Growing Dinosaurs!

Lately Parker has been OBSESSED with Dinosaurs!! It started sometime over the summer, when he saw Ice Age: Return of the Dinosaurs. Then Nana & Mimi provided some Land Before Time DVDs & dinosaur toys....sprinkle in a few books & episodes of Dinosaur Train and Voila! You have a crazy almost 3 year old, who pretends to be T-Rex about 60% of the time.
One day I stumbled upon a "Grow your own Dinosaur" kit. It was a huge hit with Parker! You drop the egg in a container of water and let it sit for 3-4 days. Your baby dinosaur grows & hatches slowly out of the egg. I was very impressed with his paitience. We checked on baby-saurus several times a day & Parker wanted me to take pictures of his new "baby."

Day 1:

Day 2:

Day 3:

Day 4:

Ta-da! A new baby something-saurus!

I'm wondering how long this obsession will last... While I enjoy his impersonations, which are surprisingly accurate, I worry that the roaring, stomping & mayheim will be disturbing to his baby brother. We have purchased a powerful sound machine for baby to drown out Parker's antics and Bambino's coming home outfit now has dinosaurs on it. Fingers crossed the baby has heard enough inutero roaring that he'll be unfazed.

Oh well, such is the life of a second child :)

The Big 30!

Andy recently celebrated his 30th birthday! We had several nights of fun to comemorate the occasion. We started by celebrating with our friends. This group of five has been friends since jr. high and they all have birthdays within days of each other. Their wives thought this was a great excuse for a group birthday party. We had a fun patio, drink specials, the hamburger man and cupcakes. What more could you ask for??

Here are the birthday boys: Chase, Andy, Arfeo, Kyle & Brian

Their party planners/wives: Amanda, Holly, Jennifer, Megan, & Shelby

Yummy Cupcakes!

Me & My birthday boy!

The next weekend we celebrated with our family.

I realize now that we both wore the same outfits to both parties....

Not sure what that means... For me it's that I'm running out of things that fit & For Andy probably that he wears the first shirt hanging in the closet ;)

Parker giving Luke some love.

The kids singing "Happy Birthday"

Opening Presents....

Surprise!! It's an iPad!!

The next night (in different outfits) Andy & I went on a date to the new Gold Class Cinema Movie Theatre. It was great! It'll be hard to go back to a regular movie theatre.

I'd say Andy had a great birthday & it's well deserved. He's such a great husband & father. Parker & I are so blessed!! It was so much fun to help him celebrate this milestone. Can't wait for the next 30 years!

Singin' & Dancin' in the Rain!

What do you do when you get caught in a monsoon on the way home from Gymnastics??

Put on your Thomas boots, go outside & play in the rain!

If you're Parker, you sing & dance...watch out Fred Astaire!

Singing...

and Dancing...

in the rain!

Oh, how I love this little guy!

Firsts...

The last half of summer flew by and I can't believe it's September!! Yesterday was Parker's first day of Mother's Day Out. We were both really excited! When we got to school, he became a little shy and wanted to go to last year's classroom. I was worried there might be a melt down in our future, but he did great. Here's a few pictures from the morning: Getting ready, walking into school & getting sidetracked by the "tickle bushes." I didn't get any photos of him in the classroom. I was too busy trying to get him settled.

After dropping him off, I headed to meet Andy at the Dr. for a bambino check up. Everything looks good. Bambino's heartbeat is strong and steady. He's a busy boy! We could hear lots of movement on the heart monitor. (And I feel lots of movement all the time!!) We think he's a big boy, too. I'm 29 weeks, but measuring at least 30, if not 31. I passed my glucose test, but am a tiny bit anemic. Overall I feel pretty good. We scheduled our c-section for November 11, 2010 at noon. At first it was at 5 am, but we pushed it back a few hours. We figured it's our last chance at a good night's sleep for a few months. :) Bambino will join the party 10 weeks from today!

In August, Parker started taking Gymnastics. I'd been looking for air conditioned activities that would burn lots of energy, and there's a gym not far from our house. In the beginning it was a parent participation class. Being 7 months pregnant and wrangling a 2 year old through the course was a bit of a challenge. Luckily for me, Parker was promoted to the 3 year old class! Now I get to watch while Parker follows Coach Chris' directions. Today was his first time on his own. It went really well and I finally got to take some pictures of his class!

Between MDO, bambino & gymnastics, it looks like we'll be staying busy this fall!