May oh my

May never fails to be the busiest month of the year.  It's hard to get back into blogging, and so easy to keep putting it off!

This month has been filled with wonderful little achievements.  Wally has started to feed himself with a spoon and fork.  It started with constant flinging and dropping, but each week he gets a little more food in his mouth.  It never fails though that he'll get an itch on his ear and try to scratch it with the yogurt-filled spoon. He's getting very bossy about his food - he'll grab the spoon out of my hand and not eat unless he is feeding himself.  Which results in many a meal like below:

Wally's also becoming quite the climber.  He's always loved sitting up on the window bench, but now he's figured out how to shimmy his way up there without help. He's very proud of himself when he can do this.

And he sits up there systematically checking the latches and handles.  This is one of the cutest little faces.  I just love it!

Here's a cute one I put into black and white.  It was nice to get a little catch light in his eyes.

Wally loves to play with anything that's expensive and not really intended for use by toddlers.  Hence my $120 resonater bell set.

May 12, the day before "the big day" - a perfect collision of Mother's Day and my birthday.  It was a wonderful day, the weather was beautiful and everyone was in a good mood.  Especially me when Brian said the magic words: Restaurant, my treat.  Yay!  We went to Sunsets in Wayzata and sat on the patio.  I had the tortellini with peas and proscuitto.  Brian had the Walleye.  Wally had a sampling of everything.

After Sunsets, we put Wally into the stroller and walked around downtown Wayzata.  There is a really cute old depot train station with a park behind it, so we hung out there for a while.  Wally was really trying hard to get down to the water.  He kept running straight for the reeds.

Backyard Remodel Stage 1: Before

Since purchasing our home in July of 2008, Brian has engineered some pretty awesome remodeling projects.  Our first, and by far largest, was the addition of the garage, residing the house, and turning the old "garage" into a storage shed.  Oh yes, along with paving the driveway.  Next came the downstairs room into an updated TV/play room, which is a wonderful space.  Then we had some not-so-easily seen but much needed things done like spraying extra insullation into the attic and a recent radon mitigation.  I had never even heard of radon before Brian pointed it out - at first I thought it was a prank.

This winter, as we talked about all the projects that the house really needs (and that list is quite long) I won out with my bid for a backyard remodel.  Brian had already started getting quotes from contractors last fall, so he got back on that horse in February to get some contractors put together.

At first it looked like this would be a June project because there are weight limit road restrictions on Three Points which would prohibit those big bobcats and trucks from getting out here, but with the crazy warm weather we had in March the restrictions were lifted 6 weeks early.  So, things got started and have been rolling along at a good clip!

Here are a few "before" pics of the back yard.

We got some help from Fred and Kath a few weekends back and took a Saturday to clean up all the leaves and debrees in the back yard that we didn't get to in the fall.  It's not easy to see, but the ground in the back yard was very uneven and pocked with little divets.  You had to watch your step or risk twisting an ankle!

In the pic below, although you can't see it, right where Brian is standing were the remains of the old driveway.  It was class 5 gravel.  So that whole area from Brian down to the house and across to the shed (to the left of the pic) was pretty much crappy gravel with a few weeds and daylilies forging life from the sand.

 Wally was helping me secure my idea that we really need some kind of hedge between our back yard and the Mazurek's side yard.  Wally loves to step over the little strip of perennials and run down Joe and Julie's driveway.  The pic below is from the street, where they are preparing to put in some landscape edging to carve out some nice mulched areas around the trees.

 This next pic just makes me happy to see.  Notice the unsightly wood pallet that was a bottom stair (not the weatherd paint job on the deck....that's not changing anytime soon).  I hated these pallets at the bottom of the steps.  This one in particular occasionally tipped if you stepped on just the wrong spot.  It was embarassing for me to have my piano students use this every winter to get into the house!  This pallet is now gone forever!  Yes!

 Check back soon for the action shots of the yard being torn apart and put back together!

Easter with the John Family

Easter: Part 2 of 2

We spent the early afternoon of Easter Sunday at Mame and Ray's place.  Mame made us a really nice lunch with just about everything you could imagine.  The ham was excellent, and my favorite (as always) are the scalloped potatoes.  She even had an angel food cake and 2 pies for dessert.

We got a few cute family shots, which I completely over edited.  But since I'm running out of time, this is what I'll post!

Wally was a little crabby because he really wanted to run in the hallways instead of hang out in the living room, so it was hard to get a smile.  The chair ride with Grandpa Fred helped.

Easter with the Rock Family

Easter Sunday: Part 1 of 2

Now isn't this the cutest group of little men you've ever seen?  I think so at least!  Wally, Colin, and Ryder are growing up and we had the perfect 3 seconds where they all sat still.  Raenay and Grant's back yard is so interesting that I didn't think we'd be able to do it.  Sheer mommy will. This is why I love the "continuous shoot" action on my camera.

I had to include this one even though it's a little blurry because this is such a funny little face.

 Dad and Raenay smiling for the camera!

I took a few family shots for Andy and Kacy.  Now that thier family is growing (due August!) we need to document the stages when we can :)  

 Here's a few more cute pics from the day.  I just thought I'd throw them in for fun!

Visit to Lake Elmo

Last weekend Brian was attending the Minnebar Tech Conference in Mpls, so Wally and I had the whole day Saturday to hang out.  We decided to head over to Lake Elmo and visit my dad and Mary, and it was a wonderful day. Kacy and Andy joined us, and Colin and Wally gave a thorough "kid-testing" to the new house.  They inspected everything from the dishwasher to stairways to bedrooms.  No square inch was unturned.  Here is a cute pic of Colin with one of Marys kitchen wooden spoons.

Those spoons made wonderful golf clubs, and Wally had a blast batting those tennis balls around the dining area.

 Dad spent a good chunk of the day chasing Wally up and down the stairs.  They played a game of peek-a-boo (a current Wally favorite) between the lower and upper staircases.

 We'll be back soon for another visit!

Easter Egg Dying

This past Saturday we had a few free hours in the afternoon so we headed over to Mame and Ray's. When we got there, Mame had everything ready to go for dying easter eggs, which was a wonderful surprise!  So, Wally got to do two new favorite activities - running up and down the hallways and spilling things all over.  It was a very exciting day!

Even though we were way past nap time and Wally was starting to get a little crabby, as soon as we put him in the high chair he was super excited. Naturally, we eat things when we are sitting in our high chair.  Vinegar water with a little coloring is no exception.  

I tried to write on one egg "Wally's 1st Easter" but it wasn't super clear.  Here's a pic.  After we got done, Wally had a little more play time in the living room before leaving.  Overall, wonderful day!  Thanks to Mame and Ray!

A Few Quick Shots

Here are a few photos I've been playing around with.  Brian and I just bought Adobe Lightroom 3 (great sale...check out Slickdeals.net) so I'm hoping to try that for organizing and editing my photos.  We'll see how different it is. I currently use Gimp for editing, which is free and a really great alternative to Photoshop.  It's taken me about a year of poking around and watching tons of youtube tutorials to really start getting a handle on it.  I'm crossing my fingers that this knowledge base will transfer at least somewhat for Lightroom :)

My current favorite

Wally is getting quite cuddly these days.  He loves to grab a stuffed animal and smash it into his face.  The same goes for Hazel.  I really had to play around with the effect of the picture above in Gimp because I liked it but couldn't quite get the look I was going for.  This is as close as I could come.  The trouble was the windows, which originally just looked like washed out trees.  So I did a Lomo effect which just whitewashed out the windows completely, brought the saturation way down, and cropped out all the junk on the floor in front of Wally.

 

I really wish I had been on the other side of this one to get the faces.  Oh well!

Sunbathing and getting a little R&R while Wally takes a nap

My next few are a storytelling sequence.  Brian and Wally have really been into Megablocks recently. Look closely.... who's really playing blocks?