Big helper!

We have a campfire ring now in the backyard! Alex helped Ben dig the hole and put in the ring. We have had a fire already and it was great! 

Are there any squirrels up there?

 

Saturday morning we took Ben and Nancy to the dunes. There were some storms rolling in but we had time to see everything before the rain came. We ate lunch at a diner in Leland and headed back to our house in the afternoon.
Friday when they first got here Alex got to watch them put up their camper, he loved their little "house"! We went into town friday afternoon to walk around so they could see downtown before it got crazy with Cherry Festival....and crazy it got! We got stuck in nasty traffic on the way home from Leland saturday afternoon, it was a good thing we'd done the town thing on friday!
We had a really fun visit and Alex misses Grandma and Grandpa now! 

"Ouch! Eye!"

Alex got his first black eye last friday. He was chasing Tessa trying to hug her and wiped out in the doorway by the garage door and slid eye first into the leg of the buffett.
This was taken a couple days ago. It was really swollen at first and then just colorful. Today now it's really dark on the bottom, under his eye and in the eye crease but less yellowy-green on the top!
I think it was harder on me than it was on him!

(His cheeks are stuffed w/ banana in case you are wondering!)

"Boats!"

We saw 2 groups of guys out playing in whitewater boats when we were hiking along the Boardman. Alex thought it was pretty cool, he kept looking for "boats!" the whole walk!

Nature preserve along the Boardman River

We had never been here before, this place is really cool and only minutes from our house! We went here sunday afternoon, it was a perfect hiking day - not too hot but beautiful sun.

To the Dunes!

Joe and Mary and my mom and dad came to visit this weekend! We had soo much fun, we hope they did too. Saturday we took a trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Alex was in heaven with all that sand!

The beach

Last week we hit the beach once but we intended on just going to the park until it got so hot there so I didn't have the camera!
So here is our first "official" beach day! Alex loves the sand - he can say "beach" and "sand" very clearly and has decided that it is all "fun". Not so sure about the water yet, but it's still a bit chilly and full of pollen anyway so we'll work on that in a couple weeks.

Choo-choo!!!

There is a train at the little zoo downtown. We rode our bikes down there this weekend and Alex just about died when he saw that train...he was trying to climb out of the bike trailer going "choo-choo, choo-choo, choo-choo...." For him and a parent to ride it is only $1.50 and the smile on his face when he went by was sooo worth it! Unfortunately the zoo is closing the middle of this summer :( I guess they are keeping the train but moving it somewhere - hope it stays close by and cheap!

A few more party pics!

Carter is the fireman in the first picture. They both loved the t-ball set!

Party!!

Memorial Day Alex got invited to a birthday party for his friend Carter! It was HOT! The kids played in the neighbor's huge sandbox, then in the pool. Carter was really great about sharing some of his new toys with Alex.
It took a little while for Alex to warm up to the whole pool idea but once he got used to it all was good. He did try to run in the pool a couple times and went swimming but he got back up and wanted in the water again.

Alex loves his room, loves books and loves Thomas the train! So here he is (with a new big boy haircut) in his room reading a Thomas book :)

New addition!

We've been making do in this area for quite a while so it's a big relief to have a reliable vehicle! It's a 2003 Saturn VUE, we've had it for a week and so far love it. The newest car we've ever had has been a 1997 and we've never had anything power at all so we're trying to figure out what the heck all the buttons are for!

We had company!

We had people over this weekend! It was so much fun to be able to have guests and actually have room for everyone to sit and room for the kids to play. Not everyone could make the same day so we had company saturday and sunday evening. Alex was in heaven, he had friends to play with both days!

Some pictures of our hard work

Just so you can get an idea of the colors we chose. Alex loves his room and has been sleeping pretty well in his big boy bed.

We're here!

First of all - Ben graduated!! The ceremony was really nice, Ben's mom and 2 of his brothers came for it along with my parents. My mom watched Alex and my dad came to the ceremony.



Then we moved! Ben had a good drive down with the big truck. Alex was awesome in the car. Just really, really good. We got to Traverse City around 6pm sunday night. Our friends here in town came over to help us unload the truck. Ben and Brandon got it about half unloaded that night! We worked really hard painting and unloading the next day. Brandon came back and helped Ben finish off what was left in the truck monday night so we could return it on tuesday. Mom stayed until supper time tuesday night and then headed home. We worked HARD, mom painted Alex's room by herself, all 3 of us worked on painting the basement and we got both rooms totally finished.
Mom had quite an adventure on the way home on top of everything! We couldn't have done it without all of her help.
Wednesday morning Alex started throwing up and that continued for 3 days. :( Not so good for the unpacking and yard work. Then Ben and I were sick over that next weekend. So last week we had TONS to get done before Ben went back to work. We worked really hard though and I painted the whole kitchen and we got totally unpacked. We still have the garage to clean up, our room is a mess and we have lots of outside clean up but everything else is pretty much done!
Please email one of us if you need our new address or phone number. We still have our cell phone, same number for now, but we also have a new land line.