How to find your son

Peter has become quite the crawler. He is now able to get in and out of things at a remarkable speed. You put him down in the living room and next thing you know he's in the shoe closest, or up against the door looking outside (both favorite activities). And when outside, he moves twice as fast. I think he must know it's a treat to be able to crawl around outside and get his outfit really dirty (or he just likes all the new "organic" things that he can put in his mouth).

Well, today at Trader Joes the check-out lady gave each kid a balloon, which I promptly tied around their wrists. So after I got home and unloaded all the groceries I thought, Where's Peter? Can you tell where he is in the picture below?

Wa-la! The balloon gave him away.

So now if I could only get a rattle or some other noise making device in the balloon then I could look and listen to figure out what my son has gotten into.

Gardening

It's that time of year again. A couple weeks ago I built my garden boxes. And then Hannah and I bought and unloaded some dirt (Hannah was using the trowel and I was using the big shovel). And now I'm starting to plant. I don't think anything could come close to the fruitfulness of my previous garden, but I'll give it a shot.

This is my first bed. Two weeks ago it was really gorgeous out so I kind of jumped the gun and planted some seeds. So in the three wet squares I have carrots, lettuce, and radishes. Then you will also see that the two middle-ish squares have broccoli starts, and then there are also some lettuce starts. When it gets warmer, I will add some snap peas, more carrot and radish seeds, and hopefully some spices.


This Square just has the broccoli so far. I plan to put 2 tomato plants in the back, and I haven't decided what to do with the other squares yet.


I wasn't planning to do anything with this front flower bed, but last Sunday it was really nice outside and it just felt like I should be outside gardening, so this is what I did. I wish I had taken a picture of it before I started because it was pretty ugly and overgrown. I'm not sure what the greenish plant in the front is, but I hope it'll bloom and look nice. Only time will tell.


And here are our watering cans. I saw the elephant at the store and just couldn't resist. I'm really trying to encourage Hannah to help. I know at this age her help is more like "help," but when she wants to help, I really want to encourage that. We'll see how it goes. It's always easier said than done.

Clifford

Every night Hannah wants us to "pay in mys oom" (play in my room). So the other night Caleb did. They played legos together and they built Clifford, the big red dog.






Pretty cool dog, huh? So Caleb asked her what they should name the dog and she said Clifford. We've only watched that show a handful of times so it's interesting that she remembered that name.

Other nights they will play with lincoln logs. Here are some of the houses they have built.






One time Caleb built a lego house with Hannah one night, and then the next night added a room. And the next night added a garage. And then the next night added a second story. That was pretty cool. It's kinda fun to buy toys for Hannah that are fun for us to play with too (like the lincoln logs, legos, and train tracks). That way playing with your kiddos is fun on more than one level.

Our Maiden Voyage

Yesterday our bicycle trailer arrived and today we took it out on its maiden trip. Here are some pictures.






The kiddos seem to like it, although they did not like their bike helmets. Actually Hannah was okay with hers, but Peter was not a big fan. However, once he got some rice crackers he was OK...not great, just OK. So now I can officially start training for the biking portion of the triathlon. This is good because you spend about half of the race biking. Lucky for me, I have my own little trainer and she is very vocal. Often times when I'm running, Hannah will say motivating things like, "faster, mommy, faster!" Or when I'm walking she'll say, "run, mommy, run" or "mommy tired?" (in a concerned voice). And today I accidentally shifted the wrong way on my bike so I ended up walking up part of a hill and Hannah reminded me that I was suppose to be riding the bike, not walking. That's how bicycling works.

So this will work great for now. I guess technically I could put the iBert on my bike and haul 3 kids arounds...but that's borderline crazy (which I guess doesn't totally make it off limits). Hopefully by that time Hannah will be riding her own bike. Or I could get one of those adult/kid tandem bikes. Hmm...

Precious Moments

Here are some pictures from this morning. Imagine, all of this has happened before 10am. It makes me wonder what the rest of the day will hold.

Here's Hannah riding her horse around the house.

No explanation needed for this one. =)

These are some cute pictures from last night.

Peter loves to be on his knees. He also loves the camera. Everytime I pull it out he looks at it and smiles.

Here's Hannah riding another horse.

And what evening would be complete without some blanket wrestling. The amazing part is that Peter didn't start to cry until about after 1 or 2 minutes of this event. He endures alot as a little brother...but he also gets great pleasure out of watching his silly sister. :-D

Happy Birthday Caleb

Saturday was Caleb's birthday, and we spent the whole day celebrating. It started with super yummy waffles, berries, and even a home made espresso. Then we took the kiddos on a family run to the park where we watched the ducks and watched Hannah play on the toys. Then while the kids where napping we went to the shooting range (my first time ever). We came back and Josh, Celeste and Kiefer came over for some birthday cake. (I made Lauren's super yummy orange cake and it turned out great...see below.) And then in the evening we went out to a nice dinner. As a whole, I would say the birthday was a grand success (as Caleb is now 28 and we had a really fun day).

Problem?...Solved

So earlier this month I was having difficulty with Hannah getting up by herself and random hours in the night. This was solved by the simple threat of punishment. Thankfully no discipline was actually required.

The new problem was that she wanted to get up at 6am. This would have been fine if she would play quietly in her room for a couple of hours (wouldn't that be nice). But instead the first thing she does is run to our room and to my side of the bed and exclaim, "Foooood, mommy, foooood." Obviously not cool at 6am or 7:15 in the morning. This was temporarily solved by me telling her that, "it's still dark out. You can't get up until it's light out." So her comments in the morning quickly changed to, "Mommy it's light out. Fooood, mommy, fooood." Well, since the nights are getting shorter I knew I would have to think up a better solution, fast! So I now have a special night light in her room hooked up to a timer that goes off at 7:45. And when she sees the light go on, she can get up. The plan is to make the light go off 5 minutes later until it's at 8. I figure that is an OK time for me to get up. I thought about turning on music, but then if she did by chance sleep in, I would hate for the music to wake her up.

Anyhow, the first night I tried this I got Hannah all excited about the light. Cool, I thought, this will work! Well, the next morning at about 7:15 I hear Hannah crying. My thoughts went to the worst possible scenario, "she peed out her diaper. I guess I had better go in there." So I go in there and ask her why she's crying. Get this - she was upset because she wanted to get up but she couldn't because the light hadn't gone off. It cracks me up! It always amazes me when she reminds me with such incidences that I have that much control over her life.

Now she runs into my room in the morning and says, "Mommy light on. Fooood mommy, fooood." And then later in the day she'll tell and reenact the story of seeing the light go on and then running to mommy and daddy's room. It's pretty cute. You will have to ask her about it next time you see her.