Speaking of "Smile"

This is one of the many silly things Levi started doing this week. Apparently this block that goes to his wooden train, is the prefect camera.

He walked around most of the evening on Tuesday telling us to "smile".

I'm telling you, this kid is quite the character. He's got some really funny dance moves we need to show off one of these days too.

I've surrendered

to stickers!
They are literally all over our house. See:

Even Levi's favorite race car has to have stickers on him.Sure, I could make a rule about where stickers go...but parenting is all about choosing your battles right? And this isn't a battle I feel is worth fighting. Especially since we've seen some "terrible two" behavior for the first time this week. Levi's decided he has to cover his face and cry when he doesn't get his way. Like when he's told he can't take 4 race cars to bed with him.

Well, Gabe's at work today. So Levi and I went to Target this morning and then decided this rainy Saturday was perfect for making a fort under the dinning room table.

This is Levi's new smile. I guess it's what I should expect when I say... "smile".

Trick or Treat

That's been Levi's favorite saying this week. (Even though the kid still hasn't gone trick-or-treating...maybe next year. I don't really get the point taking a kid as young as he is.)

We went to the zoo on Saturday so Levi could wear his costume and see other kids dressed up.
It was cool and foggy.
Perfectly creepy.
Here's our little spider all dressed up.I should probably mention that at one point (not that long ago) Levi was terrified of spiders.
But when I started asking him what he wanted to dress up as, he insisted it had to be a spider. He's now been talking about it for months. I guess he's over that fear!

Levi and I also decided to make Halloween treats on Saturday.
Since Gabe and I aren't huge sugar cookie fans (and because I didn't want to deal with the mess of frosting) we made gingerbread cookies.I think someone just likes to help mommy so he gets a treat in the process.Here are our finished cats, moons and pumpkins.

Now I've got to go so Gabe and I can watch the third episode of this.
And I'll be up all night tossing, turning and having bad dreams that zombies are after me!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Dodge Ball!

Levi's been taking a sports class at the community center this month on Thursday mornings. It's for kids age 2 to 4 so he's one of the youngest in the class. The first week they played soccer, second week they played basketball, and the third week they played baseball. Well, I got to join Levi and Grandma in class this week because we had evening conferences at school on Thursday. This week we got to play "dodge ball". The coach modified it so it was basically tag. The coach told the kids to throw the ball to get each other out. Levi sure was good at running around the gym, away from the kids with the ball. But when his team had the ball, he didn't really get the throwing-it-at-someone-to-get-them-out idea.
Here's Levi sitting with some of the other boys on his team when they were tagged out. (Along with their coach)
When class is over, they open up the whole gym and have an indoor play park. There's lots of toys to ride on and mats to jump on. Levi's favorite thing?
The scooter!Might have to look for one on Craig's list this spring.

For the love of fall

Fall is my favorite season.
I wish I could say it's my favorite time of year, but returning to work/school sorta bumps it out of that category.
I love fall because along with the clear cool days and beautiful changing leaves comes...
the search for the great pumpkin,
and a strong little boy showing off the perfect one.

Trips to pick apples include...
playing on big tractors,
checking out the cool hand cranked apple peeler and slicer,and enjoying fried biscuits and apple butter.

But maybe the best thing about fall is...
running through the rows of apple trees while eating an entire apple.

Clearly we had trouble getting this kid to stop enjoying his apple and take a picture.
Hope you're enjoying autumn as much as we are!

Go Ahead and Jump!

Levi has been working on his jumping for a while and has finally gotten off the ground. He's getting pretty good now we though you might like to see.

If you are into jumping videos, these may also interest you.

Jump
-or-
Jump

-Gabe

A Happy 7th Anniversary

Time sure does fly.
It's hard to believe, 7 years ago, this important event happened.
We've had 7 really great years. We've been extremely blessed.
I am thankful for this amazing man. He's a wonderful husband and a great father.
We joke when we're alone that all we do is talk about Levi. Of course, there's some of that because we love him and we miss him. But the truth is, we still have a great time together.

Being without our little man allowed us to enjoy dinners after 6pm and listening to this album. Which we both love, but it isn't really appropriate for young ears and a little mouth that repeats everything heard. Oh, and I can't forget the best thing of all...sleeping until 8:30 and enjoying coffee in bed.
This weekend was filled with moments we enjoyed together.
We stop to enjoy the view.We "laughed" as Gabe kicked my butt at every game we played. (Well, he laughed while I tried to hide how frustrated every defeat made me feel. I'm a bit of a poor looser.)We enjoyed one of the many things Gabe does perfectly. Seriously, if you've never had a s'more made by Gabe, you are missing one of the most delicious experiences in life.And we enjoyed some perfect beach weather. Perfect!

Eat it up!

Before I share the photo of the week, I have to share a Levi-ism. He says so many silly things now and I need to be better about writing them down.
One of his favorite expressions is: "Eat it up"! Often followed by naming what he wants to eat up.
Sometimes it's food. Like the big display of pumpkins outside Trader Joe's. Some times it's objects like the trimet bus. Sometimes it's disgusting things like poopy diapers (I think he just says that one because we make a big silly deal about how gross that is). And sometimes it's people.
It reminds me of this book.
The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind
and another
his mother called him "WILD THING!"
and Max said "I'LL EAT YOU UP!"
so he was sent to bed without eating anything.

Well, this was the conversation we had on the way home from running errands this morning.
Levi: Sun is hiding.
Me: Really? Where?
Levi: Behind clouds.
Me: Tell the sun to come out.
Levi: Come out sun.
Levi: Eat sun up.
Me: I don't know about that.
Levi: Hot (referring to the sun of course)
Me: That's right, the sun is hot.
Levi: Daddy blow on it.

Now for the photo. Gabe and I are leaving Levi with Grandma and Grandpa G this weekend. We're going to the coast for the weekend without Levi to celebrate our 7th anniversary. So here's an early photo of the week. We can hardly get this kid to play with anything other than race cars!

Handy Men

Here are my handy men hard at work again.
We got a new entertainment unit a few weeks ago, only to discover that the receiver barely fits into it. So Gabe bought, and installed, a little fan to keep the unit cool. Of course Levi had to assist in the installation.

We might have a little boy who wears big boy underwear here pretty soon. He's gone poop on his little toilet 3 times in the last week or so, and goes pee almost every night before bed. He's excited about getting to wear big boy underwear. Not so thrilled about telling us when he needs to go. That's why we haven't "officially" started the whole potty training thing. This kid has never been too unhappy when he's poopy or wet...we'll see how it goes!

Play with your food

or raspberries at least!More evidence that I'm not kidding when I say this kid is in love with berries. He and I had some really good laugh this week at dinner. He'd put berries on his fingers and then tell me to take more pictures. He is definitely at a very silly stage right now and we're loving his goofy personality.

What I'm not loving is the headache and stomach flu(?) I've been fighting for the last three days. I really hope I'm sick and it's not the stress at work making me sick. I've spent most of the day in bed. Levi and Gabe ran errands without me. Hoping I'll be up to some fun tomorrow. Although I did bring a big basket of work home with me. And, of course, left the most pressing work sitting on my desk.

Keep Away

The only pictures I have this week, come from our trip to the zoo this morning. I've got to get into the routine of taking photos in the evening, but this week was crazy busy (back-to-school night on Tuesday so I didn't make it home until after 8pm) and that didn't help.

As you can see, the elephants were playing a fun game of keep away today. We enjoyed watching them play with their ball, jumping in and out of their pool.

Levi also got to take his first ride on the zoo train today. Here he is waiting in line to board.And here's one of Levi and daddy on the train.
Turned out to be a perfect morning. This was probably the last sunny zoo trip of the year.

Crawdad hunt

We were up, and at the creek, bright and early with Gabe's dad and Joanne Saturday morning. We were ready to catch us some crawdads.As soon as the bait was set in the creek, Levi started calling out-"See one" whenever a new crawdad would come out of hiding.
In just a few hours we caught about 300 crawdads.
That was the easy part.
The cooking and cleaning over 300 crawdads is not so fun.

Here's Levi bravely showing off one of our soon to be boiled crawdads. (They are a bit easier to handle when they've just come out of a cooler filled with ice.)
And of course he had to give a crawdaddy kiss. Wouldn't be a complete trip to the creek without crawdaddy kisses.
Before we headed home on Sunday, we took a little trip out to Gabe's aunt Jaki's house. We picked some apples to take home.
Using the tractor instead of a ladder is apparently the best way to pick them.And we fed some apples to the cows too. Those girls sure love their apples.It sure was a fun time! And Levi even loved eating the crawdads as much as he loved helping dad catch them.

Happy Birthday to Me!

I had lots of help celebrating my birthday this year.

Someone helped me blow out my candles.Someone also helped me open all my gifts. Actually, I should say I was the one who helped open gifts because the only ones I got to open myself were the ones I opened after my helper was in bed.For my birthday, Gabe and I were also able to enjoy one of the best meals of our life (here). We've read a lot about the chef (she competed on Top Chef Masters) and her restaurant. But the price of the meal meant we needed to go for a special occasion. We decided my birthday was finally the perfect excuse. And I'm not kidding. The meal was amazing. 6 courses. 2 1/2 hours. The main dish was a cognac brined pork loin with house cured green cabbage, pickled wild plum relish, a parsley sauce, and duck & veal demi-glaze. AMAZING! But I think the soup course might have been my favorite. A wonderful cream of fennel soup with sake cured salmon roe that exploded in your mouth. It was a wonderful meal. The perfect ending to celebrate growing yet another year older.

Canning

We canned our first batch of tomatoes last week.
And this is the extent to which Levi helped us.Not sure what he thinks this jar lifter is really for...
some sort of back brace perhaps.

We've had a busy week. Lots of birthday celebrations I hope to share about later this evening. And a fun weekend splashing in the creek catching crawdads. I'll try and get some more posts up here in the next few days between more canning, laundry and making apple sauce.

14

That's the total number of pictures I took this week.
Sad isn't it?
With so few pictures to choose from this week, this is the only one I've got that comes with a little story. Along with Levi's continued obsession with skateboards (anyone know if they make skateboards for 2 1/2 year olds? Cause Santa may have to bring this kid one!), he is also currently obsessed with race cars and putting things in neat little lines. This line of cars was complete before Levi decided one ATV needed to take a spin along the edge of the couch. This current obsession with cars also includes reading this book at nap time and bed time. EVERY DAY! Good thing the pictures are so nice and the rhyming is actually done so well. If that weren't the case, Levi would be really upset when the book went mysteriously "missing". (Like I'm about to do with this book...another one of Levi's favorites. But not Mom's.)

Sorry that's all I've got this week. I'm lucky I survived the 90 degree weather in my not air conditioned class room with 35 8th graders. Yes...you heard that right. Class sizes are out of control this year and I have between 32 and 35 students in all 6 classes. I've never taught in conditions like this...I'm hoping for the best.

Unofficial last weekend of summer

We spent our labor day weekend doing just as the name implies...laboring. Getting some much needed work done around the house isn't exactly the ideal way to spend summer's final weekend, but it actually felt really good. Minus my aching back and thigh muscles.

We washed the cars (inside and out). I actually can't remember the last time they were washed.

We worked some more on clearing out the blackberries and English ivy from the side of our yard by the street. (Gabe's actually been working on this off and on for the last month.) We paid some landscapers to clear it and take all the debris away last month, but Gabe has been wrestling with the ivy ever since. Thankfully, it's pretty much clear now. We just need to haul away all the mess. We even planted a few more trees and will cover everything in mulch, in hopes that will help keep away the undesirable blackberries and ivy. But we'll have to keep on top of it better than the previous homeowners did...

See that bamboo behind Gabe? You couldn't even see it there before, the blackberries were that out of control!
Gabe also replaced some outside light fixtures that weren't to our liking. With the new paint job, we felt new lights would be another good addition to our new curb appeal.

Between all our hard work we did manage to squeeze in:
-lots of back yard pool time
-some delicious BBQ

oh, and this too!

-a walk to the park to play
-a sunrise trip to photograph my favorite flower. (Although Gabe was the only one out of bed at 5am on Sunday morning to do the photographing.)


-a picnic lunch in the backyard
-getting a blackberry pie made. It may not be the prettiest pie ever...but I sure hope it tastes good!

-going to see this with my mom and Becky
-and lots of time just being silly!

Oh, by they way, I am not ready for the summer to be over! Can I please get a one week extension?

Time with Grandma(s) at the zoo

Monday morning was cold and a bit wet. But Levi, Grandma G and I still met Peggy, the boys and Grandma Grass at the zoo anyway. It was fun to explore the zoo with the kids and their grandmas.
I thought Levi would love playing on the tractor in the farm/petting zoo, but he really didn't like it. Usually there are so many kids climbing on it he doesn't get a chance.

But Z really liked the big tractor!

Despite the rain, the polar bears decided to come out and play! That almost never happens!
Levi and I didn't get much more play time in this week. Going back to work really puts a damper on our play time...