But that doesn’t mean it was uneventful!
The people that sold us the house left a lot of stuff in it for us because they thought it would be a blessing to our family. Stools for the kitchen counter, office furniture, patio furniture and a giant couch upstairs. They also left the washer, dryer and extra fridge for us. All so appreciated - but we now had two extra fridges! So we drove one to Theresa after she was lamenting about never having enough storage space in her fridge in the house. If you have space and kids - a second fridge is the best!
The kids were excited about getting to play with the Larson kids and all of their dress-up stuff. There were several different astronauts roaming around and I couldn’t always correctly guess which kid was inside!
Well she has moved back into loving baby food again. Yay!
And by loving I mean “will eat a few bites”. It’s all relative here…
Thomas got a new bike! One with hand brakes - thankfully he picked them up pretty quick. (Mostly…)
Which also means that Henry has a new bike! He actually did pretty awesome the first few times trying it out. Hopefully we will have two bike riders soon!
She was “cooking” for me by pouring bead necklaces from one bowl to another. It was apparently quite soothing as she did it for awhile. :)
I got to go on a work trip to Canada and it was gorgeous in addition to being an awesome field trip. The break in the hot weather was also quite welcome!
Sometimes I just don’t know what goes through a toddler’s mind. But she was very convinced she needed a sandwich bag on her hand to eat today. (Whatever keeps her eating…!)
Eliza is still hanging around, though pretty blind and deaf these days. She got herself so tangled up in Natalie’s high chair that she just gave up and decided to rest with her foot up in the air. Crazy dog…
I finally thought to try out the helper stool with Natalie while making coffee cake. She loved being up at eye level and actually behaved pretty well! Maybe she’ll get more hang out time in the future!
We went up to Dallas to go to the Children’s Craniofacial Association annual picnic. The kids had a blast even though it was crazy hot - their faces were so red & sweaty! We met a few other kids around Natalie’s age that had BAHA’s and a few feeding tube graduates. It was nice to meet some other families in similar boats to us and we’ll definitely try to attend more events!
The police randomly stopped by when they saw the crowd at the park and all of the kids wanted to take photos with them. Natalie looks a little concerned - like maybe they heard she was standing on the furniture even though she knows it’s off limits?? ;)
There was an incident with my parent’s neighbors and burning trash that led to the fire department getting called not too long ago. Since they don’t live very close to said fire department, Dad decided it might be worth investing in his own “fire tank” in case there were any more small fires to put out. He had just gotten the equipment set up, so of course the boys had to run through the water to make sure it worked.
I guess I don’t need to give them a bath now? :)
We stopped in our usual park in Waco on the way home. We need to come back some weekend and try to bike these paths - they certainly look fun from the playground!
The boys school had an International Festival to celebrate the diversity of the students and area population. It’s apparently one of their bigger events and I was amazed at how many people were there! Almost every booth had a food to try and a poster with facts about the country. The best part by far was that Natalie absolutely devoured the Panna Cotta from the Italy booth. I went over to try to get the recipe, but they had already packed up. I guess I’ll just have to pick a random recipe online to try!
We got our first good Tropical storm - Imelda. And I didn’t do great during it… Matt was out of town and I was offsite at a warehouse looking at rocks. I didn’t realize it was even raining that bad until one of the warehouse guys came to tell me I might want to move my car as the parking lot was flooding. The water was almost up to the door jam and I had no idea what to do. I mean, staying put is what I would have preferred, but I had no idea if I could get out later and the schools were all starting to close!
I decided to try and drive out the way I came. It was soooo sketchy! I was almost having a panic attack trying to decide what to do. I went through a parking lot at one point and the water was high enough it was making my proximity alerts on the bumper go off. Eeeek!
I finally got to the highway and they were ridiculously slow, but mostly out of the danger of flooding. I thought I was home free once I got to my exit, but every direction I tried to go a police or fire truck got there just in time to block me.
At the last intersection, the fire truck got on the loud speaker and started calling out cars to tell them they would not make it and needed to turn around! The one in front of me he called out wasn’t any lower than me, so I turned into a parking lot and decided to leave the minivan. I was a mile from home and already had soaked shoes from just trying to get to my car at the warehouse. So I wrapped up my work laptop inside of the boy’s raincoats (that I thankfully had in the car), stuffed it in my backpack and started the walk home through the flooded streets. People were still trying to drive down the road and no one would listen to the crazy lady walking down the median in a tropical storm who was telling them to stop. (I don’t blame them?)
I got home finally, grabbed Matt’s giant truck and retrieved the boys. Thankfully once the rain mostly blew through, the sewers could take care of the flooding in our part of town. It was truly a flash flood - I checked the stream gauges and the one near us jumped ~10’ in less than an hour. Craaaaazy!
I decided Natalie’s play room needed a little more color on the walls and bought these awesome circle stickers to decorate. The boys and I had a blast trying to make them just enough random to look good.
Someone discovered that the boy’s cereal is way more exciting than her Cheerios and is now demanding their cereal in addition to her own. Can’t really fault her for that…!
We discovered a new lunch spot for after church - Steak & Shake! It’s not really new, but I haven’t been in years and it’s pretty good food for pretty low prices. Plus they have milkshakes!
And you can tell that everyone obviously loved the hats as well. :)
Thomas isn’t the only one with a new bike! My old bike is now Matt’s new bike and I have this awesome bike with super big wheels. The selling point was really the raised handlebars - hopefully these won’t be as hard on my wrists as my old Specialized was. It’s definitely a bike for comfort - even the seat is nice and cozy! :)
Homegirl is ready for her first bike ride in the bike trailer. Though the helmet was more trouble than help in this case - she tried to choke herself pulling it off. We may give her a pass as long as she is safely in the trailer… Maybe.
Henry got a love note from a classmate…
I * am * not * ready * for * this!!!
It’s become a running joke how nice and presentable Natalie looks in the mornings when her nanny gets her up versus when I get her up. Whatever, she and I match… ;)
When I was a kid, I had a white blanket I drug around everywhere until it was literally falling apart. I guess my dad got annoyed by the strings it was leaving around the house and cut it in half. Then cut it in half again. I finally noticed what was happening and hid it away from him. I must have brought it up enough over the years how he destroyed my security blanket that he felt bad.
So he bought me a new soft, white blanket to make up for it! Which was commandeered by my eldest. That boy loves things that are cozy and warm, so I am not at all surprised by the theft…
Sometimes we forget that Natalie is getting old enough to play with some of her brother’s old toys and suddenly realize that there is a whole train set hiding in a closet she could have! Since we found it, I had the boys set up a fun track for her to play with. She loved it!
Then promptly went all Godzilla on it and destroyed it. Sounds about like the first few times I set it up for the boys…
The one sure way to get Natalie to try a new food is to eat it when you think she is not paying attention. She was very insistent to try the hummus I was snacking on and surprisingly, it looks like she really likes it! It’s like a more sophisticated version of baby food. ;)
I stumbled across these edits to the calendar I left in the boys room last time Matt and I were out of town on trips. Thomas had a ridiculously snotty nose the other day and I had to use a warm washcloth and scrubbing to get the dried on snot off (sorry - gross!). Well apparently the next day he woke up with the same problem and needed help. Most kids might just come find their mom, but he wrote this whole note with pictures (it’s a snot-stache!) about needing help from me.
Even he couldn’t explain his logic on that one…
The boys also brought up how I haven’t built them a pillow tunnel in for-e-ver! So I did my best to recreate the tunnels like I made in Alaska. The boys were excited, but not as excited as Natalie was! She had never seen such magic and was chasing her brothers through the cushions as fast as she could crawl!
I think she was just thrilled in general to be in the boys “Lab” and explore all of their fun toys. She even managed to turn herself into Wonder Woman with part of a Hot Wheels kit. Adorable! :)
Thomas got to pick a reward at school and picked out this checkers kit. When I got to school to pick them up that afternoon, the two of them were intently playing checkers instead of running around like their usual crazy selves. I love that the two of them are so into playing games! :)