End of the summer fun

We always pack so much into our summers. So near the end of the summer we play the "see how much more we can get in real quick before the summer ends" game. These are some of the fun things we did.


Camping with some friends. This picture is apparently story time. When Drea begs Daddy to tell her a story so Daddy makes up the best story he can think of and the very often involve princess drea.


Couple pictures of our zoo trip. We love taking her to the Pittsburgh Zoo every year. We went with our friends Jordan and Sarah and their son Isak. We're thinking about starting to take her more than once a year because she loves it so much! It's all she talks about. All the time when we are talking to her she will just say "remember when we went to the zoo. what were those one things inside called. (Always talking about the meerkats)." And then she'll say "I love those. But I don't like the bats. That fruit in there was yucky." And then she request that we each tell her our favorite animals from our last visit to the zoo. And she gets the biggest smile on her face and ask when we can go again. She adores it! The other day she was cracking up and said "I saw that baby elephant pee on the floor." Which we did see. Anyway, she loved it. Below are a couple other pictures.

Great summer! Did lots of other cool things like a cookout for Andy's birthday, first Mountaineer game, Pirates game with the family, and all kinds of other things. This was just a little highlight.

Just a little update

Everyone keeps asking how I'm doing so I thought I would post it:

I'm 14 weeks along and things this pregnancy have been going great ~ just as good as with Drea!
No morning sickness!
No major food aversions!

Only differences so far are WAY less energy but I guess that's what happens when you are chasing a 2 1/2 year old! I can't eat as much. I get full really fast which has made it nice for the weight gain. With Drea I pretty much ate day and night ~ which is why I gained 60 lbs! By this point last time I had gained about 10 or 12 lbs. I have LOST 3 lbs. so far! Yeah!

Anyway, I will give you further updates as we go. Our next doctors appointment is Sept. 19th.

Big News....My first Blog and More

Stacey and I will have a new addition to our family in March 2009. She is 12 weeks pregnant! We are very excited!

We decided that we were going to have Drea tell everyone that she was going to be a big sister. We sat her down and told her she was going to be a big sister. When we were finished we asked her if she understood what that meant. She informed us that it means, "You love me very much." Which is true, of course, but the reaction made us giggle. Stacey and I then asked her to tell my mom who was in town for the week. She said "no". We again encouraged her to tell my mom, again responding with a no. Finally, like any good parent we said will you do it for a popsicle. With that she ran out of the room.

Stacey and I have already had our first appointment and we were able to see the little peanut. The baby or as Uncle Ben nicknamed her/him "Mountie" has a very good heartbeat. For now we are not going to find out what we are having, however, that may change. We will keep you updated periodically thoughout our (Stacey's) pregancy.

Garden goodness

Yeah! My first garden has been producing many vegetables! I was concerned because I planted rather late but below is a picture of some stuff we picked last week. (Romaine lettuce, zucchini, cucumbers, green peppers, hot peppers and green beans.) And I finally had some red tomatoes the other day.

I wanted to try my hand at a garden because my grandma always had a garden in the back yard and I thought it must be good ground. And I thought it would be something fun for Drea to learn. She has been very excited about picking the veggies. (Even though I don't think she actually eats any of it.)

Washers

Cutest thing ever...
I walked outside the other day to see what Andy and Drea were playing and saw Daddy teaching Drea how to play washers. I loved it and had to grab the camera. Seems like he is getting pretty excited about the upcoming football season - this is the game we play all morning while tailgating (and at other various events.) Drea loved that he let her in on the fun!

*Now the real fun will come when Daddy and the big kids are trying to play before the Mountaineer games and Drea thinks she can get in on the action.

Game with Daddy

Kareen and I have been trying to take Dad to a Pirates game every year for Fathers Day. It always ends up being in July rather than June but I think Dad loves it either way. Getting to spend the day with just his girls and talk to us in the car on the way there and home is really great! Above are a couple pictures from our adventure this year. We get excited every year about what we are going to eat. And then we only had sandwiches from Primanti Brothers and nachos - can you believe it! The Pirates have been doing great this year but, of course, they lost when we went. But we don't care - it's just so much fun!

I hope we get to continue doing this with him. It's just as special to us to get our Dad all to ourselves as I'm sure it is to him.

Learning to let her be her

Drea's into dressing herself lately and it is really stretching me but it's good for me. I tend to like things to be done the "right" way or maybe I should say the normal way. Well, I'm slowly learning that even though Drea's way seems wrong it may seem perfectly right to her.

So, funniest thing in the world, you have to see her put her shirts on over her feet. She does it like she's putting a skirt on and then pulls it the rest of the way up and puts her arms in it. This works okay with her summer tank tops but watching her put a long sleeve pajama shirt on this way is hilarious.

And it makes me crazy, I have told her a hundred times that this is the wrong way but tonight while she struggled to get her pajama top on I realized that it doesn't really matter.

She got it on. And all by herself. So why do I care? I decided I don't anymore. Just because it's not my "right" way doesn't mean it's the wrong way. When we were younger my brother always used to get in trouble from our stepdad for eating his pizza upside down. Who cares? He always ate it over a plate and he always held the cheese and pepperoni on - so who cares. Do we worry too much about doing things the right way?

So I'm learning. Learning to let her be her. Until she starts ripping the clothing while putting them on I will let her way be the right way. And you know what the more I ignore it the sooner she'll probably do it my way. : )