40 days of vegan

Today (ash wednesday) begins our 40 day journey to a whole foods plant based diet. The idea all started a few weeks ago when we watched "Forks over knives" a documentary about the subject. Needless to say it was quite convincing. Surprisingly Neil was really gung ho about it.

Our new diet gives us the opportunity to try new foods such as nutritional yeast, which Abe calls geese. (Personally I'm not a fan). We've also started drinking rice and soy milk. Abe really likes them both (Personally I'm not a fan).

But one thing that we did was visit our neighborhood tofu factory (I was a fan). I'd been wanting to try it ever since I read a Nancy Lesson article last fall about the art of tofu. The factory was didn't really have a store front, in fact we'd tried to visit it earlier but drove right past it (on MLK and Willow). But today we found it and lot's of tofu! For $8 we came away with 4 bricks and 2 batches of fried tofu. Next time I want to try the flavored ones they have. I saw a brick with green onions, and another with some sort of spices. (No one really spoke English, so it was a little confusing what we were actually getting. But, they were nice and gave us each a sample of hot dofu right out of the fryer.

President's Day Sledding

Abe getting ready to go.
We headed out to Hyak snow park, which has a big sledding hill. It was pretty comical to watch all the other sledders run into each other. First we started on a little "hill", until we worked up the courage for the big hill.
Wee! Much to my surprise Abe even sledded down the little hill a few times by himself.
The highlight for Abe was the big plow that we found along the side.

Two of Abe's best friends are Kermit and Lucy (the little baby bear that sleeps in the red carrier).
My friend Rachel from work invited us to go on a little hike with her son Ely. It was a nice leisurely hike out to an old mine shaft. Like all prepared hikers, we carried our potty chair in our pack (just in case).

Mecca

During the snow storm last month Neil stayed home with Abe for a few days. During the day Abe shared with Neil one of his daily rituals--praying to mecca

My lucky sonny

Last Sunday we had the annual Locke dinner for Chinese New Year. Abe wore our old coat and jacket to sport his heritage.

Every year they have door prizes. They call kids to come up and choose the lucky raffle tickets, and Abe decided that he wanted to do it. And, guess who his very first pick was! His lucky mama! I won 4 movie tickets. I swear, it wasn't rigged.
Way to go Abe!

catching up

To say it's been a while since we've put a post up is an understatement. Here are a random assortment of pictures from the past few months.

Abe, Frannie and Grampy getting into the Christmas spirit.
My family came down to hang out and play on Christmas Day.
Check out the two cute kids in their cute Emily-made Christmas Jammies. Pretty cool.
Joe, Minna, Ellie and Cole came up for New Years, so on New Year's Day we went to the zoo (with Teresa too). Here Abe and Ellie get up close and personal with a peacock.
It wanted to show-off for all the folks and children.
Abe enjoyed being pushed around by Ellie throughout the zoo.
Joshua.
Ahhh...Abe's first video game. You know you're getting old when the first video game your kid plays doesn't even use a controller - it just uses motion sensor. Emily got the dance game for Christmas for the Kinect.
Dad and son getting down.
On January 7th we celebrated our one year home-ownership anniversary!!! We celebrated by going skiing and Emily cooking a fabulous homemade meal.
Abe liked the apple cider. He's drinking out of a Proud Parent glass, which is what Regional gave us after Abe was born.
Abe loves going to school. Here he's playing in the water/bubble tub with his friends.
Abe getting some one-on-one time with Teacher Jennifer.