That time again!

Last week it was time to chop grass again and Ryan was very anxious to get to go out and help his Daddy in the chopper. I dropped Ryan off to ride with Jeff for awhile, while I went home and took a little siesta! Pretty soon they'll be chopping corn... hopefully we have a warm, sunny September!

Our newest furry friends...

So what might that be behind the gate that Ryan is visiting....?

Our 2 new pigs!
Jeff & his brother decided we should raise a couple of pigs so here they are! Ryan, Jordan, Caleb & Megan decided to call them "Sausage" and "Bacon"... affectionetley, of course! :) I know, not very creative, but oh well. At first Ryan thought one of them should be called "Ryan", but we were able to persuade him to pick something else! Jeff used to raise a few pigs on their family farm when he was younger, but they are a first for me! They are actually pretty friendly and funny to watch. I've also found that they'll eat just about anything so now our fruit and vegetable scraps don't go to waste anymore! The other day Ryan and I fed them some baby carrots and today they got some watermelon! Everyone who comes over now has to be shown the pigs by Ryan- it's pretty cute.
And just around the pen from them are these cute little calves! Do they look content or what basking in the warm sunshine!

Whole lot of shakin' goin' on!

Or I guess I should say, a whole lot of kickin' goin' on! This little guy is extremely active and I love every minute of his movements... even if they do create a tiny bit of momentary pain! :) I was able to catch some of his movements the other night on my camera. I had an appt. today and everything was good. I'm measuring a little big (no big surprise since Ryan was 9lbs. 7oz.!) so we'll look to have my c-section around 5 days before my due date. The time is flying by!!! Now I'll go back in two weeks and then weekly after that!

Fun times at the river!

Some friends of ours have property out by the river just minutes from our house. This weekend some of our friends camped out there in their trailers, but we live too close to justify packing up and moving our trailer 5 minutes from home! We did go out there a visit a couple different days over the weekend and bbq'd one night. Our friends whose property this is, have a 2 year old little girl and the mom got this neat portable sandox and brought it there. Ryan had SO much fun in it- it kept him occupied for a LONG time! Here's him and his friend, Emma, playing in it.

Some of the older kids were riding their bikes over this little dirt jump and Ryan didn't want to miss a second of it. You can barely see him in his little black hat towards the bottom of the picture. He definitely slept very well that night!

Fun with the babysitter!

Last Saturday night my cousin came over to babysit Ryan for us while we went out for the evening. We actually had two different parties to go to (I know, don't we just sound important! :)) and so in between we ran home to change our clothes. When we came home, him and Kari were making some popcorn and getting ready to watch a DVD. She mentioned that he liked taking pictures which I definitely agreed with! Well, the next day I looked through the pictures on my camera and he had taken some by himself and then I found these of the 2 of them and I had to chuckle to myself. I thought they were very cute.
Here he is trying on her glasses- they actually go very well with his green jammies!

Happy faces!
Silly faces!
Sad faces!
And silly Mr. Ryan. Now I know why he told us we didn't have to "come home until tomorrow" when we were leaving... he was just having too much fun with his babysitter! :)

My helper...

The other morning we got up and it was raining outside. I told Ryan I needed to go outside to feed the kitties and he said, "It's okay Mommy, I'll do it for you." My heart melted that he wanted to do something for me! I guess it was the way he said it, so genuine and sweet. So, we got him some flip flops on, his sweatshirt and off he went out to feed the kitties for me...

... and boy were they happy to bed fed!

"Anna Banana"

Well Ryan now, affectionately, calls his little cousin Anna from time to time, Anna Banana these days. So she's gone from "Baby Anna" to "Anna Banana"... you know, cousins, never know what they'll come up with next, but he means well and says it so cute that for now it's fine. We watched Anna for a few hours while my sister got her hair done and Ryan was SO excited to see her! He even ran out the door when they pulled in to greet them! Here they are on the floor playing around. Ryan found the blanket and decided it was a good one for Anna to lay on when she comes over so we washed it and had it ready for her!

We got Ryan's old exer-saucer out of the closet for her, too, so she enjoyed that... however, I'm almost positive Ryan enjoyed it even more than she did. I think he was making a driving sound in this picture. Everything these days is a gear shifter or steering wheel! Boys!
He got out a BIG stuffed puppy that his Papa got for him and wanted Anna to play with it. He realized she was too little to really play with it so he wanted her to sit on it and then he wanted to take her picture on it. I explained that he'd have to take it because she's too little to sit on it by herself. Well, as you can tell, she didn't want to sit on it, but Ryan did get a quick picture before I picked her up.
All better! Look at that belly on me!
We had a very fun time with Anna and she even took a little nap in Ryan's old crib since we kept it up for our next baby. She's starting to teeth, so she was a little more serious than usual for her, but we still had a good time and Ryan was so sad when he came down from his nap and she had left. I assured him we'd see her again very soon! :)

Silly Daddy & Ryan

I just found this picture on my camera- Ryan & Jeff must have taken it this morning while I was sleeping in!! Silly boys. Looks like Ryan had a case of the giggles! :)

Family BBQ!

Jeff's aunt and some cousins from CA were in town at the same time for different reasons so we decided we should all get together for a bbq while everyone was here since it doesn't happen very often! The weather was wonderful and we couldn't have asked for a better day for it. A big thank you to my sister-in-law, Beth, who helped me repaint our deck railings the day before and therefore enabled me to also finish staining the deck floor in time for the bbq! Jeff had taken Ryan with him for the day which also helped me get it done since I didn't have any interruptions! Anyhow, we had a wonderful day all together yesterday and some very yummy food!

We put the kids table up on the deck which worked out great and the kids always love getting to sit together at their own table!
After lunch, they broke out the potato gun! This was new to me, but apparently it was like a tradition that they always had it and shot it off at different family gatherings on Jeff's mom's side of the family. I'd never seen it before so we interesting to see how it worked. We are all happy to report that no ones car got hit and Jeff's cousin, Mark (to the right) was very careful with it and with all the little kiddos running around. It was actually pretty loud when it went off, but after watching some of his older cousins do it, Ryan wanted a turn at it and was begging Jeff for a try! Here they are getting ready to shoot it off- we were all laughing as you can sort of tell in this picture that Ryan was using his left hand to cover his ear and his right to set it off. He got the biggest grin on his face after he did it!
Jordan & Ryan working together. When everyone was done, Jordan picked up the empty box that had the potatoes in it and put it in the wagon behind Ryan's "loader tractor" so they could move it away. Very cute teamwork! :)
After they had their fun with the potato gun, they got out the lawn games and played for awhile. It was a really fun day and so nice to get to see everyone again and catch up. Hopefully it won't be so long before we get to see them all again!

Hot air balloon

The other morning after Ryan had breakfast, he looked out the window and was telling me about a balloon and pointing up in the sky. I thought maybe he meant he saw a parachuter as they do that alot near our house, so I went to check it out. Turns out it was a hot air balloon just out and above our house! We watched it for a few more minutes and saw it get lower and lower. Turns out they landed in our neighbors field across the way from our house. I hadn't seen one around here in forever so was neat to see and interesting to try to explain to Ryan how they work!