July 11, 2014

So here are the "after" pics of Matt's garden project:

                                       

                                      

                                     

My poor little homemade pea trellis.  I clearly didn't string the twine tightly enough because the pea vines are pulling it every which way. Oh well, it was fun and kind of earthy-looking.

We've been doing a lot of projects around the house.  Well.  We've hired a lot of people to do our projects around the house.  We are not DIY people.  We saw the vast slew of For Sale signs growing out of everyone's lawn and thought briefly, "But wait - if THEY can get ($$$$) for THEIR house...WE could get (oh, a ton) for OUR house........." but when we looked online to see what was available in the price range we would be looking at - a modest but not super-duper cheap price range either - we were like, 'ew.'  Okay, so our house is not huge at all, and is not in the swanky neighborhood, and isn't even sort of fancy.  In fact, I admit I get a little self-conscious when I post pics of our house and yard, because I know many of you live in very nice, very big houses that have custom thingies and pretty kitchens and fantastic master bedrooms.  But that's not the kind of house we picked nor the kind of house we chose to afford, and I am reminded daily that this is our daily bread, our home, by Levi:  Mama, don't you just love our cozy, warm little house? And my answer to that is a grateful yes.  So we decided just as quickly to stay in our house, finish those little "some day..." projects and thoroughly enjoy it.  First up: replace that wicked tile floor in the kitchen.  I hated that tile.  It was never sealed by the owner who installed it and the grout collected dirt that settled in like doggone cement, so it looked perpetually dirty.  So we had a faux wood something-or-other material installed that kind of matches the original hardwood through the rest of the house.

The cabinets leave much to be desired, but hey, there are people in many countries who would love to HAVE cabinets and anything in them, so big whoop.  Got a new table too.  Takes up less space, but is bigger somehow.

What excites me immensely is the new carpet upstairs.  Even I can't think of words to describe what our upstairs used to look like.  We had new blinds and custom black-out curtains installed to replace the ultra-glam wool Hope Cross Country blanket that used to grace the window and block out the light.  The carpet was horrifying.  Someday soon (heh) I will repaint the upstairs.  Luke got the boot and is in Levi's room (that's a whole 'nother blog post) so we have our space again.  The outer part will someday just be a little sitting area/prayer closet type of thing.  Right now his pack n play is there for naps and early mornings when the boys wake up too early and he needs a little more sleep.

Not fancy, but warm and cozy, just the way we like it. :)

                                    

                                   

                                 

                                 

Got a new pool for the boys. They love it. :)

                                     

Luke really is having fun.  He just scowls sometimes.

                                 

                                   

                                  

                                 

                                  

He loves to snuggle. How did we luck out with two snuggly boys??

                                 

We went to Sanctuary Woods yesterday.  There are 170 stairs. I carried Luke up nearly all of them.

                                                      

Levi walked up all of them with no complaint and ran nearly the whole trail.

                                                     

So proud to....have been carried up all the steps.  Wait.  What?

                                       

                                       

Friday Farm Day.  We are one of the only families that go out to the farm weekly to pick up our own milk.  Most other herd share owners co-op, and one person does the pickup.  I am usually in the unfortunate position of driving in *just after* one or more of these people, and end up waiting fooooreeeevvveerrrrrr for them to fill their fifty glass jars, while I just want to fill my four and be on with it.  

See?  I'm flanked by two fifty-jar fillers.  Argh.  Thankfully the boys love to play, hold the kittens, and look at the tractors.  And that barn on the left always has the local Christian radio station playing loudly, so it's a peaceful and festive atmosphere most of the time.

                                       

Gentlemen!  Look at the camera!  Say cheese! Guys!  Hey!  Never mind. *click*

                                      

I wish I could better capture how pretty this field was with purple wildflowers and bales of fresh hay.

                                     

July 6, 2014

Dude.  What happened to the last four months.

I'm going to pick up like I've been writing here all along, and sprinkle in the last four months' worth of pictures into each post.  I have zero time to even write this one, but I'm so giddy with excitement that Matt fixed my computer's ability to receive pics from my camera, that I can't not post!!

So happy Independence Day!!  I celebrated by...working!  Ergo, so did Matt.  He just didn't get paid.  But it was still a very fun weekend.  I only worked eight hours on the holiday ("only" - but really, eight hours IS like a half day when you're used to 12+)...AND I was put on call this morning AND was very far down the list of people to call in, so we enjoyed a serendipitous morning together. :)  Slept in, ate breakfast at Denny's, and some yard work. Some very fun yard work.

With my dad's help, Matt built two more raised beds for me this summer.  I bought seedlings from the Farmer's Market because I'm a cheater and won't grow things from seed.  I didn't get quite as exuberant as last year - I put in fewer plants, more bee-attracting flowers, and spaced it all farther apart.  Partly so it wouldn't get quite so Amazonian, and partly just to leave more space for playing and digging. :)

There are kid-sized garden tools scattered through each garden so they'll have a chance to dig.  This year we put in bell peppers, sugar snap peas, zucchini, butternut squash, beans, cukes, two types of tomatoes, and watermelon.

                                      

Lukie J. loves to use that red wagon as a water table!! He kept getting very upset with Molly for using it as her water bowl.

                                   

                                  

So the yard project today: renting a rototiller from Ace and tearing up the grass in the "cross" between the beds and laying down mulch in it.  This is what it looked like before:

 

Let me interrupt to snap a random pic of me and Luke while I made lunch. :)

Levi is THRILLED to do projects. He LOVES to work on his "farm."  I love when he crawls right on up into the garden beds to look at plants and pick snap peas and eat them straight off the vine.  We don't have these gardens to produce huge yields and feed the whole family; they're for fun, teaching, and life lessons.

Anyway, he felt very manly doing all this yard work with Papa. :) 

Luke loves it too.  Yes, by nap time they were covered with dirt from head to toe (and went to bed covered with dirt from head to toe).  Yes, they were barefoot.  And no, they had not taken a bath since Tuesday.  That's right, five days ago. (Matt did bathe them after naps.  Sweet!  Now they're set till Friday! haha) 

                                     

Luke is not nearly as into veggies as Levi has always been.  He took one bite of his snap pea and handed it to me. LOL

The project was completed about the same time I left for work (I was off for eight hours, but did have to work the remaining four - a "princess shift"), so I don't have pictures of the finished product yet, but I love it! Matt rocked it.  Not only is he quite handsome, but he's talented too. ;)

So all in all, it was a good weekend.  Aside from a foaming-at-the-mouth dog (in spite of a decent dose of downers), a horrified toddler, and our neighborhood sounding like a war zone.  I told Matt that next year we will spend the Fourth in a cabin in the woods far from anyone else in a state where fireworks are illegal.  Guess what?  I was serious.  Booked it today.  A beautiful cabin on five acres next to a stream in the Smoky Mountains.  And it was a steal (I don't think many people vacation in Tennessee in the middle of the hot, humid summer).  That, my friends, is what the natives call making lemonade. ;)

March 25, 2014

Have two weeks seriously gone by?

Here's a summary of what happened during that time: boogers, coughing, and more boogers.  About nine nights in a row of little to no sleep thanks to....coughing and boogers.  Oh!!! I did have a fun little girly getaway with one of my besties during one of those weekends.  We stayed in a condo at the Grand Traverse and ate like it was our job and shopped our faces off (her words).  I brought my camera but forgot it everywhere we went.  But during that weekend we both started to come down with colds and, as she put it, we slept like we were in the mountains. If you've ever gone from sea level to 8000ft and tried to get a good night of sleep, you know exactly what that's like.  It was my first night away since before Levi was born, and Matt's first overnight with the boys.  He was a trooper. :)

Anyway, I captured some randoms over the past couple of weeks.

These honker boxes from BB&B were vastly entertaining for a few days.  Levi loved sitting and watching his morning video in them.  Luke doesn't like to sit and watch videos, but he did just so he could sit in the box with Levi.

We sort of did the letter W last week. Ish. I'm not terribly capable of coherent thought or productive activity if I don't sleep well, so it was pretty survival-oriented.  But the boys like to paint, so we learned a little about wallabies and I gave them some wallaby pics to paint.

I have a fantastic recipe for play dough and recently the boys are very into play dough.  It takes less than ten minutes to make a decent-sized batch.  I add glitter to it because we all need a little sparkle right now!!  Levi's favorite game is "play dough construction site."  They play quietly for a mind-clearing amount of time. :)

A must-do: cut shapes out of craft foam and use them as bath toys. Maybe everyone does that and I am slow on the uptake and think that I'm a genius.  I stick the shapes on my forehead and act like I have no idea what's there, and Levi has to clue me into what it is (sneaky shapes lesson), and both boys laugh uproariously (it's a great game to play at the breakfast table too). I have a bag of shapes that I glued googly eyes onto and drew random faces that are not for the tub - but they are fun for hiding around the house for shape hunts, and we can sort them by shape, color, mood (frowny face, smiley face, silly face, etc).  Problem tho: Luke loves to pull off the eyes. I have yet to find one (ahem) in his diaper, but based on the fact that I've found sequins in there, I'm sure it won't be long before there's a little googly staring at me.

Last Friday was the first Friday I did a farm run without it being forty below.  The little space heater by the bulk tank in the silo does very little to keep my keester from freezing off while I fill my milk bottles.  But Friday!! Glorious Friday!!! It was actually warm enough to get the boys out and let them play a little bit while we were there!!

One of the many reasons I love our farm:

The goats were out and about.  The furry ones were too. (I joke that going anywhere with two little boys is like having two little pygmie goats with me.  Very cute and fairly well-behaved but EVERYWHERE.)

Luke staring down the goat.

Trying SO SO hard to get a pic of the two of them looking at me...but...pygmie goats.

Never mind.

That same day we played in the back yard and the snow had finally melted enough to be able to take the cover off the sand box and do a little cleanup.  I was happily working when I suddenly realized: the boys were playing happily together.  Outside.  No one was crying because he can't walk and is stuck on the grass.  Or wants to play with the toy lawn mower but can't walk.  Or wants a bottle but can't reach it. Or is just plain frustrated because he can't climb.  I didn't have a baby strapped to me who needed to take a third nap for the day.  We were all just having fun outside. And it was utterly, unabashedly glorious.

Levi got some tablet time yesterday and wanted Luke to join him to watch a wolf video on ABC Wildlife.

Doing the letter X this week is actually kind of fun!!!  I thought awwww mannnn the letter X is SO LAME - but it's actually not. There are some fun things to do with it!  Josiah was supposed to come today but Aunt Mary is sick and didn't want to drive across town or risk spreading it to us, so this would've been a fun project to do with him too. We missed you, Josiah!!!

We did a quick little lesson about bones and looked at pictures of x-rays (funny enough, yesterday before we even talked about x-rays Levi saw a little cartoon of an x-ray and, "Mama, look! A picture of a lady without her skin!"  That was the perfect way to describe an x-ray!).  Then we cut animals out of play dough and put "bones" on them made out of Q-tips.

Then we drew pictures of our hands (Levi wouldn't let me trace his hand so I just drew a rough one) and used Q-tips as the bones there as well.  Levi's looks more like a devastating picture of multiple severe puncturing fractures, but I didn't say anything.

Lukie J's 18mo checkup was last week - he's 23lbs 6oz and doing great.  I asked about his language but his doc wasn't concerned in the least.  At that point he had the bare minimum of his 5-15 words that kids this age are supposed to say, and even since then he has started to say more words more consistently.  When you have a brother who saddles up to the table and says things like, "Mama, what a delectable lunch!" I guess you don't really need to speak. ;)

March 7, 2014

"T" week last week was super fun. There are so many cool things that start with the letter T.

"U" is for uninspiring.  Haven't done anything with that this week.

It was so much fun during a very cold and blah day last week to do fun things with Matt's tools.  It kept the boys happy and entertained for quite some time.

Foam blocks from the craft section at Meijer and a bag of bright golf tees - that was easy

Levi doesn't normally get into something like sorting, but he really enjoyed sorting the golf tees on his plates that just happened to match perfectly

Who doesn't use screwdrivers to teach counting and size sequencing?

Our art projects for the week: teeth, treasure, trains.

Thankfully, Luke's bout with whatever-the-heck came and went in about five days.  He only needed three neb treatments and slept very well every night.

Bath before nap = bed head.  Amber, if you're reading this you're probably on the verge of staging an intervention.  Their hair is awful right now.

I realized the other day that Luke has been in an unusually sunny mood lately - and then I realized, hey! He's almost done cutting teeth for the time being and he's not sick!  The REAL Luke is really fun and sweet! LOL

Luke is very into doing everything with Levi.  It's so cool now that he's less "baby" and becoming more "kid" and will do anything alongside Levi.  They disappear and quietly play with trucks or pretend they are flying an airplane upstairs by lining up chairs, or gather their books and read next to each other.  We are loving this stage.

Luke turns 18 months next week which is entirely unbelievable.  I was 4 or some odd months pregnant with him when Levi was this age and the thought of being pregnant and chasing a child this age now is inconceivable.  He still doesn't talk much - pointing and jabbering in Chinese seems to suit him well.  He's an excellent communicator, just not with words.  He says maybe 5 or 6 words fairly consistently, and has said many, many words once or twice. Sometimes he has even pulled out a two or three word phrase....but never will it be uttered again. I know this is typical for second born boys but it's frustrating because we KNOW he knows words, he just doesn't see the point in saying them.  Then again...maybe I don't really want to know what he has to say.  I have a feeling he's opinionated.

Levi turned into more of a boy - not even LITTLE boy, a BOY! - this past week or so.  Little things.  He's potty trained but #2 is hit or miss still. :/  He tries to dress himself and the other day he put on his own socks (socks seem to be challenging, so that surprised me).  This is mildly embarrassing, but we never pushed him to drink from a cup - he's always toting his Nalgene sippies.  On Monday he saw a cup he wanted at Meijer and at lunch he just...started drinking from it (we had practiced before, but it wasn't very successful nor was it a huge priority to us).  He helps me with some chores and gives Luke a hand with some things.  He's always been a very verbally expressive kid, but even the things he says are starting to sound more mature.  It's just strange. I remember bringing this little baby home, and now he's a full-blown KID.

Yesterday the boys were bored and tempers were flaring.  I pulled out the bin full of beans and they loved it.  Luke flung beans all over the living room. ALL. OVER.  Awesomesauce.

I made blue sparkly play doh.  Because...I'm a girl and we need SOME sparkly in this house!

And THENNNNNNN...Grampa Mark came and brought a new project bench he made for the school room.  It's eight feet long!!!! The boys felt very important helping put it together. I made lunch and listened to the radio in blissful peace.  I told Dad he can come every day at lunch and do a project in the basement!!

Summer project: putting this room together and making it sa-weet.

Thoroughly unrelated: have you seen on FB those links for making your own salads in a jar?  I love to eat salads but I usually don't have time during lunch to do all the veggie chopping/assembling amidst the sippy-throwing, constant requests, reminding to (clenched teeth) sit-down-on-your-keester, etc, so I usually throw together a sandwich.  Today I assembled a couple jars for the weekend.  I have this link on my Pinterest board to remind me how the layers go.

I also stopped by my buddy Krista's house today on our way home from our farm run to pick up a scoby for brewing my own kombucha.   Very exciting.  I geek food and beneficial bacteria and (as my friend teases me) breastfed chickens and stuff like that so humor my oddities. :)