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.

..................................................................

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.