summer fun with friends!

Sunday (8-28) we went to spend the day with Amy Derrick and Glen at their new house in Hesston. Since it was 101 degrees plus we got out the sprinklers for the boys and they had a blast! We found a shady spot to watch them and it wasn't too bad compared to being in full sun, but still pretty warm. In the above pic Luke is using his "magic hands" to make the water go up! I was surprized that he actually ran through the sprinklers getting his face wet because normally that is not something he enjoys, but he had a great time.

Aaron even got in on the action, he liked to feel the water on his fingers!

Below is the web appropriate version of the boys "watering the tree"! They were too funny. (And yes, I have the orriginal in a safe place in case either Amy or I want to pull it out for future girlfriends! ;-)

After a much longer time in the sprinklers than I was expecting the boys decided they were cold and ready to come in and play a bit.

They each drank about 2 cups full of tea right off the bat (warm because they were cold) and then a cup full of cold water, so we made several trips to the indoor plumbing over the next hour or so!

We had supper together with them, a great crab quiche as the main course and home made chocolate mint ice cream for dessert!!! It was good to catch up a bit after all of our vacations this summer! Maybe soon it will be cool enough to start making zoo trips together again. (-:

playing catch-up!

A few weeks ago I was watching one of my favorite summer time dramas, ABC's Rookie Blue, and the characters were in quarenteen. One of the characters is a single mom and some of the others were helping her make a video for her son "just in case". In it she talked about how she loved the rain because whenever it rained she would get out a cardboard box and watch her son turn it into something magical like a rocket chip or a car or something. That got me thinking, we have TONS of boxes, and Luke has a great immagination. So, I got a box out for him and told him that we could color it and turn it into something, whatever he wanted and he decided on a rocket. (-:


Luke's rocket: 8-14-11 He had me write all our names on it. (-:

My little brother Tim is off his big adventure now. He is going on a vacation with my parents to visit my sister and her husband in Vermont and to NYC and then he will go to Chicago for a week of orrientation before flying to Bolivia for a year of service. At the end of the year he will come back to spend a month serving at our church before going to college, most likely Bethel here in Newton. The night before he left we had supper over at Mom and Dad's to say good-bye.

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Tim wanted to take his french horn with him but there wasn't a suitcase big enough so they had a special box made that would be big enough for his horn but still comply with size regulations for the airlines.

One last thumbs up before we say good-bye. Tim, Mom, and Dad got on the thrain around 3 am on 8-18-11.

Aaron is 5 months now. I was going to hold off on solids until he was 6 months, even though the Dr's say you can start a few things already at 4 months, but he has been watching me eat for a few weeks already and trying to grab my food so I think he is ready to start trying a little bit. I know several moms online who are doing the baby led weaning method, which basically means not mashing up their food, just giving them soft food that they can hold themselves. By not grinding thigns up it is supposed to make them not so picky later on based on texture because they will get the texture of the food right from the start. With Luke I didn't know about this kind of feeding method, but we really didn't grind up fery much of his food anyway because he really wanted to be the one to feed himself, so most of the time I just made sure to make a few things that he could pick up and eat on his own. I think that letting him do it helped him develope his small motor skills and people always commented on how well he could use a fork and spoon when he got to that stage. Anyway, one of the moms online showed a picture of how she makes these "banana handles" so on the 20th Aaron got his first solid food and had fun with a "banana handle"! He LOVED it! I think pardtly because he is teething pretty hard right now and gnawing on it felt really good on his gums, but he actually did get quite a good amount in his tummy too! I had to help him just a bit because I made the handle too short and he kept loosing it, but most of the time he held it himself and went to town!

Aaron rolled from front to back for the first time yesterday and did it 6 or 7 times!!! Here is a video, I just barely caught it, of the last time he did it before he got fussy and decided it was enough. (-: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR2TrB7uGtA

And finally, yesterday was Greg and my 9th wedding anniversary! I can't hardly believe it has been 9 yrs already. We didn't do much, played with the boys and got pizza for supper, but we will go out sometime later on to celebrate by ourselves a bit. Ben and Andrea have volunteered to watch the boys, (THANK YOU!!!) and I think we still have some gift certificates to use. We will have to plan something extra special for next year.

the zoo!

Went to the zoo on Wednesday with Mom, Dad, Tim and Abby! It was actually at Abby's request. She's leaving Friday for a year of service in WV and wanted to go to the zoo with the boys before she left and it just got bigger from there. I am so glad she asked because with the temps in the 100's all summer doing anything outside has not been on my to do list. It ended up being a perfect day though, with temps in the 70's and low 80's and only rain during the bit while we were in the reptile house and jungle!




Luke is trying very hard not to smile while we all say, "Don't smile, Luke! Don't smile!"

Friendly goats, the kept jumping up on me which I didn't appreciate too much but Luke very much wanted to feed the goats and not the sheep.

Luke showing us all the different snakes and reptiles! I wish I had caught him doing his Vana White presentation!

Everyone below is marveling at how different the exhibit above is from when I was a kid and there was just these brown branches hanging from the ceiling with snakes on them. Now it's full of gren and has an iguana and a couple of turtles.

Luke ran through the jungle 3 times while waiting for me to feed and change Aaron.

Snack time at the Tigers! Kind of a tradition now I guess.

I think the pic above is my favorite from the day! Tim is leaving in a week for his own year abroad doing service in Bolivia and I am in denile about the fact that he will be gone so long and is old enough to leave home. Luke is definitely going to miss "Timmy".

Our snack consisted of Luke's leftover PBJ sandwich and a bag of carrots.

Baby's all over the zoo this yr it seemed, but I think the baby chimp stole the show this trip.

After the zoo wewent to Panera!!! I love Panera! Luke knew exactly what he wanted as soon as we walked in the door which cracked me up a bit. Usually when we go I order him a grilled cheese sandwich because we are on the road and that is portable if he doesn't want to eat while we are there, but he usually eats my soup and saves the sandwich for later. As soon as we walked in he announced that he wanted soup!

Annother video link!

I need to play catch up but I don't feel like it tonight so for now I will settle with not getting any further behind. Things are going good right now. I quit my job at Newton at the end of July and have been job hunting since long before that but kicked the hunt up a couple of notches and just yesterday got the news that I am hired at a new job!!! It is the same type of nursing which I love but it is a PRN job so as needed. I will have more control over my own schedule which will be great and although I won't be getting benefits I will be making more money than I was so hopefully everything will work out in the wash. It doesn't start until September so that will give me more time with the boys which I have been loving for the past 2 weeks. Any way, I'm probably going to look for one more PRN job so that I can get hours somewhere else if things get slow on my unit, but for now I am just really relieved to have this job and really excited about what kind of job it is.

The boys are spectacular. Luke has finally settled down from all the craziness this summer of one major event after another and is back to being his old sweet self who constantly amazes me by how well he listens, even when it's hard, and by how his mind works. Aaron is my little Bubba Lou, I'm not sure why except that it has stuck just like Pooba did with Luke when he was little. He is very verbal but doesn't seem to be in any hurry to start rolling over or anything. He is way more focused on putting anything he can reach into his mouth and is constantly gnawing on something and drooling like crazy. I bought him an amber necklace in June when he first started drooling all over the place because it is supposed to help with the pain of teething. I'm not sure if it works or not but there have been two seperat times that I left it off for 2 full days and both times the second day he wa more fussy than usual so I put it back on him. ;-) Every day I see new ways that he is unique and different from his brother.

Here is a link to a video of Aaron laughing hard, excuse my knees in the frame! Or you can just click on the title of this post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez1GjEmxIiU

And for a little comparisson here is Luke laughing at about the same age.