bloggin' reynolds

State Fair 2011

2012-01-20T19:32:00.000-06:00

Big Snow

2012-01-20T18:22:00.002-06:00

Big snow means lots of bundling...

and lots of shoveling.

Except Dad looks like he's the only one moving any snow around. :)

Christmas? What Christmas?

2012-01-20T18:13:00.001-06:00

You thought I forgot Christmas didn't you? Well...perhaps your new year resolution should be patience! And...ah...perhaps mine should be better blog posting. Whoops, that backfired on me didn't it? :)

So here we are at Christmas, and in actuality this first Christmas was back at Thanksgiving. Down at Mom and Dad's, second Christmas at the new house. The boys took care of decorating the tree,

and they may have been coerced into taking a few pictures for Mom. This was Great Uncle Mac's green velvet chair...perfect for an old Irish man, as well as two wiggly boys. :)

A few more pictures taken...with smiles surprisingly not too bad!

Let's see if we can list ages here (minus Mom and Dad because they just get to be called 'Grand' and that's good enough for the age bit for them). Jude - 3 1/2, Navi - just exactly 1, Wyatt - 2 1/2, Aiden 5 1/2. That's a pretty good group, and soon to be joined by two twins. Next years picture is going to be fun!

Navi sporting her new Christmas dress from Aunt Reece. Note the little finger at the bottom of the page...her cousins can't get enough of her!

Aiden and Grandma fixing Thanksgiving dinner.

Uncle Ankur...ahhhh...errr...hmmmm :)

Not a lick of snow on the ground yet, and weather warm enough to get a few photos taken outside for Christmas cards.

Back home, Mabel is giving us a piece of her mind. She's talking in this picture...let me tell you, and she WILL have the final word. Sweet Mabel.

One morning Jude's monkey (blanket) was well past due for a washing. Grandma had to do some convincing to get it in the wash, and even then old monkey was missed.

Mabel is happy now. She got to open her Christmas present early.

Santa came a few days early to our house. We were up before the birds that morning as is to be expected.

Both boys got Lego head gear...a big hit with Jude.

And Star Wars swords...a big hit with Daddy and Jude. Excuse me...Wes just corrected me. "Lightsabers" :)

It was the year of Lego for Aiden. And actually I've been pretty surprised how well he can follow the directions and make these rather complicated objects. Give him another year and he'll have it figured out completely!

Just a few picture in LeMars, opening presents at Grandma Mary's house. I was the last one to pick up the family cold, and it hit just for our trip North. :( The boys had tons of fun though, decorating cookies with Annie, seeing all of the Utesch family at Terry's, and opening piles of presents at Grandma Mary's!

I'd say with these kind of holidays under our belt, we are ready to welcome a new year! :) Merry belated Christmas everyone!

Annie has come to my rescue with piles of cookie decorating pictures.

Loving the extra effort. :)

And the finished product was delicious (note the licking of lips) and beautiful!

Thank-you Annie for the extra photos!

Snow for Aiden

2012-01-12T19:12:00.001-06:00

This little kiddo has been DYING for snow. He had to wait a fairly long time this year too. With 50 degree weather in January it was looking a bit hopeless, but today he got his wish. Woke up first thing this morning talking about shoveling. Let me tell you about his logic and shoveling. He knows Mom is not a fan of the snow and cold. So he informed me this morning that, (note the quotes) "shoveling is the boys' job. And Mom, you can stay inside, drink hot cocoa and knit." Let me tell you, I did NOT argue. He even got an early out today because of the snow, and the first thing he said when he came in the driveway with Grandma was, "There's enough snow to shovel!" Came directly inside and asked me if he could shovel. Grandma and Mom bundled him up, snow pants and all...and off he went, making good use of Grandpa Terry's made by hand wagon.

This little guy has been doing some growing too.

Getting dressed all by himself! Mommy is practicing her "what's wrong with this picture" game a fair amount lately. :)

We interrupt this program...

2011-12-11T13:18:00.001-06:00

We interrupt this blog (and do a little jumping ahead) to share with you a big exciting event for us this morning. Aiden and little Jude bear had their debut performance on stage. It was unforgettable, and I can't tell you how proud this mama is!

Now back up again if you will just a few moments before kiddos were front and center. Sweaty hands, pounding heart...I'm afraid that was not my boys...no...that was me! I was sure Aiden was going to get sick (he had a little upset tummy last night) and Jude would be too afraid to even come on stage (yesterday's practice didn't go so hot). But they were both rock stars the whole performance as you can see:

Aiden got moved to the front of the choir because he did such a good job of singing at yesterday's practice!

Check out the bow tie...red with bolt heads...perfect for this little guy! And thumbs up to Dad for insisting his little guys have bow ties.

Jude came on later in the performance as a little sheep! His "Baa" was solid and delivered with a smile. And bonus....he sang his song as well! Grandma, Dad and Mom were oh so close to tears watching this little one....no joke! :)

And if you haven't yet had enough of these little cuties in their bow ties...here's one more classic boy shot for ya. Cheesy grins and all!

Fall means Pumpkins and lots of Orange

2011-11-02T21:00:00.003-05:00

I love fall! The weather is a perfect temp, all of the beautiful leaves, the thought that ideal knitting weather is coming (never mind the fact that I actually knit all year round) and the pumpkins. Lots and lots of pumpkins!! And as boys get older, pumpkin hunting changes a bit. We all each get to pick out a pumpkin that we call our own. But instead of Wes and I carrying and pushing these little guys...they are now doing the carrying and well...pulling. :) Such big boys aren't they!?!

Jude wanted a picture with one of the farm cats...he got a little extra love from Jude!

Annie and Frank joined us on our adventure again this year. We got "lost" in the corn maze. I think
Aiden was trying to keep us lost...making us turn the exact opposite direction of home at every chance. And at every chance Annie was stealing squirrel corn. Fun!

Grandma pulled Jude outside for a photo shoot with or pumpkin choices.

And I've been knitting a few hats here lately with the assumption that a few will get left on the playground and disappear. Jude is modeling for me.

A Boy is Three

2011-11-02T16:47:00.000-05:00

Our little man Jude is THREE! And to celebrate this little three year old we had three parties! How about that! :) First party was in Colorado with family and a dinosaur cake. Second party was on his special day...with a very chocolaty cake and candles.

This special day party involved a family outing to Chucky Cheese...which was enjoyed thoroughly as you can see! :)

And at our third little party, we opened presents. He got a bike of his own from Grandma Mary...

A cool airplane from Annie

and of course the special card from Annie. This year Jude had a "veterinary Jude" theme!

Mabel got in on the present opening fun!

And we had cake of Jude's choosing: strawberry with strawberry frosting. It was a bit of a sugar / strawberry overload but this little guy loved it! Because cake and birthdays go hand in hand for this one!

Happy Birthday Jude Bear

Wanted to share another house progress photo. Over Labor day the family came over and we got ALL of our house trim painted cream. It looks wonderful...and this old house loves her fresh new look! I think it took me over a week to recover from being up in that boom...felt like I was rocking on a boat. No cruises for me...um....ever! :)

He's in Kindergarden

2011-11-02T16:03:00.000-05:00

School started for my little kindergartner...actually it started quite a while ago and I'm just now getting to this post! As I'm writing this, I can just hear the grandma's saying, "um-huh" in the back of my head..."get moving on these blog posts girl." You'd think that life at home would get a little less hectic with one of your kids in school a full day, but it seems to be the complete opposite. Life gets busier...I don't know how, but it does. And we're ready for it...that is...we are now after a month or two of adjusting! :) So here is our little guy Aiden on his first day of school. It rained that first morning so we didn't get the opportunity to walk him to school that first day. Instead we all took the car and I walked him inside to his classroom.

Here we are by his classroom door...he's looking at his new teacher Mrs. Leapold as I'm taking the picture. And I did not cry when I dropped him off. Ur..ah...hmmmm....that's a lie. Ahem. Changing subject now. :) We have a Mount Vernon Mustang with maroon and white school colors...now until he graduates from high school.

Go Mustangs!

A few weeks after school started there was an open house...and a very large group of parents and kiddos explored the classrooms and hallways of Washington Elementary. Jude liked seeing Aiden's classroom. This picture below is where the teacher normally sits...and you can see the corner of the rug where all of the kiddos gather.

Aiden showing his brother a few things around the room.

Jude trying to pull out all of the toys!

And Mr. Aiden sitting at his desk...so we can all picture where he is during the day.

Cute curls peaking out. :)

This is Aiden's hook where he hangs up his coat and back pack.

And standing in the library. The kids rotate special activities every day. Library, PE, Music, Art.

And here is the official Kindergarten school picture.

Great Smile!!

Grandma caught a great smile on Jude Bear as well that had to be shared as well. :)

Our Summer trip to Colorado

2011-11-02T14:13:00.000-05:00

We DID make it out to Colorado to visit all of our loved ones!

That is quite a crew with Grandma below!

It gets a bit chaotic with four kiddos, all of which are still a bit dependent on their schedules and routines, but we made it work and had a wonderful time hanging out and romping around Denver.

We got to visit both the aquarium and zoo when we were out there. The boys were pretty amazed!

Here is Aiden in one of the viewing bubbles under a fish tank. So...the shot is a little blurry because it's taken through water! :) Both boys thought his was pretty cool. Jude was not too crazy about the aquarium. I think it was a bit claustrophobic with all of the tanks around us and sounds bouncing around....

...but the tiger in the middle of the aquarium was pretty fun to see. That's what he's checking out in the picture below...the tiger...not Mommy's camera. Ahem. Rosie got to join us on our adventures as well, and we got to see all of her new hangouts now that she's finished her master's degree! One other cool thing at the aquarium was that we got to pet stingrays. Yes, I said PET Stingrays!! Those are the fish that have big swirly fins on their sides and skinny tails. And honestly, they had quite the personalities. They swam in a pool of shallow water, and would come around and lift their fin up out of the water to be petted. One even got his kicks out of splashing the kids. Bet you didn't know stingrays had little personalities...and that you could pet them. It was fun!

Here's Jude getting steeped on by Diago...he, he.

And little Navi...who kept up as long as she could. Sweet little punkin'.

Wes got to visit a restaurant from the food network show "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" which he was pretty excited about. We took our food to a nearby park and enjoyed!

The boys got in as much time as possible hanging out with cousin Wyatt in his new sandbox,

and we celebrated this little turkey turning 3! :) He got a dinosaur cake which as you can see he was especially thrilled with. Right now birthdays equals cake for this little guy. He likes the presents and perhaps a little of the attention...but cake is for sure the important part!

Through the Sprinkler

2011-10-10T20:38:00.002-05:00

There were some hot, HOT days this summer, and after a while we got a bit tired of hiding in the air conditioner. Running through the sprinkler made it bearable...perhaps more than bearable. :)

Aiden was all about "hurdling" the sprinkler, getting sprayed in the face and all that the sprinkler had to offer. Jude was a little more conservative about his approach. I think I remember him being a bit shy about it last year as well. He preferred to keep his distance...and perhaps give Aiden a few suggestions on how to do his next super move.

Super wet Aiden...

Jude sitting on the sideline.

Two little people plotting together...fine with me as long as it didn't involve getting Mom wet!

The pool came out as well. I think the photo below is about as clear as it ever was. It typically took all of ten minutes to get cloudy with sand from the nearby sandbox. Toys went back and forth from sandbox to pool....

as did the boys. Sandbox...slide....POOL! :)

Minus the sprinkler...Jude acquired a few super hero moves for himself!

What a Reynolds Summer looks like...

2011-07-14T20:54:00.007-05:00

We began our summer by celebrating 10 years of marriage! Can you believe that!?! That means you're old. He, he...just kidding...I think that might mean I'm getting old. And if I can keep getting older with that man next to me, well then bring on those years. I'll take them!

We celebrated by heading up to Door county in Wisconsin, which was so very beautiful. We took our first ride on a sail boat...the captain saw our brilliance immediately and put us behind the wheel. I think this was perhaps when we were moving slower than the mosquitoes...but hey. Then we thought we'd give the police a little something to do and we graffiti-ed a building. For real....

...but if they catch up to us, I'm blaming it on him. Isn't that how it's supposed to work...the guy takes the blame? Remember that boys when you find that special lady. :)

We have had summer days at the park...

and summer evenings at the movies.

Here the boys are on opening night to see Cars 2 at the (somewhat) local drive-in theater. We waited an hour and a half to get this rock star seat...and it was well worth it. Aiden stayed up until 11 o'clock. Jude fell asleep about half way through.

We also made a trip down to the O'zarks to see Aunt Linda, Uncle Leonard and Great Grandma Mary Cosaert. We took the boys out on their first boat ride and got to see some beautiful views of the lake and share many precious hugs with Grandma Cosaert. We also got to hang out with baby Navi and Aunt Corrinn...but not on the boat. Poor Navi and boats did not get along so well, and somehow I let Grandma Barb get all of the Navi pictures on her camera...so now I have none to share. Humph.

We've also done some regular stuff...like getting our (first) haircut! Jude was such a good boy...and we only took off a few curls. Probably just enough to call it a haircut...any less and I'm thinking it would have just been just a 'wash and set'. :) Oh how I wish his hair wouldn't grow any more...just stay like that forever!

Aiden also had his share of appointments, including a visit to the dentist. Wait...you don't wear sunglasses to the dentist? It's probably just the cool kids. It's OK, we can't all be as cool as Aiden. This visit which was during "kids day" was followed with tattoos, balloons, a prize car, and a carnival outside. Holy cow is right! The boys loved it...and I'm afraid will not forget it the next time they visit and may be a bit disappointed when all they get is a teeth cleaning.

We also had a smidgen of "the wild" in our summer. This painted turtle wandered into our yard and escaped death from the lawn mower thanks to Daddy's super hero eyesight. He got a trip back to the quarry after his brief stay in the kitchen sink.

And then Wes of course had his 4th of July antique sale. He did a great job packing everything just right...

he he...OK maybe this wasn't his truck. But it did belong to another dealer and was somewhat reminiscent of the Beverly Hillbillies, don't you think?

A fisherman...and a lover of worms

2011-06-08T21:13:00.004-05:00

Memorial Day weekend this year was all about the fishing. This was the first time we've taken the boys and they both took to it in their own unique ways.

Feel the excitement in the car as we load up the poles and buy the worms?

Aiden took to fishing like an old pro. Just loved it...absolutely loved it and just couldn't wait to catch his first fish.

And he wasn't too bad at catching them either. In fact he caught all of the fish that weekend...I think it was 5 total!

Jude took to another side of fishing...well, let's say he just took to the worms. We dubbed him the official "worm guy," and whenever Daddy needed a worm for the hook, Jude would find the winner.

He even threw a few in the water...just to be a nice guy. :)

Emptying the worm container, transferring worms from one container to the other, talking about worms, carrying the worms around...yes, Jude was our worm guy!

And we all had fun bonding together!

Here's a little video of our first catch! (which got cut a little short because as Wes mentions...the DNR was right behind us) . Enjoy!

Preschool Graduation

2011-06-08T20:49:00.004-05:00

Preschool is over. Another step that I can't quite believe is here and over.

The week before graduation was filled with fun activities for the kids including: tie dying t-shirts, face painting, and a day at the park. Below Aiden is a knight, and kept his face paint on until it was almost completely worn off the next morning!

Aiden got to walk the stage for his first graduation. His favorite thing about school was recess and I believe he wanted to be a fire man when he grew up.

The kids looked so cute in their caps and ribbons! And afterwards we went home and celebrated with cake, ice cream and family.

What an accomplishment Aiden!! We are so proud of you!

So much artwork to choose from. But I love the pictures he draws of himself and family the best!

...and the stories that must be forming in his head as he draws.

And his attention to detail...toes, hair, belly button. Love it all!!

Magnolia Tree Photo Shoot

2011-06-08T20:09:00.006-05:00

Why I try to get the perfect photos is really beyond me.

Wes and I planted the Magnolia tree in the front yard the year Aiden was born. And so I've made it my personal tradition to take the boys' photo in front of the beautiful spring flowers every year. The poses I get speak for themselves:

Tough guy pose.

Me, "Ahhh no...I want a pretty picture in front of the tree" (take 20 pictures)

Boys, "You want a pretty picture of the tree"

Me, "No - stand pretty next to the tree and smile" (another 15 pictures)

Me, "Jude put down that stick and stand next to each other"

Boys, "Sorry Mom" (10 more shots)

Me, "How about crouch down and smile"

Still not smiling...what are those faces doing...

ahh yes...they're laughing at me out right.

Aiden, "Yea Mom...pretty sure you're not going to get this picture"

Jude, "HA...what a joke!"

I give up on nice photos of two boys and go for single shots...with a little more luck.

...even if it's hamming it up smiles. :)

Finally give up and just take a picture of the pretty flowers.

And then the boys get to do what they were really intending on doing the minute I brought them outside.

Easter

2011-06-08T19:39:00.004-05:00

No sooner were birthdays over and we were on to Easter. March and April are kind of full months for us with special activities. Aiden, who is all about understanding the order of things would constantly ask me what was next...first Mommy's birthday, then Aiden's birthday..."then what Mom?" Poor Jude just assumed it was always somebodies birthday, and was even still last week telling me happy birthday for our 10th anniversary. :)

We tried some different egg dying techniques this year. Instead of dipping the egg into the classic Dudley's egg dye...we dripped sparkly egg color into a sack and smeared it around the egg. Wes and I were a bit disappointed...there's not so much magic in smearing. But the boys had fun...

And Aiden enjoyed the q-tips that had color in them...which was a bit more like coloring and could create lots of unique patterns...except he mostly just colored the whole egg one color. :) Both boys were proud of the finished product.

The egg hunt was pretty fun this year. Jude caught on quick to what he had to do and both boys collected quite a few eggs.

After the egg hunt was finished and the boys had found their baskets (hidden next to our resident bunnies' house under the studio of course. Don't you know the Easter bunny visits his friends?) I attempted to take nice pictures of both Aiden and Jude. Nice pictures...what in the world was I thinking. Just look at their faces...

...now look at what's in their hands...

....ahhh yes....

now we know what they were thinking about, and why a pretty smile for Mom was next to impossible.

Happy Easter!

At least Elcie and Mable are showing peace and goodwill towards men...errr dogs...or is that Christmas? It all applies right? :)

Aiden turns 5

2011-06-08T19:04:00.006-05:00

This year, since Aiden's birthday fell on a week day we extended the celebration. On his birthday we celebrated at the children's museum where the boys flew planes, made race cars and shot rockets, and in general had a great time running around and being boys.

Watermelon ice cream afterwords only added to the...well let's just say "energy!" :) Note the holes in both boys' jeans. Both of them wore through at least 3 pairs of jeans each this spring! I don't ever remember wearing though my jeans like that, although I'm sure my mother would tell you that she scrubbed our a fair amount of grass stains. And so consulting with my fellow mothers I have found that there are actually jeans with double layers on the knees. Oh the wisdom we gain as mothers. :)

Aiden's party with family this year had a dinosaur theme. Dinosaurs are playing a big role in our play time adventures this year. Jude especially seems to appreciate the characteristics of a dinosaur and can often be heard roaring around the house. However if you ask him if he's a dinosaur his face will get quite serious and you will be informed that, "No, I is a Jude bear". So perhaps the roaring is that of a bear...one never knows with that one. Aiden however is quite the big boy. Does anybody else wonder where 5 years has gone?!?

Mable only wonders when the cake will be cut. Her face says it all.

Presents included new clothes, remote control trucks and helicopters, art projects...and an odd looking bridge from Jude???

Which Aiden put to use as a dinosaur tunnel and hot wheel ramp...until he figured out what his next present was.

Took a few seconds to actually figure out that the picture of the fish tank meant that he was actually going to have a fish tank in his room! Then the excitement began and the bridge made a little more sense. :) Jude was excited....

...perhaps a little too excited!

And here's Aiden trying to fill a 36gal tank with Daddy's shaving mug. Only need another 230,498,203 more mugs kiddo. Or at least a Mom and Grandpa to fill the 5 gallon bucket between mug fills. :)

It was a great birthday...and our boys is 5. Unbelievable, I know.

Sigh.

Preschool Class Picture

2011-03-02T17:21:00.003-06:00

I use to love getting these photos! I think it's even more fun now!!

Sweater Shoot

2011-02-13T16:15:00.004-06:00

We had an extra 10 minutes this morning before church. So with boys dressed so cute in their pre-Christmas sweaters I decided to finally take their pictures in them. Yes, I had these finished before Christmas...probably even before Thanksgiving. It's taken me only 2 or 3 months to take photos...sometimes that's how life is around our house...it happens when it happens. But they still look pretty darn cute in them if I do say so myself!

Aiden really has the model shot going - messy hair, tilted head, eyes that can charm your socks off.

This is his tortured artist look...no crooked-smile cowboy... smoldering...forget it, I can't figure out what those male models are going for anyway. He's cute - good enough! :)

Mama calls this "boys in green knit sweaters - sigh" :)

Mr. Aiden is getting his Valentine box ready for school. You remember those days when you got to take piles of Valentines to school and drop them in every body's envelope. He's excited to share his 3D dinosaur valentines and ring pops with his class for the first time.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Valentines Day...and Grandpa Terry a very Happy Birthday!

This year and last...

2011-01-12T21:39:00.003-06:00

The same location / the same chair / the same big winner

...just one year.

Christmas 2010

2011-01-12T20:12:00.007-06:00

The days until Christmas for this little one were long, filled with decorating the Christmas tree, wrapping presents and of course the eager anticipation of what Santa might bring. Everyone remembers those days as a kid...when it just took forever for the 25th of December to arrive. We counted down with the advent calendar, each day revealing a little chocolate to eat...or perhaps not eat since Jude didn't understand the logic of only opening one door. What fun is just opening one door if you can keep opening doors and get more candy?? Sometimes the two year old logic makes perfect sense to me too. :)

There was Christmas fun at school too - a gingerbread milk carton that just about didn't make it safely home, but survived long enough for Mom to take a picture.

And then finally the big day arrives and Mom makes you pose for a photo at the top of the stairs. (pitch black outside - yea it's approx 5 am!)

What possessed Santa to get Nerf "boomers" (that's what we call them at our house) for two active little boys is beyond me...

...the curls probably. Let's blame it on the curls. :)

After presents we headed down to Grandma Barb's and Grandpa John's house to do a little cookie decorating....naked. Tummies are so much easier to wash than shirts. :)

It was hard to keep this little guy from licking the frosting off the cookie he had just decorated. I think he would have kept decorating the same cookie over and over if I would have let him!! But we figured out the concept and even got a few Heartland trucks decorated as well. Note the massive train track set up in the living room. Several of our choice presents traveled with us on Christmas day.

Grandpa kept busy blowing off the deck about 50 million times! The snow just kept coming and coming, forcing the Jolly clan to drive through the night after the storm had passed.

Aiden and Jude welcomed their new cousins. Aiden looks like he's telling some kind of joke. Jude perhaps is laying down the law with that little hand on the table...and poor Wyatt is just dazed and confused after the long car ride. :)

Little Navia was welcomed without hesitation, even Jude thought she was cute as a button. We were all hard pressed to get her out of Grandma's arms.

One more photo before we open presents. Navi is smiling bright! :)

The weeks between Christmas in Iowa City and Christmas in LeMars were filled with a deadline for work and lots of long hours. Fortunately I had awesome entertainment from my pit crew. :)

Our trip to LeMars was quick but lots of fun!

The boys had piles of presents to open - a second little man chair for Jude, since now the two little bums don't quite fit into the original chair!

Dinosaurs, trucks and aliens...

and even presents for Mabel!!

Even a new weed eater for our little Hawkeye fan!! The goggles are half the fun of using this toy...and most of the fun for the rest of us!!

Thank-you everyone for such a wonderful Christmas. We are blessed to have such close families and friends to share all of our Christmas excitement. And look...I got the perfect Christmas card shot...just two weeks later. :)

Big Fatty Catch-up Post

2010-12-22T15:03:00.005-06:00

So it's been a while...yeah, I know...I owe everyone a new post. Two boys have a way with keeping their ol' Ma rather busy. Blah, blah, etc. :)

So how about a little distraction from the topic!?

Here's a little bit of what I get to keep up with.

Have you guessed what it is yet? No clue huh?

A Rock star puppet stage! (don' cha know)

Equipped with bearing wall cushions there in the back, ottoman stage and a Frank Gehry'esk facade - aka our favorite red flowered blanket in the house. A giraffe puppet designed and created at Awanas holds the audiences complete attention. Jude is the muscle. Yeah...they keep me entertained. :)

Over Thanksgiving we traveled to LeMars and reeled in a little of the green stuff. Didn't know we had a World Poker Champion amongst us. OK, may-be it wasn't poker...but that's a poker face if I ever saw one!!

His opponents...a tough lot.

But obviously no match!

By the way, that's probably not Dr. Pepper in the background...and it's probably not 9 o'clock at night. And he's probably not having any fun at all. :)

While we weren't rolling in the big bucks, we helped Grandpa Terry put up his funky retro Christmas tree. No reproduction here...this is the real deal!

Oh yea...and Elsie helped too. :) Good Girl!

When we got back home, there was work to do that next week. The boys spent a whole afternoon outside with their Dad pushing snow. Notice I said pushing snow...not so much clearing snow yet, but that will come right?? :)

Sporting our new and very warm winter coats from Grandpa Terry.

And if that's not enough for ya....there was a tree to set up...

villages to build...

and cute little deer to "awwww" over. (Yep, that's a me find. They fit perfect in our house!)

Apparently all of this doesn't just wear me out.

Jingle bells with the Bear...enjoy! Merry Christmas!!

Playing in the Cold

2010-11-08T15:14:00.004-06:00

The boys love to play Grandma and Grandpa's piano when they visit. Jude looked kind of cute playing the piano without pants!! :)

The boys have been begging to go outside lately. They must sense that winter is coming and these days in the sand box are numbered. This particular day they were working on building a road...which quite honestly is what they work on just about every time they play in the sand box. :)

Our garage is particularly cool these days for ALL of my boys. Grandma and Grandpa's lawn mowers are in transition and spending a little time under our roof. Jude takes every chance he can get to hop on the mowers!! Even Wes had to confess that it was a bit exciting having so much John Deere green in his man cave. :)

Trick-or-Treat #1

2010-10-30T21:32:00.005-05:00

So...some of you might be wondering what in the world Annie put in the boy's pumpkins to make them drop to the ground!?! Well...when Annie and Frank come down with the camper the boys love to go hang out. It's kind of fun...but equally fun is that Annie always has Dr. Pepper, Kraft singles (which we all now call Annie cheese...since that's what Jude calls it) and some sort of little Debbie...twinkies...hoho's...you know, fun stuff for kids!! So instead of candy in the pumpkins, the boys were served Annie style with none other than: a package of Kraft singles, a couple Twinkies and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. Only Annie!! :)

Here's our two little kiddos dressed up for their first Halloween. They both picked out their outfits. Aiden was determined to be a police officer before he got to the store and we even found a police outfit, but he was convinced he wanted to be a zoo keeper the minute he saw this outfit! Wes and I even tried to talk him into something different...something with a little more color ya know!! But...nope, this was the winner. His preschool teacher just loved the outfit and thought it was perfect for him, and she was right.

Jude, being the animal lover that he is...picked out the horse costume. He kept this outfit on for all of about 3 minutes while I took the pictures and then immediately demanded that it come off. That's fine I thought, at least I got pictures...but he totally got into character on trick-o-treat night and walked all over the neighborhood with it on...no problems!! And absolutely everybody ooo'ed when they saw him at their door.

After finishing up our first stop at Annie and Frank's trailer we headed over to the neighbor's house and then drove over to another neighborhood in Mt. Vernon that's a little more kid friendly. Almost everybody had their porch light on and quite a few were just sitting on their front step or hanging out in the driveways giving out candy. Aiden was a bit anxious at first and would kind of hide behind Annie or Dad...but once he got the hang of it he kept begging for one more house.

Cute little horse bum! :)

Wednesday evening was Trunk'or'Treat at Awana's and even thought it was a terrible cold, windy, sleety evening...Wes and about 15 other cars decorated their trunks. Then the kids would come out in shifts according to age and strut their stuff. :) Everybody had fun!! A little update on house projects. We have a new front door. Here she is, her name is Gertie! And because before and afters are so much fun I wanted to post both of these photos. She came from a salvage yard in Paulina, Iowa and was covered with layers and layers of paint!

Our front door is 36" wide which is exceptionally wide for an older house and it was pretty exciting to find a storm door that would fit. And this is the after shot...after going to Annie door spa and getting her own facial peel. All of her wrinkles and crud are gone and now she sparkles on our front porch!! In place pictures to come. And not to be out done the living room floor got a bit of a peel as well. If I could use the word peel I think my muscles would have been much happier. But this big reveal involves hand chiseling (literally using wood chisels) the old carpet pad off of almost every square inch of wood floors beneath. There is some patching to do, but I think this old wood floor is going to shine up beautifully once she is finished!

School Report

2010-10-26T19:50:00.005-05:00

This evening was Aiden's first parent / teacher conference. First of all, can you believe I'm even saying this...how can he be that old!! Wes got to go to this first meeting, and I'll have to say that I wish that I had taken turn number one...because our little Aiden got a ROCK STAR report!!

Both of his teachers love him. They said he's a very good student in class, listens and raises his hand. They said he loves to answer questions and they can see that he's dying for them to call on him to give the answer (we both knew that would be the case). He seems to like to spend his free classroom time by the science wall. And he is friends with everyone and everyone likes to be his friend. He is very inquisitive and is always wanting to learn. He's comfortable playing on his own and also with the group. The rest of the conference was spent going through the "report card" which is basically their evaluation of different skills and abilities. Wes said the "needs improvement" column was never checked...he excelled in everything. This is Mrs. Westerhaus' first year of teaching and I was a bit nervous about this when I first found out. But I think we really got somebody full of enthusiasm and still full of passion and energy for these little people. Aiden really seems to love her!

Wes brought home a packet of work sheets as well as a couple of special pictures. This first picture below is of a fall tree. Aiden has been very observant of the leaves on the trees this fall and trying to understand the sequence of the seasons. And I figured it was because they have been talking about fall in school. Every day they discuss the weather as part of their beginning of the day routine.

This second photo is going to be a special one for Grandpa Terry!! The kids spent a week talking about birthdays and all of the special things their families do. Here is Aiden's birthday picture. Grandpa Terry is there on the bottom...eating cake. I'm assuming the little person is Aiden...and then the drive way is FULL of cars. And I'm thinking that big long car with a bunch of wheels can be none other than Annie and Franks camper. And all of the cars are hitched together...because hitches are cool to our little guy right now. :) Isn't it the greatest picture ever. His teachers say that he he has some of the most detailed drawings with the longest stories to go with them!!

Pumpkin Photos

2010-10-21T09:28:00.004-05:00

Photos of the boys at the pumpkin patch are always my favorite. Always!! We went just this last weekend and each of us picked out our own pumpkin, plus one for Mabel and then also one to carve later. Aiden has mentioned several times about wanting to carve a pumpkin so we're going to give it a whirl this year.

Not sure why nobody wanted to look at the camera for me. May-be it was because they were eying up...

the kid cars! All of the kids love these cars...but I tell you what. Once they are in them, they don't want to leave. And their passion for picking out the perfect pumpkin...well, it's just gone. :) They were up for visiting the animals though, which included a lama, draft horse, cat and zebra. Yep you read that right...there was a zebra. Kind of weird...yep.

A good photo of my boys!

Aiden's got his winner.

And an attempted family photo. Do you see what I mean about getting out of the cars. Still a great time at the pumpkin patch as always!

Madison Farmers Market

2010-10-21T08:55:00.005-05:00

A few weekends back we had the grand opening for the Kirkwood Hotel, and so Grandma Mary offered to take the boys for an extra long weekend in LeMars. The boys had great fun, and Wes and I took the opportunity to have a little fun as well. I've been wanting to hit up the farmers market in Madison after our neighbor had told us about how close it was and about the wonderful blueberries. I was sure he said blueberries in September...but my memory must be slipping...there were absolutely no blueberries. Which was perfectly fine because you really couldn't pass a stall without seeing something beautiful and yummy.

We were told that it is tradition to start at one of the corner stalls and walk around the market with pastry in hand. Check...no problem!! (pumpkin scone...it was yummy!) We also bought a loaf of still steaming bread at this booth as well. I'm not sure why I look so grumpy in this photo. I had already found a great coffee shop where I met a very friendly boxer with whom I shook hands (or paws) and had a scone in the bag. I think I was trying to figure out if Wes had taken the picture yet. :) And notice how everyone is carrying their market bag. Ha...I fit right in with my new farmers market bag I had sewn up about a month earlier with cool fabric from Home Ec!! I know...I'm cool! :)

Apples were what was in season...I made Wes haul around a jug of cider for me. :) Every booth was beautiful...all the colors of the produce and just the sheer amount of product was amazing!

A cool hat store called the Sacred Feather...all they sold was hats!

And on a completely separate note. Jude bear feel asleep while I was running the vacuum and cleaning the kitchen. :) Cute!!

First School Picture

2010-09-20T11:50:00.001-05:00

School pictures came home in the back pack today!! Yeah!!

Boots

2010-09-11T23:17:00.004-05:00

Jude's all about the boots these days.

These are authentic, Texas boots that Annie bought for Aiden several years back. Aiden didn't want to have much to do with them, and actually I don't think I ever convinced him to let me put them on. But Jude loves them and thinks he's pretty hot stuff when he's got them on. Here we are in Grandpa's truck wearing our boots.

I had to have him do a little modeling for me as well. I had to get pictures of the boots.

He understood.

I was also going for a photo of his bum, but he couldn't understand why I didn't want him to look at me while I was taking a picture.

Got it!! A little fuzzy...it was during a turn. :) Check it out...it's like the perfect little cowboy bum...saggy jeans and the whole bit. Mom and I were laughing about this last week.
Cowboy Jude's got his boots. :)

Relaxing and Working

2010-09-11T22:54:00.003-05:00

One morning a few weeks ago, I decided to put my feet up and knit one morning while Aiden was in school. I had things to get done...but that morning relaxing took priority. I believe Jude understood the essence of what I was going after. :) I was knitting, and then realized that Jude wasn't making his usual amount of Jude noises. He had drug his "monkey" (that's what he calls his blankie) downstairs and crashed on the floor while he was playing. This doesn't happen too often for a little guy who's normally on the go! Pretty cute!!

Brothers bonding while watching Bob the Builder. At the end of a day, sometimes ya have to kick up your feet and watch a little TV.

...and may-be give Mom a fake smile for the camera.

We also got almost all of the floor done on the porch. We chose to use old Purlington Pavers. They were made in Galesburg, Illinois and used to be an old street in Chicago...love the history and the idea that horse and buggies, and old model A's probably use to drive over these bricks.

I later read that each one of these bricks weighs nine pounds. I'm kind of glad I didn't know that while we were working. It might have been the reason our arms were crying for advil by bedtime. :) Doesn't it look great though!! Spent an hour knitting out there this afternoon. Loved it!!

Painted the old green door orange.

My favorite color welcomes me home now. Love that too. :)

Jude Turns Two

2010-09-11T21:56:00.004-05:00

Please disregard the date on this post...it's so much later than I had intended. The summer has flown by, porch has been worked on, first ARE test has been taken, etc. Life for all of us has been no less than busy, busy, busy. But that is no excuse for not posting about my favorite second son's...second birthday!!

Jude 'Bear' Reynolds is Two!! WooHoo!!

We kept little man's second birthday pretty simple and low key this year. Everybody from LeMars made it down. We worked on the porch, hung out and ate cake. :) It was really quite nice, and fun was had by all, including our little two year old. The boys and Grandma Mary walked uptown and made a pit stop at the park. I love this photo above. In 30 years when I see Jude hanging out the side of his pick-up looking at me, I'll think of this photo. The expression is just Jude. Bugger...now I've got tears in my eyes. What's a Mom to do?!?

Grandma Mary was obviously loving the curls this day. How can we not, right? They get comments and smiles from everyone, every time we go out! And here's the Bear poking Grandpa's eye out...I mean, bonding with Grandpa. :)

Aiden and Annie making towers below. Funny little side story about Annie...giggle. When Annie and Frank come, they park the big camper in the driveway and set up camp. The boys love it and think it's pretty cool to go hang out inside the camper. Especially since Annie has Twinkies, Dr. Pepper and Kraft singles cheese....even at breakfast time (ahem). We finally picked up some Kraft singles for the boys since they seem to love them so much, and today when I gave Jude a slice of cheese he smiled..."Annie cheese," he said. I thought that was pretty cute. It's fun to get little glimpses of how their minds are ticking!

Present time was pretty fun this birthday. Jude totally understood the whole getting to open presents bit, and I think he understood that he was the special boy for the day. He graciously let his brother help him open a few. :)

Like all little boys, this little guy is into "dozers," trucks, sticks and puddles...but one of his unique characteristics is that he is kind of into music. He calls it "sound." In the car he will say, "Sound on!" He heard a band warming up at the Iowa State fair and he was absolutely riveted in his spot, staring at the people with their instruments. I kind of wonder if it will be something that will stick with him. For now we encourage him with instruments of his own. Wes and I got him his first MP3 player...kind of funny getting a two year old a MP3 player, but he loves it and it's a child one so it will survive a few bumps.

And the cake. Strawberry flavor with a fish theme. Little guy is also known for hollering, "fishie, fishie!!" every time we drive over the Mahaffy bridge. May-be he'll be a fisherman like Grandpa Terry?

Here's our little guy trying to figure out how to cut his cake. Wes and I laugh about this. Most kids at this age have their hands and face covered with frosting by this point. But neither of our boys are so inclined and tend to take a bit neater approach. I suppose I shouldn't complain. :)

Love ya Jude!!

My two year old boy!

First Day of Preschool

2010-08-23T09:35:00.003-05:00

First day of Preschool today!! Aiden is a Little Lion at the Lisbon preschool this year. He's been talking about it since last Thursday's open house. I told him we couldn't forget his backpack for school today. So after he got himself dressed he promptly put his back back on and wore it while he brushed his teeth, ate his breakfast, and kept it on until he had to take it off in the car.

I'm glad I got a few pictures at the house, because when he got to school there was no way he was going to focus enough to smile for the camera.

I did get one smile though, thanks to the principal who was standing there and helped Aiden hop up by the Lisbon Lion.

When we got to the door at the building, Aiden put his hands up and told Wes and I to STOP. Apparently we didn't need to go any further, he could handle it from here. How is it that kids are built in with the instinct to be embarrassed of their parents?!? :) Once he was inside his classroom I made him pose for one more picture by his locker. After that, his teacher came over and helped him find a book and a spot on the colored rug.

Aiden was so excited, Jude... not so much. He didn't want to be left behind and cried all the way home. Poor guy...he's going to have a rough few weeks here transitioning. I have to say that the Mom did pretty good...that is until Wes asked me how I was doing. Then the tears came, but only for a minute. Aiden made it pretty easy with all of his excitement!

State Fair 2010

2010-08-23T08:33:00.007-05:00

State Fair 2010 was awesome. How can it not be, right? :) We got to go twice this year with one day was in the high 70's, which really doesn't get any better when you're talking about fair weather! Classic picture to start with...Aiden next to the giant pumpkin. :)

I entered a knit scarf and a baby sweater in the Fabrics and Threads competition...the scarf won a pink ribbon. 4th place! :)
Jude absolutely LOVED going down this slide. His smile was so big at the bottom and he instantly turned around and started trying to go back up the slide and do it again. Wes vowed that he wasn't going to do that again. And when Aiden and I were waiting at the bottom of the slide, I asked him if he wanted to go down. He replied with a resolved, "No way," as if I didn't know what he would say. :)

The boys' favorite building was the children's building with all of the baby animals. There were baby cows, goats, sheep and even chicks hatching out of their eggs. I think Jude could have stayed in that building all day. They had a video of one of the baby cows being born, which caught Aiden's attention...which led to a million questions...which led to me trying to divert those questions and save them for a later date. :)

The John Deere tractor display is always a favorite!

As was the Ye Ol' Mill ride. Aiden and I went on the ride together the first day we went to the fair, and then grandpa Terry and Wes got to take him this past weekend. He had a blast both times and loves to pretend like he's scared in the dark and that there are crocodiles in the water.

And of course there are tons of things to eat at the fair. Jude tried his first burger (actually it was Mommy's burger) and proceeded to eat the whole thing. Mind you this wasn't some nothing burger from McDonalds...this was a quarter pound burger from the cattlemen's stand!!

Aiden sampling some of the ice cream from the Produce building.

Both days we got lucky and Jude took a nap while we were walking around. Fair day is usually as long as we can make it...the second day we arrived at about 8:00am and stayed until may-be 3:00ish!! Pretty awesome for our little guys!!

Bumper boats was another favorite ride for Aiden!! Wes ordered ticket packs online, which came with tickets for the midway rides. So while Jude was napping, Aiden got to go a good four rounds on this ride, and he loved it every time. :)

We also got passes to either ride a pony or a camel...we opted for the ponies this year. It was the first time on a pony for both of them. Jude especially had his cowboy saddle rock going on...he would kind of sway back and forth as the pony walked. Very cute!

The boys had fun with the garden tunnel...of course. It's pretty cool!!

And I always love taking this last photo on the way home from the fair.

Fun was had by all. :)

Aiden brings in the trash

2010-08-19T09:37:00.004-05:00

Aiden figured out his own way to bring the empty trash cans back to the house this morning. :)

A Carnival to Remember

2010-07-26T13:13:00.006-05:00

When it was announced at church that a carnival was being organized to wrap up the Vacation Bible School...Wes saw an opportunity to volunteer. Carnival and Wes are two words that kind of go together like peanut butter and jelly. :) He and one other man from church started meeting early in the morning, and put together an absolutely wonderful event. It was kind of a three week mad dash build with two small volunteer days at church. Wes was mostly in charge of the games. He spent his free time searching the internet for knock down bottles, rubber frogs and drooling over all of the authentic carnie stuff he would have to add in the future. The rest of us followed his lead and built, sewed, painted whatever he told us to do. None of us knew quite where we were all going...but obviously Wes had a plan.

Aiden loved to help paint...and still has pink spray paint in his hair to prove it. But his favorite job, as you all can probably assume, was overseeing the build. One night as I was stuffing punk dolls with straw, he rode up to me on his John Deere pedal tractor and informed me, "Mom, my job is to ride around and make sure everyone is working. We need to finish these games for the kids." I'm not sure this little kiddo is going to be happy unless he ends up in management some day. :)

One of my tasks was sewing the knock-down punks, which was quite a sewing adventure. When I came inside from the studio to show Wes my practice punk, Mabel claimed it immediately, started shaking it and gnawing on the fur. I can't even tell you how long it's been since she's played with any toys. It made me happy to know that if these punks didn't quite make it to the game line up...at least I knew they would make great dog toys. :)

Fortunately the punks did make it to the game line up, and survived year one of being smacked by fast balls. Other games included a ball toss (which Jude was awesome at and got two balls in a pink cup)...

the frog flop - where you smack the "flopper" with a rubber mallet and try to flip a frog (or turtle) onto a group of lily pads in one of the adjacent baby pools. Much more difficult than it sounds...although Aiden got very close to getting the turtle to make it once!!

Wheel of fortune...made with two cast off bicycle wheels...free from Scheels!! Genius (and very cute to boot)!!

The bumper car, where you have to pull the car back on the set of rubber bands...and then see how far you can get it to bounce. It has a little ticker on the side of the car that goes between the aluminum rods and tells you what size prize you win. Very cool!

The classic washer toss. I'm seeing a bit of an orange colored theme going on here...that probably doesn't have anything to do with me being an influence on the color choices. :)

There were three air filled bouncy castles. Jude and Aiden loved these. Well...Jude loved them until a bunch of bigger kids joined him one time and he got a bit stuck. I had to have a nice boy go in and rescue him from among the bouncing craziness. Before bed I was asking him about the carnival.

"Did you like the ducks, Jude?" 'yea'

"Did you like throwing the balls?" 'yea'

"Did you like jumping?" 'no'

Here Jude is with the very cool duck pond. Ducks floating in just a baby pool wasn't going to cut it for Wes...he had to have the classic, "real" duck pond...and it was very cool! It took Jude about twenty minutes to pick up his first duck. He was just having fun watching them float around the circle and sticking his hand in the water. :)

This water game was pretty popular with all ages. As you shot water in the funnel, the tube would fill up and float a ping pong ball up to the finish line. The first ball to the line won!

Below we have the classic, Plinko. This one was again a fun one for Jude since there were balls involved... although he liked pitching the ball about half way down the game board rather than setting it down at the top of the game. :)

Near the end of the evening you could trade in your food tickets for a hot dog or pulled pork sandwich. The boys each got a balloon which made them feel pretty important. :) Preparing for the carnival we kind of prepared ourselves, saying that even if it was just a few kids that showed up that it was worth the effort and it would just get bigger every year. By the food that was eaten I think we were guessing that we had somewhere around 200 people. Lots of people from church...but also everybody commented that there were a lot of faces that we didn't recognize. So I think it is save to say that everything was a huge success and hopefully will become a tradition and a great way to wrap up Vacation Bible School each year.

"Mom, you're teasing me."

2010-07-08T18:08:00.002-05:00

What have we been doing...

2010-07-06T13:11:00.005-05:00

So what have we been doing this past month besides trying to make a deadline?? Well, not much and a little bit of everything I suppose you could say. The deadline really did take up quite a bit of our time, and thank-you so much to both grandma's for watching the boys so that I can still have the opportunity to work!! It is a huge support, but also a great chance for the boys to get to know and hang out with their Grandmas!! Thank-you!!

Here are the boys at such a young and vulnerable age...being manipulated into thinking that comic books are cool. (wink, wink) I suppose Woody, Buzz Lightyear and Lightning McQueen are pretty cool and fun to read with Dad. :)

We've pulled the sprinkler and swimming pool out a few times in the hot weather this past month. These photos kind of make me smile. These two boys, although brothers, are sooo unique and different from each other. Aiden had an absolute blast running through the crazy bug sprinkler....

...but Jude didn't want to have much to do with water spraying everywhere. He much preferred to sit on the side line and stay dry,

while Aiden ran around and got soaking wet before he was finished. We made a trip to the park this past week, had a little picnic and then hung out for about an hour. There were quite a few kids playing that day. Aiden ran right into the midst of a large group of kids and joined a game of space rocket. They dodged asteroids and pushed buttons from the safe location of the rocket jungle gym. Jude on the other hand like to ride the horse merry-go-round, was not afraid of going fast and then proceeded to find the highest, fastest slide and go down it about 30 times. This he did on his own, away from the other kids. When I asked him if he wanted to play with the other children, and that I would go with him...he quietly said, "no." And that was that. After the other kids left, Aiden came over to play with Jude and I, but he was quick to warn me not to push the horses too fast...and he only made it down that slide twice. So opposite...and so fun to observe. :)

And because I have a captive audience...here is my awesome clematis from mothers day a few years back. They got quite large and were absolutely stunning this year!!

OK, now back to more boy stories. Jude has been putting the miles on the old popper. It's particularly cool this summer because...well...there are popping balls. :)

Now, when Corrinn and I were little we had a giant black and green big-wheel, and that thing was fast!! We thought we were especially cool, because one summer Dad built us a pull behind seat for our cabbage patch dolls. It was pretty rockin'!! But, now here we are with the next generation of kiddos...and apparently we need a whole implement of pull-behinds. :) Grandpa Terry made these for his Dad back when Wes was Aiden's age. Each year for Christmas he'd build something new for Grandpa Utesch. Now Aiden and Jude are more than happy to put them to good use. The grain wagon is equipped with functioning side door...

and the stock wagon came equipped with a bull that is now named Bob. :) And since Aiden thinks that hitches are about the coolest thing, he's even had both wagons hooked onto the John Deer...and was able to pull both of them for a short distance!!

A 4th to Remember

2010-07-06T12:02:00.004-05:00

Well, I see it's been about a month since I've written a post for you all...it's been a bit of a whirl wind month with deadlines, a bout with croup, etc., etc. But before I catch you up with all of those stories and photos, I want to share a few pictures from our 4th of July.

Now, we didn't make it to the traditional fire works in the park...although we did do a little playing with matches!! (giggle)

And we did have a few brief moments of rest and relaxation...
...but, most of our weekend was focused around the grand opening of Wes and Annie's new antiqueing business, "Pack Rat Collections." They laugh and call it their bad habit. I think it probably runs in the blood, but both Annie and Wes have a blast scrounging around at garage sales, spending their Satrdays at local auctions, and hanging out with the quality folks at Sharpless every Wednesday evening just to find the perfect item at the perfect price. This past year they've been collecting those special finds and pack ratting them for the annual 4th of July sale on main street Mt. Vernon.

Their booth consisted of a space 10' x 40' long, which they filled with NO problem at all. Equipped with a giant new tent, displays made from misc lumber and finds in the garage, and a sign from our old bathroom paneling, these two made quite a showing for their first go around!! Above they are looking bright and chipper at about 5:45 in the morning!! :)

Everything was tweaked and refined and ready to go when the early birds started arriving at around 7am. Actually, the real early birds started showing up the evening before when we were still hauling out rubber maids from the trailer. These guys were making sales even before the sale had started!!

One of their "famous" customers was Dan Bean who was on one of the shows from the first season of American Pickers...he's in this episode and is an older man in Key bibs at around the 30 min. mark (the third little square at the bottom of the video). But they both agreed that their favorite sale was to a teenage girl buying her first antique. She was about in tears when she loaded up an old pedal run sewing machine from their booth. :)

Here they are at the end of the day, congradulating eachother on an awesome beginning to their new business adventure. Congratulations you guys!!

Working on a Porch in Colorado

2010-06-06T16:48:00.003-05:00

The trip out to Colorado was an adventure as it always is. The car ride alone is always a bit adventuresome...I'm always worried about how the boys will travel. Aiden did awesome this time and kept himself busy watching movies, playing and coloring. Jude fought the belts a bit this time. You just hit a point where all you can think of is getting out of the car...so we all understood his frustrations. Don't we all just look thrilled below...he, he, he.

Here's a good shot of Mom's blue cast. I think she has may-be four more weeks of it being on.

We were all happy to finally make it to Colorado. As you can see the boys made them self at home rather quickly. The kitchen island was a favorite place to eat breakfast...it's very "big boy" you know.

And the ball machine was the favorite toy for the weekend. It has a little blower in it. So the balls travels down the shoot and then they get shot up in the air and roll back down. I'm guessing the batteries were about worn down by the time we left!!

And here we all are sitting around our work in progress. I'll have to get photos of the finished porch for you to see. It was really quite a project and everybody worked really hard. We ended up building a stone patio...with plans to switch a window and sliding door so that stairs come down the side of the house rather than dividing the back yard. Taking down the old deck really opened up the space behind the house and made Corrinn and Ankur's back yard look so much bigger!! Rosie came over to hang out every day that we were there which was so much fun. It felt like a little glimpse of when we were back in school and at each other's house every day...with each other practically all of the time. I think she and I have been friends since may-be 1988 or so....ugh, you do the math...I think I'm getting old. :)

We also celebrated Mr. Wyatt's birthday a month early. Poor guy had to strip down for his Nemo birthday cake....

...and for good reason. This little guy really dug in!! And enjoyed every minute of it. Happy
Birthday Wyatt!! All around it was a great trip to Colorado, and fun to get to see all of our loved ones!!

Tadpoles and a Graduation

2010-05-19T18:10:00.004-05:00

This morning we drove Grandma to the Dr. to get her splint off and cast on. After we dropped her off, the boys and I were trying to guess what color she would choose. Aiden thought she would get rainbow...I was hoping for glow in the dark (had one of those back in college). She picked sky blue, which got some interesting looks from Jude while we were running errands afterwards. Which by the way included going through the carwash. Very exciting for Aiden...but brougt ol' Jude bear to tears even when we tried to get him excited about the bubbles on the car and compared it to a bath.

While Grandma was at the Dr, I had her water vacuum to return. So we drove over to the new house where Aiden had to check to see if Grandma and Grandpa had frogs in their little pond. He was of course ahead of Jude and I, and yelled out, "Mom! Tadpoles!" "Nooooo," I replied "There are no tadpoles."

But the little guy was right! At least 500 tadpoles right, and got the opportunity to tell me that he told me so...which he is quite fond of saying here of late. We spent a good 45 minutes checking out the little "fishies" as Jude calls them, and talking about how tadpoles will grow legs and turn into frogs. We also made our "school lesson" about tadpoles this afternoon. Printing off our photo from this morning, doing a little Internet search for all of the different froggy stages and then drawing a picture of the tadpoles in the pond. "With rocks Mom...that look kind of like little bumps." We also practiced a few more of our "A's" which are looking pretty good!

The photo-opp was hard to resist...everything was just so pretty!

These last photos are of Aiden and his Truth Trackers class. Last Wednesday was the final day for Truth Trackers. They put on a little show for the parents with each of the age groups doing something a little different. Aiden's class sat up front and listened to one last puppet show, and they each got ribbons of participation. Aiden is the shortest one in his class (he gets that from his Mom) ,but in my opinion he's also the cutest!

(probably gets that from his Mom too) :) Wink

Where have we been...

2010-05-18T12:26:00.002-05:00

It has been kind of a busy few weeks for us...thus no blog posting. All four of us caught the flu the week before last...and then last week was kind of spent "recovering" from our flu week (catching up on laundry, water vacuuming the carpets and getting the house back in shape). This past weekend we were kind of back in our groove though, back outside working on projects. Wes picked up a load of mulch and Aiden was quite the helper getting it spread around.

Here's our Sunday morning breakfast. I think it's Darth Vader...Wes picked up Star Wars pancake molds while he was in DesMoines this past week. Aiden was excited, but not knowing a thing about Star Wars he called them monsters. I think we're going to have to get a new pan though...ours had a bit of a hump to the middle and didn't quite let the mold sit flat on the pan. Still very yummy though!

And I caught another great photo of the boys recently. Aiden pulled his little chairs down from his bedroom, scooted them together and said, "Here Mom, Take a picture." I'm always game for that. :)

Strawberry beds coming together

2010-05-02T18:26:00.004-05:00

Mary and Terry came up this weekend for Chalk the Walk uptown. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera uptown to take pictures like I always do. There were quite a few really cool ones this year. I'll look for a link to photos tomorrow...hopefully the newspaper will post a few.

We also got a few projects almost completed this weekend. The bathroom got just about all of it's trim work put up and is ready for me to do a little sanding and some paint work to wrap things up!!

And while I was work-working on the computer inside, everybody else was outside building us two raised strawberry beds. I'm very excited!! I'll be calling for a load of dirt this week and hopefully can get strawberries planted in the next couple of weeks. The boys of course got in on the action, and were real good helpers...

...as well as entertainers. :)

Annie commented on the phone how much we will enjoy freezing strawberries and making jam...I'm not so sure. I'm pretty sure my little strawberry junkie will polish it off every year with no problem at all. :)

It was another great weekend with family.

If life could be so easy...

2010-04-27T12:32:00.009-05:00

I have just a short story to tell from this past week. We were driving home from a full day and Aiden had fallen asleep in the back seat. Jude was back there chattering away, and I could hear him saying the word "beee-a-ball" Now, perhaps this little guy can already see himself as a coach...telling his team to be the ball. Ummmm may-be. But, being the Mom I can typically understand Jude talk...and I'm pretty sure he was shooting for (no pun intended) the word basketball. So Wes and I worked with him...pronouncing the word slowly so that he could repeat it. It truly is his favorite word in the world, and he desperately wants to get it right. He would periodically say, "baaaa-a-ball" which we would praise him for, because "baaa" is technically closer than "beee". Oh, but the effort!! He would get the "baaa-a-ball" sounded out and then heave this huge sigh of relief...like it had taken absolutely all of his effort to say the word correctly. And then the next time he would practice, he'd be back to "beee" again...but just saying the word back there over and over was keeping him happy. So sweet!! :)

Playing = Working

2010-04-15T18:45:00.004-05:00

Another picture of the pretty flowers in our yard. These tulips are from the Orange City festival last year.

AND: More playtime...

...coming...

....to YOU. :)

A little soaring, and a whole lot of sand digging this afternoon. The boys just beg to be outside almost every minute, and with this weather I'm certainly not going to tell them no. :)

After all of this digging we did a little swimming in the tub before bed!!
Here are the boys, hard at work.

Tradition with a Tree

2010-04-13T19:04:00.004-05:00

This magnolia is one of Wes and my favorite trees in our yard. We planted it several years ago...I'm guessing / wishing it was the same year that Aiden was born, but quite honestly I'm not sure. All the same, I've decided that it's going to be a yearly tradition to take a photo of the boys in front of the magnolia each year when it blooms. We can track the growth of all three. :) So here is round one of our new little tradition.

Below, they are both yelling "CHEESE" at me!!

It was absolutely perfect weather today, and I think we spent a good 5 hours outside. Riding bikes, tricycles and tractors, throwing the ball around, swinging and coming down the slide. I even got a smidge of knitting done while sitting outside!!

Aiden is really starting to get the hang of his bike. Wes had to put the seat up a few inches which made pedaling much easier, and now he's running all sorts of circles around the drive way.

Jude likes to ride the big, kid equipment too...but since he can't quite reach the pedals he has devised a new way to "get the job done."

Number 4 Party

2010-04-05T15:29:00.009-05:00

Well, the birthday party finally arrived!! Aiden has been asking about it for about the past two weeks, which makes it all the more fun for all of us adults. He even asked multiple times during the day if it was still "my party", all the way until bed time. Thank goodness Easter was the next day and gave him something to look forward too after all of the partying was done.

So, here is our little four year old train engineer.

And in case you haven't figured it out, Thomas the Train was our big theme this year. It seemed only natural with all of the trains running through my living room. :)

The actual surprise tactics had to be revised a bit this year. In the past we have put our little man down for a nap and magically when he woke up there would be streamers, cake and presents galore. This year we had to take our birthday boy on little excursions. So Grandpa Terry and Dad took him to the church parking lot and raced his remote control car. Unfortunately that lasted all of may-be 20 minutes before the batteries died. So they went for a drive to see the "castle" in Anamosa. (aka the big stone prison...which does look a bit like a castle).

Meanwhile, I was decorating the Thomas cake and Grandma Mary was mixing up a batch of Wes' favorite potato salad. The boys came back, I jumped in the driver seat and hauled the two little guys down to Kalona to pick up Grandma Barb. Choreographed perfectly, and the surprise was well appreciated!! :) Our boy loved his party!

He got lots of wonderful presents, including many trains as well as "Cranky the Crank" to move cargo on and off the train!

It was a flurry of paper everywhere, but one of the fun things to watch was the moment that he truly paused to look through a new book that he got. Another humorous moment was when he was excitedly opening the two biggest boxes on the table, to find that they were full of clothes. His response, "Clothes...ugh, I hate this." What more can you expect from a boy, right? :)

Jude even got in on the present action...a new ball!

The next morning was Easter, and the boys were up early to discover that the Easter bunny had left them each an Easter basket.

Since the boys were both showing signs of old fashioned colds we didn't make it to Easter service. We spent the morning playing with all of the new trains, eating cookies and chocolate from the Easter baskets...

...and prepping for Easter dinner. We even pulled out the wedding china and made a pretty fancy table for our our gathering. Pretty good smiles on all of us here. I love Aiden's smile...even at a young age, he loves it when all of us can be together.

During nap, the Easter Bunny made another house visit and hid piles of eggs in our back yard. This was Jude's first year for Easter hunting, and at first he didn't quite want to give up his eggs to put them in the basket. In fact there was one find that he wouldn't let go of for a while. But once he figured out the task at hand, he put his game face on and loved every minute of it. He even surprised Wes and I with a few of the eggs he spotted!!

Aiden knew exactly what the task was as soon as he stepped foot out the door!! This was his game face! :)

He did great, pointing out all of the "ball" shaped eggs for Jude to pick up, spotting eggs on the squirrel feeder and even on top of the garage. But the best find was a whole nest of eggs under a mysteriously placed sandbox sieve in the middle of the yard...eyes popped when he scored that one!! And our little guys with baskets full...

Going through the eggs to check out the Easter stash.

And quite honestly, this post wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention all of the Wii gaming that the family did. Girls vs. Boys Carnival death matches...can't beat them. Wonderful birthday / Easter weekend!!

This and That

2010-04-01T14:46:00.004-05:00

A little bit of everything going on this past week at our house. We got a little bit of Easter decorating done. Wes has put up an Easter tree the past couple of years and has had fun collecting old plastic Easter bunnies / ducks when he see them. Aiden loves the decorating as well.

Mabel has been resting up from her surgery and has been getting spoiled with lots of soft blankets and lunch meat tid bits, which are hopefully offsetting having to wear her "cone of shame" and getting pills stuffed down her throat. She is recovering well.

The boys were just way too cute when we were heading out the door to Bible Study yesterday morning. Had to stop and take a photo even though we were running a bit late. ;)

And we scored big last night at Sharpless with a new 1950's looking couch (photos will come soon) and some windows for Mary's new garage. Jude made out pretty well with feet up...
...and piggy back rides from Dad! And Mr. Aiden, aka big boy...made breakfast this morning. Can you guess what we had?!?! :)
All of this, and there is still time for a moment of rest. Hope you all have a wonderful Easter!

Our Boy is Four

2010-03-25T08:43:00.005-05:00

Our boy is four. Isn't it hard to believe?!?

We kept things kind of simple this week since the big birthday party is coming soon. On Tuesday Aiden helped me make birthday cupcakes. He is very good at telling me all of the ingredients and how many eggs that I need,

and mixing skills are improving.

We master the sampling skills at a young age. :)

Jude gave these cupcakes a big thumbs up!

We had plans to do a little park hopping for Aiden's birthday, but the weather didn't quite help us with that. So instead we headed to the Children's Museum which I think was equally good if not better. Aiden and Jude both had tons of fun.

Here they are driving the ambulance.
And upstairs they had a kid size farm, equipped with a tractor, barn, produce stand and a field that could be planted.

Afterwards we enjoyed our bagels while watching the ice skaters.

The excitement wore our little four year old out...but he still had just enough energy to call grandma. :)

Energy perked up a bit when he found out he got to open presents after dinner. That and it was pretty cool getting to hold his cupcake while the candles were lit. Very big boy.

New trains were immediately put to good use hauling loads across the kitchen floor. I think our little Mr. Aiden had a good birthday, and there's more partying yet to happen.

Happy Birthday Aiden!!

Quilt Progress

2010-03-22T12:33:00.002-05:00

I've been telling all of you about the quilt that I worked on last weekend, so I thought I'd take a couple of quick photos of it. I bought the batting today, and still have to sew up a back for it. I think I'll try to do the actual quilting on my machine and see how that goes. It may also get another band of color around the outside of the quilt to make it a bit larger. Tons of fun to make, and lots of fun to work out in my studio!! :)

A Birthday Weekend

2010-03-15T16:55:00.003-05:00

Oh, what a wonderful birthday weekend I had. Thank-you for all of your phone calls and cards and birthday $$$!! My weekend at home started with a few of these:

had a whole bunch of sewing time...

and ended with a very yummy birthday cake.

And to top it off we even got to spend a little time outside doing a little yard clean up. I can't get enough of this warm weather right now!

Aiden enjoyed the outside time as well and worked on cleaning out his sandbox...

what a big boy he's getting to be. :)

Little things

2010-03-10T11:57:00.002-06:00

Not so much going on in the Reynolds house, although the feeling of being busy never stops. Funny how that is when you have two little boys. :)

Here is Mr. Aiden sporting his red juice mustache. He and Papa stopped at the grocery store after Truth Trackers and among other things picked up red juice and a Thomas the Train magazine. Both of which made this little guy happy as you can see.

Jude on the other hand...ha ha ha. Is he looking at the camera here?? I feel like I need to be waving my hand at the computer screen, "Jude???" In a trance. :)
Ohhh - here he is back again. :)
A second one of those chairs disappeared into the hallway just this morning by the way. Another "on the table" incident involving Mom's patient with lack of watering/ survive all plant fell crashing to the floor. It survived...true to it's name.
And here is my phone hogging little boy. Who stole the phone from me four different times just the other day. Apparently he had things to talk about...and neither Grandma minded hearing them. :)

And one last little thing to share with you. Jude has decided that he is better than the sippy cup lately. Here he is proud as punch that he's drinking out of Daddy's big cup. Not sure Dad is going to want to do any more drinking from that one though!!

A Train in my Living Room

2010-02-25T22:06:00.003-06:00

I have a train in my living room.

The Aiden train equipped with comfortable rubbermaid, foot stool and chair cushion accommodations. Passage isn't free, you do have to buy a ticket. Proceeds are collected in Sheriff Woody's hat, but your hard earned dollars get you a seat on one of the fastest locomotives my living room can bring you. In fact this train made no less than eight trips direct from Mt. Vernon to Colorado this afternoon with fuel stops in Le Mars.

Maintenance was only needed once and was fixed quickly with Daddy's socket set. No worries - there are no long lay overs at this hub. And while you enjoy your ride you can read a "blue, orange, or green book" of your choice, or if you so desire relax to the tunes of our sunshine music car. :)

Pets are of course allowed in the well cushioned caboose.

Hope you enjoyed your ride!!

We are all trying to make the best of our long winter indoors...trying to wait patiently for the Iowa snow to melt.

Here are a couple of short video's of Jude. He has learned to mimic my "ahhhh" noise after throwing back one of my eight glasses of water a day. I'm really hoping I don't have the same drool situation he has going on in this video. :)

And we're working on saying a few words. "Thank-you" really started to sound recognizable today. :)

A New Level

2010-02-16T19:04:00.003-06:00

Jude's been doing a little growing up as of late. He has been trying to expand his vocabulary(magnet, basket, basketball, mabel)- trying would be the key word here because these words are only ones that a Mom or Grandma would recognize. Big boy has also been practicing eating with a fork!!

At times it takes total concentration,

and looks like a bit of a competition. Jude vs. Fork...

but when it comes to food...Jude's got that one in the bag. Especially when it's fruit. Fruit and bread are still primarily what this boy eats. I've finally convinced him that string cheese is good. That took some doing. And now I'm going to have to figure out some kind of protein to add to his diet, something that sticks to his bones a little longer. I can't tell you how many times I get this little guy fed and full, and not an hour later he's reaching up for that fruit bowl hollering for something else to eat. Speaking of eating challenges, I have to share my little dirty secret with you. I'm tricking Aiden into eating vegetables. Yep, you read that right - VEGETABLES. Of course he thinks they are hamburgers and they are sort of...they're veggi-burgers, and with a little catchup he is totally siked about them and asks for seconds. It's one of those Mommy victories. Like eating the white stuff out of his Oreo when he was little. What he doesn't know won't hurt him, right? :) He he he.

Smile from Aiden. :)

When Mom came up last week I had to warn her, "Jude's at a whole new level of getting into things. Watch out." :) Jude has been wanting to be a bit more like big brother lately. So last week when Aiden was doing all of his Valentine creating Jude wanted to try some creating of his own. So,he figured out how to crawl up on the dining chairs...

and once he was on the dining chairs, well...why not just continue all the way up to the table.

Mommy then thought it would be wise to pull the baby back off the table instead of taking pictures. So Jude got set up with crayon and paper. He got the concept of crayon...just not paper. Again - so thankful for the old vinyl tablecloth. :)

A Family Portrait

2010-02-09T21:00:00.003-06:00

Aiden drew this picture yesterday. It's a family portrait! :) In December Aiden started drawing "rock people." I about busted out of my seams when his drawing started actually taking real forms. And then yesterday he drew this picture, which I thought was just about the best Valentine ever! I'm on the left, Dad is on the right...and that big red mass in the bottom right corner is a cake (can you see the candles?). Then there are two little people in the left corners which I'm assuming are Aiden and Jude, however I don't know which one is which.

I love it - my favorite picture ever!!

Two little monkeys

2010-02-03T12:21:00.005-06:00

This is how I found the boys Monday after nap time. Aiden beat me upstairs after Jude woke up from his nap. They were both super focused - concentrating on one: their "super bounce" and two: giggling like crazy. :) Two little monkeys jumping on the bed.

And here's a few shots from one of our play times at the mall. For the past three weekends or so, we've been heading down to the Coralville mall to run some energy out. We're all a bit tired of being cooped up inside, especially two boys with tones of little guy energy. I think I need to find the super fast setting on my camera because all of my action shots were fuzzy.

The only non-blurry shot I got was of two pooped out boys waiting to get their socks and shoes back on. There wasn't any slowing them down before that!! :)

And here's Mr. Jude playing Aiden's kazoo he made at MOPS...curls abundant.

I've been cracking up at Aiden's little personality lately. Several times he has informed me (matter of factly) that someday he was going to be "growed up and be a Grandpa like Grandpa John and Grandpa Terry." It makes me wonder how his little mind is reasoning through that. Why did he skip the whole Daddy part of the scenario...is it because he doesn't think Daddy is "growed" up yet. Ha ha...just makes me wonder. :)

Boys in Buckets

2010-01-21T12:25:00.002-06:00

Boys in buckets - finger lickin' good.

(actually it's those cheeks I can't get enough of)

Buzz Boys

2010-01-16T08:57:00.003-06:00

The boys got matching Buzz Lightyear PJ's for Christmas this year. Had to get matchy-matchy photos...it's just one of those things. :) I think my favorite is the last photo. Our kiddos had absolutely no chance of not getting squinty eyes...we have to smile with our whole face. :)

To make you laugh...

2010-01-12T09:15:00.002-06:00

On New Years eve Mom and Dad came up for a Birthday dinner. We had roast beef and store bought noodles. Store bought?? Alas, yes...and they did not compare to home made AT ALL. For whatever reason that batch of noodles flopped big time. Don't even ask me how I messed up noddles, but I did and hopefully will never do it again. :) Aiden was so excited about Grandma's ice cream cake. He had to look at it in the freezer several times and couldn't wait for everyone to finish their meal. Oh the anticipation!!

That evening we also tried out the new Wii. It's quite a bit of fun, and this boxing match can really get your heart rate up!! It also give everyone a pretty good laugh in the room - check out the video below. :)

Again the snow...

2010-01-07T10:00:00.002-06:00

Another 5 inches of snow last night, very pretty light fluffy snow. So while Jude was down for his morning nap, Aiden and I decided to bundle up and venture out. Mommy got to burn some calories shoveling and Aiden, well....

His Jeep got stuck in the snow (about 15 times and had to be repeatedly rescued). It's so wonderful that we have a fire truck, dump truck and bulldozer that are so willing to come to the aid of this crazy driver again and again. :)
Mr. Aiden made an attempt to get at the sand box and got himself stuck in the snow. Mommy had to come to the rescue on that one.

And finally, covered in snow and with pink cheeks we are ready to head back inside...at least Mommy is, Aiden took some convincing. :)

Christmas at Home

2010-01-04T12:50:00.002-06:00

This was our first Christmas at home with the boys. And since it was a week after Christmas we were planning on making a special phone call to Santa to see if he would make an extra trip to our house. Unfortunately we've all been a bit on the sick side and our past few evenings have been slightly on the short side of sleep...so we decided to forgo with the anticipation. And instead we just popped the surprise on Sunday morning. They didn't object. :)

They crack me up...Aiden is crazy excited, and Jude is more focused on getting breakfast in the kitchen and dealing with his brother who keeps yelling in his face. But, once he gets a little closer to the tree he realizes what all the hype was about. We couldn't get him to look at the camera for anything. :)

What did the boys get this year? Oh...cars, planes and trains of course. A remote control dinosaur got a lot of ooo's and ahh's. A sheriff Woody doll, a flying Buzz Lightyear and Woody set, a farmer game, a space rocket, Duplo Lego's, and various other things that I'm sure I'm forgetting. We've had several solid on the floor playing the past couple of days. Aiden has his wooden tracks back in the living room and spread out...and Jude is kind of digging the two new four wheelers and the dinosaurs. The tree came down yesterday afternoon along with all of the other Christmas decorations. Both Wes and I hate taking down the holiday things, somehow they make the house seem cozier. Aiden really seemed to notice it this morning as well and needed a full explanation of where the tree went and of course, "Why?" And then he wanted to know when Easter was coming. Soon, little man...soon. :)

Christmas in LeMars

2009-12-30T12:00:00.004-06:00

Christmas in LeMars was a bit of an adventure this year...a snow adventure to be a little more exact. And instead of driving away from the eye of the storm, I'm pretty sure we drove right to it and parked ourselves there for our Christmas holiday. It snowed, and it snowed...and it blowed and then it snowed again until we had somewhere around 18 inches. It was a winter wonderland. Thank goodness Santa drives a sled though and old Rudolph has that shiny nose to get through the storm, because Grandma had presents waiting at her house for two very excited boys on Christmas day. This was truly the year that Aiden was excited for Santa to come, we've only been talking about it for the past 5 weeks or so.

And Aiden wasn't disappointed, there were piles of presents to be opened and played with. Jude even got in on some opening too...if he was quick enough...and didn't have his brother standing next to him offering him "help". It was a fun time with family, a chance to hang out, talk, eat, play cards...and shovel. :)

Thank-you Mary, Terry, Annie and Frank for the wonderful winter wonderland Christmas!!

Christmas Photo Outakes

2009-12-09T19:47:00.006-06:00

In hopes for the perfect Christmas card photo, I dressed the boys in nice clothes today and pulled up the little rocking chair in front of the tree. Why I submit myself to such an impossible task, or put the boys through what I'm sure Jude would call torture...not sure. But at the end of the day it gave me a good laugh flipping through the out takes...even if it looks like I'll be dressing them up again one of these upcoming days to try all over again. Enjoy.

Aiden, "A camera? Yes!! Take a picture of this Mom."

Jude - "Is he really posing for the camera right now??"

Jude - "Let me out of here!!!"

Aiden - "Oh Jude such cute little cheeks. Just smile for the camera like this."

Jude - "I'll show you how to smile for the camera."

Jude - "He's posing for the camera again, isn't he?"

Jude - "Mom, if he's not going to take this seriously then I'm finished."

Aiden - "Oh little brother, you know you love me."

Jude - "Yea, OK I love ya, but I still want out of this chair."

Thanksgiving in Colorado

2009-12-08T09:09:00.002-06:00

Corrinn and Ankur hosted an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving, complete with turkey, roast beef, noodles, stuffing, mashed potatoes, 3 layer salad, pumpkin pie, pecan pie...and the list goes on. It was absolutely delicious!! And to top it off Grandma, Aunt Carol and Estee hopped a plan and hung out with us for the day.

A lot of preparation went into the meal, including an Apple Cider brine. That's the turkey soaking in cider in that big orange bucket!!
Jude's favorite spot was with the dogs, where else. :)

Aiden loved just being with the whole family. (Notice Mr. Wyatt fits into the smallest size of our "grandpa" pin stripe bibs - Corrinn and my favorite kiddo outfit of all time.)

The day after Thanksgiving we had absolutely perfect 70 degree weather, perfect for a day at the zoo. Jude was so extremely excited about all of the animals. Every time he would see something new his whole body would shake and he desperately wanted to reach out and touch all of them. I think he would have jumped the fences if we would have let him go!! Notice below he's trying to climb the little wall!!

One of our cute moments of the day was when Jude wanted to do some walking of his own.

So Aiden held his hand .

Pictures coming...

2009-12-01T14:36:00.003-06:00

Pictures from Thanksgiving in Colorado are coming. But, since I can now...I thought I'd share a little Christmas present with you. This is a sweater that Mr. Wyatt received over Thanksgiving / Christmas in Colorado. Jude modeled for me so that I could get a few pictures for my Ravelry page before I turned it over. :) He's a pretty cute model...as will be Mr. Wyatt when he grows a few inches and can actually fit into this little number.

Catching up

2009-11-06T15:39:00.003-06:00

I forgot to post this photo of Wes and Terry at the Iowa Football game last weekend. Box seats - not too shabby!!

And I've been reminded that I haven't posted photos of Aiden's room. I think I was originally going to take photos after I got curtains made, but we kind of changed our mind about curtains...and then photos were never taken. We painted a toy box that belonged to Wes when he was little, bought some fun carpet tiles for the floor and a new chair. The finishing touch though belongs to Annie. She found the perfect wall stickers, which Wes and I (equipped with the Internet) were not able to do. Now I think an orange quilt is in order...although the favorite Lightning McQueen blanket will probably do for a while yet. :)

Here is big boy Aiden all ready at 8:00 am to head to LeMars this weekend. The boys are going to do a little hanging out up North while Wes and I work on the upcoming work deadline. When I told Aiden that we needed to get him packed this morning, he pulled down his back pack right away and started instructing me on what we needed to put in. The list included vitamins, toothbrush, a favorite sweatshirt among other things.

He tried to stuff the Lightning McQueen blanket in too. With all this kiddo wants to pack, I'm thinking he's going to need one of those mountain climbing packs with all of the expanding compartments for kindergarten someday.

Monday Playing

2009-11-02T21:03:00.002-06:00

I like easy Mondays. Who doesn't right? But I tend to make a special effort to put off chores, errands, etc. so that Monday can be an easy going play day especially for the boys. Tuesdays we have MOPS, Wednesdays is Bible Study in the morning and Truth Trackers in the evenings, Thursday and Friday I work...and then we're back to the weekend. So Monday is kind of our kick back day. And today we definately had a nice time kicking back. Aiden was the master puzzle guy, challenging himself with some smaller pieces. And when the puzzle was done and he had admired it for a minute or two...he was onto the next.

Jude was busy with the toy below, where you have to push a ball through the hole and it goes rolling down the ramp. So much fun to do over and over again. Note the little toe peaking throough. I can not keep socks on this little guy, and somehow today he was able to pull his shoes off as well.

And then there was also a few planes flying around the living room. With engine sounds...I just love how boys always have engine sounds. Jude's engines have just started making noise in this past week. :)

Walkin' and Rollin'

2009-10-28T12:52:00.007-05:00

It's official. We're walking. :)

After about a month of knowing how to walk, but not really seeing the necessity of it.

And then there are times where walking still isn't all that necessary. At least not when you have a tow truck to pull you around. :)

A Scary Post - Sort Of

2009-10-28T12:12:00.004-05:00

Aiden has been all about making funny faces and silly sounds lately. I can't pull the camera out without him begging me to take his picture so that he can see how silly his face is. With it being the week of Halloween I thought I'd share some of the "scary / silly" faces that have been showing up around our house.

OK, so may-be this last one isn't so scary, Aiden was cracking up at his own funny faces.

This art project cracked me up last week. I pulled this out of Aiden's truth tracker's bag...and to tell you the truth I wasn't quite sure what it was. Even after Aiden told me what it was,

"a goat." Oh...that's very nice Aiden. Followed up by a few questions for Grandma that afternoon...it was a hairy arm. Ha ha ha. This story just gets better and better doesn't it. :) OK, so you have to remember back to the story of Jacob and Esau when Jacob tricked Isaac into giving him the birthright. Link Here if You forget the Story.

Mabel found a new friend to snuggle with. This particular morning Aiden was a little less wiggly than usual and so Mabel claimed her usual spot - on blanket, on person, on couch. Aiden was so thrilled that Mabel was laying on him that he didn't wiggle for a whole minute!! The event was worth a picture. :)

Visit to the Alpacas

2009-10-15T18:29:00.002-05:00

Last Saturday was probably one of our last "family" Saturdays until Thanksgiving. Our deadline for Marion Middle School is fast approaching and ready to start monopolizing our weekends. :( We made the best of it though and got a number of errands done, and we made a trip to Vinton, Iowa to visit a yarn event. Ha, ha...I know what your thinking. Sounds like I dragged the boys to do some yarn shopping.

So, may-be you were right...

There was a wonderful selection of hand spun yarns in all shades of alpaca. And they were named after these guys in the background here, which was kind of cool. I would pick up a skein of yarn and think, hey...I just met that guy. :)

The open house was also very much so geared for kids. There were ponies, little goats, sheep in addition to lama's and alpacas...all friendly and willing to eat out of the kids hands. There were games and face painting. And inside the house you could get hot cider, chili and a number of different baked goods.

Both boys (or may-be I should say all three boys) had lots of fun. Jude was absolutely loving the alpacas and kept insisting that I walk over by them...but not too close because then it was scary. Kind of an interesting balancing act to make him happy. :) He is such an animal guy. And of course Aiden loved it because it's about the next best thing to the fair.

Here the boys are in their fall garb. Jude's hat got whipped off about 20 times, I'm surprised we got a photo with it on. :)

And here is my little helper. I turned off the vacuum the other evening to answer the phone and Aiden decided to step in. It was just before bedtime and I think he was delaying going upstairs a bit...which I of course had absolutely no problem with when it involves help with cleaning!! How could I say no, right!?!?

Just a Sink of Water

2009-10-05T11:53:00.002-05:00

Happiness in life is sometimes just a sink full of water,

and somebody to share it with.

Jude's Shoes Running

2009-10-02T17:13:00.003-05:00

And so the story goes:

Jude had only one shoe and no socks upstairs this morning as Grandma was getting him dressed for the day. Says Grandma, "Jude, where are your socks and your shoe?"
Aiden, always ready with an answer replies, "Judes shoe and socks when running out the door (down the stairs, outside, etc, etc)!!"
Bending over to search beneath the changing table Grandma finds the socks, showing them to Aiden. "Oh, Yes. Just the shoe, Grandma"
And so Grandma and Mom told Aiden that perhaps his story of run away shoes would be more believable if he drew us a picture. :)

Here and There

2009-09-29T19:46:00.005-05:00

I forgot to share this photo with all of you. Isn't it awful!!! I took it just before our Chicago trip. It was the second time that Aiden got bit by something right on the eye lid. Ugh!! The first time was the morning that we went to the state fair. Originally we thought that may-be a mosquito got him, but the gnats have been so awful this year and like to bite like the dickens. So now I'm blaming it on the gnats. His eye would practically swell shut and he would have to tip his head back to see out of it. Now that we've had a frost last night I'm hoping that those little buggers are dead!

And a photo of a boy being a boy. Jude likes Grandma's cupboards because they are easier to open than Mom's. And he can climb in them and sit. Cool fort you know!!

And since we're on the topic of cupboards, this little scene below kind of made me giggle yesterday. Jude loves to pull my two bottom drawers open. I intentionally kind of emptied the bottom drawer so there's not so much to pull out, but the next one up holds all of my dishtowels, etc. Oh what a mess he can make, let me tell ya. But yesterday, when I walked in the kitchen I noticed and appreciated that at least my little Jude Bear made an effort to pick up. Giggle, giggle. You have to applaud the effort right!?! :)

And here are the boys yesterday. Aiden in his new favorite sweatshirt now that it's cold, and Jude with a cracker. (of course)

This is Jude telling me he's ready for his next cracker, pointing towards the package on my knitting table. Look at how serious the eyes and mouth are. It's No laughing matter. :)

Cousins

2009-09-24T15:34:00.001-05:00

It took several tries - you'd better believe it. :) But well worth the effort!!

Chicago Trip

2009-09-23T12:10:00.004-05:00

Several weekends ago Wes and I had the opportunity to take a long weekend in Chicago. It was so much fun to get away and take a little break. One of the highlights was the Renegade Craft Fair. LINK So many funky people making everything from t-shirts, to purses, to jewelry, etc. etc. I walked away with my head full of ideas, and it's so much fun to see swarms of young people "crafting."

We made coffee stops, fabric stops..

LINK

and salvage stops. The salvage stores that we went to were so cool, and full of such unique things. LINK , LINK

One store not only had savage material, but connected pieces together to make new and funky things. Like the fountain / gazebo below. Note the lunch tray roof, old porch swings and bath tub fountain. So much fun!!

And take a second look at the awning below - yep....chairs!! Can you believe it?

And a concert to end our trip, the group U2 at Soldier field right down town. I think there were around 80,000 people at this concert. This photo was taken as people were still coming in. Quite the stage!!

What a fun fun weekend. Thank-you Mary for watching the boys for us!! And Mom for being the rescue nurse when Jude got a fever. And Annie for surprising us with a porch ceiling when we got home.

The past week

2009-09-10T14:13:00.004-05:00

So it turns out that I'm not very good at taking pictures when actual "events" are going on. I was just slightly annoyed when I uploaded my camera pictures to see that I had zero photos on my camera of my little nephew Wyatt and Mom had all of may-be six!! Ugh - note to self, get better at that!! And although I wasn't the greatest at taking photos, apparently my eldest did a fair job, we just need to redirect his focus to people now. :) LINK In the photo below, Mr. Wyatt was not so patient with his cousin's method of handling. :)

He was much happier stretched out on the floor in PJ's.

This past weekend was Grandma Cosaert's 85th birthday. It was a quick trip to Corning, but we packed a lot in. Including a trip to Aunt Carol's and Uncle Doug's to check out the progress on their farm house remodel. Aiden got a ride on the mower.

And we picked a few apples from their tree. It was getting close to lunch and all of us were eating away at our apples. When Aunt Janet handed Jude a little apple of his own to play with, he decided to join the taste testing. He ate a whole little apple of his own. It was sooo cute seeing him chomp away, trying to be like the big people.

Grandma's birthday party was in the park. Aunt Elaine was there from Washington, Luther's drove all the way from Texas and of course all of the Nebraska and Missouri and Eastern Iowa folk were there. It was a great time. Aiden and his 2nd cousins Madison and Samantha playing in the "dirt," and having fun. He and the girls ran around all afternoon, hopping jungle gyms and having a generally good time.

Little guy was so worn out at the end of the day that after driving back to Williamsburg, we were able to unhook his car seat (with him in it) and move it from Mom and Dad's suburban to our trailblazer...with him sleeping the entire time. When we got home, we woke him up to switch him into his PJ's and then he went right to bed. :)

Here are all the sisters and brothers in order of age:

left to right, from youngest to oldest: Aunt Elaine, Uncle Jeanine, Dad, Uncle Richard, and Aunt Linda. And of course Grandma Mary front and center.

Happy Birthday Grandma!!

Done Squirreling

2009-09-07T21:40:00.003-05:00

Well, I believe we are finished with all of our squirreling for the year, at least this little squirrel is. Phew!! We really got quite a bit canned and frozen for the year. Wes and I keep wondering if we would make it through the winter if we were pioneers. I think we just might. :) We were not the only busy squirrels this year. It seems that one of our fuzzy friends hid a little kernel of corn next to the drive way last year, and now we have a 6 ft corn stock growing just next to the porch. It's a happy little corn stock, with a whole two ears of corn that are tasseling and trying to get big and fat before a hard frost. One kernel of corn for two ears return - I'd say that was a pretty good investment on the part of our bushy tailed friends. Note the beautiful path in the background. It's getting the treatment this weekend with some hostas and lilies that I dug up from Mom and a few mums to boot.

A photo of our corn in process. Wes said we shucked about 600 ears of corn!!

Can't believe it???

The proof is in our freezer. Just under 100 quarts worth. Of course about 30 of these went to Mom and Dad's freezer otherwise we'd be wrapping these up for Christmas gifts come December and all of you might have found a slightly chilled present in your lap!!

Our pile of husks ready to go to the dump.

And this last weekend we picked a rubbermaid full of apples from my Aunt Janet in Corning. We cooked down three big pots of apples into applesauce and got them canned for the winter as well. Almost all of them made it into applesauce, a few accidentally slipped into a very yummy (no calorie) apple crisp. :)

And here's our canned hide-a-way in the basement. All of those rows are four jars deep, and will taste so delicious in the middle of the winter when we're wishing it was summer again!!

The Play House

2009-09-07T21:02:00.003-05:00

The play house got a bit of a face lift on Jude's birthday weekend. Wes and Terry went to town and got so much done Saturday and Sunday mornings. The swing set was a hand-me-down from one of the partners at OPN. His kids are in their teens now and they were looking to get rid of it. We were happy to take it off their hands.

The play set did need a little fixing up though. Some of the wood near the base was needing to be replaced, and being architects we both saw some prime real estate under the platform for a awesome fort underneath. So new sides were added, a very solid ladder and last but not least a new sandbox. The sandbox is being finished this week. Wes is trimming the sides with more of the fencing wood and lining the bottom to prevent any weeds from coming through. We bought 60 bags of play sand this weekend and had to borrow Dad's pick-up to get it home. Very heavy!! Aiden enjoyed watching the forklift at Menards lift the pallet onto Grandpa's truck, good stuff!!
Aiden and Jude both are very excited about their new play set. We've already spent a lot more time out there since it has been fixed up. Jude loves to swing and try to climb up the slide. Aiden loves to shoot cars down the slide and is now all about his small corner of sand. We dumped a few bags in before everything was trimmed. So he has a little corner with about 15 trucks that are already bulldozing and making new interstates. The rest of the trimming should be done in the next couple of evenings to give us a fully equipped construction sight.

The Big One at the Big Top

2009-08-26T10:41:00.010-05:00

Our baby Jude turned one and to celebrate we had a bit of a party!!

Welcome to the

Spectacular Reynolds' Family Circus

You can't beat this show folks. Step right up and you will experience the great adventures to be had when turning one. :) We have balloons, we have monkeys...

(that's not all folks, hold in that excitement)

...we've got clowns,

and the death defying, thriller supreme - The Great Ollini!!

Oh no, that's not all.

Dad and brother Aiden have got a show for you. Watch out for the Coke and Mentos fireworks display!!!

(the audience ooooo's and ahhhh's) LINK to another experiment by the professionals.

And if that's not enough for ya folks, let us entice you with a few carny games down on the midway. :) We've got the all time, Jude Bear favorite...the ducks!! Which by the way inspired his first word, pronounced clear as day in front of us all, "Duck!" Because, really...who wants cake when you've got ducks right?!? And the Aiden favorite, fishing. This is a serious game, lots of prises to be won!! Aiden had a great time with this game and was so determined to reel his prize in...we had the hardest time getting him to pull his reel up and so ended up having to pitch the prizes over. :) Once he figured out the trick of it, Aiden wanted to be the prize guy. After I had given him a turn, he says to me, "Now you're turn, Mom." And so we traded spots and I threw my line in and caught a bag of Teddy Grahams!! Can't beat it right?!?!

The big top was a fun time for all. And Jude had a really great birthday and birthday party thanks to our family and all of their help.

And after the circus had packed up, we all circled around to enjoy popcorn in front of our own little outside movie theater (on the side of the big camper).