The boys, Starscream, Goodbye Cookout

A couple of weeks ago, Eric's aunt told us about burying a St. Joseph statue to assist in helping sell your house.. I hurried up to the local Catholic store and bought a small one, burying him first like this & then re-reading what she had written & re-burying him the way she had.. but still nothing. We had a lady we thought was interested, but we haven't heard anything. I need to get my daycare income back soon, so I think we'll be taking it off the market in a couple of weeks.

Last weekend, we went swimming at my Dad's for the first time this summer. This is a picture of Aeson's teeth while we were there. They're out far enough that you can clearly see them now. The two on the sides of the front two are starting to come through as well. My poor teething boy.. getting them all at once! Anyway, Aeson was scared of the pool at first but quickly warmed up to it & really did well!

Westen's been especially funny lately. He's been calling the movie theater the "movie peter." He also got a strawberry kiwi slushie at DQ the other night and said it tasted like strawberry & seaweed! Chelsea asked him if he meant kiwi, and that is in fact what he meant. :) I may have written about his knock knock jokes before, but just in case I didn't, this is how they go... "Knock Knock," "Who's there?" "Westen," "Westen who?" "Westen Behymer!" He doesn't quite get the concept... :) He gets so angry when we say them to him and try to be food.. He says we CAN'T be food! He continues to draw all the time and lately has started drawing angels and Toy Story characters. His drawings are so unbelievably good for a 4 year old! I would love to get him started in some art classes or something.

This past week, Westen said out of nowhere that he's ugly. I continually told him he wasn't (that he is, in fact, beautiful! :)) but he remained persistent that he is ugly. I have no idea where he even got this from. When I tried asking him, he said he just looked in the mirror and he is. :( I told him good things about all his features, but he remained certain. He said it for several days, so I finally asked him who else is ugly. (I'm not sure that he even knows really what it means) He said nobody, so I asked who he thought was pretty & he said me.. I told him that he looks like me, so he must be pretty too then! Since then, he hasn't said anything again. I'm hoping that no one said this to him, but it also makes me much more careful about what I may be saying about myself or other adults may be saying around him.

Aeson's been standing for longer and longer periods of time. The other day, he stood in the living room looking at a book for at least 30 seconds. He's started pushing his play table around the room, walking behind it. I'm pretty sure he will be walking in no time! It makes me sad! He's getting so big! We're busy planning his first birthday party and I can hardly believe it.
Yesterday, we had a very, very busy day. After Farmer's Market, we went to the pet store to get our fish some feeder fish and while we were there, we saw a couple of cute kittens. Westen begged me for one, so when we got out to the car, I called Daddy to see what he thought. We ended up going out to the shelter to look, and I'm glad we did. They now have TWO rooms FULL of cats and kittens. There were a couple of older cats whose time was about up, and it just broke my heart not to take them! We really wanted a kitten, though.. One whose habits aren't already formed and one who could grow up with the kids. We already have outdoor cats, and I had considered bringing one of them inside.. but they're so used to being outside now and show no interest in being inside. So, we got this little black and white one you see. Westen named him Starscream (a Transformer). He LOVES him. He's been really good with him too. Aeson even has as well. He giggles at him and touches him with his fingertip. Last night, he was curling his fist around some fur but the kitten didn't seem to mind. Our dog doesn't care less about him.. and while he was afraid of the dog at first, he now couldn't care less either!
After all the errands of the morning, we had Amber's baby shower to go to. She was one of my bridesmaids, and she's expecting her baby girl the first part of October. Another of my bridesmaids is also pregnant now (with her third boy!) and due in September. I got to go visit her last week too.
And finally, last night we had a cookout at our house for my mom's side of the family. My sister and her family (above) are moving to Chicago next weekend. We had a good time with everyone, and the food was delicious! We spent most of our time indoors, because it was SO hot and humid.. but we did go outside for a while, and the kiddos got to play with water balloons. We're going to miss all three of them so very, very much!

4th of July Getaway

We spent the 4th of July weekend in Burlington, IA with my sister, her hubby, and their baby. We left Saturday afternoon. We realized we'd made a BIG mistake when we got to the hotel we'd booked. It was close to Fun City, where we were going to be spending most of our time, and much cheaper, so we'd booked it online. The whole place looked rather shady and when we got in the room, there were dead bugs ALL over the carpet. Every little thing was definitely less than clean! It had sounded nice online and there were even photos, but it definitely was not what we thought! They offered to change our room but then the lady was being less than friendly and even the 'nicer' area looked iffy, so we ended up getting a refund and checking into the hotel across the street! Thank goodness they had a room available. The extra money was definitely worth it!!!

After that whole ordeal, we finally went to dinner, where I realized I had forgotten my ID! No gambling for me! :( We went to Fun City that evening. Westen LOVED it all. Laser tag was probably one of his favorite things. He wouldn't ride the go-carts with Eric, but they had little kiddy ones that he drove himself! It was so funny to watch him. He went sooo slow! :) He was quite concerned about wrecking too, after seeing the adults do it!

When we got back to the hotel, we tried to take the kids swimming. Westen's stayed in lots of hotels when I've had to travel for work, and he LOVES the pool and hot tub. The pool was really too cool for the babies, though, and Aeson was a little bit scared! He started shaking and then clung to me the entire time we were in the pool area.. and we only put his toes in!

On the 4th, we started out swimming again and then went to Big Muddy's for lunch. It was yummy! We headed to their fair afterwards. Westen got to climb up in a fire truck, he won some silly prizes, and he got to ride on a pony! It was rainy, but we braved it! We headed back to Fun City that evening for more games and watched the fireworks at night. While we were waiting for them to begin, Aeson pulled himself up using me to hold onto and then really wasn't putting any weight on me at all... Then he took his hand off completely and stood for several seconds! After he plopped down, he even joined in in clapping for himself and then he did it again a few minutes later! He doesn't seem nervous or scared at all. I think he's going to be walking before we know it! I am SO not ready for that yet! I can't believe his birthday is in less than a month too.

Oh! One more thing I forgot to write about was that on our first night there, my camera died and I had forgotten to check it or bring the charger before we left. I still had my phone to take some pictures, but I was disappointed! It's charging now, so I'll add some photos when I have the time!

Oh, and as for the fireworks.. Aeson watched them but wasn't bothered at all! It was a fun little getaway, and Westen had a blast the whole time. It was good spending the time with my sister and her family too, since they'll be leaving us soon!

Heritage Days 2010 (and lots of pictures!!)

Last week, Aeson discovered light switches. He can't go past one now without turning it off and on, off and on!


This is Acey's new scrunchy face. He does it all the time! I'm glad I captured it on camera, lol :)
We spent most of this past weekend at Heritage Days. Here, Westen is being the conductor on the train ride they had. We made the mistake of going on the spinning dragons (my favorite!) first and then he was scared to ride any more! We ate some carnival food and watched the other kids ride and then he finally decided he'd go. He loved the little kiddy rides and then convinced me to go down the super slide with him. There will be pictures below of him sliding with his Uncle Eddie, so you can see how big the slide was! I'm scared to death of heights, so as I was climbing the million stairs, I kept imagining falling from that high! I took deep breaths and told myself I could do it for my baby! Once we were at the top, though, I'm pretty sure I'd have turned around if there had been a way to! I lived but afterwards I said never again!! It didn't even scare Westen at all. As we went to leave that night, I realized I'd given Aeson my keys earlier in the night to play with and wasn't sure if I had gotten them back. As we were searching, they came over the speaker saying there was a set found. Thank goodness someone found them and returned them! It was dark by then and it would not have been fun searching for them! I'll be much more careful now when giving them to Ace. :)
The parade was on Saturday. Down below, you'll see that Aeson slept through almost all of it! The noise didn't phase him. This man above was a very nice, older Veteran who helped Westen most of the time with collecting candy and even opening some for him. He was so nice!

That evening, Westen got a Batman tattoo and was quite proud of it. :) Here is the slide that scared me to death!



On Sunday, we went to the local Lion's pancake breakfast and airplane fly-in. It was rainy, so there were only a few planes but Westen LOVED watching them fly in and out. Next year, Eric's thinking about riding one with him. :)

On Monday, I discovered (from sneaking my finger in while he was sleeping!) that Aeson's top two teeth are now through! He's going to have a mouthful before long. He's now pulling himself up very easily and walking along the furniture. A couple of times the past couple days, he's turned himself around and seemingly tried to walk! I don't know what he's thinking! :) He's not quite able to do that yet, but it hasn't stopped him from trying.

Busy summer activities

Yesterday, Westen was signed up for the Kooky Kreatures activity at the library. Luckily, Aunt Chelsea was over and able to take him because Aeson fell asleep for the first time that day just before we were supposed to leave. I hated to miss it! :( He made a monster he named "Ghost." It's actually a little money bank too, which he loves. As part of the summer reading program, he also got to spin the wheel for a prize since he's at the halfway point (15 books). He got a little finger puppet and a fake tattoo. Here he is with his monster.
Last night, we had the LLL meeting. Last month Aeson hadn't been able to crawl. This month he was all over the place! The meetings are at Early Beginnings, which is nice because there are LOTS of toys. I got to see one of the kids I babysat and he's walking now!

We've had lots of storms here this week and Aunt Chelsea & Bentley have stayed the night a couple of nights. I'm thankful for the time together, but it will make me miss them even more once they move!

Today, we made a picnic lunch (Westen's suggestion!) and went up to the Brown Bag concert. The babies were tired but even they enjoyed it!

The park & Father's Day

Last week, Westen and I headed to the park (well, Aeson too but he was asleep in the car) and he had lots of fun.

On Thursday, there was a representative from the nature center in Peoria at the library, so we went to listen to him and Westen got to touch a snake again!

Saturday, we walked up to Farmer's Market and Westen got to plant a tomato plant.

Sunday was Father's Day. We spent most of the day at Eric's parent's. We had a good time and got to go see Grandpa Jim that evening as well. Eric got Cubs tickets for his gift, so the two of us will be heading to a game in August.

Last night, there were tornado warnings all over. I sent Eric out right away to get Westen, because he'd stayed at Grandma Sandy's to play with her. As soon as they got back, we all headed to the basement. Poor Westen was so scared! I don't even know how he knows what a tornado is-- this is the first time we've ever had to go to the basement & I don't recall talking about one before. Anyway, as soon as we got down there, he thought to pray! It was so cute, and we all tried to comfort him but we were quite nervous too! Luckily, I don't think anything really happened and Westen got to sleep in our room for the night.

We have a very, very busy week this week! We're headed to the library for an activity today and have LLL tonight, brown bag concert & picnic tomorrow, Heritage Days Thursday-Saturday, and then a dinner for Eric's work on Sunday. Busy, busy, busy!

Oh! Aeson said "ball" clear as day yesterday. Eric also says he said "hat," but I didn't hear it. :)

(The whole fam on Father's Day)

Pulled up to standing!

Saturday evening, we had Uncle Eddie, Aunt Chels, and baby Bentley over for dinner and to watch Alice in Wonderland (good movie!). I had read to make breastmilk popsicles for teething babies but since I really don't like to get out my pump unless I have to, I decided to make water with a little bit of 100% juice ones. And we gave Aeson his first one that night...
Can you see his uncertainty? :) He kept going back for more!
We ended up spending the day with them on Sunday as well. We're all going to miss them so much if they move! We showed them the house we are under contract for (at this moment..) that day. Every time we go in, we're pretty much overwhelmed by all that we need to do! I will HAVE to post before and after pictures. :)

On Monday, we put my niece in the exersaucer for the first time and she loved it! Westen stayed with Eric's parents for the night and did all sorts of fun stuff. They got ice cream, painted, planted his sweet potato plant, and he was about to take a bath with his (not TOY as he corrected grandma but..) FRIEND shark. :)

It's been a quiet day around here without him! Aeson pulled himself up to standing for the very first time today! He's stood for quite a while if we position him that way but today is the first time he's actually pulled himself up all by himself. He's done it several times since! I was so excited that he even got excited. That combined with seeing my camera (and deciding to go after it!) made for a blurry picture. :( At least I still captured it!
Aunt Chels also spent the afternoon with us, which Aeson loved, as you can see... :)

Yesterday

As I was catching up on my daycare paperwork, I came across our scores from one of the games we played with my sister and her husband this winter. I love summer and all that there is to do, but this made me remember that even during the winter, there are good memories.. memories of warm chili, discovering new games to play, and holiday meals. My sister is now uncertain where they are going to move, and I will miss those times if she does move far away! I know they will still happen but not as often.

I'm not sure if I've written about it before but Aeson ALWAYS crosses his feet when he's sitting down! It used to just be his feet and lately it has been more of his legs. It is too cute!
Excuse his dirty mouth. :) After noticing his first tooth coming through on the bottom, I noticed you can now see ALL four teeth on top moving their way down. They aren't at the edge of the gums yet but they will be soon. My poor teething boy.

I know, I know.. No dairy until at least one. Well, Aeson's had it a couple of times! We eat ice cream too often. :) And he is TOO interested! Last night, he just kept sticking his tongue out over and over again to eat Daddy's cold yummy cone!