(7.14.2010)

We had an eventful Monday. We headed to the lake for the ward lake day. Jameson enjoyed the water and building sand castles. He loves to get me nervous by walking out to the rope which means he is neck deep in water. He says he’s swimming. Luckily, he does come back out of the water before I have to go in after him.

Ella and I enjoyed some beach time.

Then Jameson walked his girls to their car.

He’s actually starting to like his baby sister, and he’s becoming more helpful… at times.

That night, after we were all in bed, Kevin came in and woke us up. Well, I wasn’t asleep yet, but I was still in bed. It was not something pleasant he woke us up for either. He was taking the trash out, and found a bunch of slugs. He picked the biggest one he could find and brought it to show Jameson. I have never seen slugs so big. NASTY!

Stretched out it was about 6 inches long.

(7.10.2010)

I had the bright idea to go pick fresh strawberries and then make some jam. Well it was the last weekend for strawberries so we had to go. It also happened to be a very warm day. (I say warm and not hot, because it was probably in the high 80s, and growing up in Vegas, that’s a nice day. Here, it felt really HOT!) A friend of mine said she would come with me. So we had her, and her little boy along with me and the two kids. Jameson and Evan love to play together. So we got there and got our buckets. I strapped Ella in the pack on my front and we hunted out the red strawberries. Well, since it had been so hot, the strawberries were small and really ripe. Jameson wasn’t much help, and bending over to pick the strawberries with a baby on your front was actually pretty tiring. After about an hour and a half I gave up. I decided I would just go to the farmers market on the way home, any buy their already fresh picked strawberries. Suzanna, my friend, was so sweat and probably picked most the berries (she’s pregnant mind you). The boys did like to pick, they just didn’t have the best judgment and would get sidetracked.

So we headed to the farmers market on the way home. Ella had to show off her shades from Grammy Brazell.

I bought my strawberries, and ended up eating the ones we picked. They were delicious, but very small. The jam did turn out delicious, though.

(7.9.2010)

First of all, Happy Birthday to my mom. (I guess it doesn’t have the same effect since I’m back dating these posts.)

What happens when Jameson doesn’t take a nap? By 5 pm he looks like this…

And I just have to say, What happened to Ella’s hair? She had a ton of dark hair when she was born, which is slowly growing in blond, and also falling out. So basically the only hair that is left is on top and above her ears. She pretty much has a backwards mullet. Do I just cut it and start over?

(7.8.2010)

We’ve been doing some swimming this summer in actual pools rather than lakes. Lakes are fine, but Jameson doesn’t really get a chance to swim. He mostly just plays in the water and the sand at the lake, but no swimming. This is totally different than when I was little. I lived in pools in the summer and we all knew how to swim by his age. I mean, we had to. It was Vegas, and that’s all you can do in the summer is live in the pool.

He surprised me this summer by wanting to swim. I put floaties on him, but he stays pretty vertical. He kicks as hard as he can, but doesn’t really go anywhere. Some friends had a tube for their little girl. Well, when she was out of the pool, Jameson snagged it. Then, he was off. He cruised all around the pool, and loved swimming. In fact, he didn’t want to get out of the pool.

Ella was a great observer of the activities.

(7.7.2010)

Ella had her first foods today. She got a treat of squash. She didn’t really know what to do with it. Well, first of all she didn’t really know what she was doing in the bumbo with a bib on.

Of course a picture of Ella cannot be taken without Jameson getting jealous. So here is your picture of Jameson eating his food. He was so proud of himself.

Ella didn’t really know what to think about it all.

Jameson was so concerned Ella was spitting out her food. He also wanted to show us that he was doing good, and can eat all of his food.

I rarely post on the blog because I think Britt does such a good job of it, that I don’t really have anything to add. Today I got an IM at work that I thought all of you would enjoy.

brittany 12:27 today in the car Jameson told me… red means stop, green means go
brittany 12:28 yellow means GO FASTER!!!

Jameson is like a sponge and he’s picking things up so fast now. Needless to say, I had some explaining to do.

(July 6, 2010)

Uncle Paul came up for a visit on his summer break. We hung out the first few days he was here, then we were all hit with some virus that nearly killed us all. Paul had it the worst, but we were all out of commission for at least 24 hours. Luckily, the kids were spared from the horrible illness we caught. Kevin caught it first, but was probably the least sick. 3 hours later I was down, and within 3 hours Paul was down. It was kind of odd how it hit us all. We spent all Monday recovering, and Tuesday ventured out. We headed to Seattle to show Paul some sights. We parked by Kevin’s work, and then had to hike a ways to get to the market. Pushing a stroller with 2 kids after being seriously ill, up hills,  was not the brightest of my ideas. We took a walk through the market and then headed back. That was about all the strength we had.

We met up with Kevin for some dinner at Johnny Rockets, although Paul and I were still not up to eating very much. Then we headed for home. We checked the mail along the way and found a letter for Jameson from Grammy Brazell. She sent a present from Alaska. We thought she would like to see Jameson’s reaction.

In case you didn’t catch it, she sent an “Alaskan Ice Worm” which was a strip of hair with some eyes glued on it. Don’t worry, Jameson defeated it.

And on to Ella…

like I said earlier, she can roll about 95% of the way over. She can’t get her arms out, so she gives up and rolls back.

So close!

Saturday night, July 3rd, Kevin went out with some friends to the Indian reservation. You can buy and light the fireworks there, although there is no safety protocol. I take that back, he said they had a coned off section and you were supposed to light the fireworks inside the cones. Only one problem, fireworks don’t always go one direction. He said it was crazy and there were fireworks flying all over the place. I hear they were even applauded on one of their creations. He was so excited that night.

The next afternoon, on July 4th, he got some fireworks out to show Jameson. He showed him how to throw the poppers to make them snap.

Jameson loved it until Dad pulled out some extra special poppers from the Indian reservation. Those suckers were so loud.

July 3rd, we met up with a bunch of friends at the park for a bar-b-que. All the grills were full, so we thought we’d save the day and bring our camping one. Well we got there, opened it up, and the regulator was missing. Who knows where it went in our move. Well, the boys tracked down a grill they could use, and we set up blankets by the playground. Jameson’s good friend, Evan, was there. Evan tried to teach Jameson how to play croquet, but Jameson just thought it was a big hammer. So, the game didn’t last very long before it needed to be put away.

Ella got a nice view of everything going on, on top of Dad’s shoulders. Thanks Aunt Lynn for the 4th of July outfit!

Ella at 4 months old

(7.1.2010)

I’m sorry, I don’t care what you think. I think this is the cutest baby girl I’ve ever seen. Ella is now 4 months old. Her stats at this point (which were actually done on 6/17/2010) are as follows:

Height: 2′ 0.09″  which is 60.82%

Weight: 14 lbs 9.5 oz which is 84.41%

Head Circumference: 40.2 cm or 15.83″ which is 41.47%

She is growing great and can now eat solids. She is trying really hard to roll over and gets about 95% of the way over. She is starting to belly laugh and smiles all the time. And since I’m writing this post about 2 months after the fact, I can’t remember what else I was going to write about her at 4 months.

Tonight, I looked outside and found my boys like this…

They were looking for birds in the trees. I love these two, and I love watching Jameson trying to be just like his dad. Notice how he lays with his arms under his head? He loves his daddy.