Visit to Lawrence

I got to go visit my brother and his family in Lawrence last week. Matt couldn't go because of work, which was sad, but Sophie and I went with my parents and we had a good trip. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

We got there after lunch, and Sophie didn't sleep at all in the car, so we put her down for a nap right away. While she snoozed, we played with a new bubble toy that my mom brought for the kids. The bubbles it made were HUGE! The kids loved it and took turns until all the bubble liquid was gone!

Poppy was showing me how soapy her hands got from the bubbles.

After Sophie woke up, we walked over to their new house that is still under construction. It's getting close to completion, though, and they hope to move in by the first week of July. (I'll make another blog post with pictures of the house.) Poppy and Oskar took turns pushing Sophie in her stroller. They LOVED Sophie and doted over her the whole time we were there. (You can see how pregnant Amy is in the picture above. She is due mid-July...which makes getting into the new house even more important!)

That's my brother, Scott, on the right watching the kiddos. Poppy pretty much never left Sophie's side.

My dad and brother talking about house stuff. Scott designed and constructed almost every element of the house (down to the doors and windows, too).

We tried so hard to get a good picture of the cousins together. These three were the best we could get.

Sophie really likes rocks, for some reason, so she entertained herself for a while.

LOVE this one!

I brought back a bunch of things Amy lent us when Sophie was born so she would have them when baby Iris arrives, including this bouncer. When we got back, the kids strapped Sophie in it and were bouncing her around like crazy. Luckily, she thought it was fun. We got a hilarious video of it on the camera, but I'm not sure how to upload it. I'll try to get that on the blog here in the next couple of days.

The next day we decided to go to the pool. It didn't open until 1pm, so we spent some time on the playground before we could get in to the pool.

Oskar went off the diving board for the first time ever while we were there! He was so brave!

The girls jumping in! (You can see Oskar walking up on the left.)

That's pretty much the whole trip. We left and headed home after the pool, thinking that Sophie would sleep the whole way home. We were so wrong. She only slept from Lawrence to Kansas City and was up the rest of the drive. Oh well, at least she's happy in the car.

It's hard to believe the next time we see them they will be in their new house and I'll have another niece! Sophie won't be the baby of the family anymore!

Celebrations!

Today marks our 4 year anniversary! It has been quite a journey, but I have learned so much and it truly gets better and better as the years go by! I love my husband in so many ways: I love his heart for ministry and teens, his passionate and sensitive personality, and his quirky humor that makes me laugh. I love how he cares for his family, how he has embraced and loves my family, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE how he loves his daughter. It is something very special to watch your husband care for your child.

Today also marks the beginning of summer for me, which is a huge deal. I have always loved my summers, but since Sophie came a long I CHERISH them! I mean, every single second kind of cherish. I am free as a bird until August 11th...but let's not even think about that right now.

Tonight was a night to splurge and go out to celebrate! We went to my favorite place--PF Changs. Not only to I love their lettuce wraps, I love that they will prepare everything gluten-free, so I don't have to worry about a thing. We ate outside on the patio, enjoyed the food, and had a great time as a family.

Sophie has been really in to water lately...especially fountains. This totally made her day.

Our Annual "Beginning of Summer" Photo. Remember this one from last year?

She really loved the huge horsies.

A family photo

Wordless Wednesday

This is what Sophie will do when we ask to see her "special face." Yep...pretty special.

Easter Weekend - Part II (Sunday morning)

After a lovely Easter service at our church, we headed over to GiGi's for brunch and an egg hunt. Sophie really caught on to the whole hunting for eggs thing and loved it! (Good thing, too, because we had another one to go to afterwards!) When she realized the eggs had something in them, she would find them and shake the living daylights out of them. The weather was perfect and it was an ideal Easter Sunday.

Brunch was DELICIOUS. Matt's mom is an amazing cook and always goes all out for the holidays. Sophie especially loved all of the fruit. She was the first one to dig into GiGi's creation (see picture below...it looked professionally made)!

Sophie and her GiGi (Matt's mom). I was so impressed that she left that hat on the entire time. Love that little grin.

The masterpiece...before Sophie tore into it!

Easter Weekend -- Part I (Saturday)

It's been a while since I've posted. Sorry about that. Life is busy and crazy and we've been bad about taking pictures of everything. Let's face it...that's all you want to see anyway.

I'm going to post about our weekend in parts. The first part was Saturday when some cute bunnies hosted an egg hunt. Remember Arika and Aliva? Well they were back in town, and Arika's mom's bunnies were kind enough to have us over for some fun. So we went over there on Saturday morning. It was overcast and a bit chilly, but we were determined to have a hunt. By the time it was all said and done, the sun was out and it turned into a gorgeous day!

So proud of her basket.

I was really impressed that she caught on so quickly.

Peek-a-boo, Daddy!

(There was also an egg in the fence that Sophie was reaching for.)

This is a picture I will cherish forever. Melt my heart! Sophie loves her Pop-Pop!

And now, a little friendly hug-o-war between the girls. It's a tradition for them to get a little frisky (see this post), and after all, it's Spring!

Anyhoo...Alivia had her game face on for the tough competition.

First, they decided they should arm-wrestle to warm up a bit.

The hug started off nice enough...
...but then things got a little out of hand.

Alivia is down for the count. Sophie's on her way up and ready for a re-match.

Let's try this again...much better.

After a tough match, Sophie decided she needed some down time and went to look for the cuddly bunnies and thank them for the lovely egg hunt.

Apparently the rabbits needed a little alone time, too, but eventually Sophie managed to coerce one out of the burrow. However, it managed to get away. Those little suckers are quick.

The brown and white one was a much more agreeable and talkative host. She and Sophie had a nice conversation.

And she let Sophie scratch her nose. She had quite the itch.

Then Sophie decided to sit for a while and check out the goods from the hunt.

Alivia came over to make sure there were no hurt feelings after the take-down.
One little girl doesn't mind the bunny ears too much.
Another little girl isn't so sure how she feels about them. "Mom...do I look silly?"

Bonita & my mom with the grandgirls in an easter basket.

"Let's kiss and make up, k?"

Sophie got a little hot at lunch, stripped off the tights, and let it all hang out for a bit.

At the end of the day, Sophie was all smiles. I'd call that a success!

Gardening

As many of you know, Matt and I started our first garden last year. You may have followed the progress on this blog or on Matt's Facebook page. You can still go there to see MANY pictures of all the produce we collected. We loved it! There's just something so rewarding about being able to walk out to your backyard and gather everything you need for a meal. Someday we hope to have some land out in the country where we can have a huge garden with enough produce to start a co-op or just store it for the winter and be completely self-sustaining as far as produce goes.

Anyway, last year we planted seedlings that we bought at a local gardening center. This year we're going to try starting from seeds. I have no idea how this will go, but we like the idea and it's a lot cheaper.

I read some gardening blogs and this week The Greenest Dollar has a giveaway for seeds from Hometown Seeds. One option is to leave a comment and hope your name was chosen, and the other option is to be the first of three people to contact Hometown Seeds and be willing to post a link to your own blog to receive free seeds. Well I hopped right on both of those bandwagons! They aren't choosing winners from the comments until Wednesday (so head on over there and enter to win!), but I just got an e-mail back saying that I was the second person to e-mail Hometown Seeds! Woo Hoo!! I'm so excited!!

The coolest thing about Hometown Seeds is that they sell survival seeds. "What are survival seeds," you ask? Well...The Greenest Dollar says this about them, "Survival seeds are not genetically modified, which means you can harvest the seeds from this year’s harvest to plant again next year. Survival seeds enable you to have a garden and not depend on buying new seeds year after year." VERY cool!

Anyway, hop on over to The Greenest Dollar to enter the contest (you have until Tuesday night), and then head over to Hometown Seeds to check out all of their flower and produce seeds.