Kraig & Terrie's Visit II

Our vegetable garden. It hasn't grown too well because it has been raining way more than usual here and my plants have been way too soggy. Needless to say, my gardening experience is a lot harder and less successful than my first time, unfortunately. But I still have hope and keep on praying for my little buggers to be able to produce some fruit/veggies. We have been fortunate to enjoy our green beans, butterleaf lettuce, and strawberries, though.

They bought Lincoln all kinds of balls. He loves his football the best. Dad's favorite color yellow.

What a great shot by Kraig on the photo. What a great shot by Jon with the ball... hopefully.

Kraig & Terrie's Visit

Jon and I are figuring out what dinners, out of the ones we love to eat, that we wanted to make for his parents. Terrie was such a nice mother-in-law by totally hooking me up with her own collection of recipes. I keep the ones I make on a regular basis written out on index cards, so she spent a couple of hours copying her own recipes on index cards for me to keep. I'm so grateful and so excited to have more of a selection to pick from. Tomorrow I'm going to make my favorite of Terries: Cabbage Chicken Salad. It's sooooo good. But it makes you fart like crazy. he he.

I wanted to see if Jon's nose shape comes from his dad. And guess what... it does! Kraig's isn't as defined, though. Just some goofy little things that we, or maybe I, had fun with.

Jon and his dad pretending to be some hill-billy golfers. They got to go golfing twice in 5 days. I'd say that's pretty good. I love Jon's faces. He's so much fun.

Too bad this is a side shot. Their faces were hilarious!

Our Public Library Rocks!

This is the best library I've seen. The kids' section is amazing. It's quite touching that people will go this much out of their way just to make a place so inviting and fun for your child when they don't have to. Terrie and Lincoln are looking at all the floating bugs hanging from the ceiling. It helped that Terrie was there to lift him up, since his grandma is way taller than his mom. Isn't that kinda backwards?

Here they made a tree and have all these things to climb in and mats to climb on.

They had a huge train set. Lincoln can barely say the word train, but he's learned about them from Word World and likes them a lot. I didn't know that the library was such a great place to bring Lincoln. We are going to try and visit once every week. Even better... it's FREE!

Our Garden, part III

More of our Beautiful Flowers

Flowers from our Gardens

These aren't flowers, of course. But they are really cool strawberries. They have survived some amazing things. We brought them from Utah and mean a lot to us. This is the first year we've been able to enjoy their fruit. I'm so sad that our strawberry season is already over. I thought it would last all summer. Come to find out it's only a couple of weeks. Bummer.

Grandma Dolly's Visit

We have been so fortunate to have so many visitors during this summer break. My grandma from Mississippi came and stayed with us for almost a week. It was great. She was so helpful to me with my sewing projects. She used to be a professional seamstress, so she took me to Joann's and we picked up a pattern and some material for my dining room valances that I'm trying to make before Jeff and Rachelle come out at the end of this month. Wish me luck! Those aren't the only projects, either. I'm endeavoring to finish my bed set by sewing some standard shams and euro shams. I already made the duvet (the material sat in my room for a year before I started working on it!). I'm also making valances for our bedroom, too. I'm learning to quilt, also. Yeah, all at the same time. I'm kinda wondering myself how I'm gonna pull it all off on top of everything else I'm responsible for...

Lincoln loves to play with bubbles. Sometimes he calls my mom bubbles since she's the one who introduced them to him. It's really cute. Can you see the humongous bubble right in front of my mom?

My mom and Lincoln before church.

The four generations: 82,54,26,1. This is taken at my mom's apartment. She lives about 15 minutes away. I drive to her place two nights a week to work out at her gym. So far, I'm doing a good job. My sister Jen, and a pep talk from Robin, helped inspire me to become more physically fit and start working out again. I'm loving it. I'm also watching what I eat and I've created a weight loss plan that'll hopefully help me reach my goals. Wish me luck!

Our Dear Lages

Jon and Elizabeth horsing around. Elizabeth was mezmerized by how tall Jon was. The girls had a little crush on my husband. It was cute. They were always trying to get his attention and climbing all over him. He loved it. I think it even boosted his self confindence to think that he was cute enough to be a crush.

This is Jon's other love. He lulled their bearded dragon to sleep and was able to move his limbs and tail around in any position without the lizard, Spiro, even opening one eye. It was pretty remarkable, really. I have to admit... I got a little jealous of all the loving the lizard was getting. It's okay, dors, it's just a lizard.

Look at the guns on this girl! Dang. This is my sister Jen and her oldest son Jonah. We had so much fun with them. Poor Kraig wasn't able to join in on any of the celebration. He was busy working really, really hard. Some of the highlights of our trip to their new house in Columbia, Missouri were going to this huge park and playing tag with all the kids and us parents, going to yoga with Jen, how sweet all the kids were to us, and all the good conversations I got to have with Jen. It was so nice to reconnect with my sister. It had been a long time. Ironically enough, we were so impressed by the city of Columbia that we put it on our list of possible places to settle down and start our practice. Wouldn't that be a trip?!

Little Zeke in his cute underwear. The kids were so great with Lincoln. Isabelle played really well with him, too. They got to hang out together during the day while the other kids were in summer school. It was a nice, relaxing visit. So glad we went. We almost decided not to go because we were scared to go on another road trip, but it turned out to be a breeze. The drive was only 6 hours long, and with a nap in there to break it up and a stop at a McDonald's playground, it went quite smoothly.

Zoo Pics III

I forget what these things are called, but Lincoln loved watching them. They totally look like they came right out of the Lion King. I think he thought they were dogs because he started making dog noises.

Ally is in nursery with Lincoln and was trying to hold his hand. This is one of those bouncy wooden bridges they're standing on. When Linc first got on it he dropped to the floor and started crawling, like it was an earthquake or something. He must take emergency preparedness classes in nursery or something :0) Anyway, Ally was trying to help him stay up, but he was not interested in holding hands with her. Just give him 15 years, then he'll be dying to!

Don't these kangaroos look a tad lathargic to you? I hope that's normal for them. Okay, so in this exhibit there was an emu or something, and it had reached it's head over the railing and totally made Lincoln crack up. I'm gonna try and blog the video I shot of the most adorable laugh you have ever heard, but I'm not sure if it'll work. Let's find out...

More Zoo Pics

They had a shark petting exhibit. I was just a little freaked out about it. I touched a shark's slimy skin and my whole body cringed. My friend Amanda was just cracking up at me. (I forgot to mention before that I had organized this zoo trip with my friends as a monthly fieldtrip thing with any of the mom's from my ward. 5 of us showed up with 6 kids in total. Yesterday, at the last minute, I thought about inviting the first year LDS dental wives to come with us, also. 5 of them said they could come with their kids. So, there was potential for a really big group. Two of the dental wives ended coming, but it was right when I was leaving to get Lincoln down for a nap. It was great, though, to get all of us out to the zoo together. So much fun.)

Lincoln in front of the penguin exhibit. He loved it because of the layered effect of being able to see under the water and above at the same time. The penguins were super playful. I would love to find some books at a garage sale or something that have a bunch of these different animals that we saw today in them. I bet he'd love that.

Below is a picture of a baby walrus. Don't be fooled by his size, he still is considered a baby. He was so funny. He would totally interact with the kids at the glass and move around and be all goofy. It was hilarious! I've only seen a dog be that playful before. It was cool.