Our Summer

4th of July

Michael was psyched for fireworks (and insisted they were "for Michael's birthday!"):

Uncle Richard was very sweet to Michael- talking with him and sharing his extra chair.  It was cute:

Family Reunion in CO

Having tons of fun playing with cousins:

Michael would rather be naked than wear wet clothes:

Awesome Aunt Jessi bought Michael construction trucks for a late birthday gift and he adores them!  He insisted on carrying all 5 of them with him everywhere he went.  Even now they're still all together:

Poor Pumpkin tried to hide in the rafters from the massive amounts of people invading his home:

And Michael learned to drive (poorly) with Ki and Tess's new power wheels:

California

Michael and I traveled to CA for my cousin Allison's wedding:

Michael is all dressed up:

Uncle Ki teaches Michael how to climb the stairs in creative ways:

 We also got to swim in the Warr's pool where Michael mostly just wanted to roam the edge and squirt people with water guns.  Grandpa Veronin was nice enough to offer himself as a ferry to Michael to try to get him into the pool.  Michael very happily used his services but did not linger in the pool:

 

Michael also learned that if you blow into pool noodles, water squirts out the other end.  Grandpa was playing with Michael by looking into the end saying, "What's in there?" while Michael blew as hard as he could (he was usually laughing too hard to blow very well).  One time, though, Michael caught Grandpa by surprise and got him right in the eye!  My Dad was done with the game until Michael said, "Grandpa, Grandpa, you want to hold it?  Grandpa?"  My Dad couldn't resist being called Grandpa and put his face back up to the noodle hole to get squirted again.  It was adorable.  

Here are some fun, traveling pictures I got while everyone else was sleeping.  :)

 You're welcome, Joe.

Miscellaneous Activities

Michael still loves Jump on It (aka "the jumping place") and was very happy to show it to Aunt Kaylee (whom he loves to talk to on his play phone) and her son, Paxton:

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We also like to visit the multiple splash parks near our house.  Michael especially loves the waterfall at one and will fill his mouth...

...and run at mommy, spitting. The punk: 

We also bring toys:

And our friend, Daniel, whom I babysit every Mon and Fri.  He prefers to get right into the waterfall:

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We visited the county fair where Michael got a balloon monkey:

Petted a horse (Without any encouragement! He just walked right up to that sucker and stuck his hand through the bars!):

He also petted a humongous tortoise.  Needless to say, we used a lot of hand sanitizer that day:

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Grandma Veronin got Michael a spiffy new suit:

  

And Michael loves the number of rolly pollies we get around here:

He's even got a bug jar for them to live in:

He sure is a cute kid!:

New Flooring

We've finally gotten rid of the terrible, disgusting carpet that came with the house.  The people before us didn't care about it and, in fact, had a naughty dog that was apparently allowed to relieve itself wherever it wanted to.  When we moved in, it was hard to care about a carpet that was so stained already, so we didn't worry about eating on it or anything (though we didn't let our animals pee all over it, just saying).  The split between the carpet and linoleum was very awkwardly placed directly beneath the dining table too, so it was a huge relief to see that old carpet go.

We decided to go with a vinyl that looks like wood flooring but is way easier to maintain and incredibly durable.  It's textured, too, so it feels nice on bare feet  :)

Michael was kind enough to get this close-up for y'all when the little punk borrowed my camera:

We had no desire to do the work ourselves, so we hired professionals to take care of it for us.  Unfortunately, I had to deal with moving everything we own upstairs all by my lonesome  because the professionals didn't confirm their appointment with me til I called them the morning of to see what was up. By then, Jeff had already left for work.  In fact, when I called at 8am, they thought they were coming over at 9am.  I told them, no, they weren't coming over in an hour, but they could come around 10am so I could have some time to move all our stuff out of the way (and, actually, when the guy showed up at 10, I sent him away for another few hours because we have a lot of stuff).  You never realize how much useless junk you own until you have to carry it all up a flight of stairs.  My sisters actually came over to help with the last bit.  You guys are freaking awesome.

We moved everything into the master bedroom (my bed is under that mess... somewhere):

It was really weird having such an empty downstairs:

Michael was fascinated by the whole process and kept trying to get closer and closer to the action.  I had to tell him many, many times that he could stand on the big chair, the couch, or go upstairs.  (Bonus: you get to see the bottom of my pantry covering my counters):

And when he saw the tool that was being used to tear up the carpet (a long metal bar with a flat, curved end), he grabbed his "stick" (the back scratcher) so he could help!:

 

Luckily, I was able to convince Michael that he would be much more helpful if he stayed far away from Solomon, the carpet man.  Instead, Michael wielded his stick like a machete and "cut" up the carpet for Solomon.

The first day, only the one guy showed up to do the kitchen all on his own.  He was at our house til 8pm working and then I practically shoved him out the door.  It would have been a lot less awkward if he spoke better English.

The second day, we got 3 guys to tear up the rest of the carpet and we were confined to the stairway and upstairs while they spread glue and lay the rest of the floor.  We spent as little time as possible in the house.  Thankfully, the guys were really honest and didn't steal anything while we left them all alone (nothing we've noticed, anyway, so we're happy).

Two days, many hours, and a whole lot of mexican polka music later, we were blessed with this glorious sight:

We love it!

It also gave me a good opportunity to go through all our junk and figure out what we could live long and happy lives without and organize everything else.  These pictures are "progress," a day and a half after the floor is already done:

It's been a few weeks and I'm still not completely done going through everything (there's still a decent amount of crud in my room), but the downstairs looks amazing and I can sleep in my bed, so I'm happy.  :)

We're Still Cute... Well, Most of us, Anyway

   What can I say?  Michael's been off his game lately:

 I mean, come on, kid.  Sharing your blankie with the kitties?  Watching football with Grandpa Veronin?  You're trying way too hard.

Anyway, here are some catch up whatnots:

 We celebrated Amy's birthday with an angel food cake with whipped cream and strawberries.  It was yummy.  Michael loved the fire:

Michael got cupcakes at his birthday, which my Mom, Ki, and Tess were able to be in town for:

Grandma Veronin gave Michael his first scooter.  It was a big hit:

Michael was even willing to share his new scooter with his Uncle Ki while Michael rode his bike:

 I love his cupcake mustache!


We went to Grandma Day's house that Sunday and had more cupcakes!:

Random picture of Michael in his big boy underwear (nope, not potty trained yet), knocking over a stack of blocks with his scooter.  He'd yell "Boom!" when the tower fell and then he'd build it back up to be knocked back down:

Summer play:

Plus, he dances! (Well, sorta):

Tuesdays with Michael

So, I've been ridiculously busy the past few weeks with my work, and to make up for it my boss gave me 3.5 days off, including Tuesday. Tuesday turned out to be such a great day that I'm going to try taking Tuesdays off on a semi-weekly basis.

Last Tuesday I took him to the playground, and Michael decided he wanted to go down the slides all by himself. So he did. This is a big step, because I never liked slides as a kid and still need Cyndi at the bottom to feel totally comfortable with them. Michael has no such problems.

Since we haven't posted anything in the past few months, I'm going to go ahead and clear out the photos and videos I have taken in that time. In no particular order. Deal with it. 

Cyndi already blogged about Michael learning about how hot his grandpa's fireplace was, but here's a picture of his hand that I took:

This was a few days later, so some of it's healed.

Guess what's in the cupboard:

If you guessed demon Michael, you were correct!

Michael got a garage from Santa that he loved, and he got a book called "Goodnight Goodnight Construction Site" from his grandma that he loved even more:

This is just Michael pretending he's playing games with us:

Michael loving his aunt and uncle:

Finally, and these are the best, two videos. The first is Michael singing "Old McDonald". He had already sung and been clapped for, so he was anticipating a good response.

The second is Michael reading to his chicken while putting it to bed. The chickens are grandma's chickens and they live on the ceiling of daddy's office. This particular chicken was pulled down with a green chip clip that Michael had, it ran downstairs, then upstairs, then outside, then back upstairs (with us chasing the whole way, of course). Michael didn't want to go to bed, but he was more than happy to give the chicken a bath, watch videos on daddy's computer with it, and then put it to bed. This is basically Michael's bedtime ritual, just with him playing the parts of mommy and daddy.