Cooking with mom

Jack's been a big help in the kitchen lately. He mashed bananas and bran cereal together with milk for banana bran bread, and he also helped make pumpkin cookies.

Birthday parties

Jack went to two birthday parties this summer - the first photos are from Hannah's first birthday (which had a monkey theme) and the train photos are from Colby's birthday at the Whittle Trains. Jack had a blast at both parties and especially enjoyed helping to open presents. He got Hannah a pink baseball glove and baseball (which he picked out) and he got Colby a firehouse puzzle and train play board. Lots of fun!

Disclaimer

About the video - the reason why half of Jack's head is cut off in some of the videos is that he likes to watch himself as I tape, so the view screen is turned towards him and I can't actually see what I'm filming.

Enjoy the videos!

Singing

ABCs

Jesus Loves Me

Baseball

These are a few clips of Jack playing baseball and talking about baseball. My favorite clip is last - when he quotes some of baseball's great announcers. Other than shooting the video, I can't take credit for having a role in any of this - Corey taught him most of these things! It won't be long before Jack is debating the choice of starting pitcher and discussing spring training stats with Corey.

Grant's Farm

We went with Scott, Amy, and Hannah to Grant's Farm this weekend. I had never been, so it was fun to try something new, especially since this is a "classic" St. Louis location/activity. And because it's an Anheuser-Busch place, there was free beer!!!!

We started out looking at the Clydesdales, then got on the train. The train goes through a beautiful green area with lakes, lot of trees, and animals roaming around. It deposits you at the main park area, which has a petting zoo, wild birds, eagles, elephants, turtles, horses, etc. It also has the huge biergarten, where we ate lunch and enjoyed a few of the free beers!

Summer = Baseball!

Last Sunday, we took Jack to another Cardinals game. He had a blast, as always, even though this game overlaped with naptime - he took an hour nap during the 5th-7th innings, which was just enough to re-energize him for the end of the game.

Summer trip to Texas

Jack and I went out for ice cream one night with Andrew, one of my Colorado/Focus on the Family friends. Jack LOVED driving Andrew's car - a porsche boxster convertible. I greatly appreciated that Andrew is fairly laid back and did not bat an eye at Jack climbing all over his Porsche!

My mom and I took Jack to the mall and then the Frisco RoughRiders stadium. One of the employees gave Jack a baseball, which was quite a hit. Jack did not let go of it and seemed in awe of his real baseball. He loved the stadium - I snuck in behind a tour group and was able to show him the field from inside the gate, but then we were kindly escorted back out!

At La Madeline with Uncle Jake- yummy mini-desserts!

And no, he's not drinking coffee. Just milk.

Here's the imaginary baseball game. The stick was the bat, but the ball was invisible. Jack still got into it and hit a few homeruns.

Happy 4th!

Happy 4th of July!

We feel a bit "Norman Rockwell" today. Cristina, Mark, Ella, and Matthew came over for brunch, then we walked two blocks to the local parade and spent a wonderful hour and a half watching all the We.bster Gro.ves parade. The parade was pretty good - lots of fire trucks, police cars, motorcycles, cars, local pageant winners, horses, lawnchair brigade, politicians walking along, people squirting water from trucks, bubbles, candy, ice pops, bands (Jack had never seen a marching band before and was mesmerized), etc. It was a good time!

Here are the dads and kids playing outside before breakfast, and a picture of our breakfast - blueberry french toast casserole and fruit. I also had bacon, but left it in the microwave and forgot about it until after we ate! So Corey and I had BLT sandwiches for lunch today instead of eating it with breakfast.

Here we are on our way to the parade!

The kids loved their flags and managed to not poke anyone's eyes out with them.

Ice pops! Jack didn't eat his, but they both enjoyed holding onto them and the novelty of someone walking by handing out treats!

Here are a few pictures from the parade:

Here we all are at the parade:

And then here's the three of us back at the house:

Happy 4th of July! (and Happy Birthday a day late to Jake and Happy Anniversary to my parents a day early).

Jack's words

No pictures in this post, but I wanted to remember some of the funny things that Jack has been saying lately, and since I'm even worse at keeping up the babybook than I am at blogging, I thought I'd write them down here:

His first full sentence: "Nana and pop-pop go on airplane to see Jack". I nearly fell off my chair when this popped out of his mouth. Now he says it EVERY time he sees/hears an airplane above us.

Every morning he wakes up and the first things he asks is "Where Daddy go?" Then he answers his own question by saying "oh, yea, Daddy go to work. Daddy-baseballs, Daddy-snacks, oh boy, daddy-work!" Whenever I take Jack up to see Corey at the office, Corey gives Jack some of the baseballs in his office collection to play with and they go out in the hall and throw the ball back and forth a few times. Then Corey takes Jack into the kitchen and lets him pick out a snack and get water from the dispenser. Jack thinks this is all the coolest thing ever and also thinks it's all Corey does all day.

Jack greets everyone by saying "hey, hey, how you doin'?"

Corey was hanging pictures the other day and Jack was so excited about Daddy using the hammer - he ran up to him and said "hi Daddy, what you doin'? Hammer? like Bob? Daddy, you build a road like Bob?" Jack has a "Bob the Builder" dvd that is all about building roads, so he associates any tools (or going to home depot and looking at tools) as something Bob does. He also says "hi, Bob!" and sings the bob the builder theme song and bob the builder "how do you build a road" song every time we go by a construction site. Which is rather frequently since we pass the I-64 construction at least 5 times a week.

Jack likes to yell at Lola "Lola, no barkin'", "Lola, eat biscuits", Lola, leave those kitties alone!" "Lola, quiet!", "Lola, no!" I never realized I yelled so much at Lola until Jack started doing it.

Lately Jack has been asking his own questions and answering them - like tonight when we were getting ready to go to Grandma and Grandpa's and Corey was telling him that he was going to ride with him in Daddy's car, Jack ran up to me and said "mommy go to memaw and bebaw's too? otay. " The answer to all his own questions is always "otay". "Jack go outside with Lola and play basketball? Otay." "Jack eat chocolate cookies? Otay." "Jack play baseball and not potty? Otay."

Oh, and he refers to himself in third person. Nothing else.

We also moved during the past few months

I haven't really taken any photos of the new house, unless it was in the background of other photos I've taken, but here are a few of various features of the house. I'll try and take a few more that show it better soon.

Here's part of the kitchen, and behind Corey, the empty breakfast room. This was on Father's Day.

Here's Jack and Uncle Adam hanging out in the backyard. We love the backyard and have really enjoyed having a big, grassy (i.e., no mud), flat area to play. You can't see it in the photo, but to the left there is a swingset that Jack spends a lot of time on.

Here's Jack in his "tunnel"

And this is the last photo that I ever took in the old house. It wasn't of the house, really, but memorable nonetheless. I thought about taking photos of the house after we moved out and it was empty, but those last few hours were a blur with trying to pack and work with the movers and clean the house as they moved everything out. So I didn't get a final picture. I'm kind of glad I didn't, as I think it would make me really sad to look at the house empty. This picture just makes me remember that I hated those old, old metal blinds in the kitchen and am glad to be done with them. They were really dirty and I could never get them clean enough.

Even farther back than Jack's birthday . . .

Ok, I'm totally out of order in all these posts. These pictures are from back in March, the weekend after we put our house on the market (and also the weekend we accepted a contract on the house) - Jack and I drove up to Chicago to visit with Jenn, Shontel, and Shelley (and kids). We stayed at a great hotel and had a blast. The kids had a good time too! Jack thought that the hotel was "Nathan's house" and still calls it that when we look at photos from this trip!

Jack and Ella

still together after all these years . . .

So a few months ago Jack had a birthday

and I haven't posted any pictures of it. Oops.

Go Cowboys!

Jack's hoping Jes.sica Sim.pson confuses him for Tony.

This one's for Pop-pop

Jack's response when he heard that Pop-pop was off to Libya and was not going to be in Dallas next week when Jack visits:

almost 100 . . .

blog posts! This is #99, so I had probably pick the pace up a bit so that we hit the 100 mark sometime before Jack's next birthday. Ha, ha.

Here's Jack with Ella and Trent eating cake leftover from Jack's birthday party. It was fun to celebrate with the kids!