Clarke and Char Round 2

When Clarke and Char passed through on their way home, we were excited that they decided to stay a few extra days. On Thursday morning we went to Kirtland for a quick Church tour. I think this was Char's first time seeing everything.

Clarke, Andrew, Charlotte, Lucy, Me, & Sydney in front of the Whitney Store.

My favorite room in here is the School of the Prophets. Whenever the Sister missionaries read the testimonies of men who witnessed Christ's appearance there, I am overwhelmed with the feeling that it is a sacred and special place.

After the tour we enjoyed having a picnic next to the Visitor's Center.

We had already made plans to go to the Kirtland Strawberry Festival with the Heaton's on Saturday afternoon, so after the rainclouds cleared away we all headed up to check it out.

Me, Stacey, and one of many signs falsely advertising the focus of this event.

I'm pretty sure everything I read about the festival online said there would tons of strawberries (including chocolate covered!) and strawberry shortcake. In reality it was like 1% berry and 99% carnival. Either way, the kids were in heaven with all the rides, and the adults had fun too.

Jack and Andrew on the Honey Pot ride.

Of course my favorite part of this ride was the sign outlining conditions of people that should avoid going on it. Click on the pic to check it out.

Talk about cautious! Now I'm no doctor, but I don't think the Honey Pot ride was so crazy that it would cause a serious spike in someone's blood pressure. I think it spun around at like 5 mph, I don't even think the bears moved up and down.

Lucky for us, Sydney is too small to care about going on rides. So instead of spending our money on that, we spent it on treats.

Lucy, Clarke, and Spencer enjoying some kettle corn.

Ahh, kettle corn. We can never resist (and Spencer can never resist buying the HUGEST bag available). We also had corn dogs for lunch- it was a very healthy day. I don't think I've had a corn dog since I was like 10 years old. No joke, it really hit the spot.

Me and Sydney.

Thanks Clarke and Char for visiting us! Hope you had as much fun as we did!

Busy Bees

Last week was one of the busiest I've had in a while! To start the week off, Clarke and Charlotte came to visit for a few days. They were passing through as part of a road trip to Boston, and we were excited to be right on their way. It's always fun to hang out with family.

A few hours after they left on Wednesday, Sydney and I headed down to Marietta for a mid-week family reunion (minus Spencer and Dan) at Wendy's house. It was my first time visiting them in their new place, and they hadn't seen Sydney since last Thanksgiving.

Their beautiful home.

I was a bit frazzled when we arrived because Sydney had been screaming for the last hour of our drive. Wendy and all the kids were waiting outside for us when we got there.

Mom, Dad, Shauna, and James came the following morning.

Allison and Elayna.

Allison was cracking me up because she asked Shauna lots of personal questions about her being pregnant (reminiscent of Dallin's fertilization question he asked me a few Christmases ago). Shauna eventually told her she didn't feel comfortable talking about it. Elayna loved brushing my hair. She has definitely made the jump from toddler to big kid since the last time I saw her.

Little Riley loved holding Sydney.

I told all the girls that my rules for holding Sydney were: 1.) they had to sit down when holding her, and 2.) I had to be nearby. Riley kept asking my why they had to sit down (after all, she has been holding her younger siblings for years). I just had to tell her it was because Sydney is my baby so I get to make the rules for holding her. I'm sure I threw the word "paranoia" in my explanation somewhere too.

James loved playing with his cousins, and he also loved playing that guitar!

Dallin and Dad spent lots of time in the basement playing the Wii. I can't believe Dallin is almost 9 years old.

Me, Sydney, & Shauna.

On Friday morning, Wendy, Shauna, and I went downtown to check out some cute shops. It was fun to hang out with my sisters, and I got lots of ideas for stuff I could totally make myself.

James was having a ball enjoying lots of free rides on this horse. Sydney and I headed home after we were done shopping.

On Saturday we went to the Lake Farm Park in Kirtland. Since Spencer is on active duty right now, our whole family totally got in free! It was "Working Dog Weekend," so there were tons of people there showing off their dogs. Spencer spent lots of time trying to convince me that we need one :) I hardly took any pictures, but here are the few we managed to get:

This picture doesn't do that bunny justice. It was the fattest, hugest rabbit I have ever seen!

Family pic.

We had lots of fun and look forward to going again! After such a busy week, I was certainly grateful for a day of rest on Sunday. I enjoyed a nice long nap after church :)

7 months

Where has the time gone? The newness of each stage makes me feel like Sydney is still brand new even though she's been with us for over half a year. We are having so much fun with her and love having her in our family.


Some milestones from month 7:

• Growling. Oh how we love the sound of it! Totally cracks us up.
• Getting up on all fours and rocking back and forth.

• Grabbing and yanking my hair. I'm not a huge fan of this one.
• Eating more pureed foods, or "people food" as we like to call it (eg. "Hey Spencer, will you give her some people food while I get _____ ready?"). So far she's tried peas, green beans, carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, pears, applesauce, bananas (she's not so fond of Gerber's version of this, but likes them when we mash them up ourselves), and peaches.
• Saying "ma ma."
• Sitting up on her own, but just for a (very) little while at a time.
  

She's also getting more attached to me and tends to cry if she sees me leave the room. Spencer is getting really good at making her laugh, and I have my moments too. Other people generally comment on what a happy and content little baby she is.

A few weeks ago Sydney also got to meet my friend Antoinette, a fellow Highland High Alumni. We chatted at Panera for like 2 hours, and Sydney was an angel the whole time.

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!