Memorial Day Weekend With Grandparents

I know it's been two weeks or so since Memorial Day weekend, but I'm slow.  Hopefully I can get several posts done and get pictures uploaded onto facebook.  We'll see, today is a busy day for me :)  Anyways, back to the topic at hand.  Joshua's parents drove up to spend Memorial Day weekend with us.  They started early early Thursday morning (or late Wednesday night however you want to think of it)  and got here Thursday evening.  Really long drive, but we were excited to have them visit.  While they were here they (Joshua and Todd) worked on the front flower beds (cleaned out the grass looking plants that I'm not a really big fan of) so I could plant my flowers, yay!!  Joshua and I bought flowers and put them in the Monday after his parents left.  I got three different kinds of impatiens (not on purpose) and pansies.  The plants are bigger now than in the pictures I have, but I don't want to take more pictures right now.   The two pictures to the right of the text are the left and right flower beds respectively.  The red and orange flowers are shade loving impatiens (normal) and I hope they do well because they get more sun than I thought they would.  The pink is a special kind of impatiens that likes the sun, I hope it gets huge because it was supposed to have 2-3 feet of space around it.



Orange for Joshua



This is a sun-loving impatiens! It's loving life.

Cave Rose

 We also went and did the 'Lost Sea Adventure!' which is a tour of a huge cave.  It was fun especially since it basically took no effort to get to the start of the cave. I like caves and they had cool stuff to do while you waited for your tour to start.  They had a little nature hike and a glass shop (Allen didn't go in that one) and some gift shops.  The nature hike was supposed to be self-guided, but they didn't have any papers to guide ourselves with so we just hiked and enjoyed the scenery.  I'm not used to trees that are so tall and huge that aren't pine trees.  There were a few pine trees, but most were deciduous (fancy word I know).  


Miniature Grand Canyon

During the Civil War they used the guano (bat poop) from the cave to make an ingredient in gun powder, I don't remember which ingredient.  At least I think that's what the tour guide said, Allen was a little distracting or I was looking at something in the cave and not paying enough attention.  At one point they turned off all the lights so we could experience "true dark," Allen was okay for a few seconds and then started to get upset; I can sympathise I'm a light loving gal myself.  Where they took us there weren't a ton of active cave formations (too much use by humans over the years), but the ones that were there were expensive if you decided to touch them (government fines), not worth it. Not that I would have wanted to touch them anyways, but I thought the fines were a good deterrent.  Another thing I learned was that if you go far enough underground it's not possible to get drunk something to do with how it affects the oxygen level in your blood.  Kind of cool, and a little ironic since one of the things in the cave was a moonshine still. 



Fish jumping out of the water for food

Trying to climb out of the boat

The final part of the tour before we hiked our way out of the cave was the "lost sea"  It's a 2 acre underground lake and you get to ride over part of it on a boat that has a glass bottom in the center.  They stock the lake with rainbow trout and feed them dog food every time they take a tour out so the fish are huge and taste awful.  They were pretty cool and we got some cool pictures of them.  Allen liked watching the fish and decided he was going to get in the water to join them so he started trying to climb out of the boat.  He didn't get far, but it was funny.  We distracted him by letting him play in the bottom of the boat.  He liked the glass bottom and entertained everyone in the boat by how excited he was watching the bubbles.  When we finished, we had to wait for the other half of our tour group so Allen (tired of being carried) decided that it was the perfect spot to practice walking.  He also wanted to hike his own way out of the cave, but he wasn't fast enough to keep up with the group so he walked part of the way and the rest he was carried (much to his disgruntlement).  After we were done with the tour Allen found a water fountain and had a blast playing in it.  It was really cute and we got some awesome pictures.   All in all it was a fun filled weekend and we discovered that Allen practices walking for grandma and grandpa better than he does when it's just us.  Little show-off :)  (Sorry if I didn't catch my grammatical errors, for some reason I was having issues today.)




Walking with Dad



Water is so much fun!

'Bout Time! The Garden, Bug, and Pest Chronicles

One of the best things about this house is that we have space to put in a garden.  We tried to pick the sunnyest part of the yard that we could and a place that had enough drainage that our garden wouldn't drown when we get the torrential downpours that seem so commom here.  We planted squash, broccoli, three kinds of lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and jalepenos.  We also planted bell peppers in our pots (not shown below).  Our jalepenos never came up so we probably need to get some new seeds.  Right now we have squash, maybe one cucumber, lettuce, bell peppers, broccoli, and our tomatoes surving.  Now I'll tell you the story of what they've had to survive.

One weekend we put in a garden, actually Josh put in the garden and I watched him dig and shook dirt off of grass clumps. 



Digging the garden.

It has a border!! Go Josh!

 Then we bought what we needed and planted.  After a few days Josh came home from work and noticed nibble marks on a squash plant.  He also noticed that our cucumbers were coming up!  We discussed what to do about nibble marks and decided we needed a fence.  Sadly, before the fencing materials were bought all the leaves on one squash plant and all of the baby cucumber plants were eaten.  The fence was put up and the squah plant made a comeback, and one more cucmber plant made an appearance. 

The fence: sqaush on the left end tomato on the right.

We thought the tale was headed for a happy ending, then Sarah watched a bird land in the garden head to the squash plant and snip the leaves off with it's beak and fly away taking the leaves with it.  Now we have netting on top though we don't have a picture of it to share.  Stupid bird, we thought it was just the rabbits and gophers.  

We have these random patches of strawberries growing in our yard.  There's no order to where they pop up, in the middle of the yard, on the edge of the yard, underneath a small grove of trees... you name it.  Some patches are bigger than others but we're keeping an eye on them to see how big they get and if they'll be any worth eating or making jam or something.

 

 

 

Our gopher family is pretty fun to watch.  There's a little one, who got picked up in the first picture, and he's pretty cute.  They pop up every once in a while and we watch them go around our yard eating clover or leaves/grass or whatever it is that they're going around eating.  The little one does eat clover flowers, apparently they're pretty good.

'Bout Time! The Allen Chronicles

Every once in a while I think someone needs to call/text/facebook message us and say "Hey! Update your blog!" A lot has happened in the last month so we'll try and remember all the highlights and catch you up on everything.  Actually, I think we'll split it up into several posts so maybe you'll get three in one day.  Miracles do happen :)



Walking with Dad.

I suppose that Allen is the main star of our story that most of you would like to hear about.  He has been a busy boy.  He's still not walking, but he's brave enough now to hold onto Mom or Dad's fingers and toddle around.  He actually balances well enough that he could probably toddle around without holding onto fingers, but he doesn't think he can so he hasn't really tried yet.


Right now Allen has 5 teeth and we told Samuel and Kamee that they weren't all through though they looked like it.  As of this morning all of the teeth that can be seen in Allen's mouth are through.  He's been kind of grumpy lately so I think it's likely that he's working on one or two more.  Allen has been learning how to use a spoon and he does pretty good most of the time.  Right now he can only get foods that will stick to the spoon into his mouth with it and half the time even the sticky food falls off before it gets there.  When he's eating yogurt and cheerios, Allen sticks the spoon into his yogurt and then uses the yogurt to stick the cheerios to his spoon and get both to his mouth.  Nothing esle new is happening with food; Allen is still picky, and we're still trying to broaden his horizons.


Eating at the Cracker Barrel, Allen liked Dad's dessert

All messy



Allen has started climbing which means that some of the places we used to put things to keep them out of reach are not safe anymore.  Mostly the couch.  He likes to crawl on top of his toy box and look out the window, but mostly he just likes being higher than he was.  Understandable, I feel short sometimes too. 



 

Sporting a new harido on top of the laundry basket.

He climbed up to see if Dad was outside. (Dad was at work)



Watching Dad mow.

Trying to get in the tub a little earlier than normal.

Last but not least I'll talk about a few of Allen's new favorite games.  The first is piggy-back ride.  When we sit on the floor, he'll stand behind us until we pick him up and give him a ride.  It doen't matter if it's Mom or Dad, either way the ride is awesome.  His second favorite game(s) is(are) technology.  He can now make unlock both our phones and call people as well as taking pictures and all other sorts of mischief.



Dad makes a good horse!

Allen took this picture of himself with Mom's phone.



A bonus picture of Allen sitting in the rain, which he loves.



Day to Day Update

So we figured that this could be a more mundane post about what's going on in our lives.  We still have fun just without the adventures :)  We now have Tennessee plates and licenses which is fun and odd.  Tennessee only requires one plate on a car so we're still getting used to our cars looking funny. 

Sarah got called as the laurel advisor (or in other words she works with the 16-18 yr old girls in our ward).  She only teaches once a month which was unexpected but nice.  Sarah was also recently called to be the ward organist which is a new endeavor in her life.  She's doing pretty well, but she's no expert.  The foot pedals are still entirely intimidating and maybe someday she'll have enough courage to play them while people sing along.  Someday she going to make some curtains for Allen's room, first she has to figure out a place to set up the sewing machine.

Joshua has been busy with work and trying to find time to start a garden and take care of our yard.  He was hoping to get the garden dug this weekend but it was threatening rain all weekend, so maybe next weekend he'll get around to it for sure (unless it rains... again).  He is also extremely wonderful when he gets home doing double duty helping with Allen and making dinner on the weekends.  We bought a lawn mower which promptly stopped working the day we bought it after not even a minute of use.  We're going to get it replaced or fixed under warranty because we followed the directions they gave on starting and putting it together.  This weekend we made a really good Apple Caramel Pie, maybe we'll even get around to sharing the recipe someday; we all know that the pie won't last long enough to share with anyone.

Allen has been busy.  He gets into everything and sometimes we think that he has no reason to have toys because he plays with other things more.  Some of his favorites are mom's hair thingamajigs (that's what Sarah calls them anyway), the containers in the bottom cupboards in the kitchen, shoes, laundry, socks, pens, and any other random objects around the house.  We go to the library every other week if not every week and get Allen some books, which he loves to sit and flip through every once in a while.  He's not walking yet and he's still really not that close; we figure we'll worry if he's not walking by 18 months which is in July.  But he is getting more daring so maybe he'll decide he wants to walk soon.  He loves being outside though he's not sure about grass.  He is also an extremely picky eater.  Allen won't touch vegetables (except carrots on rare occassions) or meat (unless it's honey ham and sometimes not even then).  He loves fruit (most of the time), yogurt, and oatmeal.  Actually he has a passion for oatmeal; he would probably eat it for every meal if we let him.  He tries to eat apples and oranges though we have to be extremely careful because he tries to eat the orange peel too.  We also think he may have figured out who "mama" and "dada" are though it's hard to tell because he just likes to say those words.  Allen is also very obedient.  He follows basic direction very well (most of the time).  We can tell him things like "please shut the cabinet" or "put that in the box" and he will do what we say.  We love our little one as you can tell by the fact that his paragraph is longer than both of ours together ;)

And now pictures for you to enjoy!  Allen and Dad regularly share oranges together.  Sometimes Allen is impatient. 

Orange slice

Look mom!

 

I think I'll just eat the whole thing.

We had a little bit of snow earlier this week so Allen and I went out and played.  This is only Allen's second experience with snow, and his first good one.  In the pictures at the end you can see the trail he left crawling through the snow.  You can also see where he changed directions.  Rather than just turning he backs up like something is in his way and then turns the direction we wants to go.  Allen crawled around until his glove fell off.  Then he tried to crawl with it off, but didn't like the cold on his hand, and even after it was back on was ready to be done. 

 



This is actually earlier.  Josh wanted to show Allen the snow on Saturday.  It didn't even stick though.



All bundled and ready to play!





Allen kept having to shake the snow off of his gloves.





This is so much fun!



Trying to climb down the little ridge in our yard.  He got stuck so I helped him down.

 



 



 

The last 3 pictures are as close as you'll get to a video since I can't get it to work for some reason.

I took a picture of the trail as we went back.  You can see the ridge Allen tried to climb down in this one.

Allen's changes of directions are the pointy parts of his trail.

 

After Allen's glove fell off.

All of Allen's layers.



Tennessee Aquarium

February is always a busy month for us and it always seems to go by really fast.  Joshua's mom drove up to visit.  We had a lot of fun while she was here.  We were able to go to the temple in Atlanta when we dropped her off for the airport.  It'll take some getting used to having to travel so far to go to the temple, but we'll figure it out.

We had a family date on Friday to celebrate Valentine's Day and the following Monday we went to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.  We were able to go because Josh gets a discount through TVA.  They have two buildings that a regular ticket gets you into:  an ocean building and a river building.  They have sting rays you can touch, penguins, jellyfish, and a huge ocean aquarium that has sharks, turtles, and lots of fish.  The river building has otters, turtles, crocodiles/alligators, snakes, and more fish.  They also have shows in each though we didn't get to go to any.  We want to go again even though it's expensive without a discount and spend more time.  Especially because Allen had a blast though he was tired by the time we were done.  

He liked looking even though he couldn't touch anything yet.

The only penguin in the water

There was a huge crowd and Allen liked watching them as much as the penguin.

Allen is as tall as a small penguin

Hello Mr. Turtle

Allen and Dad in the shark cage. 



duh nuh, duh nuh

Duh Nuh, Duh Nuh



DUH NUH NUH!  Allen really enjoyed the ocean aquarium

Allen and Mom in front of trout :)

The box is cool too!!

Freshwater stingray maybe?  It was in the river aquarium.

Little turtles

And fish!

Can I get in?

No? Ok I'll keep lookin'

The diver was feeding the fish from his hand.  It was pretty cool.

 Hopefully next time we'll have pictures of our house.  We tried to upload the videos we put on facebook, but for some reason they won't upload.  So we'll try pictures instead!