Almost "Done"

Last week we decided to try to finish our yard a little more. Luckily we found some trees and a bunch of plants on sale at Home Depot so then the project was getting it all planted. Our garden is also a little out of control in parts, but we've been able to get tons of zucchini and I'm hoping to bottle some salsa soon. Our winter squash are still growing and it is kind of fun to see how much they grow from day to day. So here are some pictures of our yard as it is today. First just a view of the yard from the street corner (we're planning on the bushes helping camouflage the big green box). Then just one of the roses in the corner planter. More flowers in the yard (I really like flowers if you can't tell). Then the crazy squash plants coming onto the lawn. It's kind of cool because they have little tendrils that wrap around things to secure the plant and that includes blades of grass so when we mow the lawn you have to pull the plant off the grass. Then one of the banana squash growing, with Ryan's shoe next to it for a comparison. And somewhere in the pictures (because of how the pictures are uploading I'm not sure where they'll come in) there's the strawberry patch, a plant I love with lots of colorful flowers, and a watermelon plant. And my favorite little garden helper just enjoying a caramel apple we made earlier this week. * After seeing how the post published, all the pictures are in backwards order.

FYI this morning when I was cleaning some weeds out of the walk out basement area there was a cup from a plant earlier this summer, and I looked inside it before picking it up and I found a BLACK WIDOW spider. So Ryan came a took care of it for me :) A little earlier I was pulling a few weeds in another spot and saw a large garden spider, but when Ryan hit it with the garden tool a ton of baby spiders went scurrying off the back. I'm hoping that with the weeds gone from around the house that we will not be seeing anymore spiders for a while. We'll see though. :) We have also had a TON of praying mantis in the yard. We are constantly seeing them in the flowers, in the lawn, on the side of the house ... kind of out of control. Sometimes we are even lucky enough to see "double" praying mantis ;) Anyway so here are some pictures of our almost done yard-only one spot left to finish, and we need to get a few plants planted to fill in some spots. I'm excited to see how everything grows. It'll be nice next summer when things are a little more the size we want them.

And a little update on my favorite little garden helper so that I don't forget is that she loves to tell us things including uh-oh, bye-bye (many times over and over with different intonations-that's my favorite), hello, baby, happy, help/help me (which sounds very close to happy), no, stop, yay, whoa, wow, go go go (cheer), sorry, eyes, nose, mine (where did she learn that???)yes, shoe, more, peas-please, tank dee-thank you, yum yum, umnem-Amen, ball, dog, goat, cat, bed, pot-potty, an occasionally wuv you, and she sticks her tongue out with a super wide open mouth when she wants a drink. When we eat breakfast she will feed herself and feed whoever is sitting by her. She will also push us away when she wants to do something or when she wants to sit by herself-sometimes I've been kicked off the front step and then the whole front porch while she sits like a big girl on her stoop. She also loves to carry this tube of lip gloss stuff around and put whatever is left on the outside (it's the squeezy kind) on her lips as well as whomever may be lucky enough (usually me, but sometimes Ryan gets the offer as well) to be around to get beautified. She also makes many funny faces and likes to pucker her mouth and find different things she can do with her tongue/lips including various clucking smacking sounds. I think the days of open mouthes kisses may be coming to an end, which is a little bittersweet. It is so fun to see how much and how quickly kids change. it seems like every day she has a new word she tells me, and hearing her little voice talking makes me so happy!

Funny Alli Girl

Alli loves to play in the fridge and she loves any seat that is "her size" whether it is the fridge, the front porch steps or anything random around the house that is the right size. So in this video she's in the fridge and I love her little voice and the face she makes towards the end of the video. I hear this little voice most of the day and I love it! We love her "serious" face, especially when she does it while giving knuckles.

And here is the kind of random part. The pictures are uploading really weird so I don't know what order they are in. I think it's pretty easy to tell which is which though. There's one of her on her favorite spot-the front porch stoop. She loves to just be outside sitting and she will watch and wave as people go by. Then sometime this summer we gave her a chocolate pudding-and it was all over, but she loved it. Amazingly enough I was able to get all of the chocolate pudding out of her outfit! She also discovered whipped topping and chocolate syrup (really she doesn't just play in the fridge all day, but sometimes when I am cooking it is easier to let her play in there and a few times she's found really FUN things). She also decided that she likes to be snuggled in this one particular soft fuzzy blanket and she will often bring it to me and want me to wrap it around her shoulders like a cape. She will walk around like this or sometimes just sit and watch a movie with her little cape around her. And the first pic is of her nose, which while the pic isn't that great, you can kind of see the swelling. She tripped on some grass and landed on the edge of a patio (luckily it was curved so it didn't scratch or break the skin at all) so she got a hairline fracture. She was tired when it happened so I didn't know if the extra crying was from that or if something else was wrong. Her nose bled a little bit, but the weirdest thing is that she wasn't breathing out of her nose and wouldn't drink from a bottle. We have a good friend who is an ER doc and he lives down the street from us so I took her down to see him and he confirmed that is wasn't mis-set at all, but he figured she most likely had a hairline fracture. She breathes fine out of both nostrils and it looks completely fine so nothing needs to be done, but I figured her first "broken" bone was something slightly memorable. Later that night we went to see fireworks for Salem days and she loved the fireworks. She kept saying wow and whoa and pointing at them. I LOVED the fireworks show, but the best part was seeing her reaction.
We also gave Ryan a haircut. i kind of like his hair long so we kept putting it off, but finally decided it was time so I got to give him the haircut. he frowed his hair out and then we went to town. Alli even had her own little set of clippers that didn't work. It was pretty fun cutting his hair, and I think I did a decent job. We were both happy with the haircut, and I must say that I like his hair shorter!

More pictures

So when I uploaded the pics on the last post they were uploaded funny so I'm doing the rest here. So the first picture is of the (broken) twin bed-the front post is what I woke up under. Ryan was next to the wall so he was sliding down. Quite the exciting way to wake up! Don't mind our ragmuffin little girl, I don't know what is all over her shirt, but she is definitely excited about the broken bed. It became quite the fun playground for her and some of the grandkids, they loved climbing it, sitting on it, and sliding down it! next pictures are from downtown Seattle at Pike's Place Market. On our way there we stopped to get Alli some milk from a little coffee shop ( we also found out they have the BEST pastries) and they had this cool green dog. She loved climbing on it and giving it hugs and kisses. Then we actually went to PPM and saw the big bronze pig. Then the last group of pictures is from the fountains and I tried to upload a video of them actually going off. When they went off part of it was "choreographed" to music so it was pretty cool, some of the sprays are pretty high. Well hopefully you can make sense of the pictures, it is all out of order, but look at the next post for the chronological story. :)

Trip to Seattle

So-the pictures uploaded funky so I am not going to try to move them-the first 2 are some of the Blue Angels. Then there is a picture of some of the cousins pretending to be airplanes while we waiting on the bridge. Then one of Alli enjoying her popsicle while waiting for the Blue Angels, and mama and Alli at the Blue Angels.
So-there's a long version and a short version (the highlights at the end). Feel free to skip to the end. :)
About 2 weeks ago we went up to Seattle to visit Ryan's family and be there for Blake and Kelsie's open house. We left late Tuesday night and drove through the night (switching off driving and sleeping) and stopped for 2 hours to sleep so we made it there Wednesday afternoon. That night we just hungout and recovered from the long drive. The next day we went to Mukilteo, which was one of Ryan's favorite places to go fishing when he was younger. Sadly, when we got to the dock area, Alli had fallen asleep and we hadn't slept well the night before (thank you record setting heat and lack of air conditioning anywhere because of the rarity of the extreme heat :) ) at all so we opted to let her sleep so for the first hour or so she and I hung out in the car (don't worry I turned the air conditioner on and off to keep us cool). Ryan loved the fishing and it was fun to see Alli with the fish and crabs. She really wanted to pick up/hold the crabs, but she only got to enjoy touching the fish for now. She wanted so badly to hold the fish, but then she would touch the fish and immediately pull her hand back because it was slimy. She did this probably 3 times until she lost interest. After that we went and finished officially buying our car since we bought it from an auto broker who lives there and we went out to some outlets and found Alli a bunch of cute winter/spring clothes for super cheap at Children's Place (I love getting good deals!!). Then Ryan went and played volleyball with his dad and brothers in a church game (and I somehow got locked out and no one would answer their phone when they were playing pick up games after :( o/well we got to play later in the trip so it made it a little better) Friday we went and saw the Blue Angels fly. That was pretty cool to see them fly in formation and do tricks. After that we went to downtown Seattle to some fountains. Alli had a fun time playing in the fountains (but mostly running from the water) and wandering up the slanted sides. Then one of Ryan's good friends from high school was having a bbq at his downtown apartment so after we walked through Pike's Place market (I wish we lived close to a place like that so I could get fresh, beautiful flowers for a good price!!!) and did some shopping in downtown (this became especially vital after Alli had a wet diaper that leaked onto Ryan's shirt so back to American Eagle we went) we went to his place. It was fun to meet and hangout with some of Ryan's best friends. They were really cool guys and everyone loved Alli. They thought she was so entertaining (she kept dancing and giving people knuckles) and was so well behaved, so that was good because I was worried how they would do with a kid at their bbq. We had a really good time! Saturday Ryan and I went blackberry picking (it was awesome because I ended up with 4 batches of freezer jam!). I LOVE how Washington has wild blackberries ALL OVER! We just drove down the road and 3-4 different places. We only picked for an hour or so, it was pretty fun despite all of the scratches I managed to get on my forearms (Ryan fared better in the scratch department only because he wasn't quite as determined to get ALL of the berries :) I actually think he was just smarter) and then we helped cut the fruits and veggies for the open house. The open house was a lot of fun, it was great to see more people Ryan knew. Sunday we all went to church and hung out and had a combined birthday party for Blake, Forrest, and Bailey so we got to enjoy yummy homemade ice cream. We ended up leaving late Sunday night so that Alli would hopefully sleep more of the drive home, which she did, but because we were so tired we also ended up needing to sleep more during the night so we switched off, and then stopped twice for both of us to sleep. Then we also found a McDonald's with a cool playplace so we hung out there and let her play for little longer than planned so with our extra long stops our 14 hour drive took 19 hours! So we pulled in Monday night exhausted from a fun trip.
Some of the perhaps not so fun things about the trip, that were nonetheless very memorable were:
* The heat with no air conditioning and lots of people in the house (which wasn't too bad, I like the heat, but I think it made it hard for everyone to sleep-especially our little Alli and Ryan).
* Our little family sleeping in a twin bed
* Twin bed breaking the second night at about 3 am-I woke up under a 2 x 4 to a sleepy frantic Ryan wondering where I was because I had just fallen. Luckily Alli was sleeping on a makeshift bed on the floor this night.
Some of our favorite parts:
* A massive water fight Saturday afternoon! I think it was as fun to watch as it was for those participating.
* The homemade ice cream Sunday afternoon.
* The yummy cupcakes left over from the open house- I am pretty sure I ate at least 10 of them- they were decorated so cutely with this edible gumdrop flowers with yummy frosting etc.- pretty much irresistible for both me and Alli.
* Playing games and hanging out with family.
* Letting Alli play with cousins and grandparents, she had a lot of fun, and showed her assertive side a few times when cousins would try to pick her up too many times. She wouldn't cry, she'd just push them away.
* Yummy Caramel Macadamia Chocolate clusters- Ryan and I ate way too many of these!!!
* All of the way fun things Seattle has to do. I am already excited for the next trip and all of the fun things we can do! I am so glad we have people to go see there!
Thanks Paul and Christyn for letting us come stay with you and for everything you did to make this vacation possible! We're excited for our next trip up there!