July Adventures

Allen is doing pretty well and has made great strides in the past week.  He went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago and hasn't grown much in the past 3 months or started walking yet but in the last week he's learned a few new things.  He's been to nursery twice now at church and is now trying to walk on his own!  Dad was on the floor playing with Allen one evening after work and Mom was on the couch.  Allen got up and tried to balance and get ready to walk to Mom before he fell.  It was then quickly made into a game to walk back and forth between Mom and Dad, and we played that game for about 30 minutes that evening.  Since then he's tried to  walk and follow Dad when he leaves the room, has figured out mostly how to stand up by himself and will take up to 4 or 5 steps by himself.  All since 6 days ago.  He'll be running soon and then we'll never be able to catch him.

We also noticed this really cool thing he does now.  During our evening family prayers he'll kneel down with Mom and Dad and fold his arms.  More like he'll lace his fingers together during prayer but it's pretty darn close to folding his arms.

July 4th

Allen had his second July 4th celebration this year although this is the only one he probably actually experienced and knew (kindof) what was going on.  It rained the entire day so we were pretty wet but the fireworks went off and we had a great time.  There were supposed to be all sorts of booths, just like you'd expect in a small town celebration, but the rain drove everyone away except for a couple of places.  We still had a pretty good time listening to the live band and being outside, even though it was rainy.  We found a spot we were going to watch the fireworks from and where we wouldn't get rained on and a bunch of people joined us in that spot under the overhang.  We ended up leaving (4 smokers in the entry-way of a business that didn't want to stand in the rain) but found a better spot right under the fireworks.

The spot was in a parking lot right next to where they shot the fireworks off.  There was another car to the right of us for a little while and then he all of a sudden got kicked out of that spot for some unknown reason by a guy in a 4-wheeler.  Turns out the fire department needed to be there, so we eneded up right next to the fire truck!  It was pretty awesome.  About the time the fireworks were supposed to go off we wondering if they were going to wait a few minutes (because of a huge downpour at the moment) but we heard over their radio "Fire away!"  A couple seconds later were the first fireworks.  haha  So cool!

"Fire Away!"

This is were Allen learned "Boom!"

"Boom!"

Waterfall

We've been to this waterfall before but we decided to make a trip back and play around a bit.  While mom was at girl's camp for a couple days Allen was babysat by someone in the ward so we watched her little boy.  We had been thinking of going back to play around some more and thought this was a great opportunity to wear out the kid some.  We had a great time wading around in the river above the waterfall and exploring a little bit.

Pool

Allen absolutely loves being outside and we were finally able to go and get him a little pool.  He loves it!  Dad likes it too.  haha  Allen really likes having someone to play with in the pool so Dad jumped in and splashed around with him once.  It'll happen again, it's really nice on hot days.

June Catch-up



 Moo-Fest

So Athens has this festival called Moo-Fest every year.  There's a dairy farm in town and they put it together; they have a big fake cow, cheapish ice cream, music, and competitions involving milk products.    It's pretty small and it needed more shade, it's on a couple of blocks downtown and in a park.  We went for the food and for the petting zoo.  We wanted to see some other things, but it was hot and by that point Allen was fussy.  Allen did really like the rabbits; he touched them once and other than that didn't really get to pet them.  He likes to hit things when he gets excited, we're working on that, but he liked watching them.

 

There was a fire engine too!  Allen REALLY enjoyed playing around in that.  We started walking over and he got really excited when he saw it.  The firefighters let him play around in the cab for a minute too, then he got a fire hat.  He actually wore it for a little while too!

 

Strawberries

 We went a picking strawberries one afternoon too.  It had rained that morning, like it does A LOT around here, but we decided to go and try to pick some anyway since they were an amazing price and it would be fun.  It was really muddy, Allen walked for a little while in his shoes but then they got too heavy so he walked around in his socks because he didn't like the mud on his feet. haha  We got two buckets of yummy fresh starwberries that were very ripe.  We tried to make some fruit leather but that failed horribly.  So we made some freezer jam and boy is that stuff good!  We made 4 pints and we're almost down to 2, they were so ripe we didn't have to add hardly any sugar to the jam.  Joshua got a rash from the strawberry bushes but other than that it was a fun hour or so of picking.

 

 

 

Allen loves the jam too!

 

Climbing

Allen has also become quite the climber.  It's like he figured out how to climb on the couch and now he wants to see if he can climb on everything, including higher on the couch.

 

So now he'll climb up on the back of the couch to look out the front windows.  He used to just climb up on the toy box to look outside, the couch is better apparently.  He'll bang his head on the window too, he really likes banging his head on things.  Everything from the window to the oven to the cabinets to us.

 

 

Allen pushes over his cooler to the counter and then uses it to climb up and see what's happening on the counter.  We've started pulling in a chair for him so he can reach better and "help" us with the dishes.  This morning he decided that the chair wasn't close enough so using the cabinet doors as toe holds he climbed up into the sink so he could play in the water.

 

Waterfall

We went and revisited a waterfall some of our friends showed us.  It has a short hike to the top where Allen enjoyed playing in some of the pools that were in the rocks at the top.   We didn't have much time to explore, but we're definitely going to go back and have some more fun.  It looks like there might be some good places to play in the water on the river and all we need is a good hot sunny day.








Not Walking

Allen is being stubborn about walking on his own, but he enjoys pushing things around.  Blogger doesn't like our videos and I don't really want to put them on youtube and do it that way so sorry but if you want to see a video of him pushing around his cooler you'll have to get on Facebook.  He also pushes around his highchair and he pushed his walking toy around until he drove it off the sidewalk and crashed.  Now his walking toy is too dangerous to walk with so he uses the cooler instead. 

 

 

We also wanted to show a picture of how big our tomato plant is right now.  Allen is in the picture so you can kind of tell how tall it is.  It is loving all of the rain and the heat and hopfully we'll get some ripe tomatoes soon (as of now only one is slowly turning red, all the others are still green).

 

 

We are now officially caught up YAY!!  Until tonight that is ;)