Vacation Post 1 - Leaving Home

So we were on vacation 'up nort' over the last five days (June 21-26) in celebration of our 10 year wedding anniversary (actual date was June 12 but Derek was still in school). It was a great time spent camping, hiking and just being together as a family.

As an additional 'bonus' we decided this would be a good time to get the wood floors on the first floor of our house refinished since the work requires that you essentially move out anyway. Sounds like a great plan, right? Sort of a two birds with one stone thing. Well, it worked. But. Imagine packing for a five to six (we actually came home a day early) day camping trip with two adults, a two year old and a 60 pound dog. Now imagine doing that while moving out of the main floor of your house and timing it so both are completed at the exact same time.

Stressful? Yes. Did it feel good to FINALLY leave? ABSOLUTELY!

So, I'm sure at this point you are just dying for some pictures. Well here you go. This first shot is of our 'front room' which is really a finished porch who's floors did not need refinished. It ended up being the destination for the large majority of our stuff. Not visible is a full sized upright piano, a large futon and a large overstuffed couch.
Seen from another angle. Our living room looked like the picture below. Yes, Henry is sitting on the potty (and I think he's 'driving a car, or a boat or a bulldozer or a tractor'). Most everything that you see sitting on the floor went into the car (except for the little bike).
Pictured below is what the car (var) looked like fully loaded. It doesn't look too bad in the picture but we were about as full as one could stuff a car AND a cargo box. If you look closely you can see that Henry was impatient to leave and is sitting backwards in his seat.
Not bad right? Well, look at this picture taken once we reached our first campsite and prepared to unpack.

Amazing that we managed to unpack and pack that thing a total of 3 times during our trip. It's a good thing we were packing light to 'rough it.' I'll finish this first write-up of our trip with a shot of Henry doing one of his favorite things. Chopping.
He saw dad using a little axe to chop wood into smaller pieces to start a fire and thought that was pretty much the coolest thing ever. So he found his 'chopper' and went to work. He has since become quite proficient at smacking things pretty hard with his little plastic hammer (chopper). That's all for now. We'll post more soon.

Birthday weekend!

Yesterday Henry turned 2. In some ways, I can't believe he's already two and in other ways it seems like he should be about 5. Not sure what that means. Grandma Janet and Grandpa Delmar made a quick trip from Ohio to help us celebrate.

Digging in the sandbox that Derek and Dad (Delmar) built on Saturday. An early birthday present.

Learning about hotrods and classic cars with Grandpa.

Learning about diggers and dumptrucks with Grandma.

The presents...and cause for problems with the nap on Sunday.

Feeding goats at the zoo.
Playground at the zoo.

Birthday cake after a meal of one of Henry's favorite foods--grilled chicken.

Thanks for traveling a long time for a short and wonderful visit Grandma and Grandpa!!!

Busy toddler

Looking through our recent pictures, they are mostly of Henry doing active things. He is loving spending so much time outside but also working on fixing things.

Most days on walks Henry rides his tricycle (with a push bar) or in the stroller but I decided to try out the Ergo carrier again since we don't have so many layers of clothes on any more. I was pleasantly surprised I could still carry him pretty easily and he liked being up high. I guess 5' 2" is considered high when you're less and three feet tall.


We hadn't had much rain so Henry enjoyed watering plants every evening. Some were quite well watered.

Henry "talked" with Grandma Cathy and Grandpa Howard over skype this weekend and was very excited to show Grandma this gift we were taking to a baby shower.


This weekend it did end up raining so I broke down and brought the basketball hoop inside. Just as popular as it is outside.
Working on fixing his automoblox car.

Random photos

Here are some interesting pictures that I thought I should post even though I should be going to bed. These all were quite entertaining.

I'm not sure what was going on here. Upside down hammering?? We finally found some sunglasses and now he won't part with them. He slept with them for his nap today. We'll try to get some better pictures tomorrow which shouldn't be hard since he won't take them off.



Henry is trying to pump up a bouncy toy (horse??) called a Rody that I found at a garage sale. I would have had no idea what it was but Henry's cousin Maia had one at Christmas which provided quite a bit of entertainment. Sadly, we don't have the right adapter to get full enough for him to ride. He has been talking to Rody a lot though so I guess it's provided at least some entertainment already.

It's been 2 years.

Almost exactly two years ago I (Derek) ran the Mad City Marathon and we posted about it here. That was Memorial Day weekend 2007. Tina was very pregnant with Henry and it is just amazing how different our life is two years later.

Yesterday (Sunday) Tina ran the Mad City 1/2 Marathon. Henry and I were there to greet her at the finish. Tina should be proud, she did very well.
Today we went to the local free zoo. Here is a picture of Henry with the tiger.
There is, of course, glass between him and the Tiger. He stood there for quite a while and really enjoyed watching the Tiger walk past. Henry's highlight of the day was riding in the little train with Tina.

Lately Henry has had fun playing with our neighbors' grandchildren. Last week they were blowing large bubbles outside of our house. That led to the following photo shoot:

Oh, and the pink pedal car is not ours. It also belongs to the neighbors. So does the tractor (and trailer) below. Henry is trying to pull the neighbor's 3 year old granddaughter. He kept saying, "this is very hard."
Finally, on a completely unrelated note. I guess not really because it has to do with Henry. Do you think the following picture gives us any insight into the personality Henry is developing? Just for the record, he came up with this on his own while he was sitting on the potty today.
Yes. That is correct. He took all of his magnetic letters and placed them into four different containers based on color.

Nothing that exciting.

We haven't done anything too exciting or new here. Just life with an almost 2 year old and trying to keep up with his daily changes. Here are some pictures of recent activities.

Henry loves playing with play-doh and making "nakes." Henry speaks very clearly but for some reason has trouble with s at the beginning of some words. (school, snake, snack) but does fine with other words like six. Who knows. He's not even 2 so I'm not worried at all. He still talks about Zoe's "ear hematoma" surgery and can say that word and use it correctly somehow. I'm discovering that language acquisition is very fascinating!

Still loves books. We had this airplane book from the library for quite some time.

Henry still loves to help out with various things. He helps cook (mainly scooping and mixing), wash the car (this was a first but thoroughly enjoyed it), fix things, fold laundry, pull weeds, etc. Of course many times Henry helping makes things go slowly or not happen at all but it's still amusing and quite entertaining.

Mother's Day

We had a very nice Mother's Day. We started with a relaxing waffle breakfast and then went hiking at a nearby park. Henry was a trooper and climbed up a huge set of stairs to an overlook and a little chapel on top of the hill.



Hiking is also much slower with a toddler. There are so many "interesting" things to look at. One example are these tree parts that were laying everywhere. Henry called them snakes.


Unfortunately, Henry ended the hike with a fall. He was running down the hill, lost his balance and fell on his face. Not too much crying though, just a fat lip and he still has some scrapes on his face and lip. It didn't scar him too bad though because he wanted to go hiking again the next day.