Stacie and Zach

Ezra’s Birthday!

We came home from school pick-up and it was time to make something for Ezra’s birthday. After too much dilly-dallying we began the cupcakes… which were very good, by the way.
Then our neighbor friend came over to play and I decided we should make a party out of things. So I called our other neighbors and after dinner we had 5 kids and 6 adults to celebrate Ezra’s 2nd birthday. Nothing fancy and very last minute. The way this party came about is very reflective of how we operate. Spur of the moment with no plans. Sometimes it doesn’t work out so well. Often messages are left and no one is around to play. Thankfully things worked that night.
   

India’s gift to Ezra.  We gave him the trucks donated by the Dahls.  Thanks!  He still loves them as much as when we were at your house. 

 After playing with all the toys, finally the cupcake was eaten.

Halloween: Take One

Every year it seems there are all sorts of Halloween festivities. I like to add an extra one for the kids. India invited kids from school and from the neighborhood. We wanted to keep it small. If anyone out there went to India’s 4th birthday, you will know why I wanted it small.
We had a blast. There was dry-ice making the witche’s brew even more witchy. We decorated the punch and snack bowels with glittered bugs. India and I put together a puppet show while Ezra napped. There was even trick-or-treating at the school afterwards.
I am sorry to not have photographed all the decorating we did. It is difficult to get a party together and photograph the details.
The cast of characters:

the pirate

The witch and Hannah Montana

The construction site, the Wookie

The uncostumed (she soon got dressed up)

and the undressed… Ez ran around the house yelling and laughing for at least 45 minutes.

The spin dizzying the kids for pin the face on the pumpkin. I kept hearing “this is too easy!”

But no one pinned a perfect jack-o-lantern!

The puppet show

On the way to trick-or-treat street

Pumpkin Patch

This year we didn’t make it to a quaint, picturesque pumpkin patch. We went to a patch beside a busy road in Denver. But it was for a good cause. The proceeds went to Habitat for Humanity. One of India’s school friends was heading to the patch so we followed. It was a lot of fun and we got a couple of cute pumpkins.

India didn’t get enough of her own popcorn since Ezra dumped it in the car. This is her buddy’s bag… she’s sneakn’ some

I feel like I’ve taken this back-lit shot before.

Not quite the same, but this is India at almost a year and a half. This was at a quaint apple orchard just outside of Boston. Oh the yummy apples!

Popcorn… we love it!

When we come inside, after school, it is often popcorn time. I have sworn off microwave popcorn in favor of the air-puffed variety. This change of thought happend a couple of weeks before the popcorn scare. I don’t know what is in microwave popcorn and wanted something a bit healthier. So I bought an air popper. But I never got around to buying the kernals. When the story broke about the man with the lung disease, Zach went out and bought a couple bags of kernals. When he made the trip he had to go to 2 stores, the shelves were bare after the story came out.

Sometimes we pop it on the floor, even.

Ezra’s Day

Ezra watching the older boys playing ball on our way home from dropping India off at school.

Then we were off to the Littleton Historic Museum. They’ve got a working farm with an old time school, blacksmith, and home with a pretty extensive kitchen garden. Oh yes, and a cat who was really friendly and followed us for awhile.

This is Ezra in the barn. I have been inspired by the fashion images of late, which are pretty low-key; meaning dark or even underexposed. It was difficult to get this shot with my point and shoot. The shutter speed was really low so I made sure to take several in a row and hope one came out. Wiggly boy (or maybe I’m the shaky one). Anyway, I made sure the auto focus/exposure square landed on a lighter part of his face so it wouldn’t try to lighten the shadows. Does that make sense? Much easier to do when you’ve got control of your settings. Just expose for the highlights and let the shadows land where they will.

This one was with the flash, which my camera automatically fired. Ah, I hate flash! But what a cute smile. I had to reduce the red-eye in Photoshop at home. With on camera flash red-eye is typically unavoidable. Unless you don’t mind waiting 2 minutes for your camera to fire while the red-eye-reducer flashes. Meanwhile, your subject has moved or even thinks the picture has already been taken! Not worth it!

Ezra’s tongue

We have passed the week mark since Ezra about bit the tip of his tongue off. He was playing on the play structure at India’s school and bit it… well, fell. Lots of blood, lots of crying and even an offer to go to a friends for a popsicles.
I didn’t know how bad it was until the next morning when I got him out of his car seat. He was fingering his tongue and pulling at the flap that was at the tip. Yuck. After dropping India off at school we were off to urgent care to have it looked at. The Dr. wasn’t sure so called the ER. That doc said they could put in a stitch but that it would heal on its own. That’s what Grandpa Brian had told us the night before. It was good to hear it from another person… the Urgent Care doc hadn’t seen a tongue laceration that bad in the 14 years he had been practicing, if that tells you anything.
You can see for yourself:

Still a happy kid… especially after the medicine.

Aren’t the kiddos so cute together?

Exploring Colorado

“Are we there yet?”
“How much longer?”
Luckily Ezra was asleep most of the ride so we were only getting it from one kid. But as we entered the mountain pass we saw all the traffic heading back to the city. I knew it would be a long day.
We began with pizza. Thankfully in fru-fru Vail they have a family friendly, hip pizza joint with skeletons everywhere (which India loved) and ’80’s music piped through the speakers. We ate, then headed to the trail that would eventually take us to a waterfall. India and Ezra really enjoyed hiking up the trail… even with the chilly rainfall. Most days in Colorado have a rain in the afternoon. We are still getting used to that. We hiked as far as we dared (who wants to be stuck in a flash flood… or just in rain?) and I think that was key to having a good experience with the kids… no pressure (even without the waterfall). After the hike I suggested we head back to Vail and really take a look around the place. I also had my eye on some shoes for Ezra around the corner from the pizza joint. I’m glad we returned because I ended up getting a really cute pair for him and we saw what Vail is all about… it is basically an outdoor mall.

These were under $20… great sale.
Most the shops were closing so we headed for home. Being Labor Day weekend we figured we would have a very long drive ahead of us. Once we hit traffic we pulled off the highway and had some dinner. We found this really cute little diner with the best peach pie around. I was very happy to eat dessert. Too bad India would only eat the ice cream. Some day she’ll appreciate the finer things in life. Hopefully.
A few photos from the hike:

My Favorite Mini

Ezra loves his red Mini Cooper. Well, it was actually Zach’s Father’s Day present last year. Daddy’s already got the real thing, Ezzy needed one just like it. Every time Zach comes home and we head outside Ezra struts up to the Mini and tries to open the door. I’m not sure which is his favorite Mini, they are both pretty exciting. When he first discoved the car he would beg me to hold him (in his baby way) and then point me to India’s room where the Minis were kept on a shelf too high for him to reach. He knew what he wanted. He even makes car noises. His favorite park of “Annie” was the helicopter and roared whenever it was in a scene. What a boy.

Ezzie Kisses

Ezra loves to kiss. He learned to blow kisses from a Laurie Berkner song “Blow a Kiss”. Since then he kisses daddy and India before going to bed every night. It is now part of the bedtime ritual. This photo was taken at our rental house in June.

Estes Park with some old friends

We haven’t seen Nancy and Jared since Thanksgiving 2002. India and Issac were just little babies cruisin’ NYC (where they lived while Jared was at Pratt) and braving the cold to see The Wiggles at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. It was sooo cold and Zach yelled very obnoxiously at the Blues Clues guy (I think it was Joe) to get him to come over to our freezing babies who didn’t have a clue who Blue or Joe were. But that’s another story.
Anyway, Issac now has a yonger sister about the same age as Ezra. We seem to have kids at the same time. It’s quite uncanny. Too bad we live so far away from each other. But just before we moved to Colorado they moved from Ohio to Utah. Jared is now director at this cool little gallery in Heber, near Manti. In any case, they were at Estes Park in June for a family reunion so we made the trek up there to spend the day with them.
While there India had her first experience fishing! It was a blast. India was the only kid who tried to hold her own fish. Once she got it she kept picking it up when it would wrigle out of her hands. Fearless, with a good grip. She’ll make a fine fisherwoman. After catching the fish the kids got a kick out of watching them being gutted. This was a full service place. Nothing authentic about it; the bait was a little plastice-like flourescent orange ball, the pond stocked with trout, and we couldn’t even gut our own fish. It was actually perfect for a bunch of young kids egar to give fishing a try. We didn’t have to wake at the crack of dawn or even wait longer than a few minutes for a bite. I think we were in and out of the in an hour and caught at least 6 fish.
Once home, I cooked up the catch and India even took a baby bite to see how it tasted. She said it was pretty good but that bite was enough.

Ezra;s crazy laugh shocks adults and kids alike.

How cute is Isaac

The assisted hold. That’s Jared and Ez in the background.

Isaac caught an upside-down fish.

It may not seem like it but this is a laugh. Ezzie was really excited and pulling out all the stops with his crazy laughter.

Blood on the wrist.

Some of the gang.

The oh so popular gutting sink.