Still busy....

So we're still busy. We're busy chasing Henry around and comforting him after his falls. This nice shiner was a result of a fall on the sidewalk. The next day he fell in the house while "running" and created a mirror image on the other side. Now it looks like he has horns. Such is life. Luckily he usually recovers quick and goes about toddling around some more.

This is what I did while Henry took a nap today. Thankfully he is napping larger amounts at once so I had about 2 hours to can some cucumbers for pickles. I haven't done much canning before but I became inspired to preserve local, seasonal foods after getting the cookbook Simply in Season and then reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. We already tried to eat locally and seasonally but we took it a step further this year. We signed up for a CSA (community supported agriculture) with a larger share than what we received in the past so we could do some preserving. We also put in a bunch of tomatoes, pole beans, herbs, and peas in our tiny little garden. The peas didn't do so well but the I've been freezing quite a bit of pole beans and they are still blooming. This week my tomato crop peaked so I'm going to take care of my tomato mess (see picture below) on Monday by canning tomotoes and also canning some pasta sauce. We'll see how it goes. It will be work but will all be worth it in January when we have yummy vegetables!

Kind of a busy summer.

Don't know how this happened, but we managed to forget to share this a while ago. Henry is walking now...has been for about 2 weeks. Here's the first video footage we've shot:

silly, silly little boys

I think the video speaks for itself.

Hats, helmet, and more.

This is Henry giving me a hug. It mainly consists of him laying his head on me. He also gives kisses which are just him gently putting his open mouth on your face.


Levi is very helpful. We were getting ready to go on a walk and I said we needed sunscreen and hats. Levi put on his own hat and put Henry's on too. A little crooked but very cute.




The other day Henry just kept saying helmet so we decided to get his out and let him wear it around inside for awhile. Here he is on the car. He sits on it, puts his feet up and says "go" waiting for us to push him.

We're back

We are finally home for good now. We've been doing a lot of traveling so we haven't been doing well blogging. Henry and I (Tina) headed to visit Grandma and Grandpa out east while Derek headed to Arizona with a school group. We had a lot of fun spending a full week with grandparents and some time with Todd, Megan and the boys on the weekend. Henry spent a lot of time outside riding on tractors, playing with sticks, playing in the kiddie pool and just relaxing. Thanks to grandma and grandpa who spent a lot of time outside with him. He can very clearly say "outside" now. Here are two of my favorite pictures from our trip.




Here is a picture of where Derek was with the school group on one of the day hikes. He had fun but was definitely ready to see Henry again!

Suddenly Standing?!

So today out of nowhere Henry began standing up. He's also taken about 4 steps total but that isn't too reliable yet. Here's some footage of him in the standing position after doing this for about 25 min (up and down and up and...). He started to get pretty tired and was even breathing hard.

Yeah he's only wearing a diaper. It was hot today.

Vacation II

Last week we traveled again to visit family. This time we headed west. Twelve hours of driving later, we were able to finally unload the overstuffed car and stay for a few days at Kim and Neil's house (Kim would be my - Derek's - sister). We spent two days with my mom's extended family (the Headings crew). It was a lot of fun catching up with people we hadn't seen in a while. We also were able to surprise my parent's with a little celebration for their 40th wedding anniversary.

Ok, enough with the the words. Here are few select pictures from the trip. First we have Henry with grandma Cathy.

Henry had a lot of fun in the lake by Kim's house.
After a couple of days we all moved to my parent's house. Here's Henry again playing in the water (you can't see the water from the pic).
This is just a really cool picture I took of my two nephews on the swing in my parent's back yard.
We posed for group pictures. Notice a familiar theme to some earlier pictures on a previous blog.

The cousins.
One of Henry's favorite cousins.