Photo books of the Cummings!

I've been busy updating my Shutterfly account page with photo books today. Go and check out our 'other' family website.

http://cummingschronicles.shutterfly.com/

Happy New Year!

~michelle

The Cummings Christmas Card 2009

Ever since I got a Facebook account I have neglected the blog. I will try to do better this year! Here is the link to our Christmas Card this year.

www.challenge-advisory.com/Christmas2009.ppt

Click on this link or cut and past it into your browser. After fighting with ppt for hours I could not get the song to embed in the file. Please sing 'Silent Night' while watching the slide show. It will make me feel better! If you don't have PowerPoint loaded on your computer, go to microsoft.com and download a free power point viewer. Then you can see it. :)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Cummings!

New baby Cousin Taylor!

We have a new member of our family! Meet Mr. Taylor. He is Zachary's new little brother! We went to Norton in May and got to meet our new cousin.

Dawson was a big fan of the new baby!

Dawson, big brother Zachary and baby Taylor

Aunt Michelle and Taylor

Grandma Cindy and Taylor

Grandpa Don and Taylor, big yawn!

Proud mommy Dannon and little Taylor.

Dawson loses another tooth!

Dawson lost another tooth in May! His permanent teeth sure do make him look older. The tooth fairy left him another golden dollar.

Dylan's Field Day

Dylan's class also had a Field Day. His class consists of pre-school and Kindergarten. Dylan passed pre-school and will be the big man on campus next year in the Kindergarten room. Here are some pictures from his Field Day.

Who doesn't love the PARACHUTE!?

This was Dylan's favorite

Dylan headed under the parachute.

Dylan loves to draw with sidewalk chalk.

Dylan is signing his name right next to Miss Jills!

Dylan's class also did the water pass. It was cold and cloudy the day of Dylan's Field Day. Brrrr!

Congratulations on passing pre-school Dylan! We are proud of you!

Dawson's Field Day

At the end of the school year Dawson's school has a huge field day where the kids get to participate in several fun events. I was able to attend for a few hours and took some fun pictures to share. This celebrates the end of the 1st grade for Dawson!

Here are Dawson's awesome teachers, Miss Jennifer and Miss Darcy!

First they had to pass water down the line and fill a bucket up with water.

Here they are all in their teams.

Dawson thought he would be the anchor man for the 4 way tug of war.

The first graders beat the 2nd and 3rd graders!

Miss Judy the PE teacher was laying down the ground rules.

Dawson and Mommy at Field day.

Another event was the bubble races. Fun!

Congrats Dawson on passing the 1st Grade!

Flag Day

Every year on June 14 we like to go around the neighborhood and put little flags up in everyone's yards. It's like May Day baskets in June! :) Here are some pics from the big event.

We put little stickers on the flags that say, Happy Flag Day! Happy 4th of July! from your neighbors @ 7095, Paul, Michelle, Dawson and Dylan

Dawson and Dylan ready to comb the neighborhood!

At the Escobedo house..... (fav neighb) ;)

Working together!

This is just a fun way to spread some patriotism throughout our neighborhood and honor our country. Trying to instill good will and pride in being an American in the boys.

Dawson is 7 today!

Happy Birthday Dawson! Our Dawson turned 7 today! We spent the day as a family. Daddy made his famous pancakes for breakfast and Dawson got to open his presents. Since mommy won't let him have a real dog, we got him a care-for-your-own-puppy game for his Nintendo DS. He is now the proud owner of a virtual pug he named Harley. (that's my sister Dannon's pug's name, too. shocker.) :) He's been trying to get his pug to sit all day long--pretty cute. It's voice activated, so it actually responds to his voice. He keeps saying how hard it is to have a dog! Ahhhhhhh, I love the virtual dog......

We also went swimming at the rec center for several hours, ate at Dawson's favorite restaurant--the green noodle store. (Noodles & Co for the grown up name. His favorite dish is the pesto cavatappi, hence green noodles.) We then went to see Hotel for Dogs at the dollar theater. Overall it was a fun day!

We had his birthday party on Sunday at JetKids Gymnastics. I have video of the big party on my other computer so I'll edit this with the video later. It was a lot of fun! We invited the whole class and ended up with 24 kids showing up! I think he rang in the big 7 in a big way! Can't believe my baby is already 7. It goes so fast!

The Jones's Spring Break at the Cummings

Dannon and her crew joined us for a few days in March for their Spring Break. The big kids went skiing:

Donnie and the kids! Autumn, Treyton and Justin

Paul and Autumn

Autumn and Treyton

Justin on the Ski lift
The little kids stayed home and played in other ways:

Dawson and Dylan taught Zachary how to play on the Nintendo DS...

Zach got WAY into the game!

Such a cutie..

Eating supper in the BIG highchair!

And of course, the bath tub shot. Zachary thought he was way bigger than he really is while hanging with the big boys. Dannon thought he was going to drown himself several times! I think he had a blast.

Sleepy boy laid down on the floor and hung out with Aunt Michelle for a little bit. So adorable.

And we hit the park up the street as well!

Such a big guy!

We also went to the Denver Children's Museum and CasaBonitas while they were here. Check out my sister's blog to see more pics of the fun trip!

Dawson loses another tooth!

If you have been a Cummings Chronicles blog follower from the beginning, you will remember the multiple blog postings on the multiple teeth Dawson lost a few months ago. Well the tooth fairy strikes again! Dawson lost another tooth today while home for a snow day. Upper left tooth in the picture below. The tooth fairy will have to cough up another golden dollar again tonight.....

Doesn't he look so grown up with his new permanent teeth coming in? Can't believe he is going to be 7 years old next week!

Dawson is an author!

This last semester we enrolled Mr. Dawson in a writing class at school. Little did we know that he actually authored a book in this class! We are so very proud of him! Taking after his mom already. :) Here he is accepting his books.


Much to his parent's chagrin, it was about Pokemon.... but nontheless we are proud of him anyway! I pretty much lost it when I opened the front cover and in red crayon it says, "Dedicated to My Mom". So sweet. We are so proud.

And for some reason, even though the pics are orientated sideways when I upload them, the blogger site decides they need to be vertical. So turn your head and see a few pages of Dawson's book.


Authored and Illustrated by Dawson, age 6.

Februrary 2009 at the Cummings

Yes, February did happen at our house this year. It was a crazy, full month! I'll do a quick recap.

First off, my mom had hip replacement surgeryon Feb 4 here in Denver, so I played nurse for a good 2 weeks. She came through the surgery just fine, scared me a few times with all of the drugs she was on, but is doing better now. Here are a few pics of her big event!


Going in for the surgery...

Dad sleeping in the waiting room. We waited for 8 hours!


Recovering in her room.
And she's UP! They had her walking on the new hip the next day!


This definitely consumed our family for about 2 weeks. I was in the hospital everyday with mom. Paul was super dad while I was out. The boys came to the hospital to visit grandma a few days as well. She was at our house for about 4-5 days before she made the treck to Kansas to do physical therapy in Norton. Desiree went and stayed with mom for a week or so when she got the Kansas and then Dannon went after that and took a turn. It all comes full circle, eh? She cared for us then, we'll care for her now. :)


After that I have been on a cross country conference tour. In February alone I was in the following cities: Chicago, Houston twice, Orlando and Boulder, CO. Then in March I flew to Pittsburg, Portland, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, NJ, Dallas and Abilene, TX and Ft. Collins, CO all for work. I've already flown 20,000 miles in 2009 alone! It's been a crazy couple of months for work and family. I'm definitely tired and ready to slow the travel a bit. In April I'll be in Las Vegas, Houston, North Dakota and Los Angeles. Whew....


The BIG event of February though was Dylan's 5th Birthday! We had a very fun party at the House of Bounce. Our best buddy, Jimmy has a birthday the same day as ours, so we shared our party with him! Here are some pictures and a video from our fun day:

The 2 birthday KINGS in the throne!

some of our friends
Our big brother!

I can't get this picture to turn sideways, but here are more of the birthday guests! It was so fun!








February ended with our favorite confernce of the year in Boulder, CO. Paul and I both go to this conference and some of our dearest colleagues are there. We both enjoy this community of people so much and look forward to it every year. We host a costume party during the conference and this years theme was 'Prom'. It was hysterical! You could come in any prom outfit from any era. People were very creative and we laughed so hard our sides hurt! From men in women's dresses to velour jackets to a t-shirt that said 'prom'--we saw it all!

It was a crazy month! I'll post again for March....

~michelle