fun with hats, balls, and books

As a Dad, one of the great joys is to share your interests with your son. These are a few things in life that I really enjoy ... hats, basketball, and books.

Where's Alex? . . . There he is!

One of Alex's favorite games to play at the dinner table is "Peek."
And it certainly is one of ours as well.


Where's Alex???


Where's Alex???


There he is!!!




One of the funniest parts of the whole game is that he regularly misses his eyes when he covers his face and that he tends to press pretty hard on his face as well.

Read Me a Book, Daddy!

It was so fun the other day for Ryan when Alex brought a book to him and dropped it in his lap for him to read aloud! He had been so opposed to sitting and reading with us for so long, that this new development was quite fun for us.

Well, Alex and I are off on another adventure! Tomorrow we fly to South Carolina for a few days for one last trip down there before the boy gets too big and active for me to fly alone with--especially as my belly keeps growing and it gets harder for him to sit on my lap in those tiny airplane seats! Apparantly Ryan has taken some good shots of the boy that I have not seen and plans on posting while I am away, so I look forward to seeing them from the sunny (we hope) south!

The Silly Side

Some of the boy's silly antics as of late have really been cracking us up! Here are a few of our faves: 1. He loves to put things in his mouth and carry them around like a puppy! 2. He takes his sippy cup out of his mouth and looks at Ry and I waiting for us to make the "ahhh" sound! 3. He likes to bend over and look at you backward between his feet! 4. He picked his nose for the first time yesterday! Of course we rarely, if ever, have the camera handy when he does these things, so we may or may not get shots of these silly things, but they will be fun memories to tell him about!!

Garage Sale Extravaganza!!

Ok, so maybe our garage sale wasn't really an extravaganza, but we did have these crazy streamers hung up all over!! I kind of though at first that it made our house look like a flea-market, but they really did bring in tons of people!! And Kay and I sold tons of stuff, our garage is going to be so much more managable, maybe we can even walk through it now!

Alex spent his time during the garage sale playing with many of the items he could reach and pull off the tables! His favorite being this old green phone. He used up so much energy walking around and chasing Toby those two days--he's never slept so good! I found out how "friendly" he can be with people. My favorite example being how he used a lady's backside to catch his balance--she was a little surprised to be goosed by a one year old, but she laughed it off, thankfully!! Overall, our first garage sale experience was a great one...but I'm sure glad it all done!

Coffee, Anyone?

Frankenmuth Fun!

Wow, it's so crazy how you wait so long for vacation to get here, and then it is gone in the blink of an eye, and you are left with lots of laundry to do, some sleep to catch up on, and a child to readjust to his regular schedule--but more importantly lots of great pictures to help you remember the fabulous time you had with your family!!! We really did have a great vacation thanks to Ryan's parents. We took long walks, shopped, played games, swam, and ate schnitzel and fudge to our hearts content! Alex enjoyed lots of people watching and several new experiences like swimming in an adult pool and watching a man play the accordian. Of course we had to stop at Bronner's, also known to Ry and me as "Christmas Crazyland" and find some cool ornaments. It was great to not have to travel very far to have a fun little getaway for a few days. A big thanks to my in-laws for such a fun trip and being very flexible with a pregnant lady and a toddler in tow!! (i.e. many naps and stops to various restrooms!) And a big thanks to my great hubby for being so helpful during the course of the weekend--it really can be hard work to vacation with kids! And now...back to the pile of laundry!!

Video Problems

Ok, so we are having some technical difficulties with Dropshots, the program that I usually upload my videos to, and now with my back-up as well, YouTube. I have tried to redo that last video, so if you have a minute try it again, and hopefully it will be able to be viewed, but if it never loads for you please leave me a comment so that I can know to try something else. Man, who ever said technology was supposed to make everything easier, cuz they lied!!!

Anyway, Alex is almost exclusively walking now. He is getting really, really good at it, too! In fact we had to ban walking on the couch the other day, too dangerous for our fearless boy. Ryan's folks are here from SC, and we are spending a few days with them in Frankenmuth, so I probably won't blog again until sometime next week (sorry Grandpa and Grams, I know I've been delinquent lately and now there will be another delay in your steady stream of Alex photos!) So, have a great weekend, I know we will--shopping, swimming, relaxing, could it be much better? :-)

Walkin' Tall

Alex is finally really walking now! He hardly crawls at all any more, and even though he falls a lot (& I do mean A LOT!) he gets right back up and tries again! The news about Coonie Baby #2 is that we heard the heartbeat yesterday and it was fast and strong! We are 13 weeks along and the baby is about the size of a lime. So, both our little ones are going strong!

Trip to Iowa

Alex & I took a long weekend trip to Iowa this past weekend to help with my sister-in-law, Heather's baby shower. We had a great time with the fam that was there: my mom, grandma, sis, brother & sister-in-law. We got to see Nate & Heather's new house, visit their church, and enjoy spending time together (which we don't get that often since we all live so far apart). These guys live out in the middle of nowhere--literally, the nearest Shopping Mall is 1.5 hours away!! But they love it there in that beautiful country and they do have tons of animals!! Here's some of the animals we saw: cows, chickens, horses, donkeys, a fox, a badger, an opposum, and deer, deer, and more deer! It was a great trip, but I must admit that we are glad to be home!