Chance's 2nd Birthday

We can not believe that Chance is 2!!!
We celebrated Chance's second birthday with just the three of us at home.


I felt a little guilty about planning so much for Christmas dinner that I forgot to order Chance a cake.  I took Chance to the store with me on his birthday and explained to him that we needed to wait patiently in line so that we could order him a birthday cake at the bakery.  I was looking through the options when Chance tugged on my leg and repeated "all done, all done".
I explained to Chance that we were not all done and that we needed to wait in line.  It wasn't until Chance pointed to our cart and said, "Mickey cake" that I noticed that Chance had already selected a cake from the bakery and put it in the passenger seat of his shopping car cart.
I apologized to Chance, asked if he wanted the Mickey cake, and off we went.  All done...

We waited until evening to celebrate because Max wanted to use the daylight to continue his work on the garage.  

It worked out perfectly and we ordered pizza to celebrate our little man with his favorite meal. 

Chance definitely understands the hats, singing, and cake are all for him now.  

Max taught him how to make a wish and blow out his candles...

 

 

 

and we tried to teach Chance how to say, "I'm two" and hold up his fingers.  

Then it was time for more presents.  

 

We spent the rest of the evening, learning how to drive our new car and watching Finding Nemo.  Two years have come and gone so quickly.  

Happy Birthday Little Man! You are our sunshine!

Christmas Day

This was our first Christmas at home with Chance. It was so much fun to open presents and spend the day playing with all of our new toys.

We got lucky and woke up to a WHITE CHRISTMAS! We made hot chocolate and cuddled while watching cartoons for a while.  

Max carried Chance downstairs and wanted me to take pictures of Chance's reaction to his wagon from Grandma and Grandpa Lehman.  

He LOVED it and insisted on sitting in it for most of the rest of the day :)

Max opened up his present next and quickly learned why I hadn't rushed out to buy him a coffee pot since Chance had broken his a few days earlier...

My parents were able to join us for a while on Christmas morning before they left for my grandparents in Nebraska. 

It was definitely fun to watch how excited Chance was about every gift!

 

 

We hugged my parents goodbye around lunch time and sent them off with their new winter gear to keep them warm in Iowa ;)

We spent the rest of the day playing with Chance, putting together toys, and preparing a prime rib dinner.  

Aaron Cook and his parents came over for the day to join us for dinner and to spend time relaxing with us.
 We all had fun playing with Chance

Cook did an AMAZING job on the prime rib and dinner was a total success.  

Nick even flew in on Christmas night to join us for dinner and to give Chance his Christmas present.  It was perfect to end the day with all of my boys at home.
Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!
xo

 

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve came a little too quickly this year.  I had most of our shopping done, but my parents were in town and my dad had not had any time to buy presents because of his recent change in location and job.
My mom and dad had already helped us with the garage, so Chance and I decided to brave the mall on Christmas Eve and show them around.  


I entertained Chance on the carousel again while my parents hit up the department stores.  

They were suckers for the last minute sales and I'm pretty sure that they gave all of their spare change to let Chance play in the coin fountain.  

We took a break from shopping just long enough to take in the sights at Red Rocks and to stop in Morrison for some lunch.  

Then it was back to the mall again.  Where this time, I decided to risk it and let Chance try the trampoline that he has been pointing to and asking for every time we walk by.  

I thought as soon as I let him try it that he would start to cry...I'm not trying to sell my kid short...I just remember that he was terrified of Santa.  

The trampoline turned out to be the opposite of Santa! My camera was really blurry on all of the shots but can you see how big his smile is?  He did a great job!

Chance actually got really high! He is going to be such a dare devil!

With all of our shopping done and being out all day, we decided to relax at home for the night and make dinner together as a family.
Chance loves helping set the table.  He gets so excited when I set plates of food on the table that he runs to his seat and yells "WOW...let's eat"!

I had so much fun making chicken tortilla soup and caramel apple cider with my mom.  

Chance barely even knows I'm home when Grandpa is around to play!

My mom and dad took over all of the bed time duties for Chance.  It was so fun to watch them get Chance ready for bed.  

It's not every day that Chance gets to have his Grandparents around to show them all of his bath toys and how he can brush his own teeth.  

Chance had a blast showing Grandma his tricks on the pull up bar.  He is such a monkey!

I bought this book about the story of Jesus to read to Chance every year on Christmas Eve.  

After story time, we put Chance to bed and started working on helping Santa put together all of Chance's toys.  

Max was a very cautious father and made sure to test out all of the toys before giving them to Chance...for safety of course!

I could not have asked for a more relaxing Christmas Eve.  It was great to be at home with family.  

 

Garage Progress

Now that we believe that the garage is not a myth and will actually get done...We've decided to show you all a little taste of what we have been doing over the past several months. 

This is our first remodel project since we've been in Denver.  We were a little nervous to start because neither one of us likes unfinished projects and we knew how much work, time, and money it would be once we pulled the trigger. 

Now that we have a deadline (Baby Girl Lehman and operation find more space in our house), we decided to stay home for Christmas break and spend a week making some progress on the garage project. 

Lucky for us, my parents were in town for three days to help us with a lot of the heavy lifiting!

This is the BEFORE picture of our back yard at the beginning of the summer. 

It took all of summer and most of fall for Max to finalize plans with the city and get all of the necessary permits for us to be able to start construction. 


As soon as the permits were in hand, Max quickly hired help for the foundation and sewer tasks and within days our back yard looked like this...

Because the city considers our garage project an additonal dwelling unit, we had to go though a lot of extra paperwork promising to never split up our property and sell it in parts. 

To make a long story short, we ended up having to replace the sewer lines before we laid concrete and foundation for our garage. 

The new sewer lines required the entire yard to become a dirt pit, but we got the job done. 

Our next step was to hire someone to pour the concrete foundations and the slab for our garage so that Max could begin with the framework.

Max has spent the past three or four weeks designing the framing layout so that he could dedicate this week to labor.  I think he was really happy to see my dad so that he had a little help with lifting the walls.  

Wall framing quickly became the focus for the family for a few days and everyone pitched in to help. 

 

It was amazing to have my mom and dad around to not only help Max with the garage, but to help with Chance and of course Christmas cookies.  

This week has been a total success and we are done with the framing for the first floor of the garage.  The lumber for the flooring and the second floor should be delivered tomorrow.  Max plans to waste no time and dive right in to work again as soon as he can.  

My mom and dad got to take a break from work while they were here and headed to the Broncos stadium to see Peyton Manning play.  They both said that the game was amazing. I'm glad that they got the opportunity to do something fun while they were in town.  

 

You have to mix in a little play with your work...

I'm so proud of all of the work that Max has done already on the garage and I'm extremely grateful to my mom and dad for coming to help for a few days.  I'll definitely keep everyone posted on pictures of our progress over the next few months.