Her first little pig tails are just too cute. Her Daddy even said so!
Only took me 19 tries to get a semi-decent one of both of them together!
Here's one of the shaggy boy who I should have thought to get a haircut, from Mamaw, for while we were in Tyler.
As spring approaches, it’s time to start thinking about a swing set for the kids, using the money given to them by relatives over Christmas and such. After looking at Wal-Mart’s cheapest wooden swing set, it became apparent that these things are by no means cheap, nor small. Most have a swing arm that, in combination with a slide tower, would pretty much consume our entire back yard. So… being the designer I like to think I am, I came up with a design for a custom built swing set, using parts and pieces from a swing set found on craigslist for free. The family that gave us this one has no idea how richly they’ve blessed us because, though the slide and glider are faded, they’re in good condition and buying them new would be about $350. The swings and other pieces I’d hoped to salvage are in pretty bad shape, but those parts are relatively inexpensive to buy at Lowe’s… they could even be put on the kid’s birthday wish lists for that matter…. while I’m thinking of it, here are those items for anyone who cares, in the order of most wanted:
Swing-N-Slide Multi-Colored Tarp $22
Swing-N-Slide Extra Duty Swing $35
Swing-N-Slide Ex.Duty Swing Hangers $35
Swing-N-Slide Steering Wheel $15
Swing-N-Slide Safety Handles $10
(10-15) 50lb. Bags of Sakrete Play Sand $5ea
Trapeeze (replace baby swing in future) $35
Anyway, as I was saying… we got the slide and the glider and a truckload of mostly un-usable wood this weeked, and not it’s sitting in a big heap in our back yard. Jonah asks us multiple time a day “we can build swing set now?” Poor guy… unfortunately, this is definitely a task slated for spring break, which is still another 3-4 weeks away. I think I do have the design figured out for the most part though… check this out… Google Sketch Up is an awesome tool for drawing out things in 3D, so this was pretty simple for me to put together:
View from the kitchen window
View towards Penny's yard
View towards the house
View from Penny's yard
Jonah is now holding conversations with us! Where did my little baby boy go? Almost 2 weeks ago now, this was the 1st conversation of any real length that he had. I was sleeping in with Carly a little bit, and he and Jason were up getting breakfast in the kitchen before church.
Daddy: Hey Jonah, what do you want for breakfast?
Jonah: (spying the cake carrier full of muffins for our Sunday school class) Oooh! Muffins! Oh, I LOVE muffins Daddy. I can have a muffin, please?
Daddy: No, those are for us to take to church, for our friends.
Jonah: Oh I like go to church too!
Daddy: I know you do. We’re all going to go to church in a little while.
Jonah: (pauses for a second to think) But Mommy’s still sleeping!
I think I mentioned in my last post Jonah coming home from church one day, trying to sing us one of the songs he had learned. About all he could get out was “Stand Rock” and “Faaaaall” I finally got that video uploaded to You Tube, so here ya go!
I’ll try to get a video of him “singing” his 5 Little Pumpkins song sometime soon too. He enjoys the part at the end that says *clap* OUT went the light! hehe He’ll lay in be just repeating that part over and over.
Speaking of bed… we are giving up formal nap time. After several days of struggling with him for 2 hours to get him to go to sleep for nap time, with lots of tears (from both of us!) I decided it’d do us both good to just have a daily “quiet time”. I read him a story, give him a book and a toy and tell him he doesn’t have to go to sleep, but he has to stay in his bed and stay quiet, or I’ll come close his bedroom door (he REALLY wants his door to stay open these days, and last night was the first time I didn’t close it after he fell asleep). Wouldn’t you know it though? The last 3 days that I’ve taken that approach, he’s been fast asleep in 20 minutes or less! Whatever works I guess!
School and work junk has been keeping Jason super busy, but thanks to an extension his professor gave the class on a project they were doing, he was able to take his day off on Friday and spend it with us as a family. We went to Rocket Park, at inside Mc Donald’s for Jonah to play some more, and just generally had a great day! Here’s a little video of Rocket Park. It was a pretty awesome public park!
Carly Sitting in a Buggy for the 1st Time 10/20/09
Here is a link to the album with our Pumpkin Patch pictures from today, and a few other random fall pics. Enjoy!
Both kids in the double stroller for the first time
I took both kiddos out in the double stroller today, just down the street a few blocks, to the little swing playground.That’s literally all there is there… some swings. Jonah doesn’t care though. He likes it just the same, and it’s only about a 3 minute walk from our house.
When we got there I tried fooling around with my camera to learn how to get the right settings for outdoor shots, but think I was somewhat unsuccessful because the sky is way too bright in all of these shots. Jonah was fairly patient with me though. He made it into a game of peek a boo!
Boy Child Shoveling to His Heart's Content
After I let him down, I asked him if he wanted to swing, and he said no. Uh Oh I thought. It was because he wanted to shovel though. So he ran around scooping up pebbles with his shovel for a while, and then eventually he did ask to swing.
Girl Child Enjoying the Warm Breeze
Carly and I just chilled in the shade while Jonah played. I could see us doing this fairly often this summer.
I had intended to take pictures of Jonah in the blue bonnets last year, and make it a yearly tradition, but I never could find a good place that was safe to pull over and put him in them. Since we moved here though, I have been passing a local biking trail, all the time, that has a sign that says “Blue Bonnet Trail” and until they actually came up this year, I hadn’t even thought about it… but wow! What a great place for us to take our annual pictures now! No busy highway to have to pull over on, plenty of flowers in the field… the only down side is that it’s a giant power line green belt park, so there those in the background on both ends and houses/apartments in the background on either side… so we ‘ll just have to take close ups I guess!
Here are the pictures from our trip to the farm from this weekend. We saw horses and cows (which I don’t have pics of unfortunately) and chickens. We played on the trampoline, in the flower bed, and went fishing. We dyed eggs and had all sorts of fun at Granny and Papa’s House. I’ll update this album tomorrow (Sunday) hopefully, with pictures from the rest of our Easter festivities. See More Pictures Here!
In the future, I think we’ll give it to him on Easter Saturday morning. I’d rather make a distinct difference in what each of the different parts of Easter are about… like that the typical fun Easter Saturday traditions (dying eggs, eating candy, egg hunts, bunnies, chicks, and what not) are about celebrating the beginning of spring and not try to intertwine it with the religious aspects of Easter Sunday. I want Easter Sunday have its own traditions that are reverent and give thanks to our Savior and what He’s done for us… like dressing in our Sunday best, sharing meals with friends or family, and like how our church does this flower cross thing… where people bring fresh cut flowers to put in the wire mesh cross in the atrium all morning and by the end of the last service, the cross is fully covered in flowers. Jonah even put one in it this year! I feel like trying to make some sort of connection between rabbit handing out colored chicken eggs filled with candy and the crucifixion on the cross is just ridiculous and that the two should be separate from each other. So they happen on the same weekend, yes, but not the same day. I wish there was a good way to separate Christmas like that too. I think the fun family/cultural traditions are good to have, but I think kids need to learn what is “just a fun tradition” and what is “biblically relevant” for the different holidays. Anyway… that just became a really long rambling rant I guess. Congrats if you read this far and aren’t plucking your eyeballs out! 
hehe
I have no clue one earth what triggered it, but just in the last two nights, Jonah has started having a real fear of bugs… namely the moths and such that gather around our front porch light at night. He will try to jump out of Jason’s arms, kicking and climbing up him, just to get away from them, and then he winces and ducks away from them as we go in or out of the door. He seems genuinely scared of them for some reason now, and just as genuinely relieved when we get away from them… he tells them “bye bye bug” in a very “good-riddance” kind of tone. Heh, I feel bad for him, but at the same time it’s really cute and funny to watch. We’re trying to show him that they won’t hurt him, but he wants nothing to do with them!
In other “buggy” news, I have recently started trying out some of the ideas on the FLYlady.com website, about how to get your household in order and stay on top of chores because I’m just not very self motivated. They are real touchy feely about some things, and a lot of it seems really corny to me. There are, however, some really good tips that have helped me, in the past week and a half of trying their ideas out, become more motivated and leave me feeling more accomplished at the end of the day. I’m breaking their basic “baby steps” idea into my own categories and am going to try to implement them 1-2 ideas/week to try to ease myself into this new routine and create new habits for myself. So far so good. Here are some of the tips that I am, and will be, doing for myself. I’m currently on week 2.
Week 1: Shine Your Sink & Get Dressed to Shoes Daily
Week 2: Make the Bed & Tidy The Hot Spots Daily
Week 3: Spend 15 Minutes on the Zone of the Day (Weekly Chores)
Week 4: Swish & Swipe the Bathrooms & Spend 15 Minutes on the Zone of the Week (Monthly Chores)
Some of them may seem silly, like “shine your sink” but honestly, it DOES make me feel better to walk into our kitchen and see our stainless steel sink sparkling, free of water spots and dirty grimy dishes. It just takes one really good cleaning, and then the continued diligence to wipe it dry with a hand towel every time you use it so that it stays sparkly. Another that I didn’t have much faith in at first was getting dressed and putting shoes on first thing every morning… but it really makes me feel like less of a lazy slob and I am more motivated to get my morning chores done before I sit down to the computer. I’m also more likely to make it to things like a 10:15 toddler story time at the library with Jonah cause I don’t wait until the last minute to scramble and get ready and then miss it. Making the bed is one that I started in week 1, even though I didn’t plan to until week 2, just because I LOVE the feeling of getting into a made bed. The sheets and blankets being neatly aligned and smoothed out is just such a nice feeling to slip into at night after a long day… kinda like a nice hotel. I am just now starting to work on the “hot spots” (the catch-all places, the dumping ground in your house, that seems to get cluttered daily) which, for us, is our wet bar area. I’ve got plans for next week to start doing basic cleaning in a zone (a room or set of rooms) each weekday and then expanding that idea the next week to do that AND spend a little time each day on one particular zone for the week so that I can tackle some more thourough cleaning and organizing in each zone every month. I’m hoping this will get my “nesting” instincts focused on more useful things and help get our house in order before we bring our little girl home. 
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