Land that I Love

We spent 11 days up in Wisconsin with my family and we had such a great time. Lucy was a great traveler for 13 hour car ride and was so excited to go to Grandpa and Grandma's house. I made the mistake of telling her we were going, so for about 5 days before we left whenever I would get her in the morning or after a nap she would say "we leaving for Papa and Grandma's house now." We went up there for my Dad's 70th birthday party. My parents went all out with a pig roast in their backyard and there were about 55 people there. My Dad and Mom have the most beautiful yard because my Dad loves gardening. We took all the pictures of the party on my parents camera because it's nicer, so I don't have any party pictures yet. So the first few days up there we were getting ready for the party. Michael was the official pig roaster and had a fun time doing it. If I hadn't been so busy getting things ready I would have gotten a picture of him with his pig. I thought of it the day after the party... just a little late. We saw family and friends that we hadn't seen since our wedding 5 years ago, so it was a fun time. The only bummer was that is rained for about a 1/2 an hour. Thankfully, the guys had set up tents all over the yard, so everyone stayed dry. Lucy and her cousins were playing with the kids that Heather and I used to babysit, so every now and then I would look around to make sure I could see Lucy. Well, all of a sudden all the kids were gone and Lucy was still under a tent, sitting under a table. She was sitting there for a really long time so quietly, so I finally got up and walked closer and there she sat under the table with a bowl full of mints chowing down on them saying "mmm, mints."

One of our most favorite things all week was going up to our cottage in northern Wisconsin. We spent a lot of our summer's up there growing up, so it was fun to take our kids up there and let them experience all the fun too. Our cottage is on a peninsula, so most of the pictures I have of Lucy she is wearing her life jacket. I come by it honestly though, my Mom did the same thing with us when we were little. So we had fun going for walks in the woods, swimming, fishing, and going for rides in the boat. We asked Lucy if she wanted to go fishing and she said "yes, I'm gonna catch a purple fish." Her Dora fishing pole has a purple fish at the end, so that's the fish she always catches, but this time she actually did catch a real fish. She was pretty excited.

One of the funniest moments was when I caught a frog and gave it to Lucy. My Dad said why don't you kiss it and see if it turns into a prince, so she kept kissing the frog. She even gave the frog a little hug before throwing him back into the water. It was so funny because none of the other kids would touch the frog, but here Lucy is kissing and hugging it.

Michael thinks I am a little crazy, but I love to go strawberry picking. So since it is strawberry season up there, on the 4th I took Lucy strawberry picking. I caught Lucy eating the strawberries that my Mom was picking... she would take a bite and then throw it back in the bucket and take another one. She also was picking green strawberries and trying to eat them and then she would tell me that it was yucky and then take another bite. So we got our fill of strawberries, well not really I can never have enough, and I made 27 jars of strawberry jam. That night we walked to the fairgrounds and watched the fireworks. Michael was catching lightening bugs on the way and giving them to Lucy. She was holding them and squishing them. There was a glowing mess on the ground behind us as we walked. When the fireworks started Lucy covered her ears, but then she enjoyed watching them. She told us she liked the pink ones, surprise, surprise!!

On our last day, my Mom and I took Lucy and my niece to a water park. The girls had so much fun on the water slides and I did too. Lucy was so brave, she didn't even want to go down with anyone, she would say "I do it myself." So down she would go and my Mom would catch her at the bottom.

The only bummer from the whole trip is that the time up there went too fast and I came back with a cold. It's just so much fun having a cold while you are pregnant!! What does Tylenol cold do for you anyhow, I haven't noticed a thing???

Day at the Lake

On Saturday, my sister's family, my cousin's family and us went to this fun little lake that had a sandy beach and all sorts of water things, like a tunnel slide, a diving board, a high dive, a raft, a rattle snake for climbing on and a huge floaty thing that you can jump on. So we packed a lunch and enjoyed the day at the lake. My nephews, who are 7 and 4 were jumping from the high dive, and it was really high so we were watching them and Lucy takes off swimming towards it and says "I wanna jump." She wasn't very happy with me that I didn't let her. The scary thing is that she would have done it because she doesn't have fear, so unlike me. She also wanted to go down the water slide and it was one of those fast tunnels that has a huge drop so I didn't want her to go down that either, but Michael said he would take her. They came flying through the air at the end and she drank about half the lake. She didn't ask to go on that again. She spent most of her time jumping from the raft and swimming around. She also didn't fail to poop in her swim diaper. All you need to do is put the girl in a swim diaper, let her swim around and a little while later if you ask her if she pooped she will say "I pooped in Elmo", even though we had discussed that Elmo doesn't like to be pooped on. Regardless, it was a fun day. So if I had a brain at all I would have remembered my camera, but since it was a fleeting thought I had that morning I don't have any pictures to post.

A little bit of everything

So I have been a horrible blogger and I know it. I am feeling better for the most part. I still have some nausea at times, but nothing like it was. I remember with Lucy the nausea just stopped, but this time it is just dwindling on and on. Lucy's new saying is "I tired".... hmm, where does she hear that from?

So what am I listening to right now? Lucy plucking the piano keys and singing Jesus Loves Me. While we were in Kansas, some good friends of the family came over to visit and of course we made Brenda play the piano for Lucy because she is amazing and we want Lucy to see that you can make beautiful music on a piano, not just chopsticks (my song) and pink panther (Michael's song). So Brenda took Lucy's little finger and played Jesus Loves Me over and over again. She also saw her cousin's piano recitals while we were there. We were in Kansas for 10 days at Michael's sister's farm and his parent's farm. Lucy got to ride horses, see pigs, chickens and tiny baby kitten's. I wasn't too pleased that she was talking so much about kittens, but I agreed that kitten's are cute and cats are still yucky. I didn't get any pictures of Lucy riding the horse because I was in the house sick, but my sister-in-law took a bunch that I haven't gotten yet. We also went to the dairy that isn't far from the farm and Lucy got to pet calves and see the cows get milked. We didn't last there too long because it got a little too stinky for nauseous Erin. Lucy also loved to go for 4-wheeler rides with Michael and she really liked going fast. She does not get that from me. Last summer when we were there, she would sign "more" to go faster, this year she just told Michael to go faster.

So I need to write down some other things that Miss Lucy has been up to. Lucy has a new way to sing her alphabet. She did it once and got a lot of laughs, so now she continues to do it. Here's how it goes... abcdefghijk mmmmp qrstuvwxyz. She says the m's super fast and it is just very cute! We also went to the library the other day and she picked out some Dora books. So that night her and Michael were reading it and Michael decided to count with her in Spanish. So he said, uno and she said dos.... he looked up at me like, Erin, she's a genius. It was a priceless expression. He kept going and she said several more all the way to 10. He was in complete amazement. I was too actually, but earlier that day I had heard my niece, Samantha, teaching her to count to 10 in Spanish. I wish my mind was a sponge too, but it seems to just be mush. Speaking of Dora.... Lucy puts things on her back and says "it's my packback." So funny!! Lucy entertaining herself while I was sick one day

Lucy and her cousin, Gracie

The Cup

Yesterday I went to the doctor, and you know how every appointment you have to pee in a cup. Well, Lucy finds this quite interesting, so she grabs a cup and says "Mommy, I wanna poopie in cup." I just started laughing so hard and she persisted to ask. She got so upset that I wouldn't let her go poopie in the cup. She is however showing a lot of interest in the toilet and even went for Michael last night before her bath. I just need to start feeling better so I can actually feel motivated to start the process...maybe in a few weeks.

Due Date

We went to see the doctor today and found out that I am almost 11 weeks along. My due date is November 22. I am happy that I am further along than I thought because the end of these yucky days are in sight, but I am also bummed that my baby will have an ugly birthstone. For that reason alone I hope that it is a boy. A boy won't care. So we will have a thanksgiving time baby. The baby had a strong fast heartbeat and looked perfect. Lucy did great at the doctors office. I made her popcorn before we left to eat while I was being examined. She sat in the chair like such a big girl eating her popcorn and turning her head away anytime the doctor would ask her a question or even look at her... she's a little shy. He thought it was pretty funny. You would never know she was shy by her actions in Aldi. She was talking so loud asking what everything was. I would say, that's creamer and she would reply "I love creamer" or that's frozen food and she would say "I love frozen food." Where did she get that from.

Catching up

I haven't posted about our trip to Florida or Lucy's birthday, so I am going to do it all in one today. We went to Florida the first week of April to visit my Grandma. Lucy LOVED being at Great-Grandma's house, #1 because she had a pool, #2 because it is a retirement center so Lucy was quite the entertainment, and #3 because she had a lot of goodies from Grandma!! We spent the week there and enjoyed swimming everyday. Lucy was a fish, which doesn't surprise me because I was too. The first day in the pool she had her water wings on and couldn't quite get balanced so she kept tipping over, but by the second day she was swimming all over. At the end of the week she was jumping into the pool without me catching her. We went to the beach one day, but Lucy liked the pool better. The ocean was cold, the sand was blew in her face, and the seagulls attacked us to get our crackers. I'm not kidding. We opened the bag of crackers up and there were about 25 seagulls right above our head.... freaked me out, which freaked Lucy out, and what does Michael do, he feeds them! So Lucy got to eat one cracker and we saved the rest for the car where we were safe.

Lucy turned 2 last Saturday. If you would ask her what today is, she would yell "it's my
birfday" and give you a big cheesy grin. She loves singing happy birthday to anyone and for us to be singing it to her just thrilled her!! We had a double birthday party with my cousin's little boy, Grayson, because they were born on the same day only hours apart. So we had our families over, we made a lot of food, I made a clock cake for them and we opened presents. It was a fun day, a little chaotic at times, but I think Lucy felt like the little princess that she is.

Lucy turned 2 and....