Firsts and Last

We have seen the last of diapers!!!!!!! Tan truly IS the man in his Lightning McQueen undies. He has very few accidents and is staying dry and clean even at night. I'm not sure who is most excited: Tan milking us for rewards and loving his adoring audiences, Mommy because it went so well and fast, or Daddy who is finally free of diaper bills. And we had the first day of school. Annika is officially a kindergartener. And loves it. It was more of a struggle to get her back home than anything! Check out her flaming Converse!

And Phoebe already adores second grade. Her favorite thing from today? Her teacher writes the schedule for the day on the board so she knows exactly what is happening. And she has her outfits for the next week already picked out. Yes, I must claim this girl. Sorry about the pic. Not sure why it didn't flip.

Important Times

**Quick note on the playlist: I have added and moved around. I tend to pick songs that I like to sing to or that move me emotionally. I also turn it on whenever I am scrapping. So if you don't prefer a song, you can use the buttons on the playlist box to turn it off or change the song, or just click a song. (Dad, Over the Rainbow just got moved down a little.)

I remember spending the night with my grandparents as a child and have wonderful memories of those times. I want our kids to have those same kinds of special memories, and thankfully all of their grandparents are more than willing to oblige.
The girls went back to Iowa for a week for what they all called, "Granny Camp." They went on Sunday and then I showed up Thursday night and stayed the weekend. They did all sorts of crafts: decorated pillows, dug for fossils, painted little frames, and played and played.
Granny got a new parakeet while we were there, Dexter.

They went swimming almost every day with cousins at the Nevada pool. I think they have nearly perfected handstands and somersaults.

Tanner loved getting in on the action for the last few days.

And then on Saturday Granny kept Tanner for some one on one tractor time and I took the girls to the State Fair. Another of my fave summer memories I wanted to share with them.

The first of our many foods we shared: a footlong freshly dipped and fried corndog. The only way to eat them.
With the biggest pumpkin. We also saw the other veggies, flowers, the butter cow, watched them judge brownies, and the cakes.

Of course we had to stop and make spin art and get homemade ice cream cones. We hit the midway for one ride, went down the giant slide, saw the Bill Riley talent show, a hypnotist, ALL the animals (including the birth of four different kinds--interesting), all of the arts and crafts in the culture building, saw my cousins at their booth, got tattoos in the Varied Industries building, and MORE!

More food! Grater taters, a giant cup of melon, fresh lemonade, a funnel cake, a pork tenderloin, and a caramel apple. Good thing we shared it all! The girls loved it all!

The week before the girls spent the week at my parents. They rode bikes, went school shopping, and more swimming and helping in the garden. They also made the cutest stuffed animals (that I need to post). The girls made drawings and then they cut them out of felt and sewed them. Super cute.
This is our favorite bistro patio in the summer. :)

Mom and Dad with happy grandkids.

It was evening, and I need to do this pic with sun, but this is one of my fave views looking from the swing down over the patio, to the pool and garden beyond.

Phoebe took some pretty amazing pictures of flowers and veggies. Again, kind of dark, but super composition.

School starts this week. Can't believe summer is already gone! We accomplished most of the stuff I wanted to this year. Maybe next year we'll do even more.

Recently

Recently we have:
1. Our good friends the Vasey's visited from Iowa. They drug us to the Bears Family Fun Night. No, not really, I am just kidding. We loved it and had a great time. Jeff did wear his Minnesota shirt to at least show a little of his true allegiance (he was smart enough not to wear Vikings gear). It will be interested to see what teams the kids choose to follow. Hear we are outside getting ready to go in Soldier Field.

Tanner was quite impressed with the big bear and the fireworks.

We had FABULOUS tickets. Third row off the 45 yard line.

Jeff of course had to work, so he just took Justin with him. They enjoyed it being the two of them like old times working and joking around together. I did not put their silly pictures on here. Not family appropriate. Just like old times. :)

And then we scored super cheap tickets to the Camp Rock/Jonas Brothers concert on the lawn. The kids LOOOVED it! I wish you could have seen them dancing. They out shone the Disney dancers for sure.

It was a great weekend. We had a good time hanging out and catching up.

2. I also realized that we have lived here for TWO whole years! Can you believe it? And we are staying! You might actually be able to write our names in your address books in pencil instead of just a post it note now. Hee hee. But really, we like it here and are glad we have a great home and some roots.

And OH So Much More

Man have we been busy so far this summer! Be prepared. This is the June and July post. It is huge! I took the girls the other day to a trail and we FINALLY have perfected riding bikes!!!! Now the girls are obsessed. Sweaty, stinky bike riding fools. Up and down the street, around and around. It is so awesome to see the sense of freedom in their faces.

Other than that, this week was fairly easy going. Last week was vacation Bible school. I was the co-director and that went fairly well, in the end it was all worth it to see 140 happy little kids.
My sister Sarah came to visit the second week of July. We took the train downtown and had a blast! We walked the kids to Buckingham Fountain, spent the afternoon at Shedd Aquarium, took the bus around the loop, played at Millenium Park, and ate at a sidewalk bistro. It was a late night getting home and every minute was worth it.

Tanner still talks about how, "Dolphins jump out water. People carry penguins. Penguins hop, seal climb rock, me LOVE it!"

Jeff has bottled the pear wine from last year finally and has another batch of cherry wine brewing. I am enjoying a glass every evening. Especially now that Jeff is back home to enjoy it with me!

We crashed my parents house with some friends for the 4th. We had a lovely picnic, fireworks, and swimming. We also spent four days there in mid-July (Mommy needed the down time that visit). Each girl spent two days and nights individually in June. And we are trying to set up another trip for the girls.

I took the kids to the Naperville children's museum. Jaxson (that I babysit) threatened to ruin it all with a tantrum, which made me appreciate how well behaved in public my kids really are. My kids loved it. Lots of super science stuff, right up their alley. This is them making a giant bubble around the three of them.

In June the girls took two weeks of swim lessons. Annika passed to the next level, and now that the pressure is off Phoebe is actually swimming better than her. We have made numerous visits to the Plymesser bed and breakfast pool, and some best friends in Lockport have a little patio 3 foot deep pool that the girls practice in. They have both learned to dive to the bottom, somersault, American crawl, front float, and are diving in off the side! If you know Phoebe (and know that until this summer she was deathly afraid to get her face wet) you realize how HUGE this is! I love letting them just GO and watching them love every minute!

Jeff is home and is working his very own business Full Time now! He loves every minute of it. Makes us wonder what he was thinking being a banker in a cubicle for 12 years. Silly. Central Crating is the perfect thing for him...the tools, the truck, working with new people constantly, and then using all of his management and finance skills running everything himself. He is the happiest I have ever seen him. And the business is flourishing.

This was the serious photo on father's day. Seriously.

I discovered a fishing hole in a subdivision nearby. We went the first time Father's day, and have gone twice more since. Perfect place to fish with kids: no weeds, no bugs, and zillions of little hungry fish. The family loves it!

Took the kids strawberry picking. YUM YUM YUM! i know we ate more than we took home.

Annika finished her softball season with two catches! We were so proud. Quite the little slugger too.

The kids and I hit a Joliet Jackhammer game. I have no idea how it went for the kids. Luckily we had friends there, I spent 45 minutes in line to find out they were out of hot dogs, so I missed a majority of the night. I think the kids had a good time.

I let the kids go out and play in one of our many many rain storms. Phoebe collected a whole family of worms.

The Carsrud cousins came in for the recital and the kids had a blast in the yard and riding scooters. We introduced them to Bandz bracelets, IKEA, and drive up Dunkin' Donuts. Lots of good city stuff. :)

The amazingly talented and gorgeous dancer! Phoebe is quite the little entertainer on stage and did a wonderful job in her tap, ballet, and jazz dances. It was a long recital (almost 3 hours), but we all enjoyed it. Especially me. Brought back all sorts of memories from when I was little and dancing. I am so glad that Phoebe loves it so much.

The Tan man LOVED touch a truck day at the park. He climbed in and on dump, garbage, snow, UPS, fire, and digger trucks, a bus, a crane, and so much more. He was in HEAVEN to say the least.

I never would have survived Jeff being gone for 2 and half months without our trusty babysitters Carmen and Hannah. We will miss them greatly next year when they go to college! I also relied heavily on my parents and several of our friends. Thank you anyone who let me have an hour or two to myself every once in awhile!!!!!!

One of the weekends that Jeff was not home at all we conducted super craft day. We baked, made stepping stones, wall hooks, super balls, gummy martians, lip gloss, and I can't remember what else. We cleaned out the craft closet it was awesome.

And I don't have pictures of some of my big accomplishments. One: I am the tannest in my life ever thanks to all of these activities with the kids. I painted a bathroom and our master bedroom (the first time out of 9 houses). Both are shades of green, and I love them both. AND I read the entire Twilight series. I am still on the fence about how well I liked the style of writing, but the action and story line sucked me in. Enough that I read four 500 page or more books in four weeks in addition to everything else going on. Ok. I guess I liked them. But only Jacob, not Bella.

Whew! I think I need a nap from typing all of that! I can't wait to scrap it all and remember even more of the fun ness of this summer.

rock, paper, ?

The girls have devised their own additions to the game. Annika does rock paper dynamite (and puts out her middle finger and then blows it up) or smoke bomb (a fist that "fizzles and smokes"). Phoebe, not to be outdone by her sister, does rock paper chainsaw (holding her forearm and wiggling the loose fingers).

Annika filled an empty apple juice bottle with water and I let her dump in rice to make a "snowglobe." We forgot about it. And then we opened it several days ago to discover it was fermenting, just like Daddy's wine. So she wanted to let it go a little further. Tonight she reopened what Phoebe immediately dubbed "the fart bomb." As the lid came off it literally made a blasting noise, a slight fog escaped, along with a horrendous smell. It is now in the trash, experiment over, girls happily giggling, lessons learned.

Super May Post

I thought I would better at blogging while Jeff was gone. I don't know why. The past month had me on my toes. Thank goodness for friends and Carmen, our trusty babysitter. Our life seemed to go crazy last fall. And I kept thinking, in two weeks this will be over and then there will be a lull. I have finally accepted the fact that that is never coming. I am starting to look at my own choices and am realizing I need to start pulling back. Yes, I could probably handle all of the things I have volunteered for and would enjoy it. But I am also realizing I am not doing my best, and I am letting things fall through the cracks. So we will see if I get better at saying no. ;)

So here is May in pictures... Annika is on her first "real" softball team. She has enjoyed it for the most part. She is learning and likes when she actually gets to play. We have been a little frustrated with her coaches this year, but at the same time, she is already losing steam and we still have three weeks left. She is the youngest on the team and can out slug and catch a bunch of the girls. You go girl!
The ducks moved back in on the neighbor's pool. We got a huge kick out of watching them.

I have been watching too much Clean House and Hoarders: Buried Alive and went on a purging spree. Which is always bittersweet. Needed to make room. We can actually put away toys now and walk through the laundry and storage room. But after it is done, I always miss a couple things. But it felt good to donate all of this. And I talked the girls into taking the toys to Once Upon a Child and they each earned $20. Those items are not pictured, and I took three tubs of clothes back to Iowa to hand down to cousins. All in all a big project that was worth it.

Our Brookfield Zoo membership ran out. I am a little zooed out, and think we will do other memberships this year. So we went one last time with Daddy. Of course I forgot to take pictures of our picnic or of the kids and Jeff together. But I did get this picture of Phoebe before bedtime with her facepaint. (And Annika is mad that I am posting it because I wasn't supposed to take any pics according to her.) The new bear wilderness is pretty cool.

We spend every morning outside so the boys can play and run. They are at the door at 7:30 banging and yelling , "OUTSIDE!" Annika and I have been playing a lot of catch while the 3 little ones dig in the sand. One day I got her to practice some of her gymnastics moves and she just flipped over backwards right into this backbend. No warm up, no fear, just blip and over she went. Oh to be that limber! Now she is doing it all the time. The Easter bunny brought a trapeze for the swingset, so both girls are spending a great deal of time upside down as well.

Tanner loves his dirt. He will spend an hour filling the "digger" and then dumping it into his semi truck so he can move the dirt to other piles. I love that it keeps him busy, and really, considering he spends that much time in dirt, he isn't that filthy.

And Miss Phoebe turned 7! I had way too much fun decorating and both girls helped make most of the food for her fancy tea party. I can't believe she is getting so big! She has grown into such a sweet and wonderful little thing.

The birthday girl and a few of her close friends had a lovely time sipping raspberry lemonade, eating cucumber sandwiches and fruit salad with whipped cream, and polished off quite a few candy dipped pretzels topped with molded almond bark butterflies and ladybugs. Then they made a little craft and played with their American Girl dolls. Phoebe got several new sets of clothes for Molly and is saving for furniture for Molly.

And Annika graduated from preschool! They had the cutest little program with songs and awards for each child. Annika was best leader...5 going on 25 and always ready to lead you how to do something the right way. That's our girl!