Learning to Ride a Bike (with trainning wheels)

So proud of my little man... This week Toben has decided he is going to ride his bike!  He is still learning and gets frustrated sometimes.  I bought him his first helmet today.  Check him out!

Bring on the cute little pink Tooth Brushes!

After two days of pain, and two nights of fevers, and really a whole week of protesting nursing Fiona finally has a tooth!  The bottom left incisor to be exact!  She is slowing getting back to her happy normal self.  (and nursing some through the day again!)  My baby is growing up.  She has a tooth and is using a sippy cup.  Now if she could only grow some hair.

Teething is no fun!  The day she got her first tooth, she feel asleep knawling on this baby carrot for a bit of relief.  :(

Below is a quick clip of the kids.  Enjoy. 

Gammy and Jessy visit Ohio

This past weekend  Gammy Yaggie and Jessica visited us here in Ohio.  A lovely visit was had by all.   Here are some pictures and tidbits from the visit. 

The visited started with spoiling Toben and Fiona with gifts of course.  Cant expect anything less from Gammy!

Then of course, it was Jessica's turn because she just turned the the big 1-6.  Yep, look out!  Soon-to-be-driver on the loose.  :)

Toben LOVED having Jessy around to play with

He still made time during the visit to check Facebook though.

 

 

 

 

Fiona has just hit the 6 month mark and is now successfully feeding herself!  Cheerios!
So, she was due for a well baby check up and Gammy and Jess were able to tag along.  Yay!  But we had to get three shots, Boo!
We learned from her appointment that interesting enough she is 27 & 3/4" at 6 months old.  Toben was 28" a couple weeks after his first birthday.  My babies are growing completely different! 

Saturday, we walked around Downtown and saw the Farmers Market and some shops.  Here is a shot of Fiona and Gammy in the children's section of a very nice independent Bookstore, Paragraphs.



Later, Toben Jessy and I went to the Hiawatha Water Park.  What a good time!  Although, we did spend most of the time there in the 1 foot baby pool with Toben.  :)

We did enjoy some refreshing slushys as we sat pool side.  Yum!

:)

Jessica and I both got the courage to go down the huge yellow and blue slides in the back of the next picture.  

Chocolate!

Later that evening we enjoyed S'mores around the campfire.  We all ate until we couldn't eat more.  Then we happily reminisced about Jessica's experience at 'Beaver Camp!'(Beaver One, Beaver All, lets all do the Beaver call... )

Mouth full of marshmellow!

Here's one of Zach... dont want him to feel left out.  Beaver, what?

On Sunday we drove to Chillicothe, Ohio for a family reunion.  I kid you not, at one point we were driving through a corn field to get back to the reunion location!  Super-hicks does not come close to explaining my mom's mom's side of the family.  LOL.

My Moms Uncle Sunny

Yes, that is fresh ink! A couple weeks prior he had his late wife's pic placed on his heart.  It was from when they got married when she was 16 years old.  No joke. 

Sunny's great grandson and his sister Jeraldine's great grandson

Lots of Food was eaten.

Fiona was protesting nursing all day, and just a grumpy teething sassy-britches.

It was a beautiful field that ended with a pond.  Fishing Reunion trophies were given out for those that caught the largest, smallest, and most fish during the reunion.  I told you, super-hicks.  :)

John Ash, 85, raised my grandmother Jeraldine

Its always nice to talk to older people about what they remember.  Especially because my grandmother passed when my mom was only 3 years old...so, none of us ever got to know her.  :(

On Monday, they had to head back to PA.  I could tell Gammy wanted to pack the kids in her bags and take them home with her. :)

Toben just wanted everyone to stay and watch him fly the new airplane he got at the reunion from children's raffle.

Toben wanted to have Jessica stay with us forever.  He misses her the most I think.

Hope you both can come back often! 

Trip to Elkhart County Fair

Friday last week, we all piled into the truck at 7am for a short trip to Indiana.  It was a four hour drive and I am proud to report we made the trip with no stops!  Fiona was fantastic.  She did not cry once.  She was awake and played with her toys, laughed at Toben, or ate Cheerios.  When she got tired she yawned and yawned and just shut her eyes.  Its as if she just figured out that crying in the car seat doesn't get her anywhere.  What a relief.

Zach arranged for us to have stay at the Holiday Inn Express in Goshen, IN.  We had a king size bed in the jacuzzi suite.  It was great!  Toben and Fiona both liked the jacuzzi.  "I want to get in the ca-coosie,' Toben would say.  Toben liked the workout room and little restaurant area, but Toben loved swimming in the pool with Zach the best at the hotel.
(That and the all-you-can drink free coffee area and free mint trays lying about the lobby)

On Saturday, we had breakfast together and went to the fair.  This was the first time Toben was able to see a DeLaval VMS.  He was amazed with it and just loved to watch it work.  The other stop he enjoyed was, yes, you guessed it, the John Deere tractor set up.  

Plenty of animals to see at the county fair.  We saw two miniature horses, donkeys, and a sow and her 11 piglets.

I found a secluded section of a ribbon winners show room to nurse Fiona.  It was full of crafts, jam, prize winning baked goods, pictures, and quilts.  The quilts we not in the running with the PA shows, but hey they were alright for a county fair I suppose.  Maybe one of all the quilts was quilted by hand.  I'm a bit off point.

I nursed her in this room away from everyone.  When we were about to leave the fair, we pasted by a bus transporting people to and from parking.  The male announcer came on the bus speaker and said something to the effect of  'attention nursing mothers: We have designated places...etc,"  I didn't catch the whole message, but I thought, well isn't that nice.  While other parts of our country are 'hush hush' about boobs feeding babies, or making a big stink about a mother nursing in a public store, this fair was incredibly supportive.  Proactively supportive of nursing mothers.  It was refreshing.