BRADY 10 MONTHS OLD AND FIRST HAIRCUT

Brady turned 10 months old last week! There are pictures below to show how much he's grown and how different he's looking with his TWO teeth!!!

He got his first haircut tonight. Lee has been wanting to do it for awhile, and tonight I finally gave him the okay!

Brady had to check out the trimmers first to make sure Dad wasn't going to hurt him.
It started out okay. Even a smile on his face!

Brady got extremely squirmy and not wanting to get his hair cut anymore!

Then he got REALLY mad! You can see that his tears are even rolling down his chest and belly. This was toward the very end, so he had been crying for awhile. I held onto him at the end to let Lee finish. Brady enjoyed being in Mom's arms much better!

Here's the finished look. I really didn't think that his hair was bad to begin with, but Lee thought otherwise. I guess he really just evened it out all over.

This is one of the goofiest pictures of Brady. It was just taken this morning. You can see his top tooth! He's standing and holding onto my legs, wanting me to pick him up.

Again, another picture from this morning.

This is the reaction I get after I put the gate up on the stairs. Within seconds, he's over it, but he sure lets out a big scream and even pushes some tears out to show me just how frustrated he is that he cannot play on the stairs. He can crawl up all the stairs just fine, but I'm not wanting to spend my entire day watching him play on the stairs. We've got plenty of toys in the house to play with instead!

This is probably his favorite place to be at when in the playroom. He loves to stand at the tool bench and play with the drill and all the other tools.

Taking a try at learning to walk. The wheels move a bit too fast for him yet, but he'll get there soon enough! For right now, he enjoys cruising along the furniture.

Just playing in the playroom.

We went to a garage sale that also had pony rides. We sat Brady on a pony, but he wasn't liking it much.

This is the look I get after I say, "No, no, Brady." All he does is looks at me and smile! I can't help it. It's very cute! He's not 2 1/2! If Tyler did that, it would be handled a bit differently! The wine bottles are now covered up with a blanket. Out of sight, out of mind!

Standing up to look out the window.

Another 2 months and we'll be celebrating Brady's first birthday!!! It's hard to believe! I love you, buddy! Thanks for making the past 10 months wonderful! What I love most....your hugs, cuddles, smiles, and kisses!

BIG COUNTRY BASH!

My mom came to babysit and Lee and I enjoyed a full day with friends at the Big Country Bash in Des Moines! It was great and we had such a fun time, however, IT WAS A MESS!!! I'm pretty sure that what we were walking in was not ONLY mud! It smelled terrible!!! We were given the heads up before even going in, that we might as well leave our shoes at the car, so we did and we were thankful that we did! It was an awesome concert and we heard great music! The weather was hot and sunny and we all got extremely red! I also was very dehydrated by the end of the night and felt horrible! Here's who we got to hear: Rodney Atkins, Jason Michael Carroll, Trailor Choir, Jerrod Niemann, (Sarah Darling, Jason Brown, these two performed first and we were still tailgating), and Gretchen Wilson who performed last, and we left right before her. It was great!!!

Here's a picture of Lee's and my feet right when we walked in. It only got much worse than this!
Lee and I enjoying our day!

Lee, myself, Brian, and Megan. Megan is another Kindergarten teacher that I work with and Brian is her boyfriend.

FATHER'S DAY

Here's a post for Lee, the best dad that our kids could ever ask for!

These pictures were all taken on Father's Day, but this picture above is Lee's favorite about being a dad. When Lee gets home from work everyday, he comes into the living room or playroom, wherever we may be, and lays on the floor. I usually tell Tyler to 'go get Dad' and he will go jump on and wrestle Lee. Once Brady sees this, he's in on the action as well. This is Lee's favorite part of the day! The boys are always so excited to see Dad walk in the door!
Tyler had to get in an extra squeeze for his Daddy.

My brother was in Colorado, so we asked my dad to come spend the day with us. The best part of MY dad's day was definately playing baseball with Tyler! Here's a picture of the two of them playing some ball.

Here's Brady wrestling his dad and getting kisses in return!

SUMMER TIME RANDOM PHOTOS

Last week was my first week off from school and my first week home with the boys! It's been great so far...however, there are definately good days and not so good days! Here's a little of what we've been up to. Alot of hanging out at the house, playing, and swimming!!!

Since I won't be driving out to the country anymore, Lee and Tyler gave the van a really good wash.
Brady, still in his PJs. The first couple mornings of our summer were quite rainy, so we lounged in our pjs for awhile inside and played.

Tyler on his 'new' bike with training wheels. We got this bike from one of our neighbors. Again, our neighbors are awesome and so generous! We've got many items in our garage that have been given to us from our wonderful neighbors. It only took Tyler one day to get the hang of this new bike. He does awesome at it now. He can even pedal up hill by himself!

The boys had pudding for a morning snack.

Brady playing.

Tyler with my sunglasses on.

Brady has gotten up 1/2 of the stairs one time. I was standing behind him the whole time, but he didn't know. He ended up sitting on one of the stairs and bumped his head up against the wall. He will now only play on that first stair. I think that incidenct scared him off for awhile.

Lee keeps a little BB gun up on top of one of the cupboards in the kitchen. When he sees a bird stoop on our back deck, he TRIES to shoot it with the BB gun. Lee really doesn't like bird poop on our deck. The other morning, Tyler saw a bird on our back deck. He came into the play room and grabbed this tool from his toolbench. He said, "I'm gonna go shoot those birds that are poopin on the deck!" Here's a shot of him shooting "those birds." Hilarious!

Tyler's first time ever eating corn on the cob. He loved it! True Iowa boy!

You think he wants out??? Too bad he can't, we have a gate on the stairs.

Fighting over the watering can.

These were the coolest clouds and sunset I had ever seen! This was after a storm one evening. Lee and I had just put the boys to bed, so we spent some time outside in the driveway looking at the sky. I had never seen clouds that looked like this.

Brady has discovered the tupperware drawer! Notice, it's completely empty!

This was just last night. I cleaned out a closet yesterday and had found these cowboy boots that were given to us from a friend at my work. They were her son's, so they are still too big for Tyler, but he was really excited to wear them. After dinner, we went for a family walk and Tyler had to actually walk the first couple minutes in his awesome cowboy boots. He ended up getting in the stroller, because with the boots being big, I think it's pretty hard for him to walk in them. Tyler changed outfits, I think, 3 times yesterday. A neighbor of ours walked this shirt down for Tyler. It was an extra from his son's baseball team. This is now officially Tyler's baseball shirt. He is number 3 and loves his baseball shirt! He wore his baseball shirt to Lee's softball game tonight and had to run the bases after Lee's game. To Tyler, running the bases meant that he played a baseball game. He was very excited!

EXCITEMENT!

We have our own swing set in our own backyard!!! I have been talking about getting a swing set in our yard since last fall. Lee finally caved in and we got one! The boys are thrilled and I am very happy! Tyler actually smiles everytime he sees it through the window and we have spent much time on it swinging since Lee built it this past Saturday. Thank you, Lee!!! You are the best!

Here is the final product!
Here is Lee's crowd. My chair in the middle of the boys. This was probably the only time that Tyler actually sat in his chair. He was up "helping" Lee the rest of the time.

Tyler came up to me and said, "I need to take my shirt off like Daddy." So, here he is shirtless, just like Daddy.

Tyler helping Lee organize the pieces of wood. I'm pretty sure that Lee had to go right behind him and put it in it's correct pile, but it was so cute that Tyler really wanted to help and as frustrating as it may have been, Lee was letting him.

Not even completely finished yet, but it was stable enough to put the swings up, so we took our first swing ride. There's the boys with their hero, their Daddy!

Tyler giving his little brother a push in his swing.

Here's the tough guy climbing the rock wall.

We will enjoy many hours on our swing set this summer. Thank you, Lee, for giving in and thank you for building the best swing set for your boys!

4 YEARS AND STILL GOING STRONG!

Lee and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary last Thursday, June 17th! The past four years have been extremely wonderful and extremely busy!!!

June, 2006, married!

May, 2007, found out we were expecting our first baby!
May, 2007, Lee's job was transferring him to Grinnell, Iowa!

June, 2007, moved into our new house in Newton, Iowa!

November, 2007, Our first son, Tyler, was born prematurely at 32 weeks. He came out healthy and strong, with no complications, and only had to spend 3 1/2 weeks in the NICU. We are so lucky and blessed!

November, 2008, Tyler's 1st birthday.

December, 2008, I was pretty sure that I was pregnant with baby #2???

January, 2009, yep! Positive test! Found out we were pregnant with baby #2.

August, 2009, Our second son, Brady, was born at a full 37 1/2 weeks!!!

June, 2010, Happily celebrated our four years of wonderful wedded bliss!


What a great four years this has been! What a trip it's been and I'm excited to see what the future holds with our family!

ANDVENTURELAND

Lee's company outing was last weekend at Adventureland. We decided to have my mom (and her friend, Michelle) stay at our house to watch Brady and we would take Tyler to Adventureland. This was the best decision we could have made. Brady was much happier at home receiving all the attention from my mom and Michelle, sleeping when he wanted and being inside and safe from the hot and humid weather! Tyler was much happier, because he had all the attention from Lee and I and he got to do what he wanted, when he wanted! Lee and I were much happier, because both of our kids were happy! Tyler had an amazingly great time at Adventureland! He rode tons of rides and loved it! Here's some pictures to show our day.

We started out on the carousel.
The only thing that Tyler REALLY wanted from the entire day was to ride on a choo-choo train. Here he is on the train. He was so happy!

The three of us on the train.

Tyler thought this ride was fun. However, this ride made Lee sick! :)

Lee and Tyler waiting patiently in line. We were so proud of how well Tyler behaved on this day!

Tyler on the ladybug "rollercoaster." I'm pretty sure I had a few tears in my eyes when I saw him on this ride. It was the first time I had seen him on a ride all by himself and he just looked so grown up!

Tyler and I in the bumper cars. This was fun!

Tyler's taking me for a ride in a semi-truck.

He also loves fire trucks!

I love this picture! This was on the frog hopper. A mini version of an adult ride that I don't know the name of. But, Tyler loved this! If you saw the other kids sitting next to him, you can see the boredom on their faces. Those other kids were too old for this ride, but it was just perfect for a 2 1/2 year old!

A mini ferris wheel. Tyler went on this all by himself! Such a big boy!

Daddy won Tyler a Cubs hat by throwing a baseball REALLY fast! Good job, honey!

Here he is zonked out on the way home. What a great day!!!