Nothing New

I have no real news, but felt like I needed to post something. We spend most of our days outside; Dean's favorite thing is digging in the dirt -he sits there for hours! KatieLynn rotates around, but pedaling her trike, bike, and tractor, and swinging are her favorites.

Dean didn't have his shovel close by, so instead he used his hand to do the digging!KatieLynn loves being a trapeze artist! So sweet, she blows me a kiss!Dean is picking up rocks from the gravel driveway, and putting them in his loader. He then will drive around a little, and next, dump the rocks out, and start all over!

We are doing well. The kids and I have been diligent about our claritin, as our allergies have been bothering us a little. We have been enjoying lots of yummy tomatoes from our garden, and will eat some sweet corn real soon! For whatever reason, my strawberries haven't made very many, but the watermelon, cantelope, cucumbers, and green beans all seem to be doing well; just no fruit on them yet.

Darren has officially started haymaking season, so it seems like most of his time is in the hayfields cutting, tedding, baling, spraying, or fertilizing! But I can't complain; it seems like the weather is cooperating pretty well this year.

Outside Adventures

For some reason, one of our baby calves wasn't nursing his mother, so Darren fixed up a little pen at our house, and brought him home for the kids and I to take care of. KatieLynn & Dean named him Blackjack, and we feed him 2-3 times a day. Right now he is just drinking milk, though we also have water and a little feed out for him. He gets so excited when he sees the bottle, but so far he hasn't shown much interest in the water or feed. Both the kids love little Blackjack, but KatieLynn especially does. As soon as she gets dressed in the morning, she is ready to go get in his pen, and she gives him hugs and kisses all day long, plus always tells him goodbye before we leave anywhere. The other day we started cleaning out the playhouse, first just sweeping it out, but when we got all the toys outside, we decided to wash them, which led to washing all the kids' ride-on toys and my car. Every time water is involved, Dean and KatieLynn always wind up very wet, so they put their swimsuits on before we turned the water hose on. :)KatieLynn washes the dishes from the playhouse.Dean is a great tire washer!

Kids' Bedrooms

My Big Boy!! Dean moved to a big bed back in March at 2 years and 5 months. We went out of town for a few days, and at the hotel we all slept in a big bed. When we came home, he went straight to the big bed, instead of the crib, when it was bedtime. I had wondered when would be the time, as KatieLynn moved from crib to bed a couple of weeks before 2 1/2 years. We left the crib in his room for a week or so, but he never looked back. He's done great! He got out one night late during the first week (I took him to the bathroom and then put him back in bed), but that's the only time. I'm so proud of him, but also sad as this seems like the last baby milestone...One advantage of having the crib out, is there's lots of extra room to play in the floor! I have to include a picture of KatieLynn at naptime. It's hard to tell in this picture, but she is sleeping at the foot of her bed! She is right on the border of not needing(or taking!) a nap everyday. She naps about every 3rd day, and instead just plays quietly in her room during 'naptime'.I recently made KatieLynn new bedding. She had been using the same bedding that I picked out in 7th grade, and I decided to let her have some ownership of her bedroom by letting her pick the colors to decorate her room. She picked pink and blue. We started buying different fabric last fall; my goal was to have everything finished for Christmas, but I came up a little short... It all took much longer and was more complex than I anticipated, but for the most part the end result was what I wanted. I made a small quilt to hang on the wall, valance curtains, and a bedskirt, and then rag-quilted pillow shams and a large quilt for the bed. I love how the rag quilt looks, but if anyone wants to make one, get ready for it to take a while!