Professional Pictures

Just wanted to quickly share that we had some professional pictures taken last week and our photographer posted a few of them on her blog, which you can see by clicking here. She is going to send us a cd with all the pictures on it, so we'll post more once we have them in hand.

May & June 2010

Shockingly there haven't been many updates for a while from deep inside the Roberts Portal. Emily finished up her semester strong but is now taking summer classes. If all goes according to plan, Emily should be graduating by December of 2011. Emily is going to make an incredible counselor and I can't wait for her to use her gifts to help other people. A lot has happened in the past 2 months including celebrating Mother's and Father's Days, saying goodbye to some of our closest friends, entertaining visitors, and celebrating Cole's 2nd birthday.

Here are just a few pictures of the fun and festivities. I'll post some more pictures on Facebook when I get a chance.

Emily got some great Mother's Day gifts from Cole & Gwen, including some new pjs for the summer!

Ryan had an incredible opportunity to fly to Clearwater for a couple of days to hang out with some of our former youth kids. Many of our kids are graduating seniors and so Ryan got to put on one final "youth group" for them before they head off to college. It was a great trip!

We have tried to get as much time as possible with some of our friends before they head off to bigger and better things after graduating. We have had to say many tough good-byes, but thus is the reality of seminary.

Emily's parents flew up for a visit over Memorial Day Weekend. Cole and Gwen loved the time they got to spend with Grandpa and Mimi.

While Al & Kris were in town we also had a dedication ceremony for Cole and Gwen. It was something that we kept putting off for various reasons but were finally able to carve out the right time and place for it. We asked our friend, Matt, to officiate over the 10-minute ceremony on-campus by the pond. We invited all of our friends and then had a bar-b-que afterwards. It was a very special day of commiting our children to the Lord and celebrating with our community of friends.

After 6 months of looking we finally bought a new(er) car! Yes, it's a minivan. And yes, that makes us super cool. Ryan is still rockin' the Explorer back and forth to work so that Emily and take the kids around in the Sienna. It will be nice to have all that room when we roadtrip it to Michigan this summer.
Cole turned 2 on June 11th. We had a huge party for him and the whole neighborhood showed up! It was a little crazy as the weather did not cooperate and he had to move the party into our breezeway/apartment. So amidst all the craziness to didn't snap too many pics of the party. So here is a picture of Cole playing with one of his favorite birthday presents --- a Slip 'n Slide!

I just love our little angel, Gwen. She is 8 months now and is sitting up like a champ, rolls all over the floor, and has 2 teeth! She loves being around Cole, except for when he accidentally kicks her and steps on her.

I like to give her a mohawk when mommy isn't around :)

Spring Has Sprung!

Just a quick update from us. Emily is about 2 weeks from being done with this semester and is doing great in her classes. We are starting to prep the garden to plant some good stuff in the next few weeks. We are enjoying the change in weather (even though it did snow again last week), as most days have been warm enough to head outside with the kids and soak up some sun. I am coming up on my 1-year anniversary of working at Chick-fil-A and things are going well there. We have too many good pictures to post here on the blog, so I posted them on Facebook and you can view them by clicking on this link:

Here are a couple of family pictures in case you don't feel like looking at all the pics on Facebook:

Life :)

Cole is definitely developing into a very loving and very opinionated young man. His "terrible twos" have been here since 18 months, but he is already showing signs (very small signs) of being obedient. On his good days he is so enjoyable to be around. He loves Elmo and all the other Sesame Street characters. He loves playing with his friends Samuel and Gami. His vocabulary is pretty extensive now, with his new favorite things to say being "I'm funny?" and "pemis" (penis). The Piehls were so nice to give us their double-jogging stroller! We've already taken the kids out for one run and now that the weather is improving we will be hitting the trails up more often.
Gwen is doing well as she approaches 6 months of life. Three of the past six nights she has slept for 8-9 hours straight, so mommy is starting to get a little more sleep these days, which couldn't have come at a better time as Emily has a huge paper due on Tuesday and then the end of the semester on the horizon. Gwen loves being outside (just like Cole), but when she's inside she enjoys posting onto her new blog.

Although I did say that the weather was "improving", we do live in Denver and so we could get significant snowfalls into May. At the end of March we got almost 2 feet of snow in 24 hours. Here is the aftermath.

I love this picture of my favorite girls!
More pictures (and maybe some videos) should be forthcoming in the next few days.....

An Average Tuesday....

Here are just a few pictures from what life is like when I am home taking care of the kids on Tuesdays. I try to do everything I can for the kids so that Emily can focus solely on her classes and getting school work done.

So, much of these days are filled with feeding the kids...entertaining the kids.... and teaching the kids about the finer things in life.
But our favorite part about Tuesdays is when mommy visits us in-between classes, studying, and meeting with her mentor.

Finally, head over to Cole's blog for a new video of our favorite little man.

40 Minutes with Asdo

In keeping with last week's post, it just so happened that Asdo had a layover in Denver on his way home for a snowboarding trip. Due to some bad weather his incoming flight was delayed and we only got to spend 40 minutes with him. But it was still worth the trip out to the airport so that Asdo could meet Gwen for the first time and get some high-fives from Cole.

Emily and Gwen eagarly await Asdo's arrival.

Video of Asdo meeting Gwen -- Crocodile Hunter Version

Asdo falls in love with Gwen at first sight.

Asdo hadn't seen Cole since last May. Cole got to show him how he could say "Asdo" and "Go Gators!"

Video of Asdo holding Gwen.

Emily pointed out that Gwen and I have the same facial expression.

This is the look that Cole gives to Asdo when Asdo is acting crazy :)

Join Team Blitz

I'm going to take a break from posting pictures of Cole and Gwen to let you all know about a great opportunity to partner with us in something that means a great deal to us. 14 months ago we received a phone call from one of our best friends (Ryan Asdourian; aka "Asdo") in which he told us that he had just been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). If you have ever spent more than 5 minutes with Asdo, you know that he is larger than life and in no way would he allow his condition to change who he is. In fact, he is probably crazier now than he has ever been (in a good way).

Asdo has been the mascot for the Seattle Seahawks football team for a few years now and has decided to use this platform as a way to raise awareness of MS and raise money to help find a cure for MS. Asdo and "Team Blitz" have a very lofty goal of raising $100,000 in their first try and they will need all the help they can get. If you happen to have $1, $10, $100, $1,000, or more just laying around, please consider giving to Team Blitz's efforts. You can click on that link to find out more about Asdo's story and what you can do to help.

While we will not be able to make it to Seattle for their walk on April 11th, we will be walking at the Denver MS Walk on May 1st. Feel free to join us if you are in the Denver area, or, find an MS Walk near you and participate.

Florida Trip - February 2010

We flew to Orlando last week and squeezed a lot of activity into our time there. We made a quick trip down to Clearwater where we got to reconnect with many friends and we also took the kids to the beach for a few minutes. Here is Gwen getting her first taste of the ocean.



The whole family at the beach.
Lunch at Moe's with Jeff, Erin, and Som :)

Hanging with the old youth kids.

Steve & Lindsay drove all the way up from Boynton Beach to meet their newest love-interest, Gwen. We also got a visit from Becky and Alan!
Much of the weekend's activities were centered around the wedding of Emily Taylor and Stephen Overholser. I have known Emily since high school, and Emily and Emily became friends during our time at Doulos Ministries in Branson. So since Emily was a bridesmaid she had a bachelorette party, a bridal luncheon, the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner to attend. My family was great with working around our hectic schedule and taking care of Cole and Gwen so that we could enjoy all the festivities. And enjoy them we did! Congrats Em & Stephen! They had a really fun photo booth at the reception. Here is a picture of one of our pictures.

We had a great night without the kids! Much needed :)

The next day we headed to Rex & Ashley's new house to 1) Take some family pictures, 2) Throw Colleen & Chris a baby shower, and 3) Watch the Super Bowl. Here are Colleen, Gwen, and Grandma Joanne before the shower began. Grandma was so great to fly in from Arizona for the festivities.
I don't think Cole is such a fan of the girl power. We are hoping for a boy cousin from Colleen & Chris so that Cole won't be so dominated.
Some of the Super Bowl Party paticipants.

It was a very tiring trip but so worth it! But we are looking forward to being home-bound for a while and not having to fly with the kids anytime soon :)

We obviously took more photos of our trip, so feel free to check them out at this link.

Daddy At Home Day

Tuesdays will officially be my day "off" from Chick-fil-A so that Emily can go to class. Therefore, I get to be home with the kids all day, enjoying all the wonderful things that come along with parenting a 19-month-old boy and a 3-month-old girl. Hopefully on these days I will have a few minutes to blog a little, especially since our blogging hasn't been quite up to speed recently.

Cole started out today day by eating a great breakfast. A couple hours later, he threw it all up, right onto the Pooh Bear that Stephen and Amy got for Cole when he was still a fetus. We'll throw it into the wash to see if it can be salvaged.

We have all been getting over various illnesses in the past few weeks, most recently a 24-hour bug that spread throughout the family, including Mimi (Emily's mom) who was here for 9 days to help with the kids while I worked and Emily took a 2-week intensive class.

Speaking of class, Emily didn't allow taking 9 credits and having a baby mid-semester deter her from getting a 4.0 this fall. We celebrated with pizza and Emily's favorite candies.

Gwen is 3 months old now and it turning into quite the lovely young lady. She isn't quite sleeping all the way through the night, but she's getting close and takes pretty good naps throughout the day. She is still a little fussy and prefers being held, but we force her to the ground once in a while for some tummy time and to give our arms a break.

Here is a video, taken today, of Gwen playing and smiling.

We are headed to Florida next Wednesday for a fun-filled adventure featuring Stephen & Emily's wedding, Chris & Colleen's Baby Shower, a Trip to Clearwater, a visit from Steve & Lindsay, and showing off Gwen to many people that haven't met her yet, including Grandma Joanne who is flying in from Arizona! I am sure a blog will be in order to summarize the trip once we get back, so check back in a couple of weeks!

Some Quick Pics...

We don't have much time to blog these days, but I thought I would try to get up a few pictures of the kiddos.

Gwen and her dimples.

Cole just waking up from a nap.
Gwen is very alert....when she's not screaming in our ears.

Cole is ready for our annual Christmas breakfast with our friends.

Gwen in her bouncy seat. She used to love it. Now she prefers laying on the ground. But what she REALLY prefers is being held all the time.

Pics were taking with our new digital camera which hadn't been upgraded in 5 years.