She's Mobile!

In her own special way Ella is now on the move! The banging in the background is Owen "fixing" our front door!

Who's Your Favorite?

Jack's obsession with Woody & Buzz is still going strong. Here's a little video of him talking about them. The ending is just precious!

Who's There?

Owen loves to play with this old Fisher-Price house we have. He also loves to ring our doorbell and say, "Who's there?" and then come busting through the door. So this is the miniature version of that!

Expressive Ella!

While Daddy was working on the tire swing Mama was having fun taking pictures of Ella. I did pull weeds out of my half of my garden bed (see in the background) so I did work too! ;)

Precious little smiler!

This is her new thing where she tilts her head to the side when she gets shy.

Love this look! Then I had the audacity to put her in her exersaucer!

Life is rough when your 7 months old!

No Yard Is Complete Without A Tire Swing!

Yesterday morning I was trying to figure out what we should do since the weather was going to be so nice. I didn't want to waste what might be our last really nice day by staying inside. I thought we could go on a hike, but I couldn't make my mind up as to where we should go. Then it hit me...we still have one more project in the backyard to finish up. So a planted the seed in Owen's ear and it was all downhill for Michael after that. All he heard after that was, "Daddy are you going to make me tire swing?" I know I'm evil! :)

Owen of course chipped in and "helped" Daddy!

When I first got the idea of having Michael put a tire swing in the backyard I search online and found this great tutorial with pictures.

After Michael got the tire all prepped and the hardware installed on it he had to go about trimming the tree so the tire swing would swing freely. He needed to cut two branches off. The two smaller ones below the big one.

Michael Dad stores a bunch of stuff in our basement and he had this cool expandable saw so Michael used this to cut the branches.

One branch down...one to go!

All trimmed up!

Then Michael had to climb the tree in order to put the chain up. This was the part we thought would be easy, but it took longer than all the other steps combined. Mainly because we found out once Michael got up there that we had a connector link that was too big for the chain we bought so off to the hardware store we went.

Once we got the right size connector link Michael had to climb the tree again and then again two more times to adjust the height.

Perfecto!

The boys absolutely LOVE it! I was really surprised that it only took an afternoon to complete this project start to finish, but it really was easy...those are Michael's words not mine! It was super nice to have that tutorial so we knew exactly what hardware we needed for the job.

So with that said...it's official...THE BACKYARD IS COMPLETE...until next year! ;)

The View From Here!

Five times a day a have the honor of nursing my baby girl...meeting both her nutritional and emotional needs. It's a closeness that I have yet to find in another situation.

Do The Puyallup!

This was at 11:30 in the morning! He was already tuckered out...not a good sign right!

Our first stop before getting to the fair was at my friend Melody's house. She lives really close to the fair and offered to let us park in her driveway. Since we went during the middle of the week and it was raining out there really wasn't a need...it was sure nice to see her in person though. :) Thanks for the garage bags too Melody!

Since it was raining and we weren't sure if it was going to get worse or not during the day Michael wanted to pay for parking so we'd be really close. I needed to nurse Ella before we headed out as well.

Since Jack was already asleep it was nice that he was able to stay asleep for a while longer. Owen also got to have a snack.


Daddy took a pretty good self portrait of himself. He was a bit of a distraction for Ella though.

She wasn't really interested in eating since she could lean back and look at her Daddy.

This time around we remembered to bring the back pack. I bought this originally for our trip to the Puyallup Fair 2 years ago and Owen still loves riding on Daddy's back.

Since Kim had baby Josiah on Sunday I need to give her Baby Bjorn back to her. I even washed it the other day and then remembered I wanted to use it one last time for our trip to the fair. Ella drooled all over it so I'll be washing it again!

Jack got to ride in the stroller for most of the day. We also decided that since our boys are such picky eaters we would pack them a lunch instead. Ga-Ga bought the boys their lunch packs at Toys R Us. Jack had to hold his anytime he was sitting in the stroller.

Owen loved going on the rides last year so we knew he would want to go, but we weren't sure about Jack. I went ahead and bought two dizzy passes online just in case. One of my other friends Tricia gave us two free tickets to get into the fair so we didn't have to pay for that.

First ride was the antique carousel...the boys love carousels!

Next stop was the animals....baby chicks!

And goats!

After eating lunch it was time for more rides. A lot more...Rockets...

Canoes...

Cars...

Break for cotton candy! Then more rides...

Firetruck...

Airplanes...

The fair tuckered someone else out!

More rides...helicopters...

Trucks...(this was Owen's favorite ride)

Swings...

Jack tried to take another nap, but there was too much fun to be had.

Time for boats...our friends Erin, Jeremy and their kids Cameron and Haley came with us. Cameron was not interested in going on the rides in the beginning, but once he saw how much fun Owen and Jack were having he decided to join in. It was fun seeing him come out of his shell like that.

The girls just chilling out!

Ella doesn't really like the stroller...at all! Mama's back was hurting me after carrying her for so long so she got to ride in the backpack on Daddy.

Towards the end of our outing the boys wanted to do this obstacle course. Jack had trouble climbing up the rope ladder, but the worker let him bypass it so he could get to the pool of balls instead.

He looks pretty excited and he did jump right in.

But this is about as far as he got. I ended up having to go in to rescue him because he couldn't lift his legs high enough to walk out. Cute shrimpo!

Owen on the other hand had a blast!!!

A few more actual rides were in order. On this particular ride the lady wanted to measure Jack, he's not actually 36 inches tall yet so he couldn't go on. None of the other ride attendants bothered to measure him though so this was the only one missed out on. He was bummed!

Jeremy was nice enough to take our picture...can you tell he's a tall guy?

It was fun hanging out them. I hope we can go to the fair with them next year!

As we were heading out we saw a couple more rides that the boys had to go on. It was so much fun seeing the enjoyment they got from all this excitment.

We ended up staying for about 5 hours and it was a blast. The only we missed out on was seeing more of the animals. But the boys throughly enjoyed themselves and we enjoyed watching them have fun. And the rain wasn't even an issue!