5 Months

Hannah is five months old today. She is amazing. She sleeps at least 8 hours every night, sometimes 10. She laughs and smiles all the time. She eats great and has finally started taking a bottle (kind of). She had her first experience with oatmeal last week as well. She can't decide if she likes it yet. She spits a lot of it out. She's in her own room now, which means Allie and Ava are sharing. They're doing okay with it. They keep each other up sometimes but for the most party, they sleep pretty well. They do love sharing a room though. Hannah has not rolled over yet but she does roll onto her side. She sticks out her tongue a lot. I haven't weighed her since her four month but I know she's grown a lot. She can already wear 9 month clothing. She's a big baby. We just love her so much.

I attend a mom's group through my church. Throughout the year, we get a sitter for the kids and usually meet and discuss a book or just have a discussion. Through the summer, we take a break from the meetings and just get together at eachother's houses or at a park. This last Thursday we all met at my house. There were 15 kids altogether!

Anika, Ava, Will, Everet, Richie, and Allie eating hotdogs. They had so much fun playing together.


This is the "silly face" picture.


We set up a slip n' slide for the kids but they spent most of their time playing on the fallen tree.

We all had a fun time and the rain held out for us.

Another one bites the dust

We do really love trees. We just happen to cut down a lot of them. So far, we have cut down about 12 trees in our yard. Eleven of those trees were pretty skinny dead ones that were just a pain to mow around. Another one was taken down this past weekend. But this one we actually liked.


This is a Walnut tree and during the storm last Friday, it was uprooted. The whole thing was leaning towards our house. If it had fallen, it would have landed right on the girls' room. So it definitely had to come down. Mike climbed up and tied a rope around one of the high branches and the other end to my dad's truck. He started cutting through it while my dad started driving the truck away from the house, to get the tree to fall the right way. As my dad started driving away, the whole thing started to uproot.


My dad was able to pull the whole tree down just with his truck. Mike didn't need to cut it at all. It was that weak. I'm so glad we got it down. The next storm could have blown it right on our house.

The girls have had more fun climbing another fallen tree in our yard. Who needs a play set when you can just take down trees.

Garden and flowers

I love summer. I love how everything comes into bloom and everything is so green. We planted our garden early this year. Last year it didn't get planted until late June because we were just moving in. So I was excited to get to plant a lot of things I love and hopefully, they will all produce a lot of great fruits and veggies!


This is our garden right after I planted all the seeds. Next year I want to double the size, making it wider, and plant a raspberry bush, some blueberries and a grape vine.


This was taken a few weeks later with almost everything blooming. We have cucumbers, lettuce, squash, zucchini, cantaloupe, watermelon, sugar snap peas, sweet corn, green beans, and pumpkins coming up! I planted carrots and spinach later so I'm hoping they will start sprouting soon. I have already picked lettuce and had a delicious salad. It's so cool to see how fast everything is growing.

The rest are all pictures of various flowers around my house. I planted most of them, but some were from the previous owners.


These three were already here. The pink ones are hollyhocks and lillies. The white is some kind of tropical looking plant. It's about 6 feet tall and has spiky green leaves at the bottom. There are four planted around our air conditioning unit.

Daisies and more hollyhocks and my favorite: peonies! There were five huge bushes already here. I split one into four different bushes and they all came up. I'm going to split the rest as well.

Foxglove plants. They bloomed in early June, then all the flowers fell off and now they're blooming again. I had no idea they would re-bloom after the first batch died.

I love this type of day lilly. I have those very common orange ones all over our yard that I need to split as well as some red ones down by the road in an area that we need to clean up.

We have an over-abundance of irises too. I do love these though.

This rose bush was already here. I can't remember the name of the middle purple flower. I bought it at Home Depot last fall. The last purple flower is from a butterfly bush. It's gotten to over 5 feet already with all these beautiful blossoms on it. And for an added bonus, it attracts butterflies and humming birds.

We have a lot of work to do in the front of our house by the road. It's completely overgrown with hostas, day lillies, ivy, and some other kind of ground cover. We're doing a little at a time, but things are looking so pretty right now with everything blooming.

Katie and Hannah

Hannah loved meeting her Auntie Katie in Seattle. I think the feeling was mutual:)

Hannah at 4 months

Hannah is such a great baby. She rarely cries, sleeps through the night (most nights!), smiles and laughs all the time, and loves watching people. Her newest accomplishment is sticking out her tongue and blowing raspberries. We are having so much fun with this beautiful girl.

Ava and Allie

We have been teaching Allie and Ava these songs that help teach them the days of the week and the months of the year.

Home improvements

We were given a table and chairs from some friends of ours. The chairs weren't in the greatest condition. The table is solid oak but it's not really my style. I wasn't fond of the color. So we decided to spruce it up a bit. And now I love it.


This is the old table.


I didn't get a picture before we painted the chairs black. The original chairs were the same color as the table. And these hideous covers were on them.



So here's the chair after I recovered and painted them.

And here's the final product!

I love my new dining room area too. This used to be our living room. Our living room is now in our old office. I'll take pictures of that later, when it's actually clean:)

Seattle

Be forewarned, this is a long post! But I did a lot in a short amount of time in Seattle. I was blessed to be able to spend the weekend with Katie up in Seattle. We hung out in her apartment on Friday night. Andy and Andrea Chamberlin came over and it was so great to see them as well.



Here are some views from Katie's apartment right downtown. It really was a cool experience.

That's Pike Place Market, about a block from her apartment.

Hannah didn't sleep too great for me the first night. But she enjoyed the big window in the morning!

Saturday we woke up and had breakfast at the Chamberlins' beautiful apartment. Then Katie and I walked to the Seattle Space Needle.

Here are some views from the top. I'm not a fan of heights so it was pretty freaky for me being this high up. The elevator ride was the scariest. You can see out as your going up. But the views were fantastic.

The Puget Sound

Hannah came up with us too (of course).

After the Space Needle we met back up with the Chamberlins and headed to Pike Place Market. I think this was my favorite place in Seattle.

It's a huge market that sells everything from fruits and veggies, to flowers, to souvenirs. It was really crowded too since it was a holiday weekend. This fish stand is the one that was in Sleepless in Seattle. They throw the fish when someone buys something.

The flowers in this market were unbelievable. You could buy bunches for only 5 or 10 dollars.

This was the very first Starbucks ever established. The line was pretty long. It was right across the street from the market.

Beecher's where they make their own cheese. Katie convinced me that I had to try one of their grilled cheese's. I like them but I don't typically get them when I'm out since they're so cheap to make at home. I have to admit that it was the best grilled cheese sandwich I'd ever eaten. They had great mac and cheese too.

These little donuts came from a donut cart in the market. They make them right there and are melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Seriously there are so many good food choices in the city.

Right before we left to head back down to Portland, we drove up to Queen Anne to check out the views of the city. It was really beautiful.

I had a great time in Seattle and Portland. The best part was getting to see great friends. Thanks Dales, Chamberlins, and Johnsons for making my trip so wonderful. You all were so hospitable. Now move your butts back home:)