Our Garden

So how do you make the most of your patio? You grow 2 small square foot gardens! When we moved here our patio was pitiful.  There were weeds and dirt, that's it.  So last summer we planted grass and a few plants and only one zuccini plant survived.  It did so well, that this year we decided to go big!  We have 3 different kinds of tomatoes (one that I grew from a seed!), potatoes (Brian found an old forgotten over grown potatoe in the pantry and planted it!), carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, and some watermelon (that unfortunately I think that by the time it gets big enough to produce the season will be over).

 Here is broccoli, carrots, 1 tomato, cucumber

 Cucumber

 My tomato plant from seed! I didn't know it had even survived until today!

 Broccoli starting to grow :)

 Big boy tomoato

 Roma Tomato

Potatoe

 Lucas couldn't resist pulling out a carrot.  They are colorful baby carrots but still need a few more weeks I think

Tingly Beach

They have these ponds here that you can go to fish, drive your model boats, and rent pedal boats.  Lucas has been talking about boats a ton lately so we decided to take him.

 Although he doesn't look like he's having fun, just relaxing. The first thing he said to me when he got off the boat was "That was SO much FUN!"

We were pretty bumed to hear that kids under 3 couldn't ride (good thing Lucas is big, we just said he was 3!). So Levi and I just hung out and watched all the ducks, geese, swans, etc walk around.

Cat vs Lion

How can someone be afraid of a cat but not a lion?  Levi is super afraid of our friends puppy, but not afraid of Gus!

 Zack and Lucas playing Mario Cart

Zack's puppy

 At least once every evening I look over and find all three of my boys playing on the floor together! Notice the little scab on Levi's forehead? :( He fell forward on my rug outside and it is a gritty material and it skinned it :(

How can he not be afraid of a great big black clumsy lion and not be afraid of that little yellow puppy (cat size)?

Zoo without Daddy

This was only the 2nd time that I took both boys to the zoo without Brian. The first time I didn't even bother taking the camera but I was way too ambitious.  I took them to the Zoo, the Aquarium, the Botanical Gardens, and rode the train around to those places.  This time was better, we only went for to the zoo for two hours and we had a friend come with her two kids :)

 Notice the leash? Everytime I took it off of him I regreted it...

 It has been ages since we had seen these guys up and moving, most of the time we just see them sleeping!

 The baby Orangutan

My little cutie pies :)

Natural History and Science Museum

I just found out that from Memorial Day to Labor Day the Natural History Museum here gives free admission to miliary families!  So nautrally, I had to drag Brian and my boys there! 

Was it as cool as it could have been? No. However, it was cool enough :) It was much more Science than Natural History, and since my kids are so little, I was really hoping for more dinosaurs.  Lucas LOVED running around and seeing the exibits.

 There was a huge area on computers that would have been interesting to see at an adult speed where you can read everything than kid lightning speed...

 Lucas thought all the exibits that were computer interactive were pretty awesome

 Trying to get on the computers...

They had this cool area where kids could make animal foot prints in the sand, see some small animals up close, and use microscopes to look at bug related things up close.

 We were there for turtle feeding time! Lucas loved watching this turtle chomp down on his apple. It was super exciting to hear Lucas almost screaming "look! The turtle eats apples just like Lucas eats apples!"



ABQ sky

We have some crazy weather here in ABQ sometimes.  The wind can get crazy strong, crazy fast. On 6/12 we were outside playing and chatting with our neighbor when the wind started getting really strong. We gathered our things quickly and Brian went to get the camera while I went to save our friends stuff that she had left outside before leaving to run errands.

 This is the view from our back patio.  The next day at work Brian found out that this huge wind storm had lifted a plane, that was on the ground being worked on, five feet up in the air. They had to do a hard landing inspection on it because it flopped back down so hard!

These pictures were taken on a not so bad day from our bedroom windows. The mountains can usually be seen very well.  We have had Air Quality alerts everyday since the fires started. I haven't watched the news in a while but it seems that at least the sky here has finally cleared up.

Levi 10 months!

Time for a little status update on Levi for our memory banks, since lets face it, this bank is mostly empty!

* My little bum scooter has permanent rug burn on one of his legs. I am guessing since it was "uncomfortable" he tries to keep one leg up (making a triangle with the ground as the bottom) and one leg all the way touching the ground. I will take a pic and upload it someday
* Still loves his brother and wants us to walk him right behind him. Now he LOVES to be at the window with Lucas and Gus, staring out the windows forever.
* Pulls to his feet on everything and if it's short enough to where he can lift up his left leg to "climb" it, he does. He learned that from walking up the stairs, holding on to fingers of course.
* 3 teeth
* was eating baby food fantastic for the past 3 weeks, until yesterday when he decided he's back to hating it.
* Still taking 2 good naps or 3 not so good ones and sleeps from 7 pm to 6 am
* Weighed him with his clothes on yesterday at a dr's office and he was 17 lbs 15 oz (at 9 months he was only 15.7 lbs naked)
* LOVES to be outside! Cries when you close the door.
* LOVES water. Pool, bath, puddle, sprinkler, sippy cup to drink and spit, it doesn't matter the form. He smacks his lips together (kind of like a big kiss) if he is thirsty.
* Jibber-jabbers super LOUD all the time. People laugh at him/us at the grocery store and pool.
* Can stand alone for a few seconds alone, but HATES when I make him do it.
* Plays peek-a-boo and hides his face with towels/clothes/rags
* Understands "No no Levi" and obeys most of the time
* LOVES taking things out of things or putting things in (ex. cars into the car box, anything out of my purse)
* Drives cars while making "vroom" noises. He was doing this one last month but I must have forgotten to put it here
* If you make him sad and he goes to throw a "tantrum" instead of throwing himself backwards like most of the kids I know. He bends himself in half forwards and won't look up/lift his head up, until he's done.
* He even waved to the UPS man two houses away until the man was out of sight. The guy thought it was super cute and was waving all cute and goofy back to Levi (you could definitely tell he was a dad and used to the baby wave!)

Funny boy Lucas

I feel so bad posting with no pictures but we had to reinstall windows on our computer and that has left my camera not being able to upload :( some sort of driver problem! grrrr... anyway..

Lucas thinks he is just Mr. SmartyPantsFunnyMan lately. This morning I told him we were going to a friends house (for my VT) He responded with "Yeah! We have to go to a Birthday Party! It's your birthday party {mom}! We need to get our party pants!" What on earth are party pants?

This evening part of his dinner was noodles which of course he spilled more than a few on his shirt and pants. When I went to get him out of his chair I had him stand on it so I could brush off all the noodles. As I was brushing them off his shirt and pants he said "Hey! I'm getting a noodles hair cut!" Seriously? A noodles hair cut? Where does he get his train of thought from!

At bedtime when we were reading books his Thomas book said "Peep, Peep" (as in a train whistle) on one of the pages, after I said it Lucas said "Not beep, beep. Trucks go beep, beep. That's not a truck. That's Percy!"

He is also Levi's jester :) Any time Levi is crying (especially while in his high chair) Lucas runs over, asks "What's wrong Levi? You ok?" and starts making silly faces, weird noises, or playing peek-a-boo.

Got a few pictures uploaded so I thought I would add to this

Lucas likes reading stories to Levi :) but if Levi tries to touch the book, most of the time Lucas gets mad

I have been a major slacker when it comes to potty training. He has gone through really good phases and then I just get sick of it and don't stay on top of him. So, to encourage us both, we made a potty chart. Every time he uses the bathroom he gets a sticker on his chart and if he poops he gets to pick a fun little present (from the Target dollar section). Lucas went and locked himself in the bathroom so I assumed he was using the toilet.  After it had been too long for a potty break I went to check on him and found that he had found my sticker stash and had used a bunch of my scrapbook stickers to decorate the wall!

Cupcake Wars

It seems that every Saturday or Sunday we seem to watch an episode of Cupcake Wars.  Brian is incapable of watching that show without the urge to eat cake.  So, we have been experimenting with recipes trying to find some good ones in preparation for the birthdays to come

I didn't give Lucas "junk" food - ESPECIALLY sweets, until my Mom overloaded him at 18 months. Now Brian has been giving Levi all sorts of sweets since he was probably 6 months...

My helpers

He had to go straight to the tub! He was LOVING that chocolate frosting!

Tasting the mint frosting

Pretty good chocolate cake with mint frosting and Andes on top. Still not good enough yet...I guess we'll just have to try again

Quarter of a Century

Another year older, another year wiser. This year my birthday came and went on a super busy week.  Brian was having to work 12's, 6pm to 6am (which really ended up being 5:30 - 7:30 most of the days) the entire week of my birthday, so we didn't see him much.  The morning of my birthday he walked in the door with the candles on this cake already lit...it was very sweet and made my day!

 

The rest of the day was just a relaxing day with my kiddos. Birthdays are so different when you have little kids, but the joy I got out of hearing Lucas sing me Happy Birthday was priceless :)