Happy (Early) Father's Day

I surprised Spencer with some Cavs tickets for last night's Playoff game and counted it as an early Father's Day present. I figured he would pee his pants just to be there, even if he did have to sit in the nosebleeds.

When Sydney and I went to greet him when he got home from school, this card was hanging around her neck and I had a baggie of candy for him.

He read the card and was like, "Oh, thanks." I'd been SO excited to give it to him all day, so I was a little sad he seemed so underwhelmed. I asked him if he had already figured it out, and his response didn't really make sense to me. Then I told him the bag of candy was for him to sneak into the game, and he looked confused. "Wait, what?" he said.

"The Cavs game tonight," I responded. He looked confused again. "You're going to the game. I bought you a ticket."

Then it all clicked, and I got the excited response I'd been hoping for. I guess the card didn't spell it out clearly enough. He was planning on watching the game at home and taking care of Sydney while I went to a Pampered Chef party, so he thought the LeBron pop-up was just alluding to that. Later when he told a friend on the phone that he was going to the game, he said "I didn't know my wife loved me that much."

Well, I do Spencer (and even more, actually).

P.S. I told him to take the camera to get lots of pics for the blog, and this was the only one he took:

Not even in the Q. LAME! We're so excited they won though!

Lakeside

Our second annual Memorial Day trip was a success! I was so excited for Spencer to come with me this year since I was flying solo last time, and we invited our friends Justin and Stacey to come with us too. We had such a fun time with our family and friends.

This is the cute cottage we stayed in. We only rented out the top 2 floors, and it was still ginormous!

It had two super steep spiral staircases that rivaled those in the Kirtland Temple.

It wasn't easy carrying a car seat up these babies!

This is the cute room our family stayed in.

On Saturday night we rocked out at a concert- a band of old guys playing 60s music. They were pretty good, but the real entertainment was watching people dance by the stage.

On Sunday we walked to the park, where Sydney enjoyed riding in a swing for the first time.

Then we all took a stroll on this path right along Lake Erie. It was super windy, but we had a fun time looking at the cute cottages and enjoying the view.

All the kiddos: Donny, Jack, James, & Sydney.

Later that afternoon we did our digital picture scavenger hunt in golf carts. Sydney and I had to bail out a few minutes early because she was screaming. There were 4 teams, and we came in 2nd... those Gusty's are hard to beat!

Afterward we headed back to the lake for more pictures, and I knew it was going to be freezing. I packed lots of blankets for Sydney instead of long sleeve shirts, but I just put her in my sweatshirt since they didn't seem to be cutting it.

She was much happier.

My favorite picture from our trip. Aren't they adorable?

Later that night we had a little celebration for James' and Melissa's birthdays.

Then we watched the Cav's game. Bummer.

Shauna, Dan, Donny, Tori, & Spencer

We celebrated Memorial Day with a quick parade and a ceremony by the pier.

We were freezing because it was so windy!!

Sydney slept through the program... until the 21 gun salute.

Then we took a few more rides in the golf cart,

kicked some trash in a few games of shuffleboard (sorry Heaton's),

and enjoyed some quality time with family.

We're already looking forward to another sweet trip next year!

Landscaping

As promised, I've put my birthday shovel to good use to tame my front and back flower beds. Then the other day our neighbor ordered way too much mulch for her yard, so she was selling the extras to her neighbors for a steal just to get rid of it. We got 5 wheelbarrows full for $15! It was like Christmas for me (excited about mulch... yet another sign that I'm a bonafide adult).

Front yard before: wild and crazy.

Front yard after: clean and colorful (at least it will be when my flowers get bigger).

A closer look. Those irises are about to pop.

Lots of marigolds, pansies, and a geranium.

Who knew there was an azalea hiding in there?

Back yard: before.
Not the best picture of around the deck, but I think it's pretty clear those plants are out of control.

Back yard: after.
I divided one hosta to get these three. It was so hard to get out of the ground, and even more difficult to cut it up. I had to hack it pretty badly, so I think they're having kind of a rough time with the transplant. Mulch still to come.

Overall, I'm so happy with it! We also have a veggie garden again this year. We're growing tomatoes, a green pepper, and some broccoli. So far everything is looking good, hopefully it will mass produce for us this summer :)

Mission Accomplished

My friend Stacey and I both got sewing machines for Christmas, and we've come up with several projects that we want to do. The first thing on the list was Happy Birthday pennants, so we got together a few weeks ago to put them together. I finished sewing all of the triangles at her house, but they seriously looked horrid. I knew they were too ugly to hang in my house for the next 30 or so years, so the next day I dug out my scraps of fabric and started over. I made some modifications to my original plan (i.e. added fabric to the back of the triangles to make my inability to sew a straight line less obvious), and that made it look a lot better.

I'm really proud of how it turned out!

We ironed on the letters, then outlined them to make them stand out more.

Back view.

I'm excited to use it for many birthdays to come!

Starting Young

Spencer and I play volleyball in a league on Monday nights with other dental students in his class (dead giveaway... our team name is "Gingiva"). Sydney comes with us every week and chills in her car seat, or if she's grumpy she gets passed around to whoever is rotating out at the moment. Last night was our final game of the season, and Patty, our referee, brought Sydney a little present: a mini volleyball. It fits perfectly with our plan to brainwash all of our children to love this sport :)

Have I mentioned she loves to eat the tag on every toy? It's pretty much the first thing she goes for.

American Idol

I voted for him tonight.

It was my first Idol voting experience! I liked Adam quite a bit for a 3-ish week span, but now I think it would be ideal to have Kris and Danny face off. I know the odds aren't good, but it could happen, right?

What Not to Wear

I pretty much love this show. Whenever I watch it I imagine being the "winner" of a new $5000 wardrobe, but then tell myself that although I'm no fashionista, I don't dress badly enough to qualify. However, as I traded out the winter sweaters in my closet for some short-sleeved shirts, I couldn't help but think of one rule Stacey and Clinton ALWAYS give:

No horizontal stripes.

And yet somehow I always get sucked in by their cuteness. In the words of Joey Tribiani, "It's like moth to a flame."

A Little Bullet Happy with Months 5 & 6

Since I neglected to do a "Sydney is 5 months old" post, I'm playing catch-up.

Her biggest developmental milestone was that she learned to roll onto her tummy. Sadly, we actually missed it (twice!). As the story goes, we were having some friends over on the evening of March 27, so I put her on her back in the middle of our family room rug to play with toys while Spencer and I cleaned up other rooms of the house. After a while I heard Sydney crying, and when I came in to see what was up she was on her tummy on the wood floor! I returned her to the rug and put her on her back, then we went back to our respective cleaning tasks. About 5 minutes later I heard more crying. She had rolled onto her tummy again, and we had missed it again.

She also learned to:

• Make lots of spit bubbles, which made us laugh quite a bit. It also made her drool even more, so her shirts were usually soaked through from the neckline to her chest.

• Use her hands and feet to splash the water in the tub.
• Say "ah" while breathing in. Check out a video of it on my cousin Heather's blog.
  
• Eat rice cereal. Well, at least we introduced it for the first time over Conference weekend. Everything that went in was drooled out pretty quickly, and feeding sessions always ended in crying.

Here are some new things she's doing at 6 months:

• Squeals with delight, often instead of laughing.
• Rolls over both ways. She just barrel rolls all around our family room; it's getting harder to contain her!
• Grabs my hair.
• Scratches her head while nursing. I love watching the slightly uncoordinated movement of her fingers when she does this.
• Says "dada" and a labiolingual form of "baba."
• Puts her binky back in her mouth after yanking it out. I'm a big fan of this.
• Sits up with support. She tends to kick her legs, which makes her fall backwards or to the side.
  
• Holds onto her legs and feet, which she pretty much never noticed until a few weeks ago.
• Eats the rice cereal instead of drooling it out.
  
• Her poor little skin around her mouth is constantly red and dry from drooling.
  

I took her in for her 6 month check-up today, and her stats were:

• weight: 13 lbs. 15.8 oz (13th percentile)
• length: 26 in. (59th percentile)
• head circumference: 52nd percentile

We left with 3 more shots and 3 more Snoopy Band-aids on her thighs. Thank goodness there won't be any more of those for a while!