Avocado Tree!

This welcomed us home:

The avocado seed that Owen started had finally gotten its stem and leaves! It had rooted several weeks ago, interesting, but not as exciting as actual leaves! We'll get it into some soil soon. Owen is hoping for avocados soon, we keep trying to explain that it will probably only be an ornamental plant. One can always hope, though!

And in honor of my friend Misty, I took a picture of our first meal home. Mmmmmm, vegetarian cilantro chili, with cornbread - an almost gluten-free meal, except that the cornbread recipe I used added wheat flour. Well, sometimes this meal is gluten-free :-) And it's pretty:

So the next day we finally got out of the house, I got to go to my wonderful Nia class, and then we joined up with friends for a day of hanging out, hiking, and playing in the Platte River. It wasn't exactly the day we had imagined, but my kids enjoyed it, and we got to be outside and see friends we hadn't seen for a while. Of course, I forgot my camera. Next time, I promise :-)

Now I guess I'll get back into picking old photos to share. These are from the Botanic Gardens in August 2003. The funny thing is that I have almost identical pics of Owen playing in the same water puddle when he was much younger, less than 2. Another rainstorm at the gardens. Actually, I can count 3 times that we have been stuck at the gardens in the rain, at least!