The Zereps

Arthur went and got some pictures taken today at the mall. Sadly, those are as big as the images get, but you get the picture (no pun intended!)

Arthur turned the big 2 this past weekend. Can you believe it? We can’t! It’s amazing how time flies when you’re tired and having fun. 🙂

As you browse the pictures, I’m sure you will pick up on a theme. Arthur’s favorite characters are Thomas the Tank Engine, and Elmo from Sesame Street (along with Oscar, too – he says ‘Ok-ar’, it’s so cute!) and the gifts he received reflect those. He also got a some shiny red wheels and a big boy potty from us. He was so excited to see the potty that he went pee pee in it immediately, right there in the kitchen. Eric and I were cracking up with laughter, as you can imagine.

For his birthday meal he ate some yummy lemon cupcakes with frozen yogurt and drank milk out of a Thomas cup. He was in heaven!

The night before his birthday we all headed over to California Pizza Kitchen to take advantage of the ‘kids eat free’ birthday coupon I had. Arthur got pasta, milk, and an ice cream sundae with M&Ms, whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and a cherry on top. He was completely in awe of it! Granted I shared it and we didn’t come near to finishing it, but still…a yummy time was had by all. 🙂

Things have been a little quiet here on our blog, as we’ve been stuck in the winter blues, but it’s going to pick up! Spring is hopefully around the corner! ::fingers crossed::

happy belated new year! 😀

here’s what we did on new years day: geocaching! with the addition of eric’s shiny new iphone, geocaching is a breeze. no more bulky gps unit that takes 4 batteries plus a bulky old ipaq. we also went out the day after this, but i forgot my camera.

arthur’s ready for adventure, off-roading it in the snow, sunset over the frozen lake

and here is a cute hat made by my cousin cherie, thanks! 😀

eric is very excited to do more geocaching, and i would be more excited about it if it were warmer. arthur’s game as long as he’s bundled and gets milk and cookies in the car afterward.

i honestly had every intention of writing an update a while ago, but i’ve just recently swapped over to another laptop, and that put my plans on hold for a while. so there’s my excuse!

this christmas season was full of lots of fun activities for us. now that arthur is a bit older he can get more involved and we don’t feel like so funny now at kid’s events, as opposed to trying to get an 8 month old to do crafts. our town had wide array of fun christmas activities geared towards those 10 and under (and their parents who probably have 60% of the fun). it starts with the lighting of the main park here in town with lots of lights. we went to one such night to partake of the roving carolers, various firepits at strategic locations (to inhibit frost bite most likely), reindeer, free pasta and pizza (what’s christmas without a hot slice?), and free cookies and milk/egg nog. oh, and a TON of kids doing crafts and playing. there was also a small train that drove around in circles that eric took arthur on. ooh, and fireworks! on another night the town had a ‘parade of lights’ through our little downtown area and the floats were actually pretty cute and there were around 60 so it was a good, hefty parade.

we also participated in a cookie swap, which yielded many delicious cookies (i made ‘sell your soul pumpkin cookies’).

eric’s mom also came out to visit, thus enabling eric and i to sneak off for a few dates. eric’s office party was held at frasca, and it was pretty good. we also snuck out to see ‘2012’, and for our anniversary went to sugarbeet.

eric’s mom left a few days before christmas so it was just the 5 of us (don’t forget the pugs!) here yesterday. arthur slept in, passed out on the couch after getting up too early and eric and i got antsy, and maybe accidentally woke him up in our eagerness to see him play with new toys. his big presents were a rocking horse from my mom (grandma janiece), a pint-sized table and chair set (great deal!), and a ‘tickle-me elmo’. he loves all 3! he also enjoyed opening up our gifts, too. as did the pups (they got new squeaky toys).

and today eric finally made the decision to put to rest his not-so-trusty, old, broken, dying, ghetto phone and upgrade (finally, praises be) to an iphone. maybe he’ll mention it it in a post of his own, but let me say i wouldn’t be surprised if a small tear might have rolled down his cheek. 😉

and as for weather, we were lucky enough to have a white christmas! 😀

a small snowman i crocheted for arthur, the inside of the toys and craft area, santa!

partaking of egg nog and cookies, the three of us in line for pizza, munching fresh, hot pizza in the snow

train ride!, happy at the library, mimi and arthur

at the park in our neighborhood, relaxing, mimi’s birthday breakfast

turtle power, eric arthur and mimi at another park by us, eric arthur and myself

trotting along, the goods, early morning snooze-fest

yeehaw, well hello, awesome

happy camper

ok, so it wasn’t really an extravaganza, but we still had a good time on thanksgiving. 🙂 i was hoping to be thankful for some snow, but the sun decided to shine instead. here’s what we (i) made for our little thanksgiving lunch: sweet potato and roasted butternut bisque, golden glow stuffed acorn squash, vegan meatloaf, sauteed asparagus, and cranberry relish. for dessert we had individual pear cranberry crisps. the closest we got to real turkey was a turkey balloon, and an amigurumi turkey. we tried to watch the ubiquitous thanksgiving day parade, but were COMPLETELY let down! non-stop commercials, annoying tv announcers, gosh-aweful product placement, it was horrible! the one float arthur saw was the pillsbury dough boy, and he has no idea who that is since we don’t buy that! fortunately, charlie brown saved the day! 😀

description of photos: our food, the pups enjoying thansgiving, arthur had his milk in a ‘special glass’ like mommy’s, crisps, park play on black friday, arthur relaxing after setting up the tree (there are no longer decorations on the lower half, btw), watching ‘sid the science kid’, waiting to slide down our backyard in the snow we got a few weeks ago, grandma and grandpa in late october.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  We have a bunch of pictures on our camera that we haven’t even downloaded to our computers yet and at the moment we can’t even find our camera. 🙁

Grandma Janiece and Grandpa Al came out to visit us around Halloween this year. A huge snow-storm hit while they were here though, so we had to spend a lot of time at home. After the snow subsided, we went and took a stroll down Pearl Street Mall in Boulder. And luckily by Halloween, the snow had melted and we took part in Longmont’s annual Halloween Parade in downtown on Main St.  Then that night, Arthur went out for his first trick-or-treating.

We’ve certainly seen some interesting weather out here in Central Colorado this month.  Our poor garden suffered from frost bite and succumbed to freezing temperatures pretty early this year.  I did manage to get six fruit trees planted in our backyard this year (two plum, two apple, and two peach,) so hopefully there wont be any late Spring frosts next year and we’ll get some fresh fruit to go along with our fresh garden-grown veggies. It’s only October 12 and we’ve already had four inches of snow on the ground. Temperatures have been hovering in the 40s during the day and 20s at night! Feels like we should be hanging up the Christmas lights already!  Below you’ll find some pictures of our ‘last harvest’ and some of the recent blast of snow we got. (Yes, we did grow all those pumpkins ourselves!)

Our gardening efforts turned out very well this year. It was a lot of work, but we’ve been eating something out of the garden almost every day. Arthur’s favorite is the yellow cherry tomatoes–he could eat those things all day. Right now we’re getting a lot of tomatoes, herbs, greens, onions, and even pumpkins and winter squashes. I think by the time everything’s grown, we’ll have about twelve pumpkins! Candice has already been busy making pumpkin muffins, pancakes, scones, soup, waffles and cazuela with the ones we’ve already harvested!

The next project I’m working on is planting fruit trees to complement all the vegetables that we have. I already planted two very small plum trees and one ‘Reliance’ peach tree (and another ‘Red Haven’ peach is just waiting in it’s pot to get put into the ground.) Hopefully next year (if there aren’t any late spring frosts!) we’ll have our own peaches and plums (and apples if I get around to it) to eat as well. Here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks that I took of our garden.