The Great Outdoors

In the past 5 days, we've gotten an insta-yard (sod in the front....soon to have sod in the back), been to the zoo, and Connor helped me plant a few more perennials. We got a HUGE rain on Friday night (after the sod) but since then it has been HOT HOT HOT. For Michigan, upper 80s, lower 90s is HOT.

Here are a few yard pictures. I'll add some of our beach, wall, and backyard as soon as that sod is done. (hopefully later this week)

On Saturday, while Pat and Leslie were still here, we went to the John Ball Zoo, here in Grand Rapids. It is a small zoo, but perfect for someone Connor's age! It was fun and I'd love to go back!

And lastly, here are the dirt pictures. Connor was an amazing "helper" and just had to play in the dirt. I was very surprised he wasn't hesitant to crawl in the mulch at all...heck, it hurts my knees!He got in every hole I dug.

Texas LPS3

more to come tomorrow...time for bed.
















LOST PICTURES Series #3

Miscellaneous at Home (LPS2)

LOST PICTURES Series #2

One of my all-time favorites. Connor acting like Mitsy!
(a little gross, I know, but she doesn't hold it by the tail)

Connor's first time crawling up stairs!!!

Another Frog Hollow attraction....funny mirrors.

Connor swinging at Frog Hollow, park.

Dutch dancers at the Queens Day Celebration in Holland.

Feeding the goats in Holland, MI.

Connor's First MLB Game LPS1

Part 1 in the LOST PICTURES Series....will add dates later.

Detroit Tigers vs. Cleveland Indians

pre-game picture of the boys in their Tribe gear. :)

Meet Kyleen, the Killdeer

The guy that is installing our retaining/beach wall was scoping out the grounds and found a little Killdeer nest. That began our Killdeer education. Killdeers nest on the ground, usually near some gravel that they bring into their nests.

When Kyleen's nest was found, there were two eggs...

.....then 3.....and now, a total of 4!

Brian did a little research and the egg incubation period is about twice as long as most birds because when they hatch, they can move/walk immediately.Sitting on her nest (marked with a flag so no one accidentally gets too close or hurts the eggs).

The most interesting part of this whole ordeal has been watching her protect her baby eggs. At first, she ran away from her nest to try to draw you, the predator, away. Then, the show begins. Both the mama and I think the daddy start to create a diversion and go into a dramatic "broken wing" show. It is LOUD and very interesting.

Now that the babies are getting closer to hatching, she doesn't really do the "run" part of her diversion process. She pretty much looks like she is about to attack and peck the crap out of my feet. Here is a video I took today with our new little camera. I kept it pretty short so I knew it would upload here.

Brian found a few videos online of the baby Killdeers and we are so excited for them to hatch. Some of the videos show them actually crawling into people's hands! Hopefully we are just as fortunate.

Stay tuned...

I Finally Have Time to Breathe

The past few weeks have been more than a little bit busy. (hard drive crash, hosting neighborhood bunco, landscaping, CATALOG, and chasing around a bouncing baby boy!)

I am so happy to say that the catalog I've been working on for the National Book Network went to press on Friday. It was supposed to be a 30 page catalog that ended up being 76 pages. I knew I'd have some sleepless nights working on it, but I seriously don't know that I would have been able to pull it off if my mom hadn't been in town all last week. I absolutely hated that we didn't get to do more fun stuff because I was working basically the whole time, but thankfully I have a son that is pretty fun and I think they entertained each other. :) (Love you mom....thank you for coming, I couldn't have done it without you!!! Oh, and Connor loves his "Nana" too.---we all like this name and perhaps most importantly, she thinks Connor will be able to say it pretty soon. Hopefully it will stick.)

Since our little camera that takes good movies officially died (and our other one took awful movies) we are now the new owners of a little Kodak camera that takes great movies...but I haven't figured out how to make them small enough to upload here. So, I'm adding some that my mom took during her stay. Oh yeah, mom also taught him to wave bye bye! They said "bye" to EVERYTHING and he finally got it. :) We get a kick out of it every time he does it.....see bottom video.

My mom decided to document the action that I spend lots o f time preventing (she did it all week...) Constantly in the cabinets, opening the trash (and pulling stuff out) or in the bathrooms unrolling toilet paper or trying to reach in if we forgot to close the lid!

The boy loves to "talk". :) I just hope he doesn't have multiple personalities that we don't know about yet! It's as if he's carrying on several conversations at once!

On a VERY VERY VERY EXCITING note....I just got a Facebook message from one of my new neighbors that is also a photographer and she has software to recover pictures off SD cards that have already been deleted. There were about 600 pictures on the card that I uploaded right before the crash and so far, she has gotten back over 400 and when she sent me the message, it was still going!!! You have NO IDEA how excited I am! I hope to be posting all sorts of "old" pictures soon. A few events you can (hopefully) look forward to ar e 1—Connor's first MLB game, 2—Texas trip, 3—Connor and Brian on a longhorn steer, 4—Grant & Carrie's visit go Michigan, 5—many others including my favorite of Connor with Mitsy's mouse. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight from all the excitement!

I am going to have to do another post tomorrow because I am so far behind on my updating. To up the excitement....you'll meet Kyleen, the Killdeer bird who is nesting in our yard. We are eagerly anticipating the hatching of 4 baby Killdeer birds. :)