Wordless Wednesday

It's a Girl!!

We got the news this morning at my 20 week ultrasound appointment....It's a Girl!! The technician asked us if we knew the gender and/or wanted to know the gender. We both said No we don't know and YES we want to know!! Then she didn't say anything for awhile and finally said I don't know yet. UGH! I was thinking I'm not walking out of here not knowing. Kenny said he thought that was a good sign. Then she said I think it is a girl. I thought, you think, you better be more sure then that. Then she followed up with yep, it's a girl and typed it up on the screen. I felt confident then we were really having a girl.

I wasn't surprised since this whole time I have thought it was a girl, but it was super nice to hear the confirmation of what I thought. Also to have the pressure off of knowing it really is a girl and we can move on with baby #2 plans: room color, clothes, decorating, and of course a name.

We were trying to keep Shane happy while we waited for the doctor to come in after the Ultrasound. We asked him what we should call her. A couple weeks ago he said Apple. This time he said Kate. (We just figured out that Arthur from the book series has a baby sister named Kate and that is where he got the name from). He then launched into a story about how we should have 3 babies and he will share one with Mema and Papa, one with Mommy and Daddy and he will have one. I don't know where he comes up with this stuff.

Other then the news of it's a girl, she is healthy and weighing in at 13 ounces putting her in the 57%. I'm doing well with my Crohns and putting weight on like no other. I won't mention the number at this point, but I'm just about where I was when Shane was born and I have 5 more months to go!! The Doctor is happy with the weight gain though, so guess I'll just go with it.

Menu Monday

Monday -- BBQ Burgers and Cantaloupe (we never managed to have them last week)

Tuesday -- leftovers

Wednesday -- Pasta with Garlicky Roasted Broccoli (new recipe)

Thursday -- leftovers

Friday -- Tacos

Saturday -- leftovers

Sunday -- Dinner Surprise

Craft Club

This month for Craft Club we made the cutest picture bracelets. I was so excited to make them. I couldn't decided on which sized frame to use, so I just had to make two. One using each size/design. They were pretty darn easy to make, too. As long as you didn't drop the string and loss all the beads off the end of them and have to start all over. Every now and then you'd hear beads hit the floor and some one groan. It happened to me on my 2nd bracelet and I ended up with a whole different design then I had originally started with. Everyone had such beautiful bracelets. So many different colors and designs. I loved every one of them!

Thanks Vicky for the great idea and for hosting!!

Water Fun

Last week we actually had a warm enough day that I was able to get Shane's new Spiderman sprinkler out for him and put on his new summer swimming suit. Last summer he wasn't so into sprinklers unless they were only going a tiny tiny bit. BUT this year he was super excited about it. He still didn't want it on all the way where Spiderman actually spun. But bigger then last year and he even got wet!!! We are making progress. He thought making Spiderman spin himself was the most fun.

A big thanks to the Valentine girls for Shane great birthday gift!!

House Projects

We've completed some house projects that I haven't had a chance to post to the blog. Along with the things you'll see below, we've painted a lot and added new baseboard to all the rooms we've painted so far.

BEFORE: I didn't get a good before picture, but this is an area at the front of our front yard. We took out the big bush and replanted a unhappy maple that was in front of the house.
AFTER: I think the maple is a lot happier here with more sun in his life and we added the two lavender plants. It really makes the front yard feel more open.
BEFORE: Guess I'm not so great at getting the before pictures. This is the only one I could find that showed the big tree in front of the house that we cut down. Along with removing 3 bushes up in the front, too. Mainly because it was blocking all the light to the downstairs and starting to cover the front windows upstairs.
AFTER: We moved some plants over to the left side of the house to fill in some areas where we had moved plants. I think this side turned out really nice. (Not the best picture)
AFTER: Then we planted 3 new plants in front of the house: 2 hydrangeas and 1 Mexican Pearl. It still needs some work over here, but we aren't totally sure what to do with it since the back portion gets NO sunlight and NO rain. But these 3 bushes will fill out at lot, so we don't want to plant to much in there right now either.

This back corner of the back yard became open after we had the trees trimmed up. We added "Stewart" to the corner. He is a summer blooming tree with bark that peels and changes colors.

BEFORE: Way back when we first moved in we took up the carpet in the front entry. Later we decided to also remove the carpet down by the garage entry.
AFTER Entry: Kenny worked really hard for almost a week and got this beautiful tile put in both of those places. I love the tile we picked out. It is one of my favorite things we've done so far.

AFTER Garage door entry:

Redmond Firestation #11

Earlier this week Shane and I took a field trip with our Moms Group to a local fire station. I had always thought he would love to do this, but had no idea that you could just call up a fire station and schedule a tour. It's as easy as that. He was super excited to go, but of course clammed up as soon as we got in there. If you ask him now if it was fun he'll even say no, because #1 "Mommy left me" (I didn't leave him...one of the fire fighters took him out of the fire engine on the side I wasn't on so he couldn't see me for about 30 seconds) and #2 "the fireman was scary" (one of the fire fighters put on his full fire gear and crawled around pretending he was there to rescue them in a fire. Shane didn't care for that!). The fire fighters were great with the kids. I thought it was a great adventure.

This statue was outside of the station and I thought it was so sweet.
Sitting in the big fire engine. He just wasn't sure about it and DID NOT want to sit up front and "drive" it.
Talking (or at least listening) to the nice fire fighter. He wouldn't say anything to her.
Wearing the head piece. Another fire fighter had the other set on talking to him in it, but he wouldn't respond to him.
Obsessed with the big stuffed fire dog.


He said he liked the aid car the best, I think it was just smaller so he didn't feel so intimidated by it. We even got to go in the back of it, but Shane wouldn't let me take any pictures of him in there. The fire fighter showed him the drawer of band-aids which Shane thought was super cool.

Half Way There

I'm 20 weeks today and half way to Baby #2's arrival!! We have an appointment next Monday, June 28th where hopefully baby will cooperate and we'll find out if it is a boy or a girl! I'm feeling very excited and super nervous all at the same time.

I'm really not loving these pregnant pictures. But here they are anyways...belly picture update taken around week 18.

Ballard Locks

For Shane's birthday adventure this year we took him to the Ballard Locks. The craziest thing was that morning on a cartoon he was watching they talked about locks and how they worked. It was so strange and just perfect timing. He very much enjoyed watching the boats come and go. We had to drag him away after seeing the process a couple times. Now when ever we mention water or boats he thinks that is where we are going.

We took a walk over to a near by park and also visited the fish ladder.


There was this huge hill that Shane and Kenny ran down quite a few times. As you can see on Shane's face he loved every minute of it, until we had to move on to something else.


Checking out the salmon at the fish ladder. We saw about 5 of them. The run was just starting, but still cool to see and nice that it wasn't very crowded in their either. I was hoping to catch some fish in the back of this picture, but it didn't work out.
Watching a boat come go out of the locks. This was a medium sized fishing boat. Shane got a toy fishing boat for his birthday. He was pointing out all the things that were on this boat that were also on his toy boat. He is so observant it is scary!

Water Fun

Shane had his first water fun of the year a couple weekends ago. We were in Kirkland having some dinner at Kid Valley on one of the few sunny Saturday evenings we've had this year. After dinner we headed over to the park and beach area. There were some giant sand puddles which he instantly jumped in. As he got his courage up he made his way down to the water front and basically jumped right in. He had never been so carefree in the water before this point. Jumping, splashing, and walking into it as far as we would let him. Towards the end he was basically just throwing himself down into the water going crazy. We were very impressed with how comfortable he was playing in it. He was soaking wet from head to toe and road home completely naked, but was a happy happy kiddo. Since then we have heard only about a million times that he wants to go play in the water "really bad".

Wordless Wednesday

Dahlia and Shane

We are coming to the last seven or so times that we'll be watching/playing with Dahlia. Just through the end of the summer. Now that we are seeing her Wednesday mornings it gives us 4 fun filled hours of play. If only the darn weather would cooperate a little more with us!!! But I digress. The last few months we've had a handful of adventures and it has been so awesome to see their friendship grow as they get older. Below are some of the highlights.

Fox Hollow in Issaquah, which is a small family farm. Getting there and parking was quite an ordeal, but the kids enjoyed running around and petting all the animals.

Petting the miniature horse and donkey.

Up in the hay loft where there was 3 different kitten litters and a jump house.
Playing on the tractors, a huge hit for Shane.
Petting a friendly cat next to the garden.

The Kirkland Community Center Open Gym was a huge hit on two different occasions. I had never seen them play so hard before. They have these two car roller coasters that they both seriously played on for 40 minutes straight both times we visited there. They would push the cars to the top and then count 1, 2, 3 GO...and race down to see who could get the furthest.



Farrel McWhirter Park in Redmond is an all time favorite place to go for all of us, rain or shine. Recently we put on our rain coats and headed in to the trails and they just ran and ran and ran some more. Never mind the pouring down rain those two had a blast running through the forest picking which trail to go on. I pretty much just saw the back of their heads the whole time until I would make them stop and wait for me to catch up and then they were off again.

Feeding the new baby calf some grass. He was so cute and funny to feed.
What a girl will do for a flower!
I thought this was the coolest tree ever, the roots were just hanging in the sky like that.
The back of their heads!!
Checking out the creek below.

Arena Sports in Woodinville was a place we visited recently on another rainy Wednesday. I was very surprised by how much they enjoyed themselves by again just running and running and running. Every now and then they would kick the soccer ball around, but otherwise they ran for just about 1.5 hours straight. Towards the end of playing they kept holding hands which was just the cutest thing in the world. The pictures didn't turn out great because of the poor lighting.