Happy Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day to all of our friends and family who have served us in the various branches of the military! I am so thankful for brave men and women who are willing to put their lives on the line for me and my family - especially our own heroes Joe Nichelson and Ron Widerberg.

We have been enjoying a relaxing weekend with our little family. On Saturday we took the girls to the beach (Sherman Park) here in town before heading to a graduation open house for one of Abby's babysitters (Kasi) who also happens to be the big sister of Abby's little girlfriend Autumn. She had tons of fun running around the open house with Autumn and came home nice and sweaty. She's also figured out that drawing on herself results in a bath. And since she loves baths we have caught her drawing on herself 3 times this weekend. She no longer has access to any markers and I think all the pens have been stored too. She is too smart for her own good.

Sunday after church we took a little drive over to Deer Park, Michigan to go to Lake Superior. We took a top secret two-track to get back to the section of beach where the Sucker River meets the big lake. Abby had so much fun playing in the river and digging up the sand. The pictures from our adventure got posted yesterday (see below). Even Olivia loved having her toes in the water. She kept stretching her legs to find the water when I was sitting on the riverbank holding her. Since it has been in the 80's here for almost two straight weeks the water in our lakes and rivers has been exceptionally warm. It's like August water in May. So weird. One sad thing about the unseasonably warm and dry weather we've had this year is how dry a lot of the lakes and rivers have become. We drove by Muskellunge Lake, which is on the way to our favorite campground, and it was down a lot. So much that some sections of the lake were totally dry.

Today Steve and I are celebrating our 7th anniversary. We aren't doing a very good job of doing anything too special. Just the basic weekend type hanging out. We had lunch out (at Taco Bell - Abby's favorite) and went to Wal-Mart for groceries and supplies for our road trip next weekend. And I've been working on laundry and trying to figure out what is going on with our basement and water. Every time I do a load of laundry we get about 2 gallons of water on the floor, but we can't for the life of us figure out where or how it gets there. I've even sat and watched the pipes for a whole load and can't find a leak anywhere. I'm beginning to think I need to call in an expert.

Hi From The "Lazy River"

Locking Up Again

We were back at the Soo Locks yesterday. I think it is probably our favorite outdoor place in town. There aren't any swings or slides or other playground equipment, but Abby seems pretty happy just playing on the staircase by the fountain and waving to all the boats that go through. Yesterday she got to wave to 5 boats in the two hours we were there (okay... technically 4 since one tug boat/barge combo went through twice). The park is a great place to just lay in the grass and enjoy a picnic. It is the softest grass in town. So yesterday we joined our playgroup friends for some time in the park. Abby and I remembered our bubbles and sidewalk chalk, but we were the only ones who brought stuff, so we didn't get to play much with the bubbles. We did, however, make some amazing sidewalk art with our chalk. Lots of lambs, bunnies, and chickens. And Abby scraped her pinkie finger running on the sidewalk (and falling from going to fast). If you ask her about it she will tell you she has marker on her finger.



















Abby has become very aware of things that hurt lately. It seems like every five minutes she is coming up to me and pointing to something to tell me "it hurts mom." Most of the things are bug bites, since the warm weather seems to have hatched out like a million mosquito. Our backyard isn't terrible compared to most of our friends yards, but it is still pretty bad. She is also still working on getting her last four molars, so I'm sure that doesn't help with the hurting.

We are leaving for Fargo, ND and cousin Jack's house in 8 days. Abby is pretty excited! We are looking forward to seeing Glenn, Melissa, and Jack and introducing Olivia to more of her really awesome family. It should be a good crash course for Jack on what it's like to have a baby around 24 hours a day. He is going to be a great big brother soon!

Beach Time

We have been busy lately trying to stay cool. And it has been hard work with temperatures in the upper 80's and no air conditioning. It would be a lot easier if we didn't have a little baby whose precious skin needs to stay out of the sun. Olivia has been beyond miserable with the heat. She wants held to be comforted, but that only makes her hotter and more uncomfortable. It is a bad cycle.

Abby would love to be at the beach all day. She loves being in the water and will willingly put all but her head under to keep cool. But there isn't a ton of shade there. I have to bring my own shade for her, which doesn't always work to well. On the bright side... if we do take a trip to the beach Abby will pass out for a good 2 hour nap. I even carried her back into the house and changed her diaper without waking her up on Monday after our beach outing.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a little cooler so we can do something besides laying around the house feeling like we are melting or sitting at the beach trying not to fry Olivia and trying to keep an eye on Abby with the huge crowds of people who are also just trying to cool off. This is only May... it could be a long summer.

Sun-Day

After two days of icky weather we are back to beautiful sunshine! Abby has been spending a lot of time outside enjoying her swing set, sandbox (which now has sand in it), and sprinkler. We had a pool out for a while, but Abby had a problem remembering not to pee in it, so we drained it and decided a sprinkler would be a better way for her to cool off.
Olivia has been a lot more alert and interactive in the last couple weeks, so Abby has been enjoying more and more play time with her little sister. She loves sitting with Olivia on the chair. Olivia seems to like Abby too and gives her great big smiles. She just won't do them when I have the camera.
This is the pool girl right before she had her accident in the pool. So consequently her daddy drained it. We have had unusually warm weather around here for most of the last week and we supposed to hit 90 at least one day this week. I'm thinking beach...
So basically, Friday we were busy baby sitting Abby's friend Maddie at lunch time and her friends Autumn and Abby in the evening. Abby had a great time with all her friends. I got exhausted. That's a lot of running. And on Friday I managed to whip up 2 baby slings and a baby blanket for gifts - and they had to be done ASAP since one recipient is leaving the U.P. for the south side of Chicago on Friday night. Saturday was a lazy day, except for the part where Steve and I dug the sandbox out so that we could put in 10 to 12 inches of sand. The box as it was built would only hold 3 or 4 inches and we decided that wouldn't really meet Abby's needs. So we did some back breaking labor hunched over since the roof over the sandbox was about 4 foot high. Today we had lunch with our friends the Dodges, went to a graduation open house for one of Steve's co-worker's children, and then used our new sandbox and sprinkler to play in the back yard. I didn't realize how busy we had been until I sat down and typed all that out. I'm getting tired just thinking of it all... I think tomorrow is going to be much less busy.

Beach Babes

This picture has nothing to do with what we've been up to the last couple days, but it is pretty much the most adorable picture ever. At least that's what I think. I seem to be getting pretty bad at keeping this up to date on a daily basis and there is good reason for that. I've been spending all day, or most of it anyway, outside with Abby. Olivia has been pretty good about hanging outside too.

Today we decided that 82 degrees meant our first trip to the beach for this year. We headed over to Sherman Park and saw one speed boat and two freighters while we were swimming. Abby enjoyed the water, which is only ankle deep for a good hundred yards. She splashed and played for quite a while, then she went on the playground. We also ran into Abby's baby sitters Kitty and Susie, along with their little sister Sadie. At that point Abby wanted to go home, but she got over it pretty quickly. She did totally wipe out after riding down the slide, but other than that she had a great time. Olivia snoozed in her car seat, which I put on the wagon to keep her in the shade and out of the sand. I survived it, so I guess we will be going back for more another day.

Olivia had her two month old check-up yesterday. She was already 12 pounds 1 ounce. The nurse said she was 21 1/2 inches, but that didn't sound right to me, so I measured her myself at home. I got 22 1/2, so we'll just average it and call her 22 inches. She also got her first set of shots and was not too happy about that. She was rather cranky all night because of it.

Park Playdate

We went on a park play date with our friends today. Abby and Autumn (AJ) had a great time riding in Abby's wagon on the way to the park. I almost had a heart attack trying to pull two girls while wearing Olivia. They got a little heavy in the hot sun (it got to 79 degrees on my thermometer today - and the thermometer is in the shade).
Abby and Autumn ran all over around the locks. It's a good thing the whole place is fenced in and has only two exits. There were quite a few times when we weren't really sure where the girls had run off to, but since we could see the only exit available to them, there is nothing too dangerous, and no one else was around we figured we'd let them enjoy some independence for a little bit.
Olivia hung out in the shade of the wagon canopy, which thankfully is totally easy to pop on and off. She also checked out the newest foster child to live with our friends. He's a little boy who is almost two weeks old. It was almost like her first little play date too, since we let them play together after Patrick finished his bottle.

Abby has also been enjoying her little pool in the backyard and has been riding down the slide in her wet bathing suit. It has been beautiful outside. It has been close to 80 the last two days, which makes for some really wonderful outside time. Unfortunately it also makes Abby loathe nap time. She didn't even nap on Sunday or Monday. That is not something I am going to allow to occur on a regular basis.

Princess Pink Bedroom

We finally got Abby's blue room turned into a pink and white princess room. We just have a little detail work left to do (like hanging the Cinderella castle details). Abby was SO excited that she talked for about 40 minutes straight when we tried to put her to bed. She was pretty surprised when she saw her room for the first time.

I tried to get a good picture of the girls today but no one would cooperate. Here is the best shot we got and yes, I know, it's bad.

Really?!?

Today was one of those days where it may have been a good idea not to get out of bed. But since it is almost bedtime again, I guess it can only get better from here. And the weather tomorrow is supposed to be great - so I just keep telling myself tomorrow will be great too.

First Abby decided to help me with the baby afghan I am working on. Her version of helping involved taking my scissors and chopping a big hole right into the center of it. Cool trick, right? So, I had to spend some time taking stitches out far enough back to tie in a piece of yarn and restitch the hole closed. In the amount of time it took me to fix that granny square I could have made two more. I should have known that she'd grab the scissors, but since I need them very frequently for the pattern I had them down next to me.

After I got done dealing with Abby's creativity, Maize decided to get sick and throw up on Abby's doll blanket and zebra toy. It wouldn't have been so bad, but I was on the phone and holding a baby, so I couldn't really grab her and chuck her out the door like I normally do. At least Abby didn't get into the "dog yuckies" and I just was able to grab most of it up on the doll blanket and throw it all away.

And it rained most of the day, so I had a bored out of her gourd little girl. I had to rearrange our furniture because she decided to climb over the back of the futon and walk along the window sills. Not really the best use of the sills and not a safe habit to start once we have the windows open during the summer. I liked the old configuration better, but you have to prevent unnecessary damage to children and window screens any way possible.

Best for last... Abby actually used her potty today, so tonight I put her back on it 2 hours after she had last had a diaper change. She was still dry so I knew she had to go pretty quick. 30 minutes later I gave up and put her diaper back on. I don't think I even had it velcroed before she was peeing in it. I swear this kid will be wearing a diaper to kindergarten. Oh well... then it will be her teachers problem and not mine.

Big Sister/Little Sister

Olivia can finally fit into her little sister shirt, so today the girls wore their shirts. Unfortunately they had to wear them under sweatshirts since it was chilly and rainy all day.

Steve had the day off (it's Native American Day), so we enjoyed a day of playing with dad and had lunch out with Dr. Moody and his wife Dina. Abby really enjoyed some special time with Daddy.

Interrupted

So I got interrupted when I was posting earlier by a little person who needed a new diaper. She normally doesn't want a new one but this diaper "spilled" - or in big people terms it leaked all over the floor and her pajamas. Yuck!

We went to the park for Abby's playgroup and made it about 45 minutes before we were frozen out. It was 55 degrees out according to the car thermometer, but the wind was about 2o to 30 miles per hour, so it felt more like 40. Olivia was nice and warm in her car seat with the shade pulled up, but Abby and I were just a bit chilled.

New Toys

We spent yesterday playing with our new toys and fixing up our
backyard. Abby and I have been playing lots of games and watching
Disney songs and Sesame Street videos on the new iPod. We also planted
some lilac bushes in the backyard to create a hedge behind the
swingset and hopefully someday block out the 5 yippy dogs in the
neighbors yard. I tried to get Abby to check out the worms I
unearthed, but she was uninterested. She was too busy digging with her
new shovels for her sandbox.

We also got rid of a HUGE pile of wood that was in our backyard thanks
to Dr. Dave. Pretty soon we will have something that almost resembles
a normal backyard. And Steve installed a swing on the swingset for
Abby so she has been busy breaking that in too.

Sent from my iPod

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mudder's Day to my Momma and Happy Mother's Day to Mom O. and all of our grandmas. We sure love you guys!

We had a rather boring day at home yesterday - it rained and snowed on and off all day, so we couldn't get outside to play like we had planned. Instead we worked on some laundry and Abby had a royal ball with her dad. She had a great time wearing her lovely Belle dress from "Hannah and Emmy" and we had to peel it off of her to get her into bed last night. Olivia did what she does best right now and slept through most of the day. They are both doing that again right now while Steve mows the lawn and I am working on setting up my new iPod touch (thanks to Steve for picking out a pretty cool Mother's Day present and leaving it in Olivia's bassinet with her this morning).

We had Abby's first successful solo trip to the nursery this morning since the arrival of Olivia. She was very impressed with herself afterward since both Steve and I made sure to tell her how proud we were of her bravery and helpfulness. I'm hoping this will lead to many other successful stays on Sunday mornings. It would look awfully bad for the nursery director to be the one paged back to collect a child.

Rivalry

Abby and Maize have been fighting tonight. So far the score is Maize 2 - Abby 0. First Maize stole the all important cheeto, which we just brought home from our Mom and Abby date to the grocery store. Then Abby pulled Maize's ear in retaliation. I told her to stop pulling on Maize's ears, but she chose not to listen to Mom. So, Maize used dog language to tell Abby to stop pulling on her ear (dog language in the form of putting Abby's forearm into her mouth but not biting down). Needless to say the parties have been separated and are awaiting their mediation appointment tomorrow morning.

Almost Swinging

Our swing set is just 3 boards and 4 stakes away from being totally finished. Steve has done an amazing job putting it together - it looks great. Abby has already been enjoying lots of rides down the slide and will be swinging away as soon as we have the stakes in and the swings up. It is going to be a whole lot of fun to play in our backyard this summer. Now we just need to get a play date schedule set up.

Abby and I also did some sewing today and made a blanket for our friends Andrea and Kevin - they brought home a brand new foster child on Sunday and he needed some manly blankets since their previous foster babies have been girls. We got the little guy set up with a Tigger blanket and can't wait for him and Olivia to get big enough to play together. Now each of Abby's best friends will have little brothers Olivia's age. I have a feeling our little girl may have to be a bit more of a tomboy than her older sister if she is going to have playmates her own age.

Olivia is still growing like a weed, or maybe I should say like the running bamboo that is taking over my backyard. She is now wearing size 3 to 6 months and we've had to put away all her newborn and 0 to 3 month sized clothing. She wore blue jeans for the first time yesterday. It was so fun to dress her more like her big sister.

Building Time

We have been busy, busy building Abby and Olivia's swing set. I think between Steve and I we have all of the major structures put together and now we just have to get them connected and staked down. Abby has been having a great time watching, helping, and digging as we put up the structure. We should be able to finish it up tonight, I hope.

Abby, Olivia, and I went to playgroup at the park this morning and had a great time visiting and playing with her friends. She may be a social chicken, but she still enjoys getting out and seeing other kids. Other than the building and play grouping, we've been pretty boring around here. Doing laundry, cooking, and doing the normal daily things. Abby wants to be outside all of the time. Olivia wants to eat practically all of the time. I want to sleep basically all day, but I don't get to. The normal stuff...

New Photos on Walmart.com

Abby helped me upload the rest of the photos from March and the ones from April to our Walmart.com photo sharing site. You can get the link on the right hand side of the page to view and order them.

We had a great time yesterday playing with lots of Abby's friends and enjoying a backyard barbecue. Abby played so hard that she ended up climbing onto my lap around 6:30 and falling asleep within about 30 seconds. So I spent about 30 minutes of the party with two small girls sleeping on my lap - adorable, but awkward. I think my arm fell asleep within about 3 minutes.

Today Steve (and me too sometimes) is working on putting together Abby and Olivia's swing set. So far we have the base for the fort and the slide put together. I think Steve is out working on the platform for the slide right now, so maybe by the end of the evening we will have the slide ready to ride on. We'll have to see. The weather is cooperating and so are the little people - for now.

Happy Spring