It has been a *ridiculously* LONG time!

Hello everyone!  It really has been entirely too long since I have updated our blog.  I am so sorry to have gotten this far behind in recording our family's antics and adventures and sharing photos with our family and friends.  I have decided that, from this point forward, I will be posting updates at a new blog url.  It is a private blog, so I'll no longer need to be vague about names and locations in my posts.  If you would like for me to email you an invitation to view our new blog, please email or call me, or leave a comment on this post.  I am hoping to post a ton of updates at our new blog url in the very near future, but for now it just contains all of the posts that I had previously published at this url.  

Who Knew Baby Wipes Could Be So Much Fun?

Our boys are silly.  They come by it honestly.  Dan and I can be quite silly (actually, oftentimes we are ;).  Tonight at dinner the boys were totally cracking up because one of them decided to put a baby wipe on their head, and the other joined in thinking this was complete hilarity.  They laughed, and laughed, and laughed.  It made me smile to see them having such a great time together.

Silly boys with baby wipes on their heads

Yes, this was simply hysterical to them (Ryan's fell off)

Silly Ethan

 

Silly Ryan

 At least they are easily amused! ;)

Marble Tower Fun

I love garage saleing and recently have found some really fun toys for Ethan and Ryan.  I bought two marble tower sets, and Ethan has been enthralled with putting together all different types of towers for the marbles to roll down.  Ryan (whose fine motor coordination at this age is much better than I remember with Ethan, who was all about gross motor skills), has been carefully observing his brother and figured out how to assemble some of the pieces himself.  Since he loves to be doing whatever his big brother does, he has had fun "helping" build the towers.  

Carefully stacking pieces of the tower

Mommy, this is fun!

Intent on building another stack

 

Checking out the tower that Ethan built

I think that this is the biggest tower that Ethan built (other than the track that he and Dan created that went all the way down the first set of our basement steps).  I must say that Dan and I have been enjoying building with the marble tower sets too!

The Joy of Sharing Puffs, a Photo Essay ;)

We visited Grandpa and Grandma G. and Uncle Mike today and had a great time.  Ryan had SO much fun this evening sharing his puffs (puffed Gerber baby snacks) with his daddy.  He and Dan took turns feeding each other puffs, and Ryan thought this was absolutely hysterical.  You can tell from his big grins that he was really getting a kick out of this.

I thought that these expressions of Ryan's were cute also.

Grrrrrrr

 

Sweet and innocent munching on a snack

 

While Ryan was laughing hysterically about puffs, Ethan enjoyed some snuggle time with Grandma G.

 

This is a terrible photo of me, but I am nearly always behind the camera and (sadly) rarely have my photo taken with the boys, so I wanted to include this one on our blog.

Ryan's 15 Month Check-Up

I took Ryan to the pediatrician for his 15 month check-up today.  He is doing very well and has even moved up a little bit in weight percentile.  He is so funny, even though he is petite, his belly looks enormous.  Today he weighed 21 pounds 4oz and measured 32 inches long which places him at the 5-10th percentile for weight and 50-75th percentile for height.  I really should start taking pictures of him the day of each of his well-baby appointments to show how he's grown...  I'll post one back-dated from May 9th since I didn't take any today.  

I love his sweet smile!

Julie's Lamplighter Weekend

My friend, Lori, sponsored me to attend a Lamplighter retreat this weekend.  Lamplighter is similar to the Cursillo, Walk to Emmaus, Via De Cristo, and Great Banquet retreats.  The purpose of the Lamplighter weekend is to give guests the opportunity to grow in their Christian faith.  Dan attended a men's Lamplighter weekend back in November and was excited for me to attend this women's weekend.  Since the schedule includes some surprises, those who have attended in the past are very secretive about what happens and when during the weekend.  So, I didn't really know what to expect, but knew that it had an uplifting impact on Dan and our other friends who had been guests at previous Lamplighter retreats.  I am thankful that I got to see Ryan take several consecutive steps Friday evening just before I left for the retreat because he (quickly) became a much more confident walker in just the two days that I was gone from home.  We were not permitted to have cell phones, watches, or computer access during the retreat, and it was nice to just "unplug" for awhile.  I won't disclose too much since Dan and I plan to sponsor more friends to attend and want to keep the weekend's activities a surprise, but I can say that I really enjoyed it and learned a lot too.  It was also evident that God had a hand in who was placed at which tables (the attendees were divided into small groups), as the members of the small groups bonded very well with one another.  I really enjoyed meeting all of the ladies at my table and especially connected with one in particular who I am sure will be a life-long friend.  And, a huge thank you goes out to everyone who supported and encouraged me during the weekend- I really appreciate you!  I would encourage any of my friends and family to attend a retreat like Lamplighter. 

Ryan is Walking!

I'm cheating a little bit and backdating the photos in this post.  They were actually taken on 5-11-10, but I wanted to post them here since 4-23-10 is when Ryan actually started to take consecutive steps on his own.  I am disappointed that I didn't capture some of his first adventures in walking on "film" but am glad that I have these photos of his early walking to post.  He had been cruising holding onto furniture and running behind his walking toys for awhile, but until this point didn't seem that interested in walking on his own.  It's fun to see how excited he is about this new found independence. 

 

Ryan is SO excited to be walking!

 

Oops!

 

And he's back up again...

Ethan's New Dentist

Since our dental insurance changed when Dan and his friends started their own company, we now have a much larger pool of local pediatric dentists to choose from for Ethan and Ryan.  Our old insurance only covered 3 pediatric dentists all of whom were at least a 25 minute drive from our house.  Based on recommendations from friends, we decided to take Ethan to see Dr. H for his next appointment.  He was so nice, energetic, and enthusiastic.  I could tell that he is great at working with kids!  Ethan has always loved going to the dentist (weird, I know), and he was not phased by going to a new office.  Dr. H. was very happy with his exam and said that Ethan had the best mouth of teeth he'd seen that day (Ethan was so proud).  Whenever Dr. H. sees a new patient, his staff takes a photo of them with Dr. H. and a giant toothbrush.  Ethan thought that was really neat and gave them a big smile.

Sorry for the poor picture quality (it's a photo of a photo)

Woolly Wonders

I took the boys to our local living history museum again today for a neat program about sheep shearing (and sheep in general) called Woolly Wonders.  The first thing that we got to do was walk out to the barn where the sheep are kept and watch a sheep shearing demonstration.  It was interesting to see how thick the sheep's coat was (and dirty!) as the shearer cut away the kind of rough outer woolly coat to reveal the soft, white, clean wool underneath.  Ethan got the opportunity to pet the sheep before and after it was sheared.

Beginning to shear the sheep and pull away the wool

All the kids crowded around to feel the soft undercoat

There were also very young goats that were walking around in the barn that the kids could pet.  Ethan just loved the baby goats!

He tried to get down eye-to-eye with them

Our next stop was to watch what it looked like for the wool to be spun into thread.  It was neat to see people using authentic "olden days" spinning wheels to make thread.

Ryan enjoyed observing the Woolly Wonders activities

When we returned to the main building, Ethan got to make a lamb craft from real sheep's wool

He also got to try his hand at using these tools with some wool (these tools are used to clean the wool and prep it for the spinning wheel)

Train Layout Designer

Lately Ethan's favorite playtime activity has been designing new train layouts and pushing his trains along them.  We have a large area of laminate flooring in our basement and friends that gave us their son's huge collection of wooden track that together allow Ethan to make some pretty impressive layouts.  Dan and I have been amazed at his creativity and ingenuity in building the layouts all by himself.  Not all of his layouts are this intricate, but here are a few photos of two that he built recently.

He was very proud of this layout

When we saw this, Dan and I asked each other if we had helped him prop up the ramp and bridge with blocks and found out that Ethan had figured that out himself.  I doubt that I would have come up with this idea to use 3 blocks to prop up the ramp and bridge.

Another one of Ethan's huge layouts

Moms' Spring Fling at Ethan's Preschool

In the Fall, Ethan's preschool had a Daddy Date Night event that was a lot of fun for Dan to attend, and today was the Mommy Spring Fling.  We had some playtime (Ethan got to show me his favorite toys at school), made a picture frame together, had a snack, and his teachers read "madlib"-style stories to us from our kids. 

 This racetrack was one of Ethan's favorite toys.  The cars roll right-side up or upside-down through the twists and turns.

Working on our picture frame together

I thought that Ethan did a fantastic job signing "LOVE, ETHAN" on this little poem.  His teachers made keychains with the kid's photos inside for each mom.

Just like for Daddy Date Night, the teachers read the kids a fill-in-the-blank story (about their mommies this time) and recorded their responses.  It was interesting to see what Ethan said.  Of all of his classmates' stories, Ethan's made the most sense (which was somewhat surprising!) 

The kids also made floral placemats for their mommies

 

Getting ready to pray before our snack

Trying to sneak some M&Ms while smiling for my photo

The decorated tables were so cute

 

Since this was one of the first times that I used my new camera, I could not for the life of me figure out how to get it into video mode, so photos had to suffice.  The kids sang several songs for us with hand motions.

We certainly are living in an age of technology.  I thought it was funny that you could see two moms recording video using their phones :)  I wish that my phone had video capability as I would have used it too since I couldn't figure out our new camera!

A few days later Ethan's teachers gave me a photo of us together in the frame that Ethan had made :)