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. :)

Pictures that were lost forever....

Brian and Amber Beene!

The rehearsal dinner.....very, very good barbque.


Our first wedding dance. :) Connor was fascinated with all the lights and people on the dance floor. He's such a cutie all dressed up....;)

n
i

Brian and Connor's first time riding a Longhorn steer at the Fort Worth Stockyards.
(Brian said when it comes down to it, one of those would kill a buckeye.)

My cousin, Austin, with Connor.

My aunt and uncle (from El Paso) just happened to be in Fort Worth that weekend, so we got to see them too!!

We all remember the big "crash" of 2009 (my hard drive that is) and I lost a bunch of pictures that I'd just put on my computer....a whole month worth actually. We thought they were gone forever, especially after nothing on my hard drive was able to be recovered, even after computer surgery.

Well, while I was hosting our neighborhood Bunco on May 29th, my neighbory/photographer/friend mentioned that she might be able to get some pictures off my SD card. It has been a very hectic 2-3 weeks for all of us, so she was just able to do it, but IT WORKED! Praise God and thank you, Kerry! She was able to recover 604 pictures!!! Some of them are damaged, but the vast majority are just fine. She has given me 2 of the 4 CDs, and I'll get the other two tomorrow. Of course I'm going to spare you from adding ALL of them here, but here are a few of my favorites. :)

Connor Videos

So you can see him in action....if only these accurately showed how he gets into everything...!

Oh, and today has been better. The two little teeth aren't all the way through yet, but he's hanging in there!

Please ignore my gross, extremely dirty feet....I'd been working in the yard. :)

Having a little taste of Brian's push pop.

Going after a ball in the kitchen.

He loves to press the buttons.

Not a Good Day....

Today started out rough and stayed that way.

Connor woke up around midnight and again at 5:30. This means I'm running on sleeping fumes.

However, interrupted sleep doesn't seem to bother him one bit. He is EVERYWHERE now. So far today he has:
1-unrolled 1/2 roll of toilet paper
2-splashed and played in toilet water
3-fallen into our shower and got his arm caught in our shower door (didn't hurt him, just made him mad)
4-he's took one 27 minute nap this morning and 1 nap in the car this afternoon.....that is IT.
5-several outbursts for no apparent reason including 1 very long one in the car all the way home from errands. (20-25 minutes)
6-he also thinks it is hilarious to go straight for the stairs because he knows it brings us running.

That brings me to another frustration of today.....baby gates.
So far, I've bought and returned 3-4 (lost count) gates because they wouldn't work in our space. That was the purpose of one of our errands today. I bought yet another gate only to open it and it is not wide enough. At this point I'm going to order an additional extension even though it already comes with one. A girl down the street has the same gate so I've asked to borrow her extension until mine comes in. Her baby is only 2 weeks old, so I don't think she'll need it right away.

Then, to top off an already frustrating afternoon, Gillware just called and were unable to recover anything from my hard drive. Apparently the "plates" were scratched. I really was hopeful that they would be able to get files....now I'm crushed once again.

I am so tired and there is so much that I need to get done. I really need for Connor to go to sleep now and sleep until about 10:00 tomorrow morning.

Ok, I'm wasting time. Better go.....tomorrow will be better.

———U P D A T E———

I am a horrible mother. Here I am complaining that we've somehow raised a little terror with a day of tantrums, but during his rotisserie chicken dinner tonight I saw two little teeth trying to make their way up in his little mouth. The inexplicable outbursts and fussiness are all forgiven...poor little guy. I should have known better. He rarely fusses or cries without reason. Hopefully as soon as they make it all the way through he'll be a happier little guy.

Also, a baby gate update. Ashley (down the street) lent me her extension so we now have a properly working baby gate! I can relax for a few minutes while he is on the loose! (He is currently swinging around an extension rod....walls and legs beware!

Time for little boys to go to sleep!

VISITORS!

I'm so sad that I don't have a lot more pictures to post here. I lost all that I took during Grant and Carrie's trip to Michigan last week during the hard drive crash. Hopefully, I'll have some of them back by the end of the week and I'll add them then! Thank you to Carrie for sending me a few that she took....here they are....

Very cool White House replica temporarily in the

Gerald Ford Museum (definitely worth $7!)

Outside the Museum...in downtown Grand Rapids.
That is the Grand River behind us.

Cool picture of the museum with reflections of downtown.

Waiting for our table at Rosies.

Connor checking out the water....shoeless no less.

———————

Leslie, Scott and Chris got here pretty late on Friday evening and left this morning (Sunday) so Scott could get back to work. Although a quick trip, it was a great visit. With all the extra help I was able to work on the catalog I'm designing for the National Book Network. I seriously spent about 10 hours working on it (at least) on Saturday. (Thanks again for all the help!) I'm just glad I didn't lose a lot of the catalog in my hard drive crash. That would have been a disaster difficult to recover from. Needless to say, I've already backed it up in about 4 different places. :)

Here are a few pictures from the weekend.

Connor hanging out with his uncles on the couch.
He never just sits on the couch with us!

With his Uncle "Skeety" (Scott)

Toonces had to join in on the uncle action too. :)

Watching Baby Einstein with Grandma
while mommy works on the catalog.

Swinging at Frog Hollow!

I love this picture of Connor and Chris.
Connor LOVES Chris' hat!

"Hi DAD!!!" (from the top of the big kid's slide with mom!)

Going down the little kid's slide with Grandma!

Another one with Uncle Scott.

————————

Oh, and there were wild turkeys in our neighborhood this morning. I walked outside to get a closer look, but you could see them very well from our kitchen! We have TONS of birds...just wish there were fewer geese. The swans have babies (in the lake nearby)...hopefully they'll come visit soon. I've never seen baby swans before!

Turkeys from this morning....HUGE! 3 guys are showing off for one girl!

Mediocre picture of a pelican...I need to get a good one.
We saw one catch a fish on our walk tonight!

We LOVE duck families! Brian says the daddy duck must be taking a nap...... :)