Adventures

As tired as I have been for the past few weeks, I sure have enjoyed how much fun my little guys bring to our lives. A few weeks ago, my parents came for a visit and then took Samuel to the ranch in Utah with them (after I kept them busy rearranging furniture, pulling weeds, helping with a garage sale, and entertaining the kids). I'm so proud of Sam and how good he did while he was gone. Here's what he says about his trip: "I droove (past tense of drive) the John Deere tractor (he really did drive it all by himself!). I went to a round up and saw JW (my cousin's son, who is 5). Grandpa gave me rides on the ATV. I rode a horse named Rusty and chased a goose. I gave the red ants bread and watched them carry it." He also came home saying we should name our baby Kelli, after my cousin that he played with. He got to hang out with all my cousins...I was jealous! But, I don't think riding around in a bouncy water truck or standing out on the range all day while pregnant would have been good for me.


And here is a picture of my dad and my uncle (both in their 60's) working together at the ranch. Yes, that's my dad standing on the scoop of a tractor cutting tree branches with a chainsaw. It exemplifies the crazy things brothers come up with together, or just how males think in general. On one of last week's rainiest days, my husband was installing an electrical outlet in the backyard, and this week, he was fixing the weedwhacker with rain and thunder all around him. And his guy friends are always so proud to hear about these stunts.

We had our anniversary this week. My bouquet of flowers even had a butterfly in it, so Jeremy did good.
We went for a walk in the woods with our kids...even though it only lasted 45 minutes at the most, Sam thought it was an adventure and was already planning our next walk--"Can we go on another walk today? Like when my baby is born and I'm 9 or 10?"

Today, we went to some garage sales as a family. The excuse was to look for things for the baby girl. Here's what we bought:
(Not pictured, rack for Jeremy's car, banana bread, 2 lemonades, and a Starbucks coffee that was used to lure Jeremy out of the house at 7 am). As you can see, no little girl stuff. We did find an awesome bike for Sam ($5) and he was riding it without training wheels on his first try--I was so proud!
Here's some other park pictures--this time there weren't any renegade 2 year olds bullying my kids, just some shady characters asking to borrow Jeremy's cell phone.





(Evan's hair is not sticking up because of the static electricity on the slide, it always looks like that. I guess I need to cut it or something.) It was crazy that I thought about grabbing sunscreen and brought hats to the park and we had to leave an hour later as a huge thunderstorm suddenly hit.

And tonight, I had to take a picture of Evan (it was his birthday today, by the way--we celebrated with my parents last week and will celebrate tomorrow with Jeremy's parents) inspecting the sliding drawer of the dishwasher...he is so intrigued with how it works. This time he even brought his toy drill with him. I said to Sam, "I think Evan wants to be Handy Manny when he grows up. Sam replied, "OR Spiderman." I guess he knows his brother better than I do.
Happy Birthday Evan!

Little Boys CAN Play Dress Up

Everyone is always asking me how I feel, and right now I feel like I have a chip stuck in my esophagus...painful heartburn is a new thing I've experienced this pregnancy--feels like a heart attack! But, for the four faithful readers of my blog, I will persevere.

I've made a few comments lately to mothers of girls about how much little girls like dressing up and that I finally will have a use for all of my dress-up stuff that sits in the closet...well, my boys proved me wrong over the last few days as they dressed up in a hand-me-down bathrobe (they were Jedi knights--I don't even know how they learned about them)
and then this morning, I put this little outfit from Ethiopia on Evan. He was excited about the flower on the front and wore it to church (I tried to take a picture of him when he was wearing my headband as sunglasses in addition to the outfit, but all the attention got to his head and he wouldn't cooperate--when he acts like that, he reminds us of an old SNL character called "Mango").

I had a busy few weeks with the end of MOPS and our big Moms Walk fundraiser. I was definitely ready for the MOPS year to be over, even though it was a great year. We'll do a few things this summer--play dates and outings and planning for next year. I will co-host (that makes me sound famous) a "God Investigation Group" for some of the ladies who want to learn more about the spiritual topics that were brought up at MOPS.

This week, my parents came for a visit and brought furniture for the baby's room--now the house feels turned upside down, but it feels good to start getting ready. I think Jeremy and I might have even picked out a name...and I can tell you that it's not JeremyAnn. I had been planning on getting rid of the furniture we didn't need anymore and some baby clothes at the MOPS garage sale on Saturday, but then it was cancelled. I decided to have my own...I didn't really have much stuff to sell, but wanted to try to make a little money. I reminded myself of the little babushkas in Kazakhstan that would emerge in the spring and sit in front of our apartment building, trying to sell their leftover canned vegetables and random screws, lightbulbs, used pantyhose, etc. at a little stand.

I don't think those little old ladies made much money, but they weren't as bad as the old men that would sit on the street with an ancient bathroom scale, waiting for people to pay them 10 cents to find out how much they weighed.

(You can see the crowds just lining up to partake in the public weigh-in.)
I did make $92, so I guess my day was a success (with the help of my parents!). I got rid of a lot of boy baby clothes...which was scary and good at the same time. Scary because of the small chance this baby could be a boy (if it is, he will be named Josiah Victor--I had that name picked out before we knew it was a girl) and good because I need space in my house for the influx of PINK!

While I was getting ready for my garage sale, I took some pictures out of frames I was going to sell. Here is a silly one of Sam that I found that I had forgotten about.
Right after the garage sale, I had to rush off to a wedding, where I ended up seeing my old college roommate, Sarah. Here's a picture of us from college that I found in another one of the old frames:.
It was so much fun catching up with her (even though we live in the same town now!). The wedding turned out to be fun...the groomsmen all wore black baseball hats backwards with their tuxes and even the guy who married them had one. I heard the word "Pookie" at least 3 times during the ceremony, which is a first in terms of wedding experiences. The toasts at the reception were entertaining--the first best man whispering lines to the second best man during the toast because he didn't know what to say, the maid of honor forgetting her speech, and the mother of the bride starting to tell too much information about the bride's lingerie...and they weren't even drinking! As you can see, I haven't been taking many pictures lately, so I don't have one of the wedding or garage sale, but here is one from a wedding we went to 2 weeks ago. When we came through the food line, the bride and groom were wearing aprons and serving all the guests...that was another first for new things I've seen at weddings.
So sweet. Alright, I am almost done rambling, but just wanted to say that I am tentatively excited for the movie, "Where the Wild Things Are" that's coming out this fall. I saw the preview this weekend when we went to see "Earth" and I felt a little emotional as Sam and I looked at each other in excitement to realize that it was Max in his wolf suit. Movies of my favorite books tend to be a disappointment, but I am hopeful for this one. (And see, Max is a boy and he likes to dress up, too!)