Date Night

The Waukesha ward has an activity every month! In August, they had a night out for all the adults. But it wasn't just any night out - it was a fancy dinner where you dressed up and we were able to choose a steak or chicken dinner. There was an incredible cheese spread as we arrived (of course we are in Wisconsin so the cheese had to be good) and these "prom" pictures taken. They had dinner and dancing but we didn't quite make it to the dancing part. We dropped off the kids at someone's home for the youth to babysit. We got incredible babysitters but when I called them after dinner, Dilan was crying so hard I could barely hear them over the phone. She was so tired and was having a hard time with anyone else putting her to sleep, imagine that? She has been my difficult sleeper from the beginning. But David did shed light on the positive side that we got 90 mintues for our date night and we'll take it. The food was delicious, the atmosphere wonderful and we were able to meet more people in our ward and socialize. The next ward activity in the month of September is a 5K on Labor day so be looking for us to be running that one! :)

4K Orientation/Open House

Drew starts preschool tomorrow! We are probably the last school district in the country to start but that's okay, it helped drag out our summer long especially because so much of it included moving and getting our house situated. Drew will attend 4K every day from 12:40-3:20. The good part is that we will be able to give Dilan her nap time in the morning and spend time together before he goes to school. We really like the school he is attending. He already talks about his teacher, Ms. Michelle, and Drew will be in a class of 19 students with 2 teachers. He already chose his Thomas backpack (Popo gave him some years ago) to take to school with him. Each time we have gone to this school for orientation or the open house, Drew just plays and plays. He is so ready to go! Here are the pictures I took of his classroom the night of the open house. They already have his name up on the wall and the teacher already knows him too.

Scooting

Dilan is full-on scooting now. She is only 6 months old! She is on the verge of crawling I'm sure. She is also working on sitting up by herself which she can do for the most part but not all the way just yet. While I was away this weekend (Las Vegas for my sister's bachelorette weekend), David proceeded to tell me she was saying, "Da, da," which she is loud and clear. Maybe we truly have a mama's boy and daddy's girl! Here's a video of her scooting - she loves to get close to Beva so in this video it was only appropriate that Beva was her motivation.

Wisconsin State Fair

We went to the Wisconsin State Fair on Saturday. We ate brats (yummy!) and had the traditional cream puffs they serve up there. We also were able to get flavored milk for a quarter (including tax!). They served chocolate, strawberry, cherry vanilla, root beer (tastes like a rootbeer float) and banana (a new flavor this year). Of course, Drew had the chocolate milk with some pizza. It was all delicious fair food and it was a nice day to be there. David even found a new pair of sunglasses for $10! Drew wanted to ride the skyrider which was like a ski lift that went from one side of the fairgrounds to the other. He rode once with David and once with me. It did get hot in the afternoon and eventually we had to take Dilan out of the stroller and she immediately fell sleep in my arms and then Drew was asking to take a nap so we eventually had to part for home. But it was fun and something we wanted to do here. Unfortunately for the Milwaukee mayor, that same night while he was at the fair, he got attacked by someone with a metal pipe so I'm not sure he had as much fun as we did that day.

Pewaukee Lake

Beach time! I have been wanting to take Drew to this beach since we first moved here. David and I were driving along (the many miles we drove searching for housing) and came upon this really neat beachfront on Pewaukee Lake. We loved it! So, Drew, Dilan and I finally got the chance to go on a perfect weather day with some new friends - Rachel and Haley. Drew and Haley dug in the sand and made a river. They played so well and it felt like there was no end in sight to the summer. Mind you, school doesn't start here until Sept. 1 so we are making the most of it!

Houston Summer Trip

The kids and I went home to Houston for two full weeks this summer. First, we got to see my dad and my grandmother. I saw my grandmother's new house she is living in since my grandfather, Pop, died in January and my dad took me to Pop's grave so I could see it for the first time (since I couldn't come home for his funeral because I was two weeks until my due date with Dilan). My dad and Drew went fishing together with live worms which he had never done before!
Then, we spent the weekend with David's mom and we were able to see David's older sister, Lisa, and her kids. Drew had a great time with his cousins and they each got to meet Dilan (Lisa had come for Dilan's blessing). It was very sweet how much interest they had in her and how much they wanted to hold her. I was able to attend and help host my sister's bridal shower while my sweet mother-in-law watched Dilan and Drew. She did great with them and then we were also able to attend church with her while we were home.
The next week we spent at my mom's house in Lake Jackson where my brother and his family came for the weekend. I also got to see my good friend, Laura E., who is pregnant with twins! This included eating at Chick-Fil-A which is heavenly because we don't have those up here anymore (compared to living in Peachtree City where Chick-Fil-A started and we would frequent with the Challis' quite a bit!). While with my mom, we swam and played and Drew was so attached to Lacey. We also spent a day at my brother's house where we swam at their pool and Drew attended Lacey's swim lesson with her. We got to spend a day at the beach with my mom and Sam (her hubby) too.
The last few days we spent at my sister's house hanging out and talking wedding stuff of course. I was also able to go to a dress fitting of hers. We did so much and saw so much family and it was a wonderful trip!

T-ball from PawDee

PawDee (Kinsey's dad) gave Drew a t-ball set for his birthday this year. In fact, I told my dad to send it to us once we moved so we wouldn't have to move one more thing and Drew could get it and actually play with it up here. So, we got this package in the mail and Drew opened it up. Immediately, he wanted to play with it. So, we went outside and David did some teaching and Drew was all over it. He got the biggest kick out of running the bases (maybe he'll be a runner like his dad). He had so much fun, the next day he was asking to do it again once David got home. THANKS so much, PawDee!!!
Also, on a side note, Drew grabbed the Lightening McQueen pillow PawDee gave him and said, "I got this from PawDee!" I don't know any other kid that literally remembers (or wants to know and asks regularly) who gave him what. He'll tell you who gave him any item and if he asks you who gave it to him and you say the wrong answer, he'll correct you and tell you. And then after he says who gave it to him, he out loud will say, "Thanks, PawDee!" like the person can hear him. We have a very grateful and fortunate little boy.

6 months

Dilan is 6 months old! We can't believe she is half way through her first year already. She is almost sitting up - she'll sit up for some time and then once she leans to get a toy, she falls. So, she isn't quite there yet but she's working on it. She loves fruits and not so much on eating her veggies. In fact, we have a spitter! Yes, she spits it at me and all over I must say if she doesn't like it or want it. She doesn't like squash much, but her favorite fruit has to be prunes and she loves bananas too. Dilan went to the doctor to get her check-up and she is 26.5 inches in length (75th %tile), and 16lbs 7 oz (55%tile). This is a major improvement from her check-up at 4 months. She made up a lot of ground and is doing great on eating. She actually slept through the night for all of last week! We are hoping this is not just a phase so we'll see. She is predominately formula-fed now because I am not producing any more milk - I still nurse her about 3x/day but she never gets enough to eat so we move onto the bottle and she is just happier that way. She laughs and giggles and loves to watch Drew and Beva especially whatever they are doing and wherever they go. We love this little girl - she keeps us smiling every single day!

Magic Jack

Have you heard of Magic Jack? We saw a commercial advertising it while we were setting up utilities in our new place. It seemed to0 good to be true but it's not! It really does what it says and it works. Instead of getting a home phone line, you buy Magic Jack for $40. We bought ours at Best Buy (when we did the guy there said he had heard really good things about it). You plug it into your computer (USB drive) and plug your home phone into it and you have a land line (they assign you your number). You pay the one-time fee of $40 for the device and the first full year of home phone service. After one year, you just pay $19.95 each year after that. So, no phone bills, taxes, fees and it even has call waiting, caller ID, and it takes messages for you and sends them to your email. The only "catch" is that you have to have your computer on for it to work and if you are like us, our computer is on all day. Plus, we have our cell phone too but you can call local and long distance in the U.S. and Canada and it's all included with your home phone service. It's crazy how much money we are going to save, and I don't have to worry about dropping calls on my cell phone or having enough minutes or hearing that delay sometimes cell phone service gives you. Anyway, we are big fans now of Magic Jack so we thought we'd share some information about it! :)

July in Pewaukee

The month of July was spent in a temporary apartment in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. It is the town just north of Waukesha. The apartment was nice enough but obviously after five weeks of having barely anything that was actually ours, we were happy to move into our current home and get all of our stuff back. The month of July was spent acclimating to our surroundings and looking for a permanent place to live up here. Home-hunting was stressful but luckily with David's hard work calling people who had their home listed on a buy owner site but couldn't sell their home, we landed on someone who was willing to rent theirs out instead of going month after month with it sitting there. Fortunately, we secured the house before I left with the kids for Houston. We went to Houston for two full weeks because experience tells me I go crazy in temporary housing. Also, July meant Dilan turned 5 months old and began eating vegetables and fruits as well. We began attending playgroup at the park too. Here are some pictures I took of the kids while we were in the apartment. More pictures to come on our trip home to Houston...

July 4th Fireworks

We were invited to a family's home (the Boden's) for dinner on July 4th and to go and see the Waukesha fireworks together along with the Smiths. It was great getting to know two families in the ward so soon and have someone show us how to see the fireworks in our new small town. Drew loved wrapping up in a blanket and rolling down the hill as you can see below. He also enjoyed making homemade ice cream which was Heather's idea. She brought all the ingredients, combined them in a bag with ice and you had to just keep squeezing it to make the ice cream. It was very tasty and cold on your hands (hence the gloves) and it was a lot of fun!

July 4th Picnic at the Park

We have moved into a ward with an amazing activities chairperson. Now, I have done this calling before and it is quite challenging. You can't possibly plan enough activities on such a small budget but apparently this ward believes in having an activity each month even if it comes out of people's own pockets. It is quite the commitment they make here. So, we moved in the week before the 4th of July and there was a picnic they had planned at a park on that day. We ate burgers, hot dogs and of course they had BRATS and it was delicious. Then, the younger kids had a kick ball game set up (which David helped run) and Drew was able to play. He had a great time learning the game, learning to "pitch", kick and run the bases. Good times.

On to Indiana!

We drove to Indianapolis, Indiana for our next leg of our trip. I insisted that we visit the Indianapolis 500 even though David gave me grief about it. He reminded me that we do not follow race car driving but I think you need to see the most popular sites of each city and why not? So, we were off to the track! This had to be the neatest thing we did really - we got an actual track tour where they loaded us on a bus and they drove us around the track telling us the history of it it, etc., and the track tour was only $3 too! We opted to not tour the museum because really what do I care about cars and racing in a museum-type manner??? Anyway, we visited the gift shop (of course) and then went on our way. On the way to the car, David admitted that it was really neat to see and that the tour was great. He then proceeded to make a statement that he may complain about my adventures but once he's done them, he's usually glad about it. So, at least he can admit it when he is wrong! :)

on the bus tour of the actual Indi 500 track

The brick of the original track that was laid

the stands where people watch

the first turn

boarding the bus

outside the front of the museum and gift shop

"Racing Capital of the world"