roofless!

And it begins!  The roof is officially gone.  (And tonight a crazy storm went through.  Amazingly--thanks to the good tarping job by Dan, Mike and Dad--no rain came in!)

When cousin Aidan comes to town...

My sister's son Aidan is here visiting from Houston.  Because of our remodeling, the kids and I have been staying at my Mom and Dad's this week.  Nedy is not much missing home, what with the constant snacks, constant late bed times, and, most notably, the constant companionship of her much adored cousin Aidan.  They are soooooo cute together. 

See what I mean?  Cuteness.

"Mehzuh, mehzuh..."

"2 inches 80 degees twenty."

"Mehzuh all day yong..."

 

A boy and his Baba's tape measure.  It's a beautiful thing.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strawberry picking...the painting.

In mid-June, on Kam's 2nd birthday (blog post still coming on that), we started our day strawberry picking with Nana, Papa, and a smattering of cousins at Polzen's.  I grew up strawberry picking every summer--good memories!  As we all violated the "stay in your assigned row" farm rule, Dan noticed a woman off to the side of the field painting our chaos.  Turns out she was painting for an upcoming art competition, but we asked for her number to see if we could buy the painting after the show.  

And here it is!  I have just the place planned for it.  (Now if that second story could just magically appear...)

My little readers.

The girl just loooooves frogs.

We went to Cedar Creek Park in Cedarburg yesterday for our church picnic.  In the midst of a carnival-like atmosphere of games, prizes, water balloons, wild and crazy kids and a giant castle-like bouncy house, my little girl was drawn to the little green creatures in the creek.  She is so kind and gentle with slimy creatures and crawly bugs of all sorts...well, except centipedes because, "...it's just they have so many legs they're creepy!!"  I totally agree.

 

  

Green Beans GOOOOOO!!!!

We have lengthy commutes in our house to Nana's or Grandma's each day, so we have lots of contained quiet time to chat.  We chat about this and that, play games like "I'm thinking of an animal...", eat Annie's rabbit cookies, look for wildlife, call out trucks and trains, comment on people who ride motorcycles in shorts/tank tops/no helmet (even Kammy says, "No hehmut!  Not safe, dat guy!"), etc.  It's a full-on Chatfest.  Lately, Kam has been participating often what with his yelling out, "Mama!  Yook der big twuck!  Guy in der dwive!" or "I sink amnal...yong neck...giraffe!...yong neck..." (he always gives away the answer in his description), or his random announcements that he sees goats, brown ones, much to his sister's irritation because calling out goats when there are no goats is totally against the four-and-a-half year old code of ethics.  Ahem.

So Kam is getting into learning his colors, though he has the whole "too cool for school" attitude at times that results in him purposefully reporting a red marker as yellow, all with a twinkle in his eyes and dimples in full pop.  (Again, much to sister's annoyance.  Because the marker is red and calling it yellow on purpose, well, "makes no sense at all.")  Anyway, so Kammy's latest is traffic light monitoring.  Just as Nedy did at his age, he eagerly awaits traffic lights for the sheer surprise of their status as we roll up.  If they're red, he's quick to instruct me, "Yight RED!  Mama, means STOP!!"  And so we sit at the light, Kammy tapping his hand on his shorts saying, "Wait foeyit...wait foeyit..." until the light changes to green and he excitedly announces, "GREEN BEANS GOOOOOOOOOO!"  So, I guess when we started talking about green lights and I told him, "green means go", he sort of morphed it into vegetables.  (I wish he's morph his taste buds toward vegetables, but that's another post.)