B-ball...

Inspired by Henry, a 2yr old I babysit quite often, I talked Jesse into playing ball with me. Neither one of us are ball players by any means, but I remember having a great time shooting hoops with my brother & my father when I was younger. Plus, lets be honest we could use the exercise. Henry is a little ball player. He plays every kind of sport out there, basketball, t-ball, soccer, volley ball, etc. Recently he's been really obsessed with tennis, so he & I play with ball retrieval being left up to the hyper Ruby, his golden retriever. I had a blast playing. I told Jesse we should get a soccer ball, tennis equipment, a basketball, baseball equipment, etc. I'm not a big sports nut, but I do love getting out of the house and goofing around for while. Since we are on a tighter budge we are always looking for things to do that aren't that expensive. Jesse has a Denver Nuggets obsession, so we decided b-ball was going to be our first sport to tackle. Last weekend we bought a $10 ball from Target, not a bad deal for hours/days/weeks/months/years of entertainment. Totally economical. Unfortunately it's been rainy or we've been busy every night since. That is until today...

As you can see for this random sampling of photos we took while shooting hoops we definitely need to practice before we challenge anyone to a real game, but hey we got out there & had fun. That's all that matters, right? If you notice in my picture besides it being a terrible shot I got some air. Woo Hoo!  Jesse and I both managed to get the ball stuck in the net, we both swooshed some, and we definitely both shot some air balls. We tried the backwards shot and neither one of us was successful, although Jesse did one blind and it actual circled the rim. It was over cast, cold, and sprinkling when we walked to the park and started, but by the end the clouds opened up and the sun made an appearance. All and all not a bad morning for our first attempt at shooting some hoops.

Hopefully today was just the start of many ball games over the Spring & Summer.

*Next up I'm going to try to talk him into playing tennis with me. Wish me luck!

Good Bye Rental, Welcome home Mazda...

We got our car back this week, a few days earlier than expected. It was given a full inspection from the shop who fixed it, then from our Progressive insurance agents, and a two days later we took it to the Mazda dealer for it's 15,000 mile check up and had them inspect it as well. Call us paranoid, but neither one of us had really been in a big accident before and that car is the most expensive thing we've ever bought. The dealer appraised it for us post accident and said it's definitely worth several thousand less now. Great! We expected to get news like that, but it's still depressing. We are working on our diminished value claim, something neither of us had ever heard of. Thanks for giving us the heads up Dad! Hopefully we can get some money out of the other driver's insurance and use that to pay down what we still owe on our car. Cars are such a necessary evil and no matter how good you take care of them they always depreciate in value or someone else comes along and hits you. Oh well! What can you do? At least we have our car back. I must admit it was weird getting in our car for the first time. We've had the rental car for a month now and we sort of got used to it I guess. Don't get me wrong we are so glad to have our car back, but it was weird getting readjusted to our car after driving that beast for month. We are both definitely thrilled to have our car back in action. I haven't taken any pictures of her since she' been fixed, but in case you forget what her back end looked like pre-accident.

Here she is...

It pretty much looks the same now. They did a really great job on the repairs. 

We're only missing our license plate cover.

Record Store Day...

In case you were unaware April 17th was nation wide Record Store Day. If you don't believe me follow the link to find out more info. Denverites celebrated @ Wax Trax, the local independent record store. Think 1995's Empire Records only a little rougher around the edges. Wax Trax had a line up of 4 bands playing a free show in their back room for the loyal customers who braved the cold rainy weather. I'm sure you have already guessed it by now, but Ideal Fathers was one of those lucky bands. This was the 2nd all ages show they've played this month and the 3rd over all. I see this as a good thing since according to the polling on their You Tube videos they are most popular with 13-17yr old boys. The guys teamed up with their friends the band, Accordian Crimes to release a 4 song EP collaboration to pass out for free to their adoring fans, in hopes to gain some cross over fans.

Making the cover for their 4 song EP.

Crazy Flier by Adam

Misc. Pictures from the show.

Record Store Day from Erin Wilson on Vimeo.
This one is my favorite. 
I took several short videos in hopes of posting them, but I decided to post this one 1st since it's my favorite. I may post more later, but it takes a while to upload them, so bare with me.

New Bedding...

On our trip to Utah we of course made a pit stop at IKEA again. We bought some new kitchen gadgets, a lamp, and all new bedding. We were only going to buy new sheets, but we decided it was time to upgrade the entire bed set. The comforter we were using was one my parents bought me when I was in high school, somewhere around 10yrs ago. Yeah it was definitely time to upgrade. We got 4 new pillows, new sheets, and a new comforter. Jesse chose the green, because we both thought we needed a pop of color in our sea of black & white. Now he's not so sure about it, but I think it looks alright. Someday we will upgrade to a real bed frame, but for now this will make do.

It does exist...

For those of you that have never been to Idaho or Utah this will be a new condiment for you Fry Sauce. It's something Jesse always talks about. At first I didn't believe him. I've never heard of such a thing, but he was right. It does exist and any fast food joint in the area carries it just like a regular old ketchup packets except this one is in a container like a coffee creamer. Whenever we have fries Jesse makes his own version of homemade fry sauce, a mixture of ketchup & mayo (or miracle whip). Weird! Regional difference I guess.

Jesse play with us...

Untitled from Erin Wilson on Vimeo.

One of the videos of Uncle Jesse playing with the kids. He definitely got his work out while we were there. The other video is better, but it seems to be to long so I can't upload it here. : (

Easter Weekend...

Highlights from our Easter weekend.

Mountains in Wyoming & Utah...

 If you've never taken I-80 through Wyoming and into Utah I highly recommend it. The first bit of the trip can be a little boring or scary depending on the weather, but the last bit of the trip is just gorgeous. I drove for the last 100miles of our journey and Jesse slept, so I missed taking photos of the most impressive views. These are a few of the shots I did manage to take. Maybe next month I'll get a chance to take some more pictures on our way back to Utah. I just love how the skies cleared up. The blue sky and fluffy white clouds are lovely next to the mountains. I only wish the pictures did justice to the beauty of these giant peaks.