Happy Birthday, and Bring on the Heat!

It hasn't been on purpose that the posts only come about once a month, but that's kind of how it's been going.

We were able to spend quite a bit of time outside the last part of May. The cooler weather was really nice. The kids really enjoyed playing outside so much. Emma is pretty adventurous, and not afraid to get her hands dirty when we would go outside.


She tried to pick some of the lemons off the lemon tree a couple of times, picked a green tomato and shoved it in her mouth, and we even caught her gnawing on a big rock.

Ezra has liked to help as well. He points out the flowers, and tells us what they are.

He'll sit and play with the various rocks and leaves that he finds, putting them in a bucket and carrying them around.

Our garden has been pretty fruitful. We've had more zucchini, a ton of tomatoes, and have picked the first of our two big watermelons.

We gave away some of the tomatoes, and have been eating them, but there's a lot.


The watermelon plant has taken over a good part of the yard. We'll see how the melons are when we cut open the first one this weekend.

Emma has started climbing everything in sight. We've found her up on the table a few times. It definitely keeps us on our toes. She has also figured out how to open doors, which has changed the dynamic of things around the house a bit more. She's working on figuring out the difference between "up" and "down". Sometimes she'll come up to you and say, "Down!" when she wants you to pick her up.
Susan has tried to put bows in Emma's hair, but they never last long. She just pulls them out.

The longest we've ever been able to have anything in her hair was this last weekend while she was watching a movie.

She was pretty focused though.

Emma loves to to play with just about anything she can get her hands on.

She has even tried to put clothes on that she has found on the floor or in the laundry.


Ezra turned 3 last week. We were able to have a party for him on Saturday. Kelly and Cameron came over and we had cake and opened presents. Ezra was excited. He talked about his cake for about 2 weeks before his birthday.


He smiled so big when we let him open presents.


Ezra is getting so big. It's amazing to see how much he understands and learns. He's a little stubborn at times, but we love him to death.

He really liked a train set that he got, and we set up a big track for him.

Emma liked it too, so it has since moved to his room.

Easter & Gardening

Time has a tendency to slip away really quickly.

The last month or so has been fairly involved. The weather at least has been fairly nice, though it is starting to heat up quite a bit.


Easter was fun with the kids. Ezra was old enough to figure out the whole searching for eggs bit.


Emma liked the new toys, though I think next year will be a bit more exciting for her.


Our garden that we planted in early March has done very well. It's been nice to see stuff grow, and the kids have enjoyed helping out with it.


We've even been able to harvest a decent amount. We've had lettuce, snow peas, cilantro, chives, and squash so far.

The zucchini got away from us a bit. There was another one about this same size that we picked and ate earlier in the week. Hopefully the melons do as well this summer.

The tomato plants have done very well, and we should have a bunch of tomatoes here soon.


It looks like we'll even have lemons this year off of our tree.

The flowers have done decently well too. The poppies didn't seem to mind the freeze we had in January, and have just been blooming away for a couple of months now.


The oleanders have started blooming as well. The red are the most stunning.

Unfortunately, the orchid tree didn't take the cold quite a well. It didn't bloom this year, and in fact we ended up cutting the top quite a bit back. I think the freeze was a bit much for it. It is coming back from the roots fairly well though, so we'll see how it goes.


This last weekend was finally going to be a relaxed one where we just cleaned up a bit after everything. But instead, we ended up buying a new couch. In order to fit it, we ended up moving furniture pretty much all over the house, but we really like it.

The kids keep us on our toes and try our patience at times (they're kids, that's what they do best, right?), but it's all worth it to have them smiling and laughing. They've both gotten so big very quickly it seems.

Happy Birthday & California Trip

On Emma's birthday we headed out to California to see everyone for a week.


It's hard to believe that she's already a year old! She's walking very well now, and has been trying to say more and more words.

Emma wasn't sure exactly what to make of the whole birthday thing. She was intrigued by the candle.

She tried some of the frosting.


But, in the end, she decided that she didn't want the cupcake at all, and ended up with a birthday cookie instead.

The presents part was pretty easy for her to figure out though.


We got to have all of the little cousins together. They all had a lot of fun playing together.


They even built a "snowman" out of the balls in the backyard.

We got to play at a few parks, and relax a bit. It did rain on us once, but the weather was beautiful overall.
Emma enjoyed climbing on the stairs, since we don't have any at home.


We got the kids some new clothes for church. They clean up pretty well don't they?


While there, we got to go the aquarium. It was kind of a long day, but we all enjoyed it.


Ezra had to make sure and show us how "big" the fish were.

Walking...

The last few weeks have been good. It was great to see everyone when they were out last week. Ezra was glad to have more people to do puzzles with him, and Emma liked all of the attention. She also liked chasing grandma & grandpa's dog, so that kept us on our toes.



We didn't put the air mattress away for a few days. It became a favorite place to sit for both Ezra and Emma.


The weather has been good, and most of the trees and stuff have been coming back pretty well. Our garden has quite a bit growing in it, and the citrus trees are covered in blooms, so we should be able to get some good stuff out of the yard this year.

Ezra continues his love of puzzles. We've finally got some 60 piece puzzles for him that keep him occupied at least for a while.


The time continues to just fly by. Another 2 weeks and Emma will be a year old.


Emma has decided that she doesn't like people feeding her now that she has figured out how to feed herself. We've been trying her on a few different things. She wasn't quite so sure about Chex the first time she had them though, and pulled a couple of funny faces.


She does pretty well though. She lets you know that she's done by either throwing what's left on the floor, or by slamming her cup down on the table.

Emma has also finally started walking around by herself. She's so proud that she can walk around that she gets a big smile on her face and giggles as she walks.

Long Lost Post

Yeah, I know, it has been a while since we've posted. Time has a tendency to just slip away.

The weather has finally decided that it is going to be warm and stay that way, so we'll see.

Ezra's most recent obsession has been puzzles. He will sit and do puzzles all day.
He's up to doing 24 piece puzzles by himself, and we've ordered him a 48 piece, so we'll see how he does with that. He's as active as ever, always running around doing something. He always tries to haggle with you when you tell him how much of anything that he can have. Ezra has also started asking things like, "But, why?" a lot of times.


Emma is still working on her upper teeth. You would think that they would have come in by now, but it has been a fairly slow process. She stands on her own, and will take a couple of steps at a time when she wants to. We're just waiting for the day where she just starts running around all at once.


She got her first cookie about a week ago. She did really well with it, and seemed to really like it.


Emma finds herself in interesting situations sometimes. The other day she knocked over her laundry basket full of clean clothes and crawled in. We had to rescue her though, because she couldn't figure out how to get out. She's just full of energy too.

We put some of that energy to work though:


(okay, so she really just got into the clean laundry pile)


Susan has her hands full with the two of them during the day, but it is definitely worth the joy that they bring.


Random picture of a flower from one of our spider plants. Who knew that they flowered?