Arthur’s Abuelo (my Dad) came out to visit last weekend. While he was here, he played the role of resident paparazzi with his ultra-nice Canon SLR camera. Below you’ll find some really great pictures of Arthur and our adventures from last weekend around various parts of Colorado (and if none of Arthur’s pictures get any comments, we’ll be really sad :() :
holey moley we’ve been a little lazy at the posting!
not a whole heck of a lot has been going on. our garden is producing tons of food, including zucchini, yellow squash, a mystery squash, onions, garlic, red taters, tomatoes, and most recently, pumpkin.
eric was out of town for about a week recently, but i will let him tell that particular story.
arthur’s growing like crazy. the pups are as lazy as ever, and it’s summer….ew! i cannot wait until fall. fall and early winter are my all time faves. woohoo!
so to make the most of the remainder of summer, we headed out to the hills today. not to hike (we keep slipping in our crummy shoes….big 5 is in our future), but to drive around and admire the scenery.
here’s arthur exploring a log…with mt. meeker in the washed out background
my little guy
lilly lake
mommy’s little helper…he loves to push the stroller
in other news, arthur has also taken up the occupation of resident spider monkey…he climbs all over EVERYTHING! i turned my back, and arthur had climbed up onto our counter height chairs! here he is working hard.
everybody loves processed noodles!
and just to prove we’ve been getting pumpkins!
On July 11, Arthur’s grandma Cindy and his cousin Ashton flew out to sunny Colorado to visit us. We went to a festival here in town, went for walks around some parks, took a hike around the always beautiful Rocky Mountain National Park, visited the Celestial Seasonings tea factory in Boulder, and had an overall great time while they were out here. Candice and I even got to go out to lunch at a local brewery here in Longmont (which is something we haven’t been able to do for a long time–thanks Mom!) Below are some pictures of our adventures; the first picture warrants some additional commentary though. This was taken before Grandma arrived. Candice had made some cookies for me and I had them in my lunch bag in the entry way. Arthur was rummaging through the bag and found the cookies and decided that he wanted to become a Cookie Monster and starting munching on all my cookies. Also, later on in the set there are some pictures of wildlife and water and mountains–those were all taken at the Rocky Mountain National Park.
Colorado has a short growing season usually, so I was very glad to have ‘warm’ temperatures (above 45 degrees) starting in February. This allowed me to spend quite a bit of time outside building garden boxes and digging out all of the native dense clay soil and mixed in some bags of organic compost and some compost that we made ourselves from fruit and vegetable scraps in the kitchen. Below are some pictures of various garden ‘plots.’ We have six 8’x4’ boxes this year filled with dozens of edible plants including carrots, broccoli, flax, sage, watermelon, pumpkins, sunflowers, rasberries, zucchini, yellow squash, spinach, garlic chives, acorn squash, potatoes, parsley, various tomatoes, basil, mesculin, arugula, various onions, eggplant, garlic, various peppers, dill, culantro, oregano, lavender, rosemary, peppermint and kale. Whew–that’s quite a list of edibles for this year, but next year I have even more ambitious plans for the garden. The coolest thing that happened this year was how the winter squash, pumpkins, and watermelons grew. I wasn’t even expecting to have all of those vine plants, but what happened is that last year we composted at least one watermelon, a few pumpkins, and a few winter squash. The seeds sat out in our compost pile and survived even through the -14F degree winter weather and then when I mixed the compost into the soil that I had prepared, the seeds just started growing and we ended up with a mass of vine plants (as you’ll see below.)
who: arthur and i
what: a walk through an historic neighborhood, the library, and park fun
where: longmont
when: last week
why: it’s fun!
who: eric, arthur and i
what: hike
where: button rock dam
when: yesterday
why: to get out of the house!
what: sneak peek of the upcoming pugs’ post
It’s been four years since we started our blog. It was 2005 and Candice and I had just graduated from PUC. We were off to New York City with Jabba our trusty pug, seeking fame, fortune, and adventure. We didn’t get so much of the former, but the latter we had plenty of. Now, four years later, we’ve added Leia and Arthur to the Zerep bunch and even more adventures in the mountains of Colorado. Thanks for reading and hope to see you again next year.
Friday was a big day for Arthur–it was the first day that he took more than one or two steps by himself (and luckily we caught him on video!)
[The password to watch the video is: arthur]
[vimeo width=”480″ height=”360″]http://vimeo.com/5361514[/vimeo]
somehow i never seem to catch up on posts…oh well! 😀 hopefully pictures make up for some of my post-related shortcomings.
look who i found hiding in my cupboard!
oh no! what a mess!
i’m coming for you!
father’s day, yesterday, started with giving eric some time to sleep in and some breakfast (banana bread). we headed over to ‘richard’s on third’, a place here in the historic west side of town with good food and a nice outdoor patio where arthur can make noise and throw food. 🙂 it was nice not to have to clean up dishes. 🙂 for our afternoon activities, i got arthur a little splashy pool to play in.
for eric’s father’s day bbq i made chickpea cutlets and buns…the cutlets were SO AMAZING!!! and so easy!
i hope every one had a swell father’s day! i would write more, but i’m tuckered out…goodnight!