Pictures to Cob

We started our week out with Nellie's 1 Year photoshoot. Our friend, Greg does the kids' pictures every year and it's great to see how his work has progressed over the years. Every year he worries that they don't have enough work scheduled, but by the time it comes to schedule a photoshoot with him..... Let's just say that he's as busy as we are - maybe even busier, if that's possible.

We met at my alma mater, University of Colorado Denver for pictures. This is also where I met Greg's wife, Meka. Ah.... Organic Chemistry II, the class for those that REALLY like memorization of rules and puzzles (sometimes referred to the weed-out pre-med course, well O-Chem I). Anyways, we went to campus for pictures. I made Nellie a pink, purple, & white glitter tutu to wear and found a matching onesie and we can't forget the headbands! I just hope my serious one (Nellie) and one who can't focus (B-Bee) let Greg get a few good shots.

Gotta love the baby tutu butt! She's getting markedly better at walking everyday. Here We were getting pictures of her walking with Daddy. This must be when we were trying to occupy B-Bee by letting him snap pictures - since you can see me in the background getting her to go that way.

For family pictures we did a 4th of July theme. Thank you Old Navy! This is my favorite tutu so far! We hit up Kohl's for the rest of her outfit (minus headband, courtesy of yours truly) and found a rock guitar red & blue shirt for B-Bee. Daddy-O & I wore Old Navy shirts. At the end of the the photoshoot we went inside to get some pics playing on the blocks inside. We were pleasantly surprised to find these pretty white curved benches, tables and rocking chairs! I'm expecting we'll have some great shots here!

Busy morning....got home changed B-Bee into his swim trunks and we were off to his first swim lesson. We actually got there early, so I had a chance to sit on the edge with him for awhile and acclimatize to the pool by dangling our feet. He did great! Much better than I had anticipated.



Baby butt! (sans tutu)



He spent much of the time getting out of the pool. This is one of the moments he wasn't obviously nervous. They were playing Red Light, Green Light. Him and the little girl don't like to be in the water. In all fairness, it's 3'6" deep and he's only 41" tall.

To finish a great summer day, we had B-Bee's favorite: cheeseburgers (sans french fries) and corn on the cob. Nellie got to try corn for the first time and is definitely a fan.

Garage Sale 2011

Why is it that when you bring stuff out to the garage sale, the toys that they've had no interest in suddenly become the best toys ever? We participated in the community garage sale last weekend, which was EXHAUSTING. Something about being outside all day? Thankfully, Daddy-O a vacation day on Friday to watch the kids. Then my sister came over Saturday to help out. We did fairly well for not having any big ticket items. Everything was priced to sell. We had a lot of clothes and most of them were priced 25 cents to $1. Think we'll probably do a one day sale in September since we have a lot of cold weather clothes. It's hard to buy a big sweatshirt or coat when it's 90+ degrees out.

The dogs chilled / baked outside with us for most of the day. I couldn't believe how well behaved they were, specifically how they stayed in our yard. Eventually they just found a spot to nap, Woody under the table in the garage and Charlie in the shady grass. Look at that big smile! ...as you can also see, he's getting old and gray.

Zanna made a big sign for my Ellie Grace products and we had a table out for it. Didn't sell many, but there were a lot of people interested. Had I had tutus premade - instead of just Nellie's out as samples - I definitely would have sold a few. Next time, right? I just have to find the time to build a tutu inventory. Am working on that. Btw, I've also added clips to my product line. So now there are headbands, clips, leg warmers and tutus.

The kids were fairly happy to hang outside as well. Nellie kept wanting to go crawling around the garage floor and I learned that she has an ability to go from sparkling clean to absolutely filthy in 0.4 seconds. Yeah, that onesie got bleached.

B-Bee had T-ball in the afternoon and again he was tired before he even got there. Daddy-O bought him a soda for lunch to pep him up and he made it through. I know, bad parenting. There must be another T-baller that lives in the neighborhood, because shortly after he got home there was one of his buddies shopping at our sale. We joked that he must have followed B-Bee home. Daddy's been taking him to T-ball every Saturday, it's good daddy time. I guess he's starting to do better and can run the bases like a champ, especially 3rd to home (which was a struggle the first day, this was a struggle the first day because he's so literal and ran to the exit when told to run home). He does like to take a detour path, via the pitcher's mound to first.

Strawberry Picking At the Berry Patch Farm

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Sweet and succulent strawberries. Hands down the best strawberries I've ever tasted - even though they were pretty small. Their small size probably contributed to their intense sweet flavor. Nellie's checking out the picture here as I type, saying "bah-bah, bah-bah" (her word for everything food, bottle or beverage related.

I took the kids to pick strawberries at the Berry Patch Farm. This is about as much picking as B-Bee did. He was more interested in the tractors and pushing Nellie in the stroller. Nellie was content to sit in the stroller as long as I kept handing her berries to eat. Have mentioned that she loves food? If she's not eating it, she's feeding it to the dogs. Needless to say, my 2 little helpers weren't very much help. I may have had more fun enjoying the fruits of labor at home - rather than attempting to pick strawberries in the heat and chasing down my 3 y/o pushing my 1 y/o across the field. It wasn't so bad, but I hope B-Bee is more interested in picking next time we go (in August to pick rasberries).

If this were at the Willy Wonka's Factory, she would have turned into a strawberry. She's so serious, serious about strawberries.

A Not-So-Bad Day At the Z-O-O

Nellie has found a new hobby, tearing down B-Bee's coins & prizes. Sometimes she tries to eat them, sometimes she shares, most of the time she throws them on the floor - which of course upsets B-Bee when he finds them on the floor.

....but they're still buds..... until she spills his milk.



Get ready, Nellie, and put your shoes on. We're going to the Z-O-O! On the way to the zoo, the entire way to the zoo, B-Bee informed me that Z-O-O spells zoo. He's so smart, so I tried to get him to spell boo and moo... He got "moo" down, but it turned funny and went back to "zoo".



B-Bee wanted to see the elephants first. So we headed off to the Pachyderm building to watch the elephants have breakfast. These guys are always eating whenever we come see them. Suppose they need a continuous flow of hay and other elephant food to keep up with their metabolism.

Stinky as it may be, the pachyderm is my favorite because of the rhinos & hippos. This one was having his dental exam. There's something cute about these big, stinky, slightly pink creatures. I wonder if they get daily brushings.

The train was closed for repairs. The carousel just isn't the same. B-Bee freaked out about the animals and wouldn't ride on them. Instead we sat on the bench. Nellie wanted up and rode on an animal though. Both of them were fascinated by the lights, music & mirrors.

We never did find our mommy group. Just as well... we stopped for an early picnic lunch and Nellie decided that she'd had enough of the wagon. B-Bee got tired of listening and it was very hot. We quickly saw the camels, checked out the North Shore River play area - no water running that day - and headed home for naps. As you can see Nellie was a little crabby. She's teething a million teeth (just had 2 come pop through and is working another 6 or so up still). It wasn't our best day at the zoo, but it could have been a whole lot worse. I'm just thankful that they behaved and were pleasant for most of it.

Nellie 1st Birthday Party!

This is going to be mostly a picture post - is there any other kind? - with snippets of the party.

IT CAME!!!! FedEx guy delivered it just in time for the party! "Nellie's birthday present" from Oma & Papa, in lieu of a wooden swingset. Needless to say, it was a HUGE hit - pun intended.

Favorite menu item: RASBERRIES! Cake was a close 2nd. She'll make a beeline to anyone with either.

Ready to get in trouble with her buddy, Lyd. Tutu trouble.

I chopped my hair off the other day. I'm donating 10" in honor of all the wonderful mommies that donated milk for Nellie. As I was nursing her down for a nap this afternoon, I realized - as I admired her for her perfect latch - that I have successfully breastfed her! (Even if we have had to supplement the entire time.) It has only taken me 363 days to get to this point. It has been quite the journey!

Begging from the master chef.... (and Great G'Pa).

The berry tower.

She was so neat about her smash cake. Napless Nellie, Nosy Nellie....and now Neat Nellie.

She was instantly in love with her dollies! ...and even into unwrapping her own presents. I've determined that it IS genetic, cars & boys, dolls & girls. Although, B-Bee has already played with all of Nellie's dolls. He decided that the Bath Doll needed a bath this morning. So he undressed her, "bathed" her and redressed her.

....and at the end of the night, we had one TIRED Nellie (with "aunti" Oz).

Libraries & Fountains

Todays plan started out a little open-ended, with tenative plans to go to the fountains and tenative plans to go to the library.... We ended up getting to do both!

During storytime, B-Bee was really.....overwhelmed? He had the deer in the headlights look, wouldn't participate in the songs & dancing and kept wanting to sit in my lap. He did sit and listen to the stories well though. It was a rather rambuncious group of kids today. When it came to craft time though, he worked hard and intently making Daddy a Father's Day present.

We ran into a friend and her daughter at storytime, so I was able to sneak out to the kids' desk while Nellie slept and B-Bee was listening to a story. I finally registered the kids for the summer reading program. Thanks so much, Jaq! B-Bee is already 9 books into his first set of 12. After playing trains and checking out books, we went to spend 10 minutes on the playground. The fountains were going on and off, so we played some in them. Nellie really liked the doggie fountain that you can see here.

Ran home quick to pick up a towel and extra clothes - Daddy had taken the car with the wagon & summer bag in it. Then we were off again to meet up with some friends at the other library fountains. Have I mentioned that little girls just love Nellie? Think it's a baby thing.

The boys inspected the sidewalk drain. Must have been making sure there were no alligators growing in there.

Have you seen the monkey crawl? She CAN walk, she just doesn't know it yet...and will plop to the ground if noone's hanging onto her.

 

B-Bee & his buds....getting soaked and racing their cars.

And how do you get 8 kids to leave all the fun? A choo-choo train to the ice cream shoppe! There was a red, white & blue pig statue outside the shop that we tried to get the kids to pose with. This is the only shot that I got where you can see all our buds.

We ended our day out to dinner with Oma & Papa (Daddy's parents) and Great G'Pa. They drove from MN to celebrate Nellie's 1st birthday!



Flag Day Fun

Didn't take many pictures today, since Daddy had the camera today. He's going to traffic court tomorrow morning (stupid, petty PMSing ticket) and started his day off taking pictures of the intersection where he was apparantly off-roading to make a right turn. However, looking at the pictures he took, I don't see how he ever fit all 4 wheels of our SUV between the white line and stop sign.

The kids and I had planned on going to the train museum this morning, but I thought the playdate was at 10am or 10:30am. Just as I was going to log on to confirm the time we had to be there, my friend texted me asking if I was still going.... "Yeah." Then I saw that we were supposed to be there at 9am and it was already 9:20am by then.

So we went to the mall instead. I gave B-Bee the choice between the mall with the train & horse rides or the mall with the dinosauers & sandbox. It was a different answer each time I asked. So I chose the dinosauers & sandbox - Old Navy there is right by the food court, dinosauers & sandbox. It just made sense. To boot, they had a train running there as well - as we found out when we were walking in. A Polar Express Train, as B-Bee put it.

Called my friend that works up that way to see if she could meet us for lunch and what great timing! She had taken the day off work to bring her daughter, Bre to an appointment. ...meaning we got to see her AND her 2 y/o sweetie. All the kids were pretty well behaved, right up to the end when B-Bee trainwrecked we started heading out.

After shopping returning stuff, our picnic lunch, and running around on the dinosauers...we went out side for Sand Castles 101. I can't believe it has taken me nearly 4 years to show B-Bee for the first time how to make a sand castle. Not that we have a lot of beaches around here to do it at - the mall has a sand pit / area stocked with trucks and sand toys. First step was to create some mud. Mommy had to go wading in the "pool" fountain that you're not supposed to swim or wade in to throw buckets of water onto the sand. I know, bad Mommy. Nellie was quite concerned with this rebellious behavior. Second step was to sit down and get muddy digging. Next fill bucket, pack down, flip upside down on the ground....and wah-lah! Last step, Bre had down: crash the tower!

We had to take a ride on the train before we left, since I had promised and promised B-Bee trains today. It was actually roomy enough for me to sit comfortably with both kids (and possibly another adult?) in a coach car. Believe me, this isn't always quite a simple task. Getting out a barrel train is down right comical, but this one was no problem. We ventured over the road and past more stores, another playground AND an outdoor rollerskating rink! Nextime we are SO bringing B-Bee's skates! This may just be my very favorite mall. Being that I used to live within 30 minutes of the Mall of America, I've seen some cool mallage.

I must thank my Facebook friends for reminding me that today was Flag Day! Some days I'm lucky to remember what day of the week it is, nonetheless what holiday. To think I just about bought a flag & pole to hang on our front porch the other day - product placement almost worked this impulsive shopper. We do need to get a flag though, not only would it look great on our front porch, but what veteran doesn't fly a flag? Eek, this one. Don't get me wrong, I have several American flags. But they're special flags that we flew over Iraq during our aeromed missions. Anyways, I'm proud of our nation and proud to have served and will be a proud flag-displaying American very soon.

In the spirit, I worked on Nellie's 4th of July tutu tonight. It's almost done; ran out of tulle. Her 1 year old photoshoot will be in a couple weeks and I'm planning to have her wear her her birthday tutu for some shots and then the 4th of July one for the rest - including a 4th of July themed family picture.

Nanas To Silverware

What's for breakfast, Mommy? Or ratherly *more**more**more eat* signs and "Bah-bah, bah-bah". Nellie's has realized that (for awhile now) that her words mean things and get responses. She's now begun to generalize. So "bah-bah" and *more eat* means "hungry", "food", "bottle", "boobies" or sometimes even "phone" or "toy". This is the eating a banana look.

"Shopping" for more breakfast while she models new headbands. Hmmmm... oatmeal? onions? noodles? crackers? What would make a mess? What would work best to tease the dogs?



Near Perfect Day.

Between the 3 mommies at our playdate today, we had a total of 11 kids! What fun! What chaos! ...no, really it wasn't too bad as lond as we weren't in pedestrial transit from one part of the park to another. Here are about half of the kids waiting for the train to go and come back. Kudos to you if you recognize where we are! You've found an awesome place to spend a summer day.

Who's the ring leader of trouble? Pick a side. The Thomas fanatic in the middle goes with the flow. For most of the train ride, they were "choo-choo" - ing.

 We're serious about some watermelon; it's quickly beome a favorite - a messy favorite.

Wading & playing in the creek.

Watching the train go by one last time before we head home for naps. B-Bee & Nellie fell asleep so hard on the way home that they did the car-to-bed transfer. Ahhhh....

During this blissful nap - until B-Bee woke up crying because he wanted Annie's chocolate bunnies - I got some plants put in the garden, the pool set up and filled, and a few flowers (for headbands) pinned together. So after nap, while waiting for Daddy to get home, we played in the pool. It was a little too cold for Nellie and she freaked out whenever I put her in. So she was content to watch from the side, eating chocolate bunnies and feeding the dogs. At one point I put each of the dogs in for a short swim. Neither one would come back over after that. *sigh* Landlubber dogs.

A near perfect day.