Move over, Griswolds!

Growing up, my dad was always interested in taking family vacations with my sister and me. I saw the Air & Space Museum in DC, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Boll Weevil monument in Alabama, the Space Needle in Seattle, and yes, even the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. And while I didn't always appreciate it at the time, I'm so grateful to have had those experiences looking back. However, I can't help but be a little jealous of this family vacation and the memories it must have created. The dad told his two kids that Ewoks lived in the Sequoia National Park and then photoshopped them into some of their vacation pics once they got home! Dad, where were the Ewoks when we visited?!?

Because I Said So...

Skydiving has claimed the lives of 473 people since 2004. That seems awfully high for an optional activity, doesn't it? So when my kid asks me in 20 years why I'm against it, I'll just direct him to this site and break out the ol' "because I said so" clause.

With the summer in full force we have been taking a ton of family walks. Many times we find ourselves at one of the Beaverdale parks where we recently introduced Asher to the swing set. As you can tell from the photos this is one of his new favorite things.

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Cheeseball!

I had to post this pic I took one morning last month. Asher was up and sooo happy at 5am on a Saturday.

This little cheeseball smile cracks me up everytime I see it. Enjoy!

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Asher Month by Month

We know not all of you get to spend as much time as you'd like with Asher due to the distance between us or how busy everyone's schedules are.

Taking Asher to his 9 month appointment got me thinking about how much he's changed since he was born and since we have been taking photos every month I thought this was a good time to share them with all of you. I can hardly see that little baby who arrived back in September when I look at his more recent photos.

He's such a little sweetheart and loves to smile. I think you'll be able to tell how happy a little boy he is by these photos!

9 Months!

Well Asher is officially past the 9 month mark. We took him to the pediatrician last week for his check up and boy is he growing fast!

He's moved from the 13th percentile to the 52nd percentile in weight after he weighed in at a whopping 20 lbs 15 oz.

Here are a string of candids we snapped before he received his shot. He is a big fan of his little ducky so we brought it to help comfort him. I mean who says you can't look tought holding a duck?!

Niagara Fun

Here are a few quick picks of our trip to Niagara falls. We had a great time and it was Asher's first trip out East!

Clockwise from the top right:

- Brandy and Asher snuggling before dessert at the Red Lantern Inn on the US side of Niagara. We had a late dinner at this local favorite the first evening we were visiting.

- My favorite family pic of the weekend while we were sitting in front of the small rapids on the 3 mile trail are the rapids.

- Lawrence and Asher enjoying the view right above the Cave of the Winds tour.

- Asher looking dashing in his new "northeast" gear. We tried to find Daddy a matching version but it just wasn't to be!

50 and 50

As their website states "the 50 and 50 project, curated by Dan Cassaro, attempts to construct a handsome new way of looking at the United States. Fifty designers, one per state, have illustrated their state motto: a kind of designer's atlas." They just unveiled all 50 state designs, and although Iowa's isn't at the top of my list, design-wise, I still like it enough to want to call a copy my very own and the concept is just plain cool.



Maybe we can get a few different ones from various states we have lived in. Colorado's print isn't bad:

And South Dakota's, although having a decidedly cheesy motto ("Under God the people rule"?!? What year was this created in, 1992?!? I feel like the author had to have tightrolled jeans on when they came up with that one! Or perhaps it would be better suited for the Rocky Mountain high state? Hmmm....), has a nice simple look:

All I have to say is, thank god I don't have any affiliation with New Jersey (as if I haven't thought that enough through the years):

You can also get this beauty (and the others, to be fair) on stretched canvas. Wrong on so many levels.

Happy Anniversary, Part II

No, you didn't miss Part I to our Anniversary this year. I never wrote it. I'm so behind on postings, I never posted a follow up to our anniversary post from last year about the gift I made for Lawrence. It's already made it's appearance on the blog in background photos, but I thought you might still be interested in seeing it. Well, my friend Lacretia will be interested in seeing it. And I'm convinced she's the only one who reads this thing on a regular basis anyway, so here you go, L!

Last year was our fifth (!) wedding anniversary, but with a baby on the way and a basement in the middle of finishing, we decided we didn't want to spend a lot of money on gifts so I figured I would make something meaningful for Lawrence instead of buying something. After much deliberation, I decided to make some artwork for our livingroom with a quote from the lyrics of our first dance at our wedding reception (which incidently was Bon Jovi's "You Had Me From Hello").

I got some thin (1/4") wood vaneered plywood and had the friendly folks at Lowe's cut it down to 3'x4'. Then I took some 2" vinyl letters (note: I also bought 3" but they were way too big by the time I laid it all out) and spelled out the lyrics on the plywood once I had marked off the lines with painters tape. I did do a mock-up on the computer with a similar font so I could try to figure out the line breaks, but it ended up being trial and error as I decided to move around the break between two of the lines once the letters were all on.

After the letters were in place I took off the painters tape and took the whole thing outside to give it a coat of spray paint. Actually, I used two colors of spray paint, one darker blue and one lighter blue/aqua, to give it some variation. I could have given the whole thing a base coat first, but I wanted the wood grain to show through the letters.

Once it was dry, I pulled off the vinyl letters and TA DA.

I didn't give it a clear coat over it or finish off the edges with trim, but those are certainly some options if you're wanting to achieve a similar but different look.

It's found a home on the mantel and I love it. Better yet, Lawrence loves it, too. At least that's what he told me on our anniversary when I gave it to him.

Happy 93

Today is my grandma's birthday. She would have been 93 and I can't believe she's been gone for nearly 6 months. I miss her every day and I'm constantly amazed at the number of things that remind me of her that pop up on a daily basis. So in honor of my grandma, here's a list of 93 things that remind me of her and 93 of the thousands of reasons I miss her so very much.

1. Nutty bars
2. Canasta
3. Scrabble
4. Roses
5. Bananas
6. Banana savers (you know, the things you can buy that will cover 1/2 banana for you? She would only eat just a half at a time and every time I see one of these silly contraptions at the store I think that she's the only one I knew who would use it. Well, her and Lawrence)
7. Coffee creamer
8. Canned cranberries
9. Spaghetti (the last meal she ate at our house was spaghetti that Lawrence made and she raved about it so much she made him promise we would come down and make it for her again)
10. Coke floats
11. Sewing machine
12. Purple (my grandma always told me a story of how purple was my favorite color when I was young and one day at the store I complimented a very large woman on her purple dress - it was a funny story when she told it, but I could never remember a time when purple was my favorite color however I always believed her because her memory was better than mine is)
13. Asher (I'm so glad they had the chance to meet, and he was with me in the room when she passed away - I think they will always be connected because of that)
14. Our staircase (she climbed it like a monkey to get upstairs to see the nursery and I will never forget that sight or the effort that it took her, and she never complained or said she couldn't do it)
15. Hot air balloons
16. Our local coffee shop (we had a nice little lunch there in the fall - I will always chersih the last few meals we were able to have just the two of us when she came up to Des Moines)
17. Laughing
18. Tickling (she and Lawrence would get into tickling contests)
19. Banana bread
20. The blue pitcher
21. My favorite chair
22. Our fireplace mantle (made from timbers from the farm she lived on)
23. Chicken and rice
24. Oatmeal cookies (only my Aunt Janet makes them as good as grandma did)
25. Blue birds
26. Golden finches
27. Hummingbirds
28. Bird feeders
29. "Squinties" (what she would call chipmunks - she hated them!)
30. Cats (she didn't like them either!)
31. Pan fried hamburgers
32. soft, fuzzy cardigans
33. Sunday comics
34. Readers Digest
35. Asher's hands (she commented they looked like he had a manicure they were so perfect the first time she held him)
36. Ham (the only place I would ever eat it is at her house)
37. Cribbage
38. Boggle
39. the 9o'clock nightly news
40. Clone cones
41. Washing dishes by hand
42. White kitchen drying towels
43. family pictures (she insisted on getting photos every time there was a group of us together)
44. shredded wheat
45. frozen blueberries
46. strawberry ice cream
47. bendy straws (she always had them on hand)
48. ice cream cones (she always had those on hand too)
49. wigs
50. veiny hands (from the time I was little I would trace the veins on the back of her hand with my finger- I thought it was magically the way they would pop back up after I pushed them down)
51. Christmas
52. slippers (her last Christmas gift to me was a pair of slippers she bought before she passed away - they had my name written on a slip of paper clipped to the toe. I keep them in my top drawer with the note still attached)
53. Twin beds
54. eyebrow pencils
55. rosy lipstick
56. checkbooks (she would write checks for everything and kept her account balanced all the time)
57. Her bony pointer finger
58. shaking her fist (usually at Lawrence when we were playing cards)
59. Her dainty wrists
60. "Go faster" (anytime you were helping her walk, she always said it was easier for her to go faster so she'd urge you along)
61. seafood
62. Red Lobster
63. tenderloins (but only if you'd split them with her)
64. clip on earrings (she's the only person I've ever known to wear them, and she wore them every day to match her outfit)
65. Sunday mass
66. Worrying
67. My horsehair lamp
68. Coke trays
69. The way her hand would graze the discard pile
70. Aprons (she even would help me make my own when I was little)
71. Fabric pens (she'd let me decorate my aprons with fabric pens)
72. Sunbonnet quilt
73. microwave cake
74. cinnimon raisin bread
75. state quarters
76. journals
77. Satin hands lotion
78. cuckoo clocks
79. pearls
80. coke pencils
81. phone books
82. corded phones
83. my large oak desk
84. Thanksgiving
85. road trip to Louisiana
86. Mezzodi's
87. Atlases
88. Door draft stoppers
89. yellow
90. wildflowers
91. bird baths
92.window blinds
93. Birthdays - she always had such a great time and she loved getting everyone together. I'll always remember hers and the amazing woman it celebrates!

Grandpa Jimmy

A lot of people say that Asher looks like me. You know, mainly because of his pasty white skin tone that we are both blessed with. But I think he looks a lot like my dad. They even make the same expression sometimes...

 

Thanks for coming to visit, Grandpa Jimmy!

Niagara Falls at Night

Here's a few pictures of Niagara Falls that we took on our recent trip... what you can't see in these pictures is the RAT that bit my toe as we were taking in the view that night. Luckily my toe hasn't fallen off yet and I haven't started frothing at the mouth, so I think I will live. Next time, close toed shoes, for sure. The things the guide books don't tell you...

Yes, that is a nice circle of drool on the Baby Bjorn. Thanks for noticing.

Whatever. My kid has teeth. More by the minute. What can you do?

A Cake Made for Wishing

For Lawrence's birthday he had been craving just plain old white cake, but I couldn't give him just a plain cake, so I decided to venture into the world of rainbow cakes. If you follow blogs, you'll have seen the idea pop up many times recently. If you don't follow blogs, you'll be blown away.

 Rainbow cakes just make me happy. It's like biting into the end of the rainbow- I feel like every piece should come with it's very own granted wish! Luckily, it made Lawrence happy, too! Happy Birthday, honey!

I had some leftover cake batter, so I decided to try my hand at rainbow cupcakes, too. Now these I hadn't seen on any blog, I just thought it would be a cute idea and I have to admit, I LOVE how they turned out! I put a little skittle rainbow on the top of each one and dropped them off at the neighbor kids' houses.

I didn't measure them out or bake them in layers or anything, just one spoonful of colored batter at a time, making sure I went all the way to the edges with each layer.

Here's what my kitchen looked like during the process, just in case you were wondering. I think I left one or two bowls still in the cupboard. But it was worth it!

Hiatus.

As my ever-helpful mother pointed out the other day, it's been over a month since our last post. It's been an eventful month, including:
-the aftermath of a car break-in (including stolen purse, wallet, 2 cell phones, check book, and 2 sets of car keys)
- celebrating my first Mother's day
- becoming square foot gardeners
- celebrating my golden birthday
- celebrating Lawrence's 31st birthday (turning 31 sounds kind of lame when you can't put the word "golden" into it)
- a trip to Denver for Brandy
- visits from grandpa Jimmy and grandma Kelly
- countless business trips for Lawrence
- a fun golf outing for LC
- Asher's first plane ride
- a trip to Niagara Falls
- a wonderful Syracuse wedding

Whew, I'm exhausted just thinking about it. I've got lots of photos to upload, and even more from fun times beyond a month ago, so excuse my randomness in the upcoming posts as I share in no particular order. June and July are crazy busy for us both, so I may never get caught up. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Why yes...

We do actually have raccoon prints on the side of the house upon close inspection. Huh. They didn't cover that in home ownership 101.

Coons!

That's what they think is in our chimney! OMG! More to come...

Asher's Christmas list, item #1

Supervisor?

Harley doesn't make for a very helpful office mate! And yes, that would be the camera bag to my $500 camera she is perched on. Awesome. I swear she has a skewed perspective of just how big/small she is. But don't we all???

Happy little woodpecker

In our backyard tree! Good morning!

All I want for Christmas...

...Is my two front teeth! (Yes, I'll do anything to mention Christmas, even in April!)  A few weeks ago Asher welcomed two new buddies to his ever expanding world- two front TEETH! And he didn't even have to wait for Santa to come. He looks awfully cute with them. It almost makes me wish he would only ever have just two front teeth, but I suppose that would just be awkward after a while. In the meantime, we'll just continue to enjoy his (barely) toothy grin.

On a related note, we will soon be switching over to formula!

Waiting...

For 6 month shots. No fun!

You'd think...

That the kid didn't have any toys! It's like a cat with a laundry basket... Or a dog with a sock...

Crazy Hair Day

Just Keep Swimming

Monday night marked another first in Asher's ever-expanding world - Swim Babies class! Lawrence took him in the water while I stood on the side of the pool and took pictures during the 1/2 hour class. He's definitely no Michael Phelps and during the first 10 minutes or so he was really unsure of the whole deal, but once they introduced a few floating toys into the mix for him to "swim" to, he was much more excited. He looked like such a big boy in his swim trunks (thanks to our friend Lindsey for that tip, but that's a story for another post!). We have four more classes during this session so hopefully by the end he will be much more comfortable in the water!

Pre-swim class, just taking it all in!

 Still not so sure about the whole deal!

 Oh yes, once he could go after the floating fish, all was better!

Got it!

 And of course, once he got it, it went straight to his mouth. Just like everything else these days!

Drying off afterwards, still a little unsure about the whole situation!