playing in the rain!

The weather here has been pretty crazy--lots of rain, HOT temperatures, thunderstorms, and tornado warnings! Thank goodness we have central air conditioning! (which we thought was broken the other day!! but luckily the breaker had just tripped when the power went out!--and thank goodness for friends who know the things to check before we paid the repair people $79 to come see what's wrong!)

Anyway, with all of the crazy weather, we've been doing crazy things! One really fun thing we did the other day was play in the rain!! It was a really, really warm evening rain, the temperature had to have been in the upper 80s to 90s and it was just HOT. I mentioned to Mark that when I was a little girl, my sister and I LOVED to play in the rain. My mom would let us run around outside with all of her tupperware containers and we would try to catch the rain...we'd put them on the rain spouts all around the house and run around and around the house trying to fill up the bigger containers. Let me tell you, we had a blast doing it. If I remember right, it was one of my sister and my favorite activities as a kid, right mom?

So after telling Mark this, he decided that he needed to run out in the rain with Isaiah. And boy did they have fun!!

Then he asked me to get them a few bowls. After a few seconds, he said, "what was the point of this again?" ha ha...I guess filling up bowls with rain water isn't quite as exciting when you are older than 8 years old.

I decided that I needed to go play too.

Levi happily watched all of the fun from the front step...
Until daddy came and got him and he got wet too! It was tons of fun...then the tornado sirens went off and we had to go inside to the basement - bummer.

The pictures are a little cloudy because it was so hot that my camera lens was fogging up!

Happy Birthday Dakota!

Our nephew, Dakota, turns four this month! It's hard to believe he's that old already! It seems like just yesterday he was born! He had his birthday party last Sunday to celebrate his special day! The party was at a big picnic shelter at a park south of town. We all had a great time!

It was a big party--lots of people wanted to help celebrate--here's a picture of all the kids!

Grandma Cindy was in charge of the games... First they played "duck, duck, gray duck" (same thing as duck, duck, goose). Isaiah didn't quite get it :) so daddy came in to help! Red Light

Green Light
The Birthday Boy.
Our sweet little Niece Khia - Dakota's little sister.

Isaiah and Dakota are good friends...they love it when they get to play together! Here they are looking for polar bears... after this Isaiah came running into the shelter area saying, "Everybody hide there are polar bears coming!!!"Happy Birthday Dakota!

Isaiah says...

Isaiah is a funny little boy...He is so smart ... and understands so much... I thought I'd share a few of the funny things he has been saying lately.

1-- A few weeks ago Mark picked Isaiah and Levi up from Laura's and had them in the car on the way home. Isaiah said, "Let's go geocaching." Daddy said, "we can't buddy, we have to go home and eat supper. And the GPS is in mommy's car." Isaiah says, "I'm going to count to three daddy." (Like he's getting in trouble---we use the one, two, three method on Isaiah and it usually works pretty good).

2-- For some reason I typically let Isaiah pick out what jammy's he wants to wear...He usually has a hard time deciding and almost ALWAYS picks the spiderman ones (we now have 3 pair because of this--good thing he's popular and I found them for 50 cents at a garage sale!)...I'm not really sure why he thinks Spiderman is so great--especially because I'm not sure he even understands who/what Spiderman is...One night he picked a spiderman T-shirt that isn't really jammys but we use it for bed...and so there are no pants that go with it...so I picked a pair with dinosaurs on them and brought them out for him to put on...he looks at the jammy bottoms and then looks at me and says, "THAT DOESN'T MATCH!!!" He has been so into matching and finding and pointing out things that match. If he sees two red cars he will say, "those match!" or if he finds two shirts that both have a truck on them he'll say that they match.

3--The first day of our kitchen project I had to work all day so the boys were at Laura's house. When Mark brought them home, the kitchen sink and all of the kitchen counter had been ripped out. Isaiah saw it and in a very concerned voice says, "Who did this?" he was quite upset about it. After some explaining and showing him the new sink, dishwasher, etc, he's more okay with it. He's also very interested in the "worker" who's fixing our kitchen and LOVES to watch him (I've been home Tuesday and Wednesday) he keeps peeking in to see how he's doing. Thankfully the contractor that we hired is very nice and likes it when Isaiah checks in on him!

4--Isaiah is really starting to be more affectionate and express himself...The other day we were at the park and my mom met us there. He saw her and went running and yells, "I MISSED YOU!" For a long time he's said "I love you" back if you said it to him, but now he is often the one to say it first.

5--Isaiah has been crawling out of his crib (yes--crib still!:) and coming into our room in the morning for the past few weeks...one of these days we'll put the toddler rails on!...a few mornings ago he crawled in with us (and Levi) and snuggled for awhile. Mark asked Isaiah if he dreamed about anything and Isaiah says,"yeah, birds." "Birds? What kind of birds?" Daddy asks. "Bluebirds." he said. "Oh...did you dream about anything else?" "Yeah...bees" ha ha ***since this day, we've asked him several more times what he dreamed about and he has ALWAYS responded with birds, and if we ask what color they are always blue.***

6--This past weekend we went out geocaching and ended up going to one that was really tough. We'd been looking for a little while (maybe 10 minutes) and couldn't find it. Finally Isaiah shouts out, "Come out, come out, wherever you are treasure!!" Too cute!

7--After the Buck's game I forgot to take out the baseballs that the boys received from my friend's mom Jan from the diaper bag (Thanks again Jan!) Isaiah found them in the bag one day at Laura's house. He showed her the balls and said, "a deer did this" as he pointed to the autograph where the Buck's mascot had signed. It took Laura a minute to realize what he was talking about... ha ha.

He's such a fun little boy, I could list stories all day long of how cute and sweet he is...

neighborhood picnic

When we moved into our new neighborhood, we knew we liked it because of the beautiful nature around our house, the bike trails are just a few minutes away, there are two very nice parks right around the corner, and it is a great location in town...

and then a few weeks ago we got an invitation to a neighborhood picnic--and I liked our neighborhood even more! They amazing thing is, this neighborhood has been having an annual summer picnic since 1916!!!

The picnic was this past Sunday at one of the parks right down the street. We had a fun time and met lots of our neighbors!

The party started with the adults talking and the kids playing...

Levi showing off that he can walk up and down the tables...

funny thing, in the picture below is the husband and wife that owned our house before us--they just happened to be at the park while the picnic was going on!
Next it was time to EAT! Everyone was to bring any dish they wanted to share...there were lots of good things--Yummy!

After everyone was stuffed full, there were games for the kids.

A race!

Isaiah was doing pretty good until they got to the other side and were supposed to run back...he just kept running, after he heard us yelling for him to come back, he turned around and finished the race (in last place!!:)

Silly boy.

What a fun Sunday afternoon!

our new kitchen!

When we moved into our new house, there was just one thing I wished I could change about it--the kitchen...and more specifically the fact that it didn't have a dishwasher (to wash/disinfect all the bottles and sippy cups that come along with having 4 little ones around here!). I told Mark from the beginning that I loved the house but if we bought it, I wanted a dishwasher ASAP. So a month or so ago, we agreed to make a few minor adjustments to the kitchen to make room for the dishwasher and utilize the space a bit better. The kitchen is quite small so it is important to make the most of all of it's space.

My mom's friend's husband does home repair/improvements on his own so we asked him to come over and look at it with us. He agreed to make the changes we wanted for a really reasonable price...so we asked him to start as soon as he could...which was this past Monday.

He was able to tear out the old counter, sink and peninsula cupboard thing and replace it with a couple new cupboards, new counter, sink, faucet and install a few new tiles all in one week!

Before:

Day 1: Getting out the old...counter, sink, faucet, and cupboard.
Day 2: adding new boards for the new counter to sit on & installing new cupboards. I was home with all four kids that day--Isaiah and Jayda had a good time checking out what the "worker" had done while he was gone on his lunch break.
Day 3: fixing the tile floor.
No pictures...I forgot that day...oops!

Day 4: Installing the new counter and sink.
Day 5: the day of plumbing...installing the dishwasher, garbage disposal and making the sink work (without leaking--Day 4 he had the sink plugged in but it leaked).
The finished room!
(well, almost, he has to come back tomorrow to do a few finishing things but otherwise it's all done! Except the part of a wall that we need to paint--see the 2nd picture)
The boys had fun checking out the new cupboards...
We love it!! What a huge change it made for us!

Levi is standing and more!

Levi keeps growing and doing more things! It seems like each day he is closer to walking and talking!!

He can now successfully stand for several seconds! He will pull himself up to standing on something or someone and then will let go! He thinks it's pretty funny sometimes! :)

He is also walking along furniture...I don't have a good clip of it yet -- he's pretty new at it...but here's a really short one with a few steps.

He is also starting to bounce up from sitting down to his knees...It's pretty funny what he does, I think he's trying to stand up but only making it to his knees... Here are two pictures so try to show what he does.

Sitting Down.
On his knees.
Levi also has been very interested in eating bigger things by himself. Mark gave him bites of a cereal bar the other day and last night I gave him a Gerber Biter Biscuit.
My friend Shannon gave me a couple boxes of toddler food that her little one outgrew before she ate them...I had never tried these with Isaiah, but Levi LOVED it...it was extremely messy and it pretty much smelled like a graham cracker, but it was thick and a little hard. Levi is working on his two top front teeth and I think it felt good for him to chew on this biscuit.
Finally, at Levi's 9 month appointment we learned that he was over 22 pounds (22lbs 2 ounces). Our baby carrier car seat was for babies upto 22 pounds, so we had to make the switch. About a week ago we put Levi in a big car seat...
He seems to like it, he can actually see out the window and look at what's going on. And it's so comfortable that he took his first nap in it the first time he was in it!
what a big baby boy!

Isaiah and Levi's first baseball game!

Last Monday night (June 1) we went to the Waterloo Buck's baseball game...this was both Isaiah and Levi's first ever baseball game! The weather was perfect! (sunny and warm) and there was a crowd, but it wasn't crowded. I think it was a good game? There was so much going on that I hardly even noticed the game! :) but I think that may have just been me! My mom, Isaiah, Levi and I drove separately from Mark, his mom and my dad knowing that the kids would probably only make it through an hour or so of the game -- and bedtime would be long before it was over. (The game started at 7).

Isaiah was excited to go, and seemed to have a great time while he was there (and I not only because we let him walk and crawl along the bleachers). He watched some of the game on daddy's lap (okay, like 5 minutes or less), looked around at all of the people, watched the games they had after each inning and enjoyed a hot dog, pickles and popcorn!

Levi had fun too...being passed between grandparent and parent and seeing all the people.

We happened to run into my friend Angie's mom, Jan, at the game...She was like my second mom throughout junior high and high school... I don't get to see her (or Angie) enough these days, but it was so nice to see her...She always enjoys seeing the boys too... (She helped Angie watch Levi and Jonah a few weeks ago while Isaiah, Jayda, Laura and I went to Elmo--yes I still haven't posted about Elmo Live!!). She was so nice that she went and bought each of the boys a Bucks Baseball!! Thank you Jan!! Isaiah even got to meet the Buck's mascot and have him sign the balls!

Isaiah and daddy getting ready for the game by playing catch.
Levi all ready to go! Grandma Michele is a big Florida Marlins fan...so Mark, Grandma Michele and Levi went to the game dressed alike...
Let's go daddy!!
Go Bucks!
Go Marlins! :)
Daddy surprised Isaiah and bought him a "Go Bucks" finger to wave.
Isaiah and daddy getting the new baseballs signed.

We had so much fun! I think we may have to go to another game this season!