Fall Fun

Easiest way to catch up 2 months of blogging? Throw as much as you can in one post! So here are pictures and short snippets of what's been going on:

(Trying to enjoy the outside as much as possible before the cold whether comes! Bean loves coloring with chalk and trying to catch bubbles outside!)

(Daddy teaching Bean about seeding the yard.  She even got to help sprinkle some of the grass seeds!)

(Bean has really flourished in her play! She now takes multiple figurines and acts out little scenarios.  Most of the time, she is saying stuff that I don't understand. I just happened to catch a little princess sleepover happening before bed.)

(Bean has really started to take on dressing up! She loves to wear different hats and masks while she plays - and daddy's shoes!  She's also become very opinionated about what she wears on a daily basis.  She'd wear the same Ariel & Minnie dresses every day if I'd let her.)

(James became more fun to play with! Now that he sits up and crawls around, they are able to interact more together.  Bean is also a HUGE help now.  I can ask her to get things for him or even for herself.  So nice having a little helper around the house!  One of her favorite activities is taking items to the trash.  Which I realized she was having too much fun and she threw some of her toys away.  Now I monitor the trash a little better.) 

(All dressed up for church!  Bean is still able to wear this outfit that she got for Christmas last year! Thanks again John & Kim!)

(If Bean got her way, we'd go to the park daily.  We don't make it there that often, but when we do, she loves it!  Sometimes we meet up with friends, sometimes it's just us.  Either way, she has fun!)

(She has graduated from going down the slides with me, to going on her own.  I still freak out with her going by herself though.)

(She has dreams of being able to climb everything.  I'm too nervous to let that happen!)

(One of Bean's favorite things to do is "go to church!".  Lucky for her, we go every Wednesday night so Steve/I can work in AWANA.  While we are working with the older kids, Bean gets to hang out in the nursery with her "friends" and "She-She" -- Miss Sherrie! One night at AWANA, it was career night and I threw on an apron. Bean wanted to match and wore an apron to church, too.  She likes to wear it now around the house and has me put one on, too.)

(Playing doctor and making sure James wasn't sick)

(We knew this day would come - James's last day - but didn't know it would be so soon!  Sara's bakery dreams are coming true & the shop is slated to open by December! James was on a wait list for a daycare.  Original plan was for him to go there part time, and me watch him part time.  However, they got a call that there was an opening for a full time spot.  If they turned it down, they weren't sure of the next opening.  So they took it.  We still try to get the kids together to play, but it's not the same without James around weekly!)

(I'm not sure who was responsible for the big mess.  I was just happy they were playing "together".)

(With our cruise in September and Disney in October, there was constantly suitcases and chaos in Momma's room.  Bean loves to play in there while I work -- putting laundry away, cleaning the bathroom, packing, etc.  She found random items from around the room and put them in the suitcase.  Said she was going to Disney World!)

(Then it turned into putting a pillow and blanket in the suitcase so she could go to sleep.  She was actually upset when I told her she had to go to her bed to sleep!)

(Post Disney -- Bean LOVES to ride on the horse at Meijer, now.  She starts asking to "ride horse" as soon as I start to walk towards the registers.)

(Another day on the horse!)

Snapshots of Summer

This summer has flown by.  I'm still scratching my head how it is the end of July already and I'm still a month behind on the blog!  Quickest way to catch up is just to share snapshots from our month:

(This has been the wettest summer I can ever remember.  Our backyard has turned into a swamp multiple times.  There have been roads shut down and several cars stuck in water multiple times -- not ours, of course!)

(So how's our basement held up?! Surprisingly well!  We had one night where our basement flooded in the middle of the night, but receeded by morning.  We only knew it had flood by the water line and items being wet -- all the way into the laundry room this time!  We lost nothing, and are thankful that we now only have issues when the city's system is inundated with water.)

(That "pond" between the trees is our neighbors yard.  We are high enough that we only had issues in our backyard. This has been the first straight week of no rain and their yard is still a little on the squishy side!)

(The rain finally stopped and we were able to join Sara & James at the pool!)

( Bean was hesitant to get in at first.  I finally just had to force her to go in.  I put her on my lap and did a bouncy game until she was fully in the water.  She then realized she could just walk around on her own and had fun the rest of the afternoon.  She slipped and went under a couple times, but I was right there to pull her up whenever that happened.)

(Just checking out a magazine while eating a banana.)

(Mmmmm, more icing??  More coookie??)

(Selfie with Momma!)

(Our neighbor's granddaughters come over to play with Bean (and now James) and oftentimes bring their old toys over for Bean.  Her new favorite hand-me-down is a Dora doll.)

(Teaching James how to properly play the Kazoo.)

(For my birthday/father's day, we did a join gift and got an ice cream maker attachment for my stand mixer!  I've only made 1 batch of ice cream -- strawberry.  The ice cream was delicious, but I learned that next time, I'd blend the strawberries into more of a puree than just being chunks.  It made the texture weird and was hard to scoop.  I just got ingredients to make a snickerdoodle concoction from an ice cream book from Sara.)

(Steve got some virtual reality Conan phone viewer online for free.  He got to tour Versailles from the comforts from our own home.  I was skeptical about it until I used it.  It's actually very cool technology.  You can "look" all around the room and see all around.  It messes with my eyes, but is still neat!)

(Bean is now discovering the importance of sunglasses... Or maybe she just likes the fashion??)

(Exploring outside)

(Confession: We go to BWW's A LOT. I'm ashamed to admit the amount.  In reality, it's not that much, but for us who never eat out, it's a lot. Anyway, we love that Bean can be completely crazy and it doesn't interrupt anyone's dinner because it's already noisy and full of tv distractions.  We've recently made the decision to take Bean to Disney this fall.  Only issue is that she is afraid to ride things like animals on a carousel or the little mechanical horse at the store.  She kept asking to ride this machine in the corner, so her and Steve hopped on it.  We'll call that a small win!)

(A couple of weeks ago, I noticed some bumps on Bean's legs.  I thought maybe they were mosquito bites, but there were a lot of bumps all over - even in diaper area -- and some where small like a pimple while others were big like a hive.  Then I realized she had a fever 101.9.  I called the doctor and there happened to be a cancellation within the hour.  So I took her.  She wasn't diagnosed with anything official -- maybe a UTI that is revealed as a rash or maybe some reaction to something?  She was put on a heavy duty antibiotic.  The bumps went away in a few days, but the fever stuck around for almost a week.  She's done with the antibiotics now, bumps are gone, and fever is gone.  She's been really sleepy and having some tummy issues now, but I'm thinking it is just from the medicine wearing out of her system.  Sheesh kids!)

April Showers bring April? Flowers?

Ha, I crack myself up sometimes.  The weather was gorgeous this past weekend, so we randomly decided to work on our Flower boxes! Since we've moved in a few years ago, we noticed that the boxes were starting to fall apart a little.  So Steve took the front box down and used screws to secure it back together.  Some of the wood is rotting and will eventually need totally redone; but for now, some simple fixes will get them through a couple more years.

Once he got it put back together, I did a quick sanding and then gave it a fresh coat of paint! We decided we wanted to repaint the numbers and brackets as well, but didn't have the paint.  So I just painted it and moved on to the other box.

The box on the side of the house is a different story.  The bottom board was pretty rotted and slanting.  We couldn't get the box off the house, but the bottom board easily popped out.  So we decided it was worth buying a new board for the bottom of the box.  The insides are rotting pretty good, but again, it'll last a couple more years.  So Steve screwed together the sides that needed it and I painted it!  Once Bean woke up, we headed to Menard's to get the paint we wanted for the numbers/bracket, new board, new plastic planters, and flowers.

We had to put the project on pause until Sunday afternoon.  Once we got home from church, Bean went down for a nap and we headed back outside.  I worked on painting the numbers and the brackets while Steve cut the board for the bottom.  I should have taken a photo, but forgot.  I taped a bunch of paper all around the brackets on the brick so that I didn't get paint all over the house.  It was windy and the wind kept moving the paper which really annoyed me.  Steve had to come help hold the paper while I painted.  I used a really cool textured black spray paint with copper flecks in it.  It turned out great!

Once the painting portion was done, I moved on to planting the flowers in the plastic planters that would go in the boxes! We picked petunias (loved them so much from last year!) and dianthus.  I had just finished the planting when Bean woke up.  While I went and got her, Steve drilled the new holes for the bottom board and put it into place.  While she played in the driveway with chalk, I quickly painted the bottom board (not for looks, just to help it last longer).  Steve put the numbers back on the front box, put it in place, and put the flowers in it.  Now to wait for them to grow bigger!

Front Before:

Front After: 

(I realize there's not much of a change.  Just a lot brighter and fresh looking!)

Side Before:

Side After: 

(This one to me looks tons different!)

(Close up of the flowers -- Purple Petunias on left and right, White Dianthus in the middle!)

Outside Freedom

The weather has finally been showing some signs of winter coming to an end, and we couldn't be more thrilled!  I'm so looking forward to having daily outside activities planned!  We've only been outside a few times for some fun, and Bean has already caught on.  About mid-day, she will go on the hunt for her "tschoos" (shoes) so that she can go "bye-bye".  She'll stand at the door and wait until I give in.  She even has gone to find her jacket and carried it around for awhile before giving it to me and signing "please".  

(As much as I want to say Bean is advanced and already making smiley faces, she can only claim the scribbles with the chalk.)

(She loves playing with the chalking, roaming all around the driveway and making little marks all over.)

(I have to now hide the chalk box and just give her a few pieces.  She likes to hoard them and walk around with them all.)

(We also play with bubbles outside!)

(Notice the white on her lips -- she snuck a few licks of the chalk.  Haha.  She doesn't do that anymore, she finally realized it was never going to taste good!)