The Shakes

This morning while eating breakfast, Macie started doing a little shimmy dance. Addie thought that it was funny and decided to try it herself. She then thought that it was even funnier and did between every bite. Luckily, it lasted long enough for me to grab the camera. Enjoy!

(At the very end of the movie Addie starts hitting her head. Geoff taught her this trick a while back. When he says "oh man" she hits her head. To cute)

Owies Galore

Our last week and a half have been full of mishaps. It seems to have hit everyone in the family. Let's start at the beginning.
Last Wednesday I was going up the stairs with some new flip flops on and they are very slippery, I fell with Addie in my arms. Once down, I couldn't stop myself from continuing. My shoe just kept slipping from step to step. I couldn't use my arms because I was trying to hold Addie so she didn't get hurt. By the time I was able to stop, I was half way down the steps and I now have a MASSIVE bruise to show for it. It starts on the front of leg above my knee and continues to the back of my thigh all the way to my rear end. And it is still there almost 2 weeks later.
The next day, while making dinner, I took a pan out of the oven and burned my arm. Good. It blistered, scabbed over, and I now have a nice scar to show for it.
On Saturday, Geoff went to play basketball at the church and came home with a sprained ankle. Nice.
On Monday we met Geoff at the park by the school for lunch. We show up and the park is under construction. (You could still play on the park, just all of the grass around it was under construction.) Geoff gets Macie out of the car and tells her to go to the sidewalk. She went a little further than the sidewalk and ended up falling in a pipe. Luckily it was just big enough to fit her leg, she got a few nice scrapes and bruises from it though. Shortly after arriving, the tractors started working. Macie thought that they were noisy and wouldn't do anything but plug her ears. We finally convinced her to go down some slides. She did, and then wanted to go on the swings. Geoff gets her going and right when she at the highest point, she decides that it is too noisy and plugs her ears. This resulted in a nice face plant. We were expecting the worst, but she jumped up and first thing she did was plug her ears. She didn't even shed a tear. Funny and shocking all at the same time. We decided at that point that it was time to just leave. We got home and Macie went to play with the neighbor. On our way down to their house, she fell and skinned her knee pretty good.
The next day she was at same neighbor's house and face planted it on the ground. This resulted in a scraped nose, a scrape above her eye, and the other knee getting a nice scrape on it as well.
Let's just say that she looks a little abused.
On Wednesday Addie had her 1 year doctor appt, where she received 4 shots. She was not happy.
On Friday she had to get her blood drawn. (In Ohio when your child turns 1 they have to get their blood drawn to make sure that their lead levels are ok because of how old the homes are). Let's just say that it was a painful experience and that she has veins like me. (not good) We were there for 1 hour. 50 minutes of which was trying to get her blood drawn. They (the 3 nurses) put the tourniquet on both arms and decided that they had found a vein that would work, instead, they blew the vein (poked through the whole vein so blood was leaking into her arm instead of the needle). nice. She was screaming by this point and we still had yet to get anything. They put the tourniquet on both arms again looking for another vein that would work and found nothing. They then tried putting the tourniquet at her wrists and looking in her hands, again nothing. The final decision was to prick her finger and get as much out of it as possible. The poor thing was exhausted by the end of this and was almost falling asleep in my arms. It was not fun.
To top it all off, Addie gets to start Physical Therapy on Monday. (She has to go to this because she is one and is not crawling or walking yet). Wish us luck!

Deer

So the past few weeks when leaving for church or coming home from church this is what we have seen in our front yard and across the street. It is a mom deer and her 2 babies. It is fun living in a place where this happens often. A few other things that we have seen in our neighborhood are a raccoon, a skunk (we smell these all of the time), and there are squirrels everywhere!!! It is fun and Macie really enjoys it!

Beach

Another thing while on this break was out to the beach!!!! It was soooo fun!!! We met the Jenkins out there and had a great time. Macie and Talmadge stayed busy playing in the sand and water while the dads chased them around. The moms just sat under the tents and talked, relaxed and took care of the babies. It was a great day!!Macie getting water for her sandcastle.Addie thinking she is a big girl playing in the sand.

Geoff and the girls making the sandcastle (which Macie destroyed before I could get a picture)

Macie and Talmadge playing in the sandMacie playing with a toy boat

Addie sitting with mom by the tent playing in the sandMacie and Addie playing in the water (Addie was not enjoying this)Addie mad that I put her in the water.

Pittsburgh, Day 2

ok, So sorry that we haven't updated in a while. I have been without internet for the week and we are FINALLY back up and running.

The 2nd day we were in Pittsburgh we went to the children's musuem. It was soooo fun!!! We have a boonshoft pass that gets us into a musuem or 2 basically everywhere we go, so we thought that we would take advantage. The Bjarnason's were with us and then we met up with some friends that were in Pittsburgh as well. It was nice because then Macie had a friend. Here are some pics to show you what we did there.

Going down this really cool slide. You went up to this room that was all slanted and disoriented and tried to get to the slide. It was wierd. It totally threw off your balance.Driving in the car.Crossing the rope walkway.Teeter-tottering with Talmadge. You could see through it and when you rocked back and forth it would make bubbles in the middle. They loved this!!

Playing in the water. They had a whole floor just for water play. It was sooo cool! The kids got soaked, but they loved it!
They had this whole floor set up so you could attach pipes to it and then would come up out of the floor through the pipes. It was so neat. What a cool idea. I am pretty sure that Talmadge soaked Geoff a couple of times while trying to put together a tower.This is Macie trying to cover her head from the water that was coming out of a tower.I think that this was probably the most entertaining part of the whole musuem (for us adults anyways). They had a stage with costumes, makeup and props that you could go on and put on a show. It was quite funny. Especially when Macie chose this outfit and came out dressed like this!!! She was loving every minute of it and kept running back and forth through the curtain.I love this picture because it looks like she is doing the catwalk. So cute!!!

Pittsburgh, Day 1

Another thing we did over this break was go to Pittsburgh. It was A LOT of fun!!! The first day we got there we headed straight to IKEA!! (Let's be honest, this is the real reason we were going, everything else was secondary.) While at Ikea, Macie got to play in the kid playzone. She thought that this was the best thing ever and now asks if every store we go to has a ball pit. After Ikea we headed to our hotel. (We went with some friends so we were sharing a hotel room that had an upstairs and a downstairs. It was way more fun this way because we could put the kids to bed and still play games!) Our hotel had an outdoor pool and it was a Beautiful day, so we took advantage, skipped naptime, and went swimming!!! It was sooo fun! The girls loved it and so did we.

This is the girls right before we left! Can you tell how excited they are!?Geoff and Addie swimmingMacie was having a blast, she just did not want her picture taken (like always!)Me and Addie, she was getting very tired and almost fell asleep 3 times before we got out of the pool.Here is Macie just lounging. She thought that she was pretty cool sitting in one of these chairs.

After swimming we went out for some dinner and then we were off to go explore the city of Pittsburgh. I had done what I thought to be a lot of research on the city, its attractions, the things that you should do when you go, etc. Apparently my research was not enough because we ended up having a few setbacks, but what is a vacation without those!? Right?! Ok, so we went to Mt. Washington, which has a trolley that goes up it and supposedly was one of the first in America. It was called the Duquesne Incline. So, we paid $4 per person each way to go up and down this thing, thinking that there was going to be a fun fountain and shopping at the top. After we had paid, gotten to the top and looked around, we couldn't find anything like that, so I asked someone if this was all there was to see (which was nothing) and she said that we were at the wrong one (apparently there are 2 of these). The other one is by all of the shopping and the really cool fountain and to make it even worse, it is only $2 roundtrip. AHHH!!! Oh well I guess. Live and Learn!!! At least we got a pretty view of Pittsburgh!! Right?!Here is the incline.Addie enjoying the view from inside the tram.Macie was a little scared at first, but it didn't take her long to warm up. She loved it and was very ahh struck by the whole thing.A family pic at the top!The way back down. This is how steep it was.

So, after this nice ride, we went to where the fountain and shopping were to walk around and see the cool fountain. The fountain is one that has lights and goes to music. It was so fun. Totally worth driving over there to see. Here are a few pics of us enjoying the music and water.This is the fountain!All Macie wanted to do was play in the puddles.Enjoying the water show.Addie and I looking at the water.The girls in a picture booth. Macie just wanted to push the buttons. Addie was all smiles for the camera though. We then went back to our hotel, put the girls to bed, and played some games!!

My Birthday

It was also my birthday on the 25th!!! Yes, I am old, I am 25!!! It was a good birthday. We celebrated by going out to dinner and having a couple of friends over for brownies and ice cream.
Macie and I blowing out the candles!!

Bird House

So Macie for the longest time has been asking me if we can build a birdhouse. I keep telling her that she has to wait for Geoff to help her. (Really though, I was hoping that she would just forget.) Anyways, I was at Joann's and found this little birdhouse for $1, so I bought it for her. She was SOOOO excited!!! She got to paint it and then go and hang it out on the tree. It was so fun to see how happy she was about this, it made it all totally worth it!! The whole crew!! Macie is showing me her birdhouse. Addie is grabbing the paintbrushes and trying to help out.
Macie and Geoff painting the bird house.
The finished birdhouse!
When the house was all done, she wanted to keep painting, so I went out and got a few pieces of scrap wood and let her go to town!! She loved it!! It is so fun that she is getting old enough to start enjoying some of these things.

Visitors

This past few weeks Geoff has been on summer break. It has been fun having him home and we have been busy doing a lot of things. The first week his parents came into town for a few days. It was fun having some family here and getting to do a few new things. We went on a boat ride while they were here. It took us up the river and gave us a lot of history of the area. It was fun and really neat to hear all of the things that used to happen here.This is Geoff's parents with the girls. I am really surprised that we actually got everybody looking and smiling!!!!Here is the boat that we went on. It was a beautiful day and a lot of fun!Here we are on the boat. There was a REALLY loud horn that kept going off and Macie did not like it one bit. We ended up spending most of our time inside the boat, where it wasn't so loud.This is the view of the city from the boat ride.