Bumper Crop

About a year and a half ago we got a cool patio tomato planter from Chris' parents for Christmas.  Many of you may remember Chris giving his parents a pretty hard time about it.....In fact, I believe he said "all I got for Christmas was a bag of dirt."  Well let me say that we were finally able to put that planter to good use this summer.  We planted two little tiny tomato plants in there at the beginning of the summer, and now they are two huge tomato plants and we are picking fresh tomatoes off of there nearly every day.  I have not had such good luck with tomato plants here in Colorado, but this planter has changed my opinion about growing my own plants.  Even Chris is impressed and wants to get 2 more of the planters so we can grow other things next year.  Wes and Mia are totally into it too.  They love to help take care of the growing plants.  Here are a couple of photos of our most recent harvest:

  

Catch Up Post

It's hard to believe that summer is here already.  We have been getting hit with record high temps and it looks like the heat wave will continue for the upcomming week.  We really have not done too much over the past couple of months.  Chris' job has been really time consuming so we rarely have time on the weekends to do much as a family.  We are hoping that will all change now that he is starting work with a different company tomorrow.  And as Chris says, anything will be an improvement over what we have had to deal with over the last year and a half.  Looking forward to getting my family back!!

Let's see, the kids and I have spent lots of time at the park and the zoo.  We also just pulled out the big ole water slide this weekend and had some friends over to play.  Chris' buddy Skip and his wife Beth came out to visit us recently.  The guys went golfing and the women folk tried to shop, but then Wes got really sick and actually came down with strep so that pretty much ended the shopping for us.  Oh, the kids also recently had preschool graduation, which is where I believe Wes got the strep.....anyways, I had no idea what a big deal it was going to be.  It was like 300 poeple by the time you got all the kids, parents, gradparents etc - crazy!

We are heading to St Louis for the 4th of July.  Looking forward to a few days off.  The kids are excited to see their grandma and grandpa and all the cousins.  My friend Sharon and her family are again teasing us with the possibility of them visiting in August.....love you guys, but I'm not gonna hold my breath just in case :)

I will try to post pictures more frequently over the summer......until then, here are a few shots from the past couple of months....

 

Puppet Show

So Wes & Mia have taken to putting on little puppet shows before bed. They crawl over to one side of the bed and we sit on the other and they take turns singing songs with their favorite animals......really funny to watch. Here is a picture of them in action:

Also, we were lucky enough to have a visit from Uncle Brian and his 3 boys this past few days. His boys were on spring break and so they drove out for a couple of days. They got to take in a few sights around Denver and we also made a trip up to Copper Mt to take the kids tubing. What a fun day! Wes & Mia already miss their cousins (Liam, Tristan & Owen). We sure hope you all are able to come out and see us again soon.

Tubing at Copper Mt with the Kansas City Tepen's

Big Kid Bedrooms

The time has finally come to give the twins their own rooms. After weeks of planning, they are nearly complete. Mia picked out flowers and butterflies for her room. Wes picked out a fireman theme. Althought they LOVE their new rooms, they still insist on sleeping together. They take turns sleeping in each others rooms. Here are a couple of pics:

Renovation

So the Colorado Tepen's have started out the new year doing some remodeling around the house. First we tackled our cheesey fireplace surround and put in some fabulous stacked slate. Overall a pretty inexpensive project, but boy did it make a huge difference in our living room.

Then we started in on the kids jack & jill bath. New countertops, sinks, lighting, tub, tub surround......again, major difference. And the kids got cool monkey accessories to go with the updates.

New School

So this week was Wes & Mia's first week at their new school. We decided to move them to this new school because they were pretty much at the top of where they could go at the old school and they were starting to misbehave. The new school is right in our neighborhood and is an offical "school". They are in a private pre-k program and are required to wear uniforms. At first I wasn't quite sure how they would react to uniforms, but after this first week I can see that they really like it. They both said how cool it was that other kids were wearing the same shirt as them. The great thing for Chris & I is how tired they have been this last week. Our kids are pretty good sleepers to begin with, but this new school is really tiring them out. We put them to bed and usually there is a little bit of talking between them, sometimes we have to go in there a couple of times to get them to settle down......not this past week. In fact a couple of nights Wes crawled into bed before Chris was finished reading bedtime stories......that NEVER happens. Anyways, so far so good. Below is a picture of them in their uniforms, and the photo with Santa was from a lunch their new school hosted complete with a visit from Santa.

I do have some sad news to share. Many of you may know that my father has been really sick over the past year. He was placed in a nursing home about a year ago and has had many close calls since then. Yesterday morning he lost his battle. I hope you are somewhere that you feel better now dad - you will be missed. So, if you can when you read this, please take a moment to put some prayers out there for my dad.