Moo, Baa, La La La!

The past week and a half have been pretty full for us: celebrating Christmas with my mom's side of the family (Jan 2), finishing semester grades, starting back to school, celebrating Mark's mom's birthday, seeing Mark's parents off as they continue on their travels, starting Karamea's swimming lessons, and going to the Stock Show in Denver.

The swimming lessons went better than I had expected, considering the temperature of the water...It was c-c-cold! I was actually a bit anxious to see how she would do because I knew the water would be pretty chilly...it has been about 9 months since Karamea was in water that cold, so I was curious to see what she would have to say now that she is better at expressing her opinion of things. She was a bit tentative, but there was no crying or fussing, so I consider that a success!

We went to the National Western Stock Show in Denver today and Karamea had her first real-life encounter with the farm animals that she had only known thus far from books. She is very good at making animal noises and when she saw the real animals, she recognized them and made their noise, if she knew it. We saw: cows, horses, ponies, sheep, chickens (and chicks), ducks, rabbits, turkeys, and llamas and alpacas. She really liked the llamas, but none of us knew what sound a llama makes...We also went to the Colorado Fiddle Championships and she enjoyed clapping her hands along with the music. We only stayed a few hours, but that was long enough to have good time and get home before we all got tired and cranky.

Karamea kicking back in the new lounge chair from Grandma and Grandpa

Practicing animal noises

Very intrigued by the real chickens...

Sorry we didn't have better pictures...we couldn't get next to the bigger livestock and it was really hard to get good light and the right angle!