Brandon's the Best

We had a low key birthday with Brandon in January. (sorry, I haven't been in the mood to blog in a while, so this is a bit late...). But was nice. He took the day off of work so we just hung out. My gift to him was a Russian Banya Spa treatment and massage.  Which was, let's say, interesting.  Not like anything we've ever tried before.  Our massage therapist said that the Russians were the original creators of the 'Ice Bucket Challenge' (which I decided is a lot more fun when you sweating like a mad man).

44!  Which is how many balloons are hanging behind Sean. Thanks to Sean for spending an hour hiding in the laundry room blowing them all up!

And after the balloons came down...what a cutie.

Trying something new

In our attempt to just have a little more fun with family this year, we have made a list of some new things we'd like to try that everyone would enjoy.  I came up with the idea to do a family Ikea Scavenger hunt just out of my bright little head.  Which it turns out is not such a novel idea. When I google scavenger hunt list ideas, several Ikea lists came up. Which made it east, I guess!  We divided up in 3 teams of 2 and each had an hour to complete the 25 tasks. Here is a sampling:

Milla as 'the most awesome superhero ever'

Thomas as 'Team member stocked on a shelf in the Self Service area'

Carrie fulfilling the 'I don't understand how to use this item of furniture' requirement

Rin reenacting a movie scene. Can you guess? Think Christmas...

Then for our date last week, we decided to tryout the Denver Roller Derby, whose games are played in what the players affectionately call 'The Glitterdome'. It's really just a big warehouse north of Denver. ;)

Really fun though. The announcer explained rules as the game went along, making it easier to follow. The crowd was friendly and the little girls sitting next to us were daughters of one of the players on the Orange Crushers, so we just joined in their fan club (go Punk Roxy!).  We were both pretty impressed by Reptar, though, on the Bad Apples team, so we had to give a shout out to her on occasion.  She seemed to just jump through people, she was so adept at passing the crowd.
Will definitely keep this on the rotation of date night ideas. Of course, the night was not complete until we participated in the audience 'wave' and getting to stand in the congrats line up and give all the players a 'high five' (side five?), as they rolled off the rink.

Burning the evidence

With a need to dispose of a bunch of confidential documents and, with the lack of a shredder, we decided to make use of our fire pit in the backyard.  It turned into a good old family chat around the bonfire. Thomas had so much fun that, in the days since, he has been requesting that we save all his old school papers for a future blaze.