What a better place for grandparents to take a little hippie than to the Bass Pro Shop! Ezra’s Saba and Savta took him for the better part of the day, which included a trip to the north part of Denver and the hunting, fishing, camping and boating superstore. In reality, the place apparently has a lot of fun things to do including playing with R/C trucks, watching model trains, playing with slot cars, sitting on ATVs, enjoying getting outfitted for a backpacking trip, discovering what a fish-finder is and finding child size camping chairs. The best part? The nap that comes afterwards.

These are absolutely fascinating and have raised all sorts of questions discussions as new parents. Watching this stuff makes me excited, scared and intrigued by what the future holds for Ezra….and makes me ask “what can we do to get him ready for it all?” I can tell you for certain, that I am looking forward to the communication technology that will make our nursing home life better.

Version 3.0 was created in 2008.

Version 4.0 was created last month.

A few nights back we all headed over to our friend’s house to visit Kendra, Mark, and Sydney. The kids had a great time (do did the parents) and they even found the energy to share a story together. PS – there is also a video of them running around the island in the kitchen; you just have to be a friend of ours on Facebook to see it (go to our profile and look for the video that Mark posted).

I have the luck of being at work over this weekend and during this latest snow storm (they are saying 10-12 inches by Sunday’s end). One of the guys that I work with asked about capturing the snowfall in the flag lights with a photograph. Having no idea how to do this, a few quick attempts were made with surprisingly interesting results and I quite like them….

We just added a new page to our Blog (you can find it just above the header image). It explains itself fairly well, so we won’t waist your time here….just go take a look. It’s called ‘Lessons Learned’

Sorry for the delay in this posting….it’s been a crazy busy week (perhaps we can talk about that soon) and between the stuff that needed to happen, work, and camera assignments (it’s need to be taking photos in two different places at the same time) we just haven’t been able to get this up sooner. Anyway: enjoy.

We had the opportunity to borrow a home-made costume from some good friends, and it just happens that it allowed Ezra to dress up as one of is favorite animals – a lion. Full disclosure: the first time that he put on the costume he didn’t like it. It was hard to see his hands, it was a lot bulkier than his clothes, it was a little warm, and it had a tail that kept getting caught on things. But the longer that he was in it, he either started to like it or just got used to it. Either way, we all had a good time walking to our neighbors in the building and eating some candy (well, Ahna and I did. Ezra just enjoyed putting the candy in his pumpkin).

The great thing about Colorado is that even though we got nearly 30 inches of snow over the past couple of days, it was sunny and topped 50 degrees today. Ahna had a third consecutive day off (!) so we took advantage of it by just hanging out together….you know breakfast and lunch down at my parent’s house, a nap for all three of us, and a relaxing evening at home.

In the spirit of measuring horses by ‘hands,’ we have determined that this storm has dropped a little more than 1 Ezra of snow. By the end of the melting today, there is only about .5 Ezra left on the ground, and the streets and sidewalks are completely clear of snow and only wet due to melting.

It normally snows here in October (we even posted pictures from mid-Sept a few weeks ago) but to get a storm the size of the one that we have just received is a rarity. Since Tuesday night, we have gotten 26 inches in Castle Rock and the wind is producing drifts that are topping 4 feet.

I had the fortune of being at work on Tuesday and Wednesday and responding to all sorts of traffic accidents caused by questionable driving in the weather. Ahna had the fortune of experiencing two consecutive snow days (which is even more of a rarity than the storm itself) and has been mostly cooped up in the house with Ezra. They did venture outside for a while yesterday afternoon, and everyone quickly realized that even an inch or three of snow is enough to trip up Ezra. He had a mostly good time exploring around, but the cold forced them in after only about 20 minutes.

We had the opportunity to spend the day together today and ventured out once for lunch and some errands. Otherwise, it’s been hang out inside and hope that we can find enough things to do to avoid driving each other crazy.

The photos of Ezra playing were taken on Ahna’s cell phone, and the big one below is our best impromptu impersonation of a picture from the book The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.

Ezra went old school today, wearing an outfit from some 30+ years ago. This post was originally supposed to show how cute he looked in that outfit, but instead it equally highlights his new dance moves. While we were trying to get him to stand up for photos, we grabbed a talking/singing frog that he absolutely adores. On came the music, and on came Ezra. These turned out to be a really fun set of pictures.