a trip to the orchard

These pictures go back in time a few months to a beautiful fall day where Beck and I went to an orchard in Indy with Kyra, Ashton and their kiddos, Poppy and Emerson.  Although they are late, I wanted to post them still since they are a fun memory of picking apples, sampling the apples, and having our first taste of apple cider for the fall season... in the form of apple cider slushies - yum!!  And as I am typing about this day, I'm getting hungry for apple cider.  :)

no longer 1...

... nope, he's 2.  Beck that is.  And it went fast, super fast.. of course.  Everyone says that time flies for a reason.  I would be surprised if a birthday ever goes by where we don't look back and say, "wow, that year went fast."  Sometimes I'm not sure how to feel about that.  Sad that time is going to fly by faster than we want and everything we do is quickly a distant memory?  Or thankful that our time on this earth doesn't drag on forever?  If anything it should give me the desire to make sure I'm intentional with my time, the time our family has together and the time we have watching our kiddos grow up...

Beck's second b-day was quite different than the first, when it comes to the presents.  At 1 year he still wasn't so excited about gifts and wasn't sure how to open a present.  At year 2, he was squealing with delight and waving his arms around in excitement after he opened a gift and saw a tractor or train.  He could hardly contain himself while he waited for someone to open the packaging so he could get his hands on his new present.  Very fun to watch. :)  And he has continued to love all his presents after he got home and they keep him entertained for a long time... quite nice.

So a few pics of Beck's birthday celebration.  A couple things you might notice:

1.  He rarely, very rarely looks up for a picture when he's engrossed in a new toy or something he likes, no matter how many times you say his name and how excited your voice sounds.

2.  He likes trucks, trains, tractors... all things that go vroooom.  Pretty much all his toys were very boy, which is great as that is what he likes... just funny to see what a little boy gets for his birthday.

I like this pic b/c it's all fuzzy due to Beck bouncing up and down with excitement while his present was taken out of the package.

playing with a new toy from aunt Sheli

watching in amazement as the loader bucket on his new remote CAT tractor goes up and down

a little unsure about his candles.  yes, he got excited and went a little overboard on putting candles in his cupcakes :)

yum.. frosting.  he pretty much just licked off the frosting and left the cupcake (the best part!)

all about beck

I was thinking that I haven't written much about what Beck is up to lately and wanted to give a little update... maybe more for my sake of recording it than for everyone else's sake.  :)

Most of the stuff he is doing lately revolves around things he's saying, as the talking has increased quite a bit.  One thing I'm always amazed at is the randomness of his memory.  He'll remember one little thing we said to him one time, yet probably forget something we say all the time!  And his thought process is so funny... jumping from one thing to the next - cars, to candy, to singing a song, to talking about something he did yesterday.  Kids are oh so interesting.

a few other things he's been doing as of late:

• playing his favorite activities - pushing around any type of tractor or motorized vehicle, golf (which is more of watching dad play golf), "mowing" (pushing anything across the yard or even inside), going fast (running around), and shooting guns (nerf of course!)
• talking about his favorite movie Cars... which is a treat he gets to watch at his aunt Sheli's
• starting to sing the ABC's, Jesus Loves Me, and Twinkle, Twinkle
• saying he wants something by saying "yeah, uh-huh", for example, today in the car he wanted my chapstick, so he kept saying "chapstick, yeah, uh-huh"
• getting woken up by mom a little earlier than preferred on work mornings, to which he responds "more sleep" and snuggles up on his pillow again.  quite adorable :)
• asking for c-a-n-d-y the minute he wakes up in the morning (not an everyday occurrence, but it happens often enough!)
• saying he wants a sister when asked about the baby
• using lots of 3 word phrases
• agreeing to go on the "big boy potty" but not really wanting to go
• sleeping in!  instead of his usual 7-7:30 rise, it's become more like 8-8:30... at least for now :)
• asking to have things, whether it be a toy in the store or a truck in his book, he's developed a preference for the toys he likes that communicates by simply saying "have" in a voice of desperation at the item of choice. sometimes he'll even make it a "have please", in which case I believe he thinks he has a pretty likely chance of receiving his item of desire.

and of course some recent pics:

at the zoo in AZ with the Beer family.  plenty of girl time for Beck... which he didn't seem to mind and only kissed one of them :)

playing football with dad before it was freezing outside

sleeping in the car just like his mamma - mouth wide open :)

tasting a Vitamix sample at Costco... it tasted much better than it looks!

love at the zoo

The other Saturday we met up with Bryan, Ashton, and Poppy at the zoo for a beautiful morning with the animals.  The kiddos were having fun, but the cameras didn't come out until we were at the porcupines...

"Poppy, say cheese".... 

"Beck, give Poppy a hug... that's so nice."

oh no... going in for something else.  Poppy appears to be very unaware as to what is about to happen.

Beckham making a move!  Very unlike him... he's usually the one that's off on his own.  But Poppy seems to be a little too into this and knows what to do.  Notice the arm on his shoulder?!  This must not be her first kiss. :)

ahaha... that was funny!  Poppy's in a daze and cannot believe what happened...

oh my... a kiss from a boy!

hum... Beck looks like a stinker in this pic... like he enjoyed that kiss a little too much.  :)

#2

yep, that's right... #2 is on the way for our fam, expected to come 4.10.12!  we're thankful and excited about the timing and having a brother or sister for Beck.  still seems far off, but I'm sure it will be here faster than we think... just praying for a healthy pregnancy right now.  and we will be finding out what we're having for sure - very much looking forward to that.  not sure how some people do the surprise when the baby's born... I'm much too curious!

here's a pic from my last ultrasound.  I always think it's hard to tell what's going on in these things, but in this one you can see the baby's little arms and legs and it was actually dancing around. :)

10 weeks

tomato harvest

Despite growing up in a family that always had one or even two large gardens, and of course helping work in the garden, I didn't absorb much of the details and feel a little lost when it comes to gardening.

This year we decided to make one of our flower beds a small garden and I planted a few things - a cherry tomato plant, two other tomato plants, some hot peppers, some fruit plants, and several herbs.  I found that it was more fun than I thought it would be to water the plants, watch them grow, and start to produce!

Despite having fun with my garden, it didn't really do that well.  The herbs all did fine - the basil and mint being the best.  Two of the fruit plants died and the other won't produce anything this year.  The jalapeno plant did great and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all of those... my aunt said they're easy to can without a pressure cooker?  I actually thought I had bought a bell pepper plant, but ended up with hot peppers... oops.

My very best plant was the cherry tomato plant.  It grew and grew and took over everything.  The wire stand I put in it for support is doing very little and has been outgrown.  My two other tomato plants were doing ok until this thing took off, but now they look rather sickly - not sure if the two events are related?

Here it is overtaking everything:

So I could tell that one day, all of a sudden there were going to be gobs of cherry tomatoes ready to eat.  Now is that time!  And I love it.  They are so good and the best snack.

So my verdict on my small taste of gardening?  I think it has made want to continue to learn more about it (mom?!) and take on a bigger garden in the future with more unique plants.  Chad thinks it's fun too.... so we'll see how ambitious we are next year.  :)

neti pot

This past weekend I got attacked with hay fever and it's been much worse than I ever remember it being.  Usually I just sneeze, blow my nose a lot, and want to poke out my eyeballs because they itch so bad.  Nothing horrible.

Well this year was different.  More congestion.  Painful.  A weird headache feeling that didn't go away all day long.  I was desperate for a remedy!

I had read a little about neti pots online.  They seemed a little weird.  I mean really, do I want to pour water through my nose, making it run out the other side?  Maybe if things got Really bad. 

I guess last night it came to the point were things were Really bad and I was miserable.  Plus I didn't want it to turn into a sinus infection.  So I went to CVS and got myself a neti pot.

Sorry... I didn't have Chad take a picture of me using it :)

So if you are new to neti pots,  you pretty much just fill this thing with salt water (it gives you packets of the salt mixture to mix with water), put the spout in one nostril, tilt your head, slowly pour the water, and the water goes through your nose and runs out the other side, flushing out your sinuses and all the junk that's in there.  Sounds fun right?!

It took a little bit to get the hang of it, getting the water to flow right.  And one side of my nose was more blocked and it didn't work right at first so I had to try the other side.  At first it definitely felt like when you go underwater and get a bunch of water in your nose and can't breath.. not a fun sensation..  but it did get a little better once I got the hang of it a little more.

The verdict?  It definitely helped rinse out the junk and I felt better right after doing it, but I was still pretty stuffy and congested when I sent to bed.  A little disappointed.

However, after a night of sleep with a humidifier and some strip thing on my nose to help my nasal passages, I feel 100% better today!  No congestion and just back my normal sniffles and sneezes!  I'm just hoping that it lasts through the whole work day. :)

So I'm not sure if it was all the neti pot that made me feel better, I just needed some time to feel the effects, but I definitely think it helped and I will for sure be using this thing again, no matter how weird it feels.

bath time

Beck hadn't been a big fan of baths lately... until he discovered how much fun his squishy cars and trucks are.  Now he says "baf" and actually suggests taking one.  As long as he can play with all of his toys at the same time he's good to go...

Lined up and ready to go!  I love how if you look closely his little eyebrows are furrowed and lips are pursed, showing how serious about the boat noise he is making.  :)  Forget about trying to get him to look up for a picture!

need a new home?

We've decided to put our house on the market in hopes of moving closer to Chad's work, into a house with a little more space... and we're ready to experience a new part of Indy... well, south of Indy really.

Are we sad about the thought of moving?  Not really... neither one of us are too attached to our home, although we do really like it.  We are more excited about the thought of change than disappointed about leaving the little house we've called home for the last 4 years.  Of course it's never fun to move farther away from friends, but we'll still be close to them in relative terms... we won't be moving hours away - more like 30 minutes.  

The good news is that we aren't in a rush to move and don't Have to move if for some reason our house isn't very interesting to anyone else!  However, we have started looking at houses in Greenwood and already and found one we're Very fond of.... patience, patience!

Wow - our grass is bad, huh?!  hopefully it won't take too long to replace this with a 'sold' sign :)

our cute little house!  when we moved here the white trim and garage door was weird purple color?!  we also painted the front door and shutters black.  

our view out back

I did find a couple 'before' pictures of our living room and kitchen - it wasn't very pretty to say the least:

And here are some 'after' ones:

fresh paint, new appliances, beadboarding, new trim, and acid staining the floor were the main changes to the kitchen

we painted the living room the same color as the kitchen, put in new trim here too and switched out the carpet for laminate wood flooring

So if you know someone moving to Indy or within Indy - send them our way!

a weekend of fun

We had the privilege of spending a weekend at Lake Wawasee with Bryan and Ash and Brett and Liv.  Having the kiddos there made for a chaotic but entertaining weekend... good thing we had a pool to give them something to do with all their energy!
I failed to get great pics that captured much of anything besides a little pool time.  Obie won the award for being the bravest in the pool and would do big jumps off the side, going underwater.  Poppy was a pretty close second and was daring in the pool as well, especially being the dainty little girl she is. :)  Beck, the kid who doesn't like water in his eyes, was of course the safest in the pool and wouldn't go underwater or even float around on his own... hum, I think we're going to need some swimming lessons to teach him a few things.  He did, however, like to be tossed up in the air...

I like this one b/c if you look close, Beck is making the sign for 'more'... indicating he's ready for another toss. :)

Obie - looking like he might have just dunked his head under the water!

Poppy getting to chill and take a little shoulder ride.  Gotta love her teeny tiny striped bikini!