Decorating the kid's rooms!

Yesterday I decided to paint a couple of rooms. I wanted to finish Alex's room. I knew what I wanted to do the minute he was out of the nursery. SPORTS!! Alex loves any kind of ball. He loves to kick them, hit them, and throw them. His first try with a bat he hit about 65% of the balls that we pitched to him and that was a few months ago. Maybe he sees how much mom and dad enjoy playing and it has rubbed off, I dont know!!! This room definetly fits him!I took these this morning right after Alex got up.
The dresser has balls for handles and even the picture frames are shapes of different balls.
Alex just discovered the footballs on the side of his nightstand!
So the pictures below are of our new nursery!!!!
If you can't tell we are expecting a girl!
We were picked by a another wonderful birthmom a few weeks ago. She is due Sept. 22 and if all goes well we will have someone to enjoy our newly finished nursery. We are excited for the new addition!
The butterfly's have a stream of crystals behind them!
This is the close up of the crystals. I put each individual crystal on after I cut it apart. It took me a very long time just to do the crystals. They are quite subtle after you get them on and it actually looks really good all finished.

Birds!!!

Earlier this spring we looked into this nest and saw 4 or 5 eggs. How exciting to have baby bird right on our fround porch . . .or so we thought!!!
Well the eggs finally hatched and we were excited to watch as these babies grew and got ready to take their first flight. . . or so we thought!!!
You can see the bird to the right flying around. . . no not just flying around. . . he is dive bombing the humans!!! These are barn swallows and in my research I have come to understand that they are very aggresive birds, if you come near there babies. We have some beautiful flowers that were hanging in our entry way less than a foot away from this nest. In the beginning I had no trouble watering them. As the babies grew the mommy and daddy became more aggresive each day. My flowers have to be watered on a daily basis or they will die. At first the birds would fly close but not to close, just to give us a little scare. Well I am not scared of a little bird so I continued to water my plants. I learned quickly that we should maybe move them for the time being. At least until the birds flew away. So we moved them and now they are about 4 feet away from the nest. Well the birds continued to get bigger and therefore the parents aggression tripled. One day I came out to water my plants. I was at least 15 feet away when one of the started dive bombing my head. They were so close I swear they touched my head once or twice. Okay I am tough but this was not fun and I have to admit a little scary.. . . but I had a mission to complete, I had to water my flowers. I filled my bowl that has a cute little spout on the end so I could water both sets of flowers in one trip. Well as I approached still 10 feet away the stupid bird dive bombed me. My reaction first was to yell at the bird. I yelled "STOP" as if he would listen. The second dive I raised my hands above my head to protect it and forgot that they had a bowl full of water and ended up dumping the gallon bowl of water over my head. I was furious!!!! I stomped into the house and up the stairs to change and blow dry my hair when I realized why I was soooo mad!!! Then I started laughing. The bird won!!! I ended up moving the flowers about 30 feet away and put Erik in charge or watering the flowers. The birds are now gone thank goodness and we knocked the nest down. We are not inviting our guests back next spring!

Helping!

Erik is letting Alex help him put the plant food spikes into the ground.
Whooo! That was exhausting!
Lets pound another one in!
Okay this is a much better angle than sitting. Mom made me put my gloves on so I wouldn't touch the spikes with my bare hands.
I need another rest! Dad's work is hard work

Alex is always wanting to help us with whatever we do. We try to let him when we can so he doesn't lose that enthusiams to want to help.

Lake Elmo!

We went swimming at Lake Elmo! If Alex is any where near water he wants in. We have turned him into a little fish!


He also loves to play in the sand!

We decided it would be fun to bury Alex!

Time to go to the water and wash off!
"Look Mom, I am swimming all by myself!"

After going to Lake Elmo we went to eat at the bon fire!

Christy is telling Alex a secret! He kept grabbing her arm and pulling her over to tell him secrets! It was very cute.

Christy was getting ready to give Olivia a bath and Alex decided he wanted to join her and started to get in with his clothes on. So I took his clothes off and they both got all clean after a long day in the sun at the beach!

Lake Elmo is a fun park where you can camp and fish and go boating. The little tiny lake we were at was man made. It is very clean and has sand in the lake. I think it is chlorinated too, so really it is like a pool but it looks like a lake!

4TH OF JULY!

This is a side of butter that Alex is holding! We went to breakfast with Eriks parents before the parade on the forth of July. We learned on this day that Alex likes butter. . . not on anything just straight from the minnie cute little cup they give you. OOOH!!! It grosses me out just thiniking about him eating that butter.
Before the parade started we went to a little park and let Alex play. This is him going down the slide. There was also a band in the park and some yummy snacky foods. Erik got a snow cone for himself and his dad with the intention of sharing. I think I got to taste it !!!!
Alex waving his flag at the parade being all patriotic!!! He is such a cute little man!
Alex loved the parade. His favorite part was the horses when they went by and the bubble float. There was a float blowing bubbles and I thought I was going to have to join the parade for a minute. He ran out into the street trying to get the bubbles. In the picture above I am collecting cand for Alex (aka: for Erik and Kristina. Alex doesnt actaully like candy....I know wierd little 2 year old)
Alex has figured out that they are throwing candy at him. He decides that the thing to do at a parade is they throw you candy and you throw it back. This is him getting ready to launch a piece of candy back at the parade. Erik and I thought it was pretty funny. He did catch some of the paraders off guard!