Bryson's Words

Here is a video of things that Bryson says, but I forgot to have him say some words like, "all gone", "thanks you" & the most common one lately "mine".

18 Months!

Today Bryson turns 18 months old. He really has grown up, he is such a little boy and not a baby anymore. He is talking a lot more which is helpful, but yet he still manages to squeal and scream plenty, especially when Megan is "playing" with him.
Bryson has also started nursery! I think the best part of turning 18 months old. We started him a couple of weeks ago and the first week was long and didn't do so well, lots of crying, and I had to stay with him most of the day. Week two was a lot better, Josh took him instead of me and he stayed in there the whole time! He is getting a lot better with it and hopefully will continue to stay in nursery!
Yesterday I also started putting Bryson in the corner. I have been just having him sit on my lap for time outs, but I upgraded him to the corner. I really didn't think that he would have stayed in the corner, but I think that he has seen Megan sit in the corner enough that he has it down. You should have seen his face when I first put him in the corner, he was just shocked, but yet it hasn't kept him out of the corner. I'm hoping that maybe he will stop hitting Megan and throwing his food if I sit him in the corner enough. But it is so cute when he gets out and he says sorry by giving a hug, at least I know that he understands.

Things that we love about Bryson:

*His adorable laugh
*His big blue eyes, which everyone comments on.
*He loves playing peek a boo and getting scared, and we love hiding and scaring him, he will get scared and then start laughing.
*He is usually a good eater (minus the throwing food when he is done) and he LOVES to eat meat, Daddy's little boy!
*He always wants to be with Megan and do what she is doing, which of course doesn't always make Megan happy.
*He is so cute when he tries to sing.
*His kisses

We love our little boy!

Strawberry Delight

This is what we did with all of our yummy STRAWBERRIES!

Fruit Salad

Nectarines

Grapes

Strawberries

Fruit Pizza

CRUST:
1/3 cup margarine
1/3 cup shortening
2 cups flour
1 egg
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon Baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
Dash of slat
To MAKE:
Beat margarine & shortening well. Add 1/2 of the flour and then the rest of the ingredients, then slowly add the rest of the flour. Divide into 2 balls, cover and chill for 3 hours. After chilled spread dough on round cooking pan (I used my cookie sheet since I didn't have a round pan) and bake at 375 degrees for 7-8 minutes. Let cool completely.
SPREAD:
2 cups cool whip
4 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup powdered sugar
TO MAKE:
Soften cream cheese, add powder sugar and beat till smooth. Fold in cool whip and spread over cooled crust, top with your choice of fruit. (I used our strawberries, but I have also used, kiwi, banana, & blueberries)

FREEZER JAM

We made 4 batches of jam, but dumped one down the drain since it didn't set right and after we researched why, we found that the pectin that we had just bought had expired 2 years ago. Then 2 more batches didn't set and we realized that that pectin had expired 1 year ago. So we took them back and got our money back, but we decided to keep those 2 batches instead of waste them, so if anything happens to us and we all get sick, it's from the bad pectin that we bought.

Ingredients:

1 pouch of CERTO pectin
2 cups crushed strawberries
4 cups sugar
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
To Make:
Follow directions found in CERTO box!

The best freezer jam!

We also froze some of the strawberries for smoothies later, and are still using some for fruit salads and strawberry shortcake! Yummy!!

Plan E

Plan A: Apply to dental school.
Plan B: Move to California, work in dental office and apply to dental school.
Plan C: Move to Kentucky, work in dental office and apply to dental school.
Plan D: Buy a home in Kentucky and apply to dental school.

Josh is still on the "Waiting List" to get into school this year (which starts July 1st) but he had a meeting with two of the women in charge at the dental school, and it is not looking good. They told him to not re-apply until after July 1st just in case a spot opens up. So we are still crossing our fingers and saying our prayers that someone will drop out so that a spot will open up for him. But if not...
PLAN E: Apply for the Masters program (most likely Biology) and start that in the fall, and reapply to just the University of Louisville.
After completing a year in his Masters and IF he doesn't get in AGAIN (which I don't see why he hasn't gotten in by now, he is perfect for the job, he has the passion, the commitment, & determination to do it. Plus he is smart and just has amazing hand skills.) then...
Plan F: Apply to a ton of schools with fresh grades to show them what a great student he is.
But we are stilling hoping Plan D will work. So please keep him in your prayers, hey and you could even send a nice letter to the school in his behalf of what a wonderful guy he is and how lucky they would be to have him in his school.
This really has been a very long and hard process for us, especially for Josh, and we really appreciate your love and support through it all. Thanks!

All Gone

Megan has been wanting her hair cut for the longest time, but I thought that it would be fun to grow it out long enough to donate to Locks of Love. But every time we walked into Wal-Mart and saw the salon there she asked to get her hair cut. So this morning I decided to let her get it cut. She has had a ton of snarls since it has become more humid, and her hair wasn't growing fast enough so that she would have enough to donte. So long story short, one of the sisters in our Branch cuts hair and came over to our house to cut it during Bryson's nap (bonus!), I let Megan tell her how short she wanted it and so here are the cute pictures...

BEFORE

AFTER

Megan LOVES it! She was so excited for Bryson to see it when he woke up from his nap. Bryson keeps looking at her funny. Now we will see what Daddy says!

STRAWBERRIES

Before I get started I just wanted to share what Megan had said about this picture, she said that "Mommy you look silly, I look pretty, Bryson looks pretty, and Daddy looks silly." Now on to our day!

Saturday we went up to Huber Farms in Indiana and picked yummy strawberries. We went on the perfect day since it was overcast, it still was hot and humid, but we didn't have the sun beating down on us.

Here is our day of picking strawberries...

PICKING

There were so many good strawberries to pick that we just couldn't stop. Megan was doing really well at picking good ones, she did like to get little ones, she said that they were for Bryson. Bryson loved to pick up the straw and throw it, pick the leaves off the plants and then finally realized what the little red things were they we were picking...

so he ate it! ALL of it! He started dry heaving after eating it, after that we made sure we gave him the strawberries with the stems off.

(Video of us picking strawberries)

We all enjoyed EATING the strawberries, but only a couple. I told Megan before we got there that she could only eat 1 strawberry while we were picking them, and told her that if she ate 2 it would be stealing. She did good not eating them out in the field but on the ride back Josh started eating them since they were SO good, and she had to join in.
PLAYING AROUND

After picking strawberries we walked around the farm, bought some yummy strawberry bread & fed the coy fish. Bryson also loved the talking tree.

(video of feeding the coy)

One last picture...

I love this one, we gave Bryson this strawberry on the tractor ride back to the store and he just held on to it, he did not want to eat it. I still don't know where it went if he eventually ate it or if he threw it somewhere, but I love how he is so carefully holding it in his hand. He was probably sick of eating them since he ate so many while we were picking them.

Frustrated

I don't know what to do. Megan has been potty trained for 2 1/2 years now and has now started to wet her pants again ever since school got out. She will usually have an accident here and there when there has been a change in her life but usually only once or twice, but this has been 2 weeks now and I am going crazy and I don't know what to do. I tell her that if she runs out of clean undies then she has to wear diapers, which scares her, since she is a "big girl." I have even put her in a diaper before when we ran out and she cried and cried & took the diaper off once I wasn't looking, but yet it didn't solve the problem. We make sure that she potties before we leave anywhere, and when we see her drop to the floor (which means she has to go) we ask if she needs to go and she will say "no" and this will go on until she actually admits that she needs to go or wets her pants. What am I suppose to do? I am losing my patients with her and I feel like I have been yelling at her a ton lately. Which I know probably doesn't help the situation, but how do you be kind, loving and supportive to a 4 1/2 year old who KNOWS that they need to go to the bathroom but just doesn't want to until it is too late? I am out of ideas, needed to vent and hoping for some advice... have any?

Growing

I am so proud of my growing 'green thumb'! Here is what my plants looked like before I planted them in the garden...
And here they are now!! Okay, so I do have to confess that the tomatoes did not grow this much...
since we bought this tomatoe plant since our little one will continue growing and won't be ready till the fall (hopefully), But I was surprised to see that we already have 3 little tomatoes growing.
This is my pumpkins that I did start growing from seed, they are so big now, but are only getting bigger!
Here is one of the watermelon plants that really has a funny story behind it... my dear friend who's garden I am growing my plants in, was trying to be sweet and was fertilizing the garden since the guy at the nursery said to do so to help them grow better, she was doing it around her plants and thought that she would do it around my plants too... well it ended up killing all the watermelon, so she felt so bad that she went out and bought new plants to replace the ones that she killed, but she said that my plants looked good before they died, and I'm just glad that I didn't kill them, which makes my 'green thumb' seem a little better!
Here are all the pepper plants, we ended up buying them all (red, green & yellow) for the same reason as the tomatoes, they won't be ready till the fall (unless I kill them before that).

And last... here is the corn, which I can take NO credit for. My friend planted some for me and I just have to weed it, so only 1/2 of one of those rows are mine.

I am so proud!

Cicada, what's that?

Something that I have realized living in Kentucky is that there are a TON of bugs, and this year I got introduced to another bug that only comes out every 17 years, a cicada, so I am glad that this will be the only year with them, but really these bugs are loud and annoying. I took a video so you could hear the sound from our back porch. Josh says that he can even hear them driving, with the music on.

The only good news is that they are only out for 3-4 weeks while they mate and then they go away, check out this news clip if you want to see them and learn more about them. I don't think that I will miss these bugs. I think one was stuck on the car door and flew out at me when I opened it to get Bryson out. I freaked out and the kids thought that it was funny. I hate bugs, so on a better note, the bug people just called and said that they are coming to spray tomorrow, just in time!

One Busy Day

Saturday was a busy day for us with LOTS of fun things going on, we first went to our Primary Camp out Activity. There was a lot of fun things for the kids to do... Story telling, target shooting, smores, fire building (with pretzels), sleeping bag races, singing camp songs, and making rock necklaces.Next we were off to a Ashlynn's 2nd birthday party where the kids had a lot of fun slipping sliding, eating watermelon, cake & ice cream, and swinging. At first no one would go down the slipping slide, Megan would try it out a couple of times but wouldn't really slide, but they all picked it up pretty quick.

Ashlynn ^

Here is a video of Megan getting pushed in the swing, she LOVED it!

After we came home for a short nap we were out again for the Louisville Bats game (with Josh's work) where they ended up winning 9 to 3. The weather was a little warm and muggy, but over all pretty good. They for casted it to rain on and off through out the day, but we didn't have a drop.

Megan also tried some more cotton candy since her friends bought some and she decided that she liked it. They even pretended to put it on like make up, silly girls. But the evening ended with a beautiful sunset over the bridge, 2 tired kids (who ended up sleeping in till 9:30 the next morning! The best part!) and one fun filled day!