Boo at the Zoo 2010

Sloan, Everett, Courtney, Luke, Lorraine, Bryce, Nick and Wes

Sloan and Luke

Ah, life with small children: one stands as a 24-hour witness to the pursuit of truth, fun, and candy.  In this case, we joined the Nelsons and the Rufners for Boo at the Zoo, which is another way of getting candy in front of kids loosely disguised as a zoological outing.  The weather was good and the crowds were thick...it was, well, a zoo.  But the mission was accomplished, as Luke found candy, saw elephants and gorillas, and had his picture taken jumping around like the curious monkey he was dressed up to be.  And again, the trip led to the sign of a successful weekend: the glorious afternoon nap!

Trek or Treat and a visit to Buffalo Bills gravesite

Happy Wes and Dad

A family photo at the top of Lookout Mountain

A view of Golden below

Buffalo Bill meets my boys

Howdy partner

Saddle up!

Check out these chaps

Buffalo Bill's gravesite

And of course, a stop at the gift shop (by the way... we did not buy these hats)

[Posted by Nick] In COLORADO, we make our kids work for their candy.  Back in my day, Halloweens were habitually the day of the first or second snow of the season, and most of my trick-or-treating was done with the temperature below freezing and the snow falling.  It built character.  Now, with the weather 75 degrees and sunny this weekend, it was time for some other type of child character-building. So, the whole family piled in the car and drove to Lookout Mountain in the Front Range, which offers a view of all of Denver and, on a clear day, a view to Wyoming.  (The flagship Coors brewery is also plain to see, for those of you who are interested).  Here, in the high alpine environment and amidst the pines, we marched Luke forth dressed as Curious George up and down hills, over rugged trails and the occasional dry stream bed in search of free candy.  And he was rewarded after a hard-charging 0.7 mile walk.  I am proud to say that he was able to walk the whole way.  Wes, on the other hand, needed to be carried the ENTIRE way.  Perhaps, at 5 months, he truly is just a babe in the woods...

Halloween fun has already begun!

Curious George in his habitat!

We have begun our jammed packed weekend of Halloween fun.  First, we went downtown to Poppa Paul's office for a Halloween lunch and trick or treating.  What fun we had visiting Poppa at work!  Everyone was so nice to us and gave us lots of candy.  No pictures because I forgot my camera.  :(

Next, we went to the Honeybees Halloween party hosted by mom friend Karen.  The Honeybees is the playgroup that I have been in since Luke was 6 months old.  It is amazing to see how much our kiddos have grown since our first Honeybees Halloween party two years ago. Our group has gotten smaller but we have a blast together meeting once a week.  I will miss this when I go back to work in January.

Also... Luke has been saying everyday that he wants to go skiing in the mountains.  This is great because as I told Nick we are a skiing family and I can't wait for all of us to be on the slopes together.  Our plan is to wait until next season to really start him in lessons but play this year.  Any thoughts on an almost 3 year old playing with skis?  I was thinking there must be something that he can wear his snow boots and slide on the snow in.  Need to google this...
L also insisted this morning that he does not have nipples like dad, they are just freckles.  Need to write more things down like this to remember them.  My girlfriends who blog lots do a wonderful job of keeping track of the cute things their kiddos say.  I do remember that the first time L noticed his freckle on his arm he thought it was an ant.  Can't remember how old he was.

Wes is being too cute lately.  I was playing peek a boo with him last night and he had the biggest belly laughs.  I am loving this stage of his.  Feel out of the woods and the truly hard part of the newborn stage is over.  His PT is going great and he is becoming so much stronger.  He is tripoding (sitting) more and more each day and can now be on his tummy and look at a 90 degree angle.  This is huge improvement. We also talked to a feeding specialist who is helping us having him take a bottle of breast milk.  She almost got him to suck the bottle.  Just praying that he will be a champion bottle drinker by the time January comes around.  I should be off sleeping since both boys are and it is 10 at night.  Ok... off to bed.  :)

Adventures in the corn maze

Corn, beautiful, corn!  Perfect to feed a village or, if you are the Denver Botanical Gardens, perfect for making a maze out of and charging people to get lost.  And get lost we did, if only because we had a precocious 2-year-old leading the way while seemingly taking directions from his babbling baby brother.  But we did find out way out without cheating too badly by leaving the designated trails, and Scott and Courtney were good sports in letting Luke lead us into the depths of corn field, in which very few other patrons seemed to be.  But most importantly, we got a good dose of exercise and wore out the little ones, setting the stage for the highlight of every weekend for the foreseeable future: the family afternoon nap!

Sleep...

used to be a beautiful thing until a week ago.  Wes has decided to wake up like clockwork at 12, 2, 4, and 6 AM.  Before that, Wes woke up at 4 and then in the 6 o'clock hour.  I guess one blessing is that when he wakes up I just have to nurse him back to sleep which I do in bed.  That way, I don't have to wake up completely.  I told Nick last night that I just wish he had boobs sometimes so that he could help put Wes back to sleep at night.  I don't have the heart to have him cry it out yet but might have to do something if this does not change.  Definitely nap time today!

Off to the pumpkin patch!

Off to the pumpkin patch we went today.  It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day... perfect for picking pumpkins.  On our way up Luke told me that he did not want a cow to lick his hand.  Fortunately for him, the cow was fast asleep.  What a fun way to spend time together!

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From Farm to Table

We got the go ahead to start introducing Wes to table food. I decided to go with sweet potatoes since that was Luke's first food and we found them at our local farmers market... Wes did not seem to know what to do with the food as he mostly spit it out and eventually cried. My plan is to try a bit each day and see. Here is how the process worked...

steaming the sweet potatoes 

Wes ate from his special sterling silver spoon, a gift from Grandy and Grandad Damuth