Category: Activities

Day at the Goat Farm

We live near a goat farm, which produces cheese. They offer tours a few days during the week, so last week, Ryan, Cole, and I met some friends to tour the farm, and see the new baby goats.

Ryan and I went last year in April too, and I was nine months pregnant with Cole, it was really warm, and Ryan was pretty scared of the goats. Not this year! He ran right up to the wheelbarrow they had out with greens to feed the goats, and he didn’t want to leave. He thought it was really funny when the goats would try to eat his coat. Cole was a little scared at first, but he quickly snapped out of it, and liked standing up, holding on the goat’s pen. What a difference a year makes!

Here are some pictures of the outing:

Activities Cole Parenting Ryan

Sunshine at Last

The weather is finally warming up around here, and it has been SO nice. Last week we met a friend, her daughter is six months younger than Ryan, and her son is two months older than Cole, for a walk and picnic at a park. Ryan and H. had a lot of fun running around and playing in the warm weather, and we enjoyed the sunshine as well.

We have discovered that Cole doesn’t like the grass. Every time we try to put him on it, he cries, and gets a really freaked out look on his face. So I have resorted to putting him in a cardboard box, so he can be outside too. He won’t crawl off of it.

Today he sat in his box, while Ryan played, and I went in and out of the house, doing laundry. I managed to snap this picture of him in the box- 🙂

A few minutes later it dawned on me that I could put his exerciser out, and he really liked that. I heard Ryan singing to him, after Cole had been outside for about 10 minutes, and I walked by the door and saw this:

That really touched my heart. Sometimes it seems like all I do all day is tell Ryan, “no,” and “be nice to Cole.” It was nice to see that Ryan can be sweet to Cole as well, and makes me wonder how many other tender moments like this I have missed seeing.

In other news, we are really busy, trying to figure out what kind of car we want, and then we have to narrow it down and go do some test drives.

We finally got our taxes done yesterday (doing a happy dance,) AND we get a pretty good refund back. (doing another happy dance.) BUT now we will probably end up spending it on the replacement car- (no more happy dances.)

I also have a lot of work, from my job that I am trying to organize, so if I don’t blog that much this week, that is why, or else I am trying to enjoy the nice weather while it lasts.

Activities Cole Family & Friends Parenting Ryan Work

Vacation (again) / Open House / Work

Post author By A Mama's Blog
Post date March 12, 2007
3 Comments on Vacation (again) / Open House / Work

Joe is on vacation again, having to use up some time before he looses it. I don’t know how we missed all these days- it sure would have been nice to have had some extra time after Cole was born, but it is a nice and surprising break.

If I don’t get to blog much this week, that is why. 🙂After having a few rough nights with Cole, Joe took Ryan out this morning, and Cole and I took a long nap. He has gotten 4 front teeth this weekend, and has been miserable. He slept about 3 hours total yesterday, so he is just wiped out! He had a fever this morning, but just woke up from a nap, and seems like he is feeling better, so I hope tonight is better.

We all slept in on Sunday. We almost went to the zoo, and after asking Ryan what he wanted to do, he kept saying he wanted to go see Grandma (Joe’s mom). We aim to please, so we went out there for lunch, but Grandma wasn’t home. Grandpa was, and while Ryan was eating lunch, he kept looking out the window to see if she was coming home.

After lunch, Ryan and Grandpa, went outside and started messing around- Grandpa let Ryan sit in his truck and “drive,” so Joe and I took Cole on a long walk on a walking trail.

When we got back, Cole had fallen asleep, and Ryan was crashed out on the couch, so we hung out for a while. Grandma came home, so Ryan got to see her, and sit on her lap. Then we went and got pizza. It was a fun and relaxing day.

I like this “vacation at home,” it is fun not to have to be in the regular routine. I read in the paper that a local restaurant that we like is having a free entree night, so we are going to go get some yummy free noodle / rice bowls tonight. Can’t beat that!

We do have to do our taxes this week, but with Turbo Tax, we are optimistic it won’t be too “taxing” (pardon the pun), and then we are going to do some work on seeing what kind of mortgage we qualify for, etc.

We have needed a bigger place since Ryan was born, but for various reasons (maybe a future post?) we have stuck around in our current place- but now are getting really serious about moving.

We went to a few open houses on Saturday in a neighborhood we are now 99% sure we want to live in, and there was a house that we fell in love with. It would be ideal for us, so we are going to finish our taxes and then proceed with seeing if this will work out.

We want to keep our current house (it is a duplex) for retirement income, so it gets kind of intimidating thinking about having two mortgages, but we have done some work with paying down the mortgage over the last few years, so we have been working towards this, but it is exciting, fun, and a little nerve-wracking to finally be at this point.

We don’t want to get to excited yet, but it is nice to know that we have at least decided on a neighborhood, and if this house we like sells, there will be another one. We are in a good position in that we don’t have to sell our house- we can just sit and wait for something that we really want, and then go for it. It seems like it always works out this way though- when you aren’t totally ready, that is when you find something you like, so all we can do is just go from here.

Finally, after not having an outside (paying) job since February 2005, I start my first day tomorrow, at a very, very, part time job. It is bookkeeping for a mom that just moved back to our area who has her own sling / baby carrier business. It will be a few hours, every other week for now, but that is just perfect for me. It is very flexible so that is big plus, and I will be able to come in whenever it works for me, including weekends, so this is a great chance for me to get some mental stimulation, (not that the boys don’t stimulate me, but I mean some business stimulation), take a small step back into the working world, while still being able to keep the ideals that are very important to Joe and I with raising our children.

Joe will be able to stay with the boys if I go in on the weekends, or I can leave them for the few hours with their Grandma. I am excited, and eventually I would like to continue to build my bookkeeping business, but for now, this is a step in that direction.

Activities Cole Family & Friends Ryan

Meeting Great-Grandma

We went over to my dad’s house for dinner on Saturday night, mainly because my grandmother- Ryan & Cole’s great-grandmother- is visiting from out of town for a few weeks. She is the only great-grandmother the boys have, so she is VERY special.

She had never met Cole, so it was nice for her to be able to see him. Unfortunately, he was a total mama’s boy all night and only wanted me to hold him. Grandma did get to hold him for about 5 seconds, before he started crying, at least she got to hold him.

My dad bought an out-door fire pit, and had a fire in it, under his covered patio. It was raining, so Ryan bundled up with his older cousin under some blankets and watched the fire, and then they got down to the business of roasting marshmallows.

I was inside the entire night with Cole, but I heard from Joe that his cousin, (who is 13), would roast her marshmallows, catch it on fire, yell, “AHH!”, and then blow out the fire on her marshmallows.

Ryan watched a few times and then proceeded to do exactly the same thing, including the “AHH,” yell. Here is a picture of Ryan his cousin took, with his marshmallow success (he is pretty proud of himself.)

It was great to see, and have Cole meet Grandma. We are planning a trip to her place this summer-she has a beach house on some water, so it will be wonderful to see her then, and have her be able to spend some time with Ryan and Cole.

Activities Cole Family & Friends Ryan

Weekend Activities

The last two weekends, we have been able to do some fun family activities.

Last weekend, there was a model train show that we took the boys to. Ryan loves trains, so this was a big hit for him. My dad, and Joe’s dad went with us, and it was really neat to have both grandpa’s there. As expected, Ryan was thrilled with the countless model train exhibits, and there were even a few that had Thomas! Double bonus!

The big surprise was Cole- he absolutely loved the trains, whistles, and the noises. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do- he usually doesn’t like loud noises or a lot of people, but this was the exception. Every time he would hear a train whistle, he would clap his hands, start to laugh, and kick his legs. I thought one train engineer in the family was enough, but if this was any indication, I think we will have two on our hands.

Here are a couple of pictures- Ryan really was having a good time- he just gets so serious sometimes when he sees the camera out. And no, that isn’t Darth Vader with us- I have my dad’s face blacked out in one of the pictures, because I am not sure how he would feel about having his picture on the Internet.

Then last Friday, I got to meet one of my really good friends, that I don’t get to see very much, for lunch at a local mall. It was really nice to visit and catch up, and the boys did really well. Ryan was pretty shy around her, and Cole let her hold him, and at one point he fell asleep, and I handed him over to her, and he slept for a good 15 minutes in her arms. It kind of felt like I was in a time-warp, because she came to visit Ryan in the hospital after he was born, and now she was holding Cole who is 9 months old, and the “little” baby she came to visit back then, is 3 now! It just made me wonder where the time has gone.

Then on Saturday, we went to butterfly / bug museum. We had always heard really good things about it, but we have never been there. Ryan instantly loved the “Nemo” fish tank- there is a tank there with all the fish from “Finding Nemo.” He was so excited to see Nemo and Dory. Cole had a blast too, seeing the fish swim by. He is in a major phase where he wants to pound on anything and everything as hard as he can, so it was a challenge to keep him from beating the fish tank, but we managed. 🙂

We saw the butterflies, and it was really neat. They are in a seperate climate controlled room with lots of tropical plants and flowers, and they get to just fly around free. Here are two shots I got of some butterflys before they flew off.

Here is a picture of a hibiscus that I loved:

Ryan started to get bored in the butterfly exhibit, and Cole did great, just sitting in his little stroller, looking around at the fluttering butterflies, and grabbing his toes. His hair started to curl up, due to the humidity in the room and it was really cute. Here is a picture of him:

Ryan was set on pushing Cole the entire time in the stroller- I guess it was just his size. Neither one liked the bug display, and I didn’t either; especially the cockroaches- yuck!

Ryan informed us he was bored, so we went back to look at the Nemo tank one more time, and Ryan asked us, “where is the shark?’ When we told him there wasn’t a shark, he kept saying, “I need to see the shark.” Maybe we will have to upgrade to an aquarium next time.

On Sunday we had some errands, and household stuff to do, but we had time to go fly a kite. There was a light wind, so we went to Joe’s parent’s house, who have some acreage, and tried to fly the kite. It was one that was just around, and it was terrible. We would get it up in the air, and it would nose dive. Ryan was bored again, but decided to push Cole in the stroller all around the field again. Finally, we managed to get the kite airborne for about 2 minutes (okay, confession time…Joe managed to get it airborne, but I tossed it up for him.), and the boys loved seeing it fly. As soon as it started to nose dive, Ryan would let out the loudest scream he could, just to be goofy. After about half an hour, of trying to get that silly kite to fly- we gave up, and Joe and I both raced Ryan a few times, until he decided every few feet, he would stop, drop, and roll around in the mud! Fun for him- not so fun for Mom, who has to clean his shoes and clothes.

We had a nice time being together as a family, and I hope as Ryan and Cole get bigger, they won’t remember so much what we did or didn’t do, but remember that we were together and always managed to have fun- even if that means I have to spend the next two days cleaning the mud off Ryan’s clothes!