and Holly's came on a plate, but Mandy's came in a box. Which is important to the story because the box it came in was a tad bigger than the table we were sitting at so needless to say it needed to hang off the edge in order to make room for everything else on the table. Its important to note here that Il Vicino's is one of the tinier restaurants that we frequent, its not much bigger than a Starbucks as far as seating goes and the tables are very close together. That, tethered with a pizza box hanging over the table, and a paunchy waitress equals recipe for disaster and Mandy was barely two slices into her pizza when the waitress came by and successfully dumped her freshly baked pesto pie onto the floor. This was a blessing in disguise for Mandy, though, because they immediately sent back for another one and it was even more delicious than the first :) Here's the moral of the story and it"s directed to all of you restaurant mangers out there: when I change me & Holly's order from "to go" to "for here" and my sisters with us, you can pretty much guarantee that the change can be applied to her order as well. I wish I had pics to go along with this so you could see the devastation to the pizza and how tiny the place is and everything, but I got the idea for the blog after we got home so it was too late, but now that I have my new blog set up, I'll be ready to snap the events from now on. In the meantime I have a darling video of my beautiful Sofie to tide us all over until we meet again in a future blog :)