Spring & Change

This last week has been long/tough/crazy. So, as we mentioned a while back in this post, we decided that we had out grown our beloved VW Golf. So last Friday, we picked up our 'new to us' vehicle; a Mazda 5. We have yet to decide whether it is a car or a van. Check out the two pictures below.
It's a car right? Looks all kind of swoopy and stuff. But then look at this:
Yeah, that's right. Sliding rear doors. So, is it a van? car? var? spacewagon? Anyway, Moving on.
We have been enjoying the weather recently with lots of warm sunshine. Henry particularly likes helping in the garden/back yard any chance he gets. Here he is 'raking' our garden.
Which clearly needs some raking since it's already full of weeds. He also enjoys riding his 'bike' (a tricycle) and Levi's 'bike' which is a sort of push along thing. Here are the two boys out on a ride:
Another summer favorite around year is the prolific amount of road construction and road construction equipment. Henry and Levi both love watching diggers and rollers and... So one of the more well used toys in Matt and Kathy's back yard is a little sand digger:
Ok back to the theme of the post, the difficult week. So we think we have figured out that Henry is either lactose intolerant or allergic to milk. We're hoping for the former as we kind of already know how to deal with it. So prior to figuring that out, Henry had about 1.5 months of discomfort almost daily.

In addition our self-diagnosis of Henry, Zoe also had some medical issues this week. Last week we discovered that she had an 'aural hematoma.' Essentially her ear flap filled with blood and the only real way to deal with it is surgery. So that happened Tuesday and now Zoe looks like this:
The good news is that she and Henry are pretty tolerant of her running into things with the big E-collar. She also seems to be healing pretty well.

The last level of stress this week was that Tina was struggling with some sort of stomach ailment. So to recap our week.

Last Friday: new car
Last Sunday: diagnosis of lactose intoleran Henry
Tuesday: Zoe surgery
Wednesday and Thursday: Tina sick

It's been a long week. At least the weather has been nice.

Hope you are well.

Pictures and Visitors and Pictures of Visitors

Like the most of the country we are beginning to tire of 'Mother Nature's' games this spring. Sixty degree days followed by three inches of snow followed by three days of rain. In all of this we've been having a lot of fun cooking, rearranging the house and occasionally going outside. Also this week, Tina's parents visited us for a few days. It is always fun to have the grandparents around.

Enough with random words and on to random pictures. This first picture is completely unedited. It was Sunday morning, and like usual I was making bread. I put 2 heaping tablespoons of yeast into 2 1/4 cups of warm water just like I always do. But this time, when I looked down I saw this.
Funny huh? I didn't want to mix it and in fact waited as long as I could before I mixed it in with the other ingredients.

After a brilliant bit of rearranging on our part, we now have a new spot for Henry to sit at for his snack. It allows us to work in the kitchen and still be accessible/visible to Henry (and vice versa). Here he is eating a snack and watching me cook, an all-to-common occurrence.

Apparently our impulse to rearrange the house has rubbed off on Henry because suddenly the other night he began to do this:

Until our kitchen looked like this:

Still don't really know why except that he then lined up all the chairs and sat in the first one telling us that he was 'playing train.'

I just thought this was kind of a cute picture. I wonder what he was thinking/imagining.

Friday Tina brought home some boxes from work and so Saturday morning, while she was running we made one of the boxes into a stove for him to cook on and the other one into a car. Guess which one was more popular... Yeah, this one:

He played with it most of the weekend.

And now some pictures with g-ma Janet and g-pa Delmar.

This is how most walks with the stroller end up these days:

A little lap time.

That's all for now. Hope you have some nice weather over Easter!

Spring Break

We've somehow managed to take a break from posting but we also did take a quick trip to Kansas over Derek's spring break to visit family.

On the drive out we stopped almost halfway there and spent the night in the hotel. Henry was not happy when we arrived since he had been sleeping for a few hours. However, the next morning he loved eating breakfast on the bed and swimming in the indoor pool.


We had a brief visit to Kim, Neil, Hallie and Jonathan's house. It was so nice to hang out together in the back yard and just relax together for a bit.

Henry enjoyed all of Grandma Cathy and Grandpa Howard's toys and really enjoyed when they were playing with him.

The only day when it wasn't unbearably windy, we took at walk at a nature center.

Not sure what Henry was pointing out to Grandma at the time.

Henry also enjoyed sitting on multiple tractors and "steering" them.

And an old truck too!

On our walk in the field we found a big "stick" (aka large grass).

Same grass stick only a manageable size. I think Henry would have played with it in the dirt for hours but it was getting dark.

We had a windy picnic on the way home...


..and we've decided our car is too small for us. Notice Henry's feet reach our shoulders in the front seat. Also, if you're concerned for Henry's safety, Zoe is actually harnessed in so she can't move much. Poor dog. They were both great travelers since we drove straight home (12 hours) with only a few stops.

We're happy to be back but wish we could have visited for longer. Now we're on a great car search!

Trip to Chi-Town

So this weekend we had a chance to visit with some friends in Chicago. We were of course totally oblivious to the fact that it was the weekend of the St. Patrick's celebration. This meant we got to share the road with even more people that we had planned on sharing it with. And most of the them were wearing green.

Anyway, before we get to the pictures, we have another funny Henry quote. We were stuck in traffic after being on the road for a couple of hours. Henry was great because he's easily entertained by looking at big trucks and cars and anything transportation related. As we were driving along a Hummer passed by us slowly and then we stopped near it. Henry, being the curious sort asked his standard question, "What's that?" To which I replied, "That's an abomination Henry. Can you say abomination?" His response was, "No daddy. That's a rectangle." Even typing it just now I laugh in near hysterics. It was awesome.

On to the pictures. First, here's a couple of pictures our hosts.

Henry and the youngest of our hosts did pretty well together although they both don't always get how sharing works. I guess that could be said for a lot of us.
A major highlight of the trip was a morning spent at the Shedd Aquarium. Henry did not hardly know what do do with himself initially. Here he is pointing vigorously at a fish.
More pictures of Henry and our host enjoying the sights. It was hard to take pictures in the aquarium as you were not supposed to use a flash and the little ones (children) move rather quickly in all of their excitement.
Henry really enjoyed playing with the plastic sculptures of the fish and coral almost more than he enjoyed looking at the real fish. Yes that was a 'real' fish zipping past in the background.

Just Pictures

Derek's been busy taking pictures so here are some of my favorites.

Legos. Not sure how much time Henry spends playing with his Legos. (Derek also spends some quality time with them too.)

Blueberry syrup with waffles are a breakfast favorite.


Swinging at the park yesterday afternoon.


Henry called this picture "Big Henry."

Lots of time was spent in the swing yesterday!

Then right before coming home he fell on his face in the mud/woodchips.

Spring is coming...maybe.

We're at least able to spend some time outside these days. Henry is enjoying his new rain boots which work better for stomping in puddles. He's even made a few trips to the playground, even though it's wet.

The two buddies enjoy hanging out in front of our house walking through the flowerbed, riding the car and the tricycle, and collecting rocks, sticks, etc.


Here is another favorite. They have to sit right next to each other on the step and then watch cars, bikes, people, etc. going by. (Note: I did not try to make Henry match this well the hat, vest and boots were all bought at very different times. It's kind of embarrassing though)

Nothing to do with spring but I thought I would include it none the less. Henry really likes to eat. I am continually thankful at how he is not a picky eater--at least not yet! Last night we ordered take out Tex mex food since we were running low on time. Derek and I shared our burritos with him and then he devoured the Pico de Gallo, as in ate almost all of it and drank the juice. Granted this was a very mild form but I was still amazed. He also was liking Derek's pickled red onions from his burrito. We'll see if this lasts once he's a bit older.

Update

A few weekends ago, we had our annual church retreat. We all head to a beautiful retreat center and spend a weekend together. It is a great time. Here are some of the things Henry did at retreat:

Finger painting (more watching others paint than actual painting)

Foosball!

All Saturday it snowed and created a beautiful scene for a sled ride on Sunday morning.


The retreat center is surrounded by lots of hiking. We didn't go too far since it was a lot of work pulling the sled.

This is from this weekend. We finally got Henry some rubber boots to splash in puddles since his winter boots proved to be leaky in water. : ( They are dinosaurs and he fell in love with them so much we wore them all day and all evening, even during his nap!