progress

The addition is really coming along. Ryan has been working like crazy on it. Well, in between all the fun stuff we've been up to. It has been really nice to work on it as much as we can, but not to stress about getting it done right now. It's all about balance. And I use the term "we" very loosely. I can honestly say that I haven't been much help. Unless you call keeping Mason out of the mess helping. There's been lots of painting going on and I can't really help with that. There's also been lots of ceiling hanging...and it turns out I wasn't really tall enough for that. I did actually help with about 10 boards though I'll have you know:) Mostly I've been cheering him on and feeding him BLT's. And cleaning up. Mason helps with that too:


Here's what we have so far (and I realize now the lighting is pretty awful):


The floor is in, now we are just waiting for carpet for the rest (coming Thursday!!). The ceiling is hung and both light fixtures are up. We have the bathroom door on the left and our bedroom door on the right. We're still painting and hanging trim. And the floor really needs to be mopped. We've done it once, but we just keep tracking junk all over it from the unfinished parts of the house. I'll give it a good scrubbing after Thursday. Or maybe I can talk mason into it!

family and friends

The last few weekends have been full of good times with family and friends. It started 3 weekends ago when my sister and her husband surprised us with a visit. We went to the football game, I fed them BLT's and we stayed up way too late playing games.

Then last weekend my best friend mindy and her sweet family (and dog:) came for a visit. The little ones napped and we ate egg salad sandwiches. Then we went to the park. So much fun! I wish I had remembered my camera. Olivia was army crawling all over the grass. Java was chasing the frisbee. Mason was chasing the frisbee (after he pulled his usual stunt of screaming in the swing...I don't know why he doesn't like it). Then we all went and got ice cream. We had green chili and sopapillas for dinner and a mad game of pictionary. Did I mention that Ryan and I made a huge comeback and won the game? I see a rematch in the near future though.

That brings us to this weekend. Homecoming weekend in our little town. On Friday our friends Tim and Megan stopped by with little Brenden. It was fun watching him and Mason play. They are two months apart. Oh, and I fed them BLT's.

Is he playing with MY toys?

Isn't he a cutie?

I'm not sure what's going on here, but I'm glad he never dropped that truck:)

Then on Saturday Lacy came over for breakfast, which was a real treat since she's in college now. We had some really great conversations. I love that girl. It was just what I needed.

Next stop: the football game. Go Bobcats! They pulled off a great win. The weather was beautiful. I enjoyed hanging with Mason and my cousins at the game. Then we headed into the gym to watch Karly's volleyball game. Another win.

Today started off with a beautiful morning and a long walk. Just me and Java. It was a great time to slow down and think. I realized (again) how thankful I am for each of these relationships.

On another note: I can't stop eating BLT's or egg salad. We've been making bread like crazy.

wordless wednesday

a boy and his dog.

Daisy usually doesn't stray too far from the little one. Java prefers to keep her distance unless of course mason is eating. It's nice having a clean up crew. Mason sure has taken a liking to Daisy. He even grabbed her face between his two hands and tried to give her a kiss. Daisy has got to be the most mellow dog because I'm pretty sure she didn't even budge. This is about as close as mason gets to snuggling. He is constantly asking to be "up" but he doesn't mean to sit on your lap. He wants to sit in his own spot, right next to you. And he wants to pile as many toys as possible on his lap. It's a pretty fun game.

But this boy sure knows how to play hard and he will let you know when he's ready to sleep. Then you might get a few snuggles in. He'll start rubbing his eyes and crawl up next to you for a few minutes of lovin' before he heads off to bed. And in the morning one of the first things he does is stand up and call his dogs. He likes to play a few rounds of peek-a-boo with them and give Daisy a few pats on the head before he's ready to get up and start playing again.

wordless wednesday

tub time

Even though we cut mason's hair, Aunt Kati and I were still able to give it a little style!

things I'm loving...

• a vase full of flowers from our garden
• surprise weekend visits from my sister and her husband
• the way mason raises his arms and makes a little puff sound when he tries to say "up"
• canning (so far peaches, pears, and beets. And green chilis tomorrow.)
• chilly mornings
• picking tomatoes from the greenhouse
• my job
• arby's
• all the progress on our addition (two weeks until carpet!)
• good friends
• watching mason play with ruby
• bagels for breakfast with freshly ground almond butter
• watching Friends with ryan in the evening
• chasing mason around the house and hearing him giggle
• 3 day weekends

a few things I'm not loving so much:

• car shopping...I hit a deer on the highway and had to say goodbye to our little red subaru
• the never-ending stickyness in the kitchen from all the canning of fruit
• liars
• mason waking up early in the morning, standing up in his crib and turning on the light (did I mention that his bedroom will have carpet in two weeks...almost time for him to move in!)
• second graders who insist on tasting our science experiments

a little something...

Things have been a little fun in our family lately:) First I found out that my sister was pregnant and Mason was going to have a little cousin in March. Then a few weeks later we found out I was pregnant. Mason is also going to have a little brother or sister in March. We are so excited! It's been pretty awesome sharing this experience with my sister, Kati.

a new do

Hey Mason. How could we let your hair get so long? It was getting a little crazy looking. People were starting to comment. Family members were starting to comment. Mason was having a hard time seeing. It was time.

Now, I've tried a lot of things since Mason entered our lives, but cutting a toddlers hair was not one of them. I asked my cousin (the pro:) for help. She told me to just pull a section straight out, angle it, and cut away.

So we gave Mason a bag of animal crackers and started combing. And pulling. And angleing (is that a word?) And cutting. Ryan and I couldn't stop laughing. Mason couldn't stop moving. I kept saying "I don't know how to do this!" Yet we kept cutting.

And here's the new do. I'm pretty sure he thinking "what have you done to me??" And "can I please get down now?" It's pretty rough for him to be outside and have to be strapped into a chair. I want to run!! That's what he's thinking.

We spent the next while running around and playing hide and seek.

I love this one! You can totally see all the un-evenness that came from the pulling and angleing and cutting. Hey, at least it's shorter. I did follow him around for the rest of the evening with a pair of scissors because I kept noticing things.

Oh Mason. Your first haircut. Where has the time gone?

wordless wednesday

weeks gone by

It's been a few weeks since I've been around the blog-o. Life has been a little crazy.

Ryan and I took a week long camping trip full of canoeing, waterfalls, and plenty of exploring some of the most beautiful parts of Colorado. It was a great way to wrap up the summer. Then it was time to gear up for school, which started this week. I have a great class full of little second graders. They have been so much fun this week, with so much energy for learning. I am so looking forward to this year for many reasons and it's off to a great start.

Mason has kept us on our toes this month as he has transitioned from a crawler to a walker. He pretty much walks everywhere now and the knees of his clothes are staying in much better shape!

He has also become such an independent eater. He prefers to feed himself these days. And he doesn't want his food cut up, but wants to take bites out of the whole piece. He's getting pretty good with a spoon too. His feet still fit under his tray and that's where they stay for most of his meal. I think it's pretty adorable and I will be a little sad when he grows out of this one.

Some of his latest food experiments include:

~sucking the sauce off his pasta and spitting the noodles back out

~figuring out how to use a straw

~using spaghetti noodles to pick up his cheerios (this one takes a lot of concentration!)

~stacking his cheerios inside the middle of sliced olives

~trying any kind of fruit we give him

All this independent eating and playing with food has led to my new full-time job of trying to keep both the boy and the kitchen clean. It's pretty impossible. Mason has turned into a bath-every-night kind of guy.

My favorite part of the day is coming home from work and getting a hug and kiss from my little guy. Oh, and Ryan having dinner ready. I feel so blessed.

10 bucks

How many canning jars do you think you could get for 10 dollars? I stopped counting at 287. My in-laws got them at an auction in town. They called me and said they had some canning jars for me to pick up. I didn't know that I would be shoving boxes into every inch of my car! For a little while my kitchen was consumed by jars. We washed them all and had them drying on the counters:

and the kitchen table:

Now I just have to fill them (ok, maybe not all of them). I'm glad they are mostly quarts and pints because I can't seem to stop making jam so the last thing I need is more jam-sized jars. You gotta love a good deal.

wordless wednesday

the rest of nyc

So we pretty much left off after the longest day ever. We totally slept in the next day and then headed off to battery park to see the statue of liberty. We couldn't really find anything for breakfast (maybe because it was almost lunch time???) We walked around trying to figure out how to get on the ferry for awhile and then we saw it: the line. The end was not in sight. We started following it in a zig zag all around the park and still no end. I did however find some roasted nuts to give us some stamina while we searched for the end of the line. We made an executive decision that if we waited in that line we would be wasting away most of the day so we got some hotdogs and decided to try again tomorrow, much earlier in the morning.

From there we decided to head to the Museum of Jewish Heritage since it was nearby. What an interesting place! There are 3 floors: the first floor is before the Holocaust, the second is during, and the third is after. What a heartwrenching experience. I have been interested in this time period and am so glad that we ended up going.

Then we headed to Chelsea Market (what a cool place!) walked around, did some shopping in the fun stores and finally decided on a snack at The Cleaver Co. We enjoyed a cheese/bread/fruit platter. Oh, yum! The figs were my favorite. Or maybe the cheese and honey. Wait, it was the sourdough bread. Ok, it was all delish.

Since once again we were navigating the city so well, we decided to just take a cab to Purl SoHo, a yarn and fabric shop. I got a few goodies and by then it was almost time for our dinner at The Ninja. We had been looking forward to eating at this place for months. We began our venture over there by getting ourselves kicked out of a cab. But, we finally made it. And it was totally worth the trek.

It all started with me screaming twice before we even got to our table. Did I mention that I'm not so good at the whole people jumping out and scaring me thing? You are in this dark dungeon of a place and there are ninjas everywhere just waiting to scare the bejeebies out of you. They jump out with flames, swords, knives, you know normal things for a dinner out.

Let's just say it was a blast. And the food was amazing. The whole experience was fun.

We spent the majority of our meal looking over our shoulders though. The ninjas were seeming to enjoy our screams and nervous laughter because they didn't really leave us alone.

We ordered dessert because we just weren't ready to leave yet. That was great too. Then we headed off for some shopping and more walking around the city. I'm pretty sure my feet were burning by this point. so.much.walking.

As promised, we got up early the next day and headed back to battery park. It was such a new experience for us to actually know where we were going since we had been there the day before. And after being herded through security we ended up on the first ferry. It was amazing to see the statue up close and personal. I loved going through the museum on ellis island. I kept wishing I knew more about my family and when they came here. Had some of them passed though? The photographs and stories were inspiring.
Next stop: Strand Book Store. I don't think I've seen so many books in one place. I'm not gonna lie, we just plopped down in one of the aisles and started browsing. Hey, our feet hurt! This place had 4 levels I think of books on every topic. We both found a couple that we couldn't pass up (um....yeah I haven't read one of them yet...guess I better get started since summer is winding down:). Then on to a place I was very excited about:

We took the subway uptown in hopes of a frozen hot chocolate from Serendipity. What a cute place! It was such a mixture of colors and textures and just fun. The frozen hot chocolates were awesome. They tasted exactly like they sound: hot chocolate in frozed form. Yum! We stayed awhile and just enjoyed sitting down:) Plus, those drinks were huge!


We did a little more shopping and then got the wild idea that we wanted to see another broadway show: The Lion King. This time we weren't dressed up, we had a million shopping bags with us, and we hadn't eat dinner, but we went to the ticket booth to see if there were any tickets left. We were actually able to get some and they were really good seats front and center. I don't know what I was expecting, but when they started singing 'circle of life' and a huge elephant appeared next to Hillary my heart may have skipped a few beats. The show was amazing. The costumes were ingenious. Lots of laughs and plain good entertainment.

After that we were hungry (again!) and set off to find dinner and check out the NBC Studio store again. But, the store was closed and so was every restaurant we could find. We ended up some place that looked promising for late nights (hillary, do you remember the name?) for drinks and appitizers. Hey, it's what sounded good: quesadillas and fried macaroni. The only problem was that our waiter disappeared on us. I think his shift ended and he just forgot about us. We finally flagged down someone, paid our bill, and began to hunt for our hotel with yet another confused taxi driver.

Sunday: time to head to our friends' Anita and Zach just across the connecticut border. We packed up our stuff and headed to grand central to take the train. We had plenty of laughs at the lady at the ticked window. Her eyes were barely open as she glanced our way and said "brreewwster?" in slow motion. Don't worry, we did not keep replaying that one over and over. We found our gate and had more pizza since we had a little wait.

The train was full of excitement as we were pretty sure we were going the wrong way the whole time. Once again, we had no clue and all the places we were stopping were not on our list of stops on the way to brewster. But, in fact we did make it but not before we lugged all our suitcases two cars up (our car didn't exit at brewster we were informed by the ticked punch guy who totally reminded me of the guy from polar express!) and I tore my pants!! Not even kidding. They got caught on the arm of the chair and ripped about a foot down from my back pocket. Cool.

While we waited for Anita and Zach it decided to downpour. We huddled in a doorway (nothing was open) with our suitcases and when they did arrive, Zach escorted us to the car with an umbrella.

Staying at their house was the perfect end to our trip. It was neat to see what the country was like just an hour away from the city. They took us to the winery where Anita works, the McLaughlin Vineyards, for a wine tasting and a walk around the grounds. It was beautiful (and tasty!)

Then we headed back to their house for chicken bar-b-que (which actually has nothing to do with BBQ sauce, which hillary and I couldn't quite figure out!) and strawberry shortcake. This was totally different from the city...relaxing, only a little walking, and good times with friends. One more night and we found ourselves at the airport ready to head home.