It’s Christmas Eve, and we are in Oklahoma.  It looks cold and raw outside.  I think it is supposed to rain today, but I am not sure how much we have had.  You can be sure that there will not be snow though.  For some reason,  David and I seem to be snow repellent.  Not Davey – he’s too sweet to repel.    It’s cosy and warm inside though!

It’s been a nice morning.  Davey has been playing and playing and cooking with his Pa and Nanny.  Soon we are going to my parents’ house.  I have been knitting.  David and I have also been watching our new favorite show.  It may not sound to Christmasy, but it has been a “Pawn Stars” marathon around here.  

I knit up another hat made out of Cascade Eco.  It is a bulky soft and squishy yarn and it made a great beret.  It’s an interesting pattern by Rowan.  It’s that drop stitch pattern when you wind the yarn for 3 yarnovers, and then drop them on the next row.  I like the way it turned out.  Now I am knitting a scarf to match.  That pattern is a great traveling pattern.  I need to put up some pictures.

I made another neat Boyfriend Hat.  I love that pattern.  This time I used the Noro Silk Garden.  I’d never used that yarn before.  It’s a silk and wool blend and knits up so pretty.  It is almost self-striping.  I have got to take a picture of that as well.  It’s great yarn. 

So it’s been a knitting, visiting, Pawn Stars morning. 

Merry Christmas!

The other night Davey was playing with David.  Their game  involved a large puppet named Sam.  He was trying to catch the balls that Davey was throwing at top speed.  Sam was having all kinds of problems, and Davey found it hilarious.  I just love these pictures.

Today Davey and I went over to school to meet one of my students who has a 13 week old Siberian Husky.  (Davey calls the school that we teach at “Rocky Mountain High”.)  We took Timber along too.  We wanted to get him some more exercise, as Koko can’t go for very long at all anymore.

Timber and Iris hit it off.  Well, I never thought I’d see it, but Iris was like the little puppy annoying old man Timber.  I guess Timber is not a puppy anymore.  It took him a long time to grow up!

Iris and Davey played and played too.  It began with Davey chasing Iris:

But then Iris began chasing Davey.  Iris looks like he wants to eat Davey in this photo.

Davey really displayed some splendid moves in running from Iris.

Iris and Davey both on the move.

They explored a little together.  Timber was just hanging back, sniffing, trying to mind his own business.  Although he did enjoy friendly pats from the students.

Afterwards, Davey and I went to Whole Foods to get a few things and he loves to get a cupcake there.  So we got him a cupcake and some lemonade.  It was kind of a memorable day because Davey has always used a sippy cup or a straw.  Today, he did great with a paper cup.   He had a great time with it as well.  Small pleasures – I really liked watching him drink out of that little cup.

It was springlike here in Denver today.  We were lucky to be able to spend a good part of it outside!

Yesterday we drove up to Estes Park.  We wanted to explore a little on the way, so we drove up through Longmont, over to Lyons and then up to Estes Park.  We stopped and had lunch at Pizza Hut in Longmont.  Davey was very happy to go into a real Pizza Hut.  He’d missed it.

Estes Park was a fun town to “stroll”.  It was very crowded though.  We hadn’t encountered a town with so many tourists before.  I have heard people rave about Estes Park all of my life, and I finally can understand why.  It is beautiful!

We walked and window shopped.  One of our favorite things to do.  Dog watching is another favorite.  Davey will see a dog and say, “Oh my goodness.  Look at that precious pup!”  We saw the biggest dog on the planet in Estes Park.  We think he was a Russian Wolfhound.  Davey could have ridden him all the way back home.

There was a yarn shop!  I love googlemaps on my little phone.  Finding a yarn shop involves only a very quick search and then a map to lead me to the front door.

Great shop!  I bought yarn for 2 pairs of upcoming Joy of Sox socks.  Lime green and a pretty blue.  Oh I love that lime green!

We had an unfortunate incident in the yarn shop.  Davey was beside me and was as usual pulling out skeins of yarn to “show me” just as fast as he could.  “Mommy, I JUST wanted to show you this one.”  (Shop owners likely whimper when they see a 3 year old boy enter their shops.)  All of a sudden I hear a cry, and there’s Davey.  Except this time instead of having a skein of yarn in his hand to show me, there is a mousetrap hanging off his finger.  Poor thing.  Thank goodness it didn’t snap him too badly.  He told me later that “Mommy, it really didn’t hurt that much.”  I think it scared him and me more than anything.

Although it’s not a method I would have advocated to get him to stop touching all the yarn, it did slow him down abit.   He was also busy following Duncan the yarn shop dog around as well.

Have you had mountain cookies?  We learned our lesson in Breckenridge as to the sheer enormousness (nice word huh) of them, and so yesterday the three of us split one and still had plenty.

The other highlight were the elk.   They were all over the golf course.  Davey really enjoyed seeing them.

They were looking at this guy.

We definitely want to return to Estes Park.

We get pretty excited about the small things around here.  Davey has been really looking forward to getting our new car tags.  “Mommy, they have mountains on them!”  So yesterday, we took on the purchase and changing of the tags.

Since we are back in an urban area, we first had to go have an emissions test done on the car.  We found the emissions place.  There was a line of cars.  I didn’t bother reading the big information board when we drove in, because I’d looked into the process online before we’d left.  As we were waiting though, I had a nagging feeling that they might not accept my credit card.  Sure enough as we approached the front of the line, there was the sign “Sorry no credit/debit cards”.  I wiggled ourselves out of the line and off we went in search of money.  (I’d neglected to put my checkbook in my purse, and I barely know what cash looks like anymore.  I am very debit card dependent.)

We were not in the greatest part of town.  I knew we’d be getting back in line so we went into the Dollar General for a snack.  I also hoped I could get some cash back there.  No such luck.  We did stock up on animal crackers though.  The person in Dollar General told me that there was an atm in the liquor store next door.  So Davey had his first trip into the liquor store.  It wasn’t the fact that I took him into a liquor store that bothered me much, it was more the gauntlet of cigarette smoke that we had to run through to get into the liquor store.

So we got our money, drove back and got in line.  It moved pretty quickly and soon we were standing in a booth waiting for them to finish the car.  I started talking to a couple in there.  I was curious as to how often I had to have the emissions testing done.  They told me every other year.  Then they asked me if I had any idea how much tags were in Colorado.  “You are in for a shock!” the man told me.  Then I think he took my slightly southern accent as a sign of naivete and maybe dumbness because he started to warn me how I probably was not going to get out of the tag office without having paid oh $500-700!  Even on my 7 year old car! I really had my doubts about that, but I made all the exclamations of “oh no!  You are kidding!”, and he was happy.

Next I learned that not only did we need the $25.00 emissions test, but since we were registering for the first time in Colorado, we had to have a $15.00 VIN Verification.  Seriously.  She walked around the car, wrote down VIN numbers, verified.  However, there was no computer database verification check involved that I know of.   Anyway, a first for me, but no biggie.

Next we were off to the tag office.  Another very long line.  Davey and I were getting hungry by then, but he hung in there great.  We played “find objects in Mommy’s purse that can entertain us.”  We talked to a man next to us who had moved from Washington D.C.  Finally, it was our turn.  Davey was thrilled to see our mountain tags, and I was thrilled that our tags, while higher than in our previous states of residence, were “only” $158.

Davey is ready now to install them onto the car with Daddy.  More cause for great excitement!

Happy Saturday!  We are off on a Saturday exploration.

We had a great Mother’s Day.  I got so many nice messages.  David’s parents both called, I talked to Mom, Angie texted me! (I am such a texting noob), Michael left me a voicemail, Michele emailed!  We hung out here.  David got me a really pretty citrine drop.  Davey liked it and he liked eating the card even more!

We had to leave for a couple of hours while they showed the house, so we had lunch at Backyard Burger.  Then last night we watched the Survivor Finale.  It’s gotten to the point that we pretty much just watch the Finales.  Can’t seem to quite give the show up. 

Davey has abit of a cold.  He seems to be better today already.  Night before last he was up about every three hours, but he slept the whole night last night. 

Today we are hanging out.  David just gave Davey a bottle and now they are being silly on the futon.  They do something called face wrestling.  I am not sure what it is, but I need to do a scrapbook page about it. Here are a couple of pictures including one of this so called "face wrestling".  I think this was a break from the action.

Saturday we celebrated Davey’s 6 month birthday.  We had a great party – the three of us.  I will post some pictures.  We had presents, I made him a cereal/baby food parfait, it was great fun.  Yesterday we went to a cookout at a friend’s house.  Davey sat in the grass for the first time.  He got his first grass stain, and he ate his first popsicle.  I think that popsicle must have felt great on his gums.  He loved it. 

While he was sitting on the grass, he kept pulling it up and trying to eat it.  So today he was sitting on the carpet – and we have that frise carpet – so he was trying to pull that up too.  No luck but it was pretty cute. He figured it was tan grass!

I did a fun layout today of him. 

Birthday pictures

Davey had such a great two hour nap this morning after his first short one.  He felt really good for the rest of the day.  We’d been running around quite abit the prior two days, and I think he needed some catching up time.  I did a layout today of what he is like when wakes up in the morning or after a nap: