here and nau

i can't believe i'm just now posting this, but if you haven't done it yet, please check out andy's place of employment. the store is called nau (pronounced "now"). the clothes they sell "blur the line between urban and outdoor," as andy would say. not only are the clothes cool, but nau is also making pretty significant environmental and humanitarian efforts in the way they run their business. it's been awesome to see andy connect with nau and jump on board with their philosophy of business and design. and it doesn't hurt that he looks fantastic in their clothes. personally, i'm in love with the loooong sleeves on their shirts and jackets. hop on over to nau.com and see what andy lives and breathes every day.

j max

eden has a little buddy and his name is joshua max. he is just eight days older than her and belongs to the lovely karin and mark stroessler. yesterday at music class, karin snapped a few great pictures of the wee ones. here's one of them. thanks, karin! (and thank you, dannah, for eden's sweet outfit.)

feeling groovy at music class.

karin and i with eden and joshua the day after eden was born.

and the dads: andy and mark.

fall brilliance

one time, back in huntington, my family went for a drive on a really pretty fall day. dad caught some footage of the fall leaves as well as the three rather spirited (to put it politely) girls in the backseat. he later added the words "fall brilliance" in a spectacular ancient 80's-computer-style font to the beginning of the video. almost twenty years later, my little family and i captured some "fall brilliance" of our own with our digital camera and soon-to-be-outdated video camera. (someday i'll get around to editing and posting some zenz family videos...someday.) it was a beautiful day with my andy, mercy (25 months) & eden (almost 12 weeks) and i wanted to share it.

mercy's been working on her monkey bar skills.

doing what they love to do.

munchkin masquerade

every year on halloween, there's an event called "munchkin masquerade" on pearl street in boulder. kids are invited to dress up and collect candy from the store owners along the walking mall. we've taken mercy the last two years. this year, both girls were decked out. i'm happy to say that mercy wore my wonder woman underoos from the 80's (along with some supplemental clothing to truly validate her membership in the justice league). eden was the inevitable pumpkin and was quite cute if i do say so myself. it was madness on pearl street with hundreds of kids and parents wandering around gathering candy and snapping pictures left and right. we held it together as much as possible before racing the stroller home for a quick dinner and then bed.

there she is...wonder woman, jr.

w.w. and her bodyguard, andy zenz.

i'm glad someone can still fit into those awesome underoos.

i love my daughter. she's so cool.

eden woke up long enough for a quick pic.

jase the kangeroo grabs a photo op with mercy "wonder woman" zenz.

grammy & grandpa return!

andy's parents were in town a few weekends ago. this time, we weren't having a baby hours before their plane landed. it was just a good old-fashioned visit. and it was wonderful.

story time with granpda. ("read boat?" is how mercy asks to read books.)

snuggle time with grammy.

this girl definitely belongs in our family.

nice.

mercy with her buddy jase at a nearby pumpkin patch.

mercy with john and jase.
checking out the pumpkins with grammy.
dear heavens, that's a big cow, guys.

mooooo.

not quite like the view from the corn mazes we're been to back in the midwest.

play dough time with grammy.

mercy takes this event soooo seriously.

oh, the second child

already, eden has lived such a different life than mercy did at two months old. at this point with mercy, we had taken about a thousand pictures. poor eden. we have maybe only a couple hundred (ahh, the beauty of digital cameras). the other day we noticed that we've not yet had a good mom/dad/eden photo session, so we remedied that during mercy's nap.

team mommy & mercy

mercy is quite the helper around the house. between going to our play dates and music class, visiting andy on his lunch breaks, reading books, practicing our letters, numbers, and colors, taking care of eden, and napping, we've got to fit in cooking and cleaning, of course. mercy takes both pretty seriously and is always asking to be a part of things ("mercy...help...mommy?"). melts my heart.