Happy 2nd Birthday, Tate!

My baby is 2 today! It's amazing how much he has changed in the past year and how much fun he has become. He's certainly not a baby anymore! He loves to run, ride bike, play in the sandbox, and push his brother's buttons. He's full of bumps and bruises from trying to keep up with his big brother, but he doesn't seem to mind.

My bubble baby at birth.
First birthday.

My 2 year old monkey,
and his monkey cake.

Update

Whoo! It's been a while since I blogged. This summer has been crazy busy. Here's what we've been up to the last couple of weeks

• Tate finished up his swimming lessons. He did great. He started jumping in without holding hands, which Cole still won't do. The last day we got to go down the water slide. He loved it. Cole has always been nervous of the water gushing at you from the top, but Tate just started laughing the second we sat down and continued laughing the whole way down. He's a lot of fun in the water. I wish we could make it to the pool once in a while.
• Other things we learned in swimming lessons:

1. We are related to our instructor. Her father-in-law and my father-in-law are first cousins.
2. When parent child lessons involve water slides, that's when fathers fill in. Granted we did that with Cole, but I was 7 months pregnant and didn't feel like holding a 2 year old while traveling down a water slide. I like water slides and going with Tate was actually a lot of fun. I guess I should have seen it coming though. I was the only parent that helped out for Cole's class when they went down the water slide.

• A couple of college friends came for a visit last week. We had 5 boys under the age of 5 between the 3 of us. It was a lot of fun. The kids got to run around the farm and we got to visit a little bit. I forgot what it was like to have babies around. Not sure if I really want to go there again. Babies are so much work!
• Saturday, my Father-in-law hosted a family reunion for his mother's side of the family. They had a good turn out and they all had a good time. I didn't do much other than make a pan of bars and try to help. It was hot and windy and I forgot to take my allergy meds. I'm still paying for it.
• I also started going to the chiropractor. He did some amazing stuff for my sinuses yesterday and I ran to the barn this morning without any pain in my back. There goes one excuse for not running!
• I got to go shopping by myself on Sunday. It would have been more enjoyable if I hadn't felt like I had been hit by a truck, but it was nice anyway. I bought myself and iPod Touch and am still feeling a little guilty about it. I had looked at getting one earlier for our trip to New Orleans, but thought I could wait. I went to look at getting a better MP3 player for the car since the one I have has horrible sound quality and it is going to get me in an accident. I decided that there wasn't much point in wasting $60 on and MP3 player I would replace with a Touch anyway. I should have ordered the bigger one earlier. The 8 GB isn't quite big enough. I'm still trying to get all my music uploaded which is part of the reason for the lack of blogging.
• We leave bright and early Friday morning for New Orleans. I've been so busy I haven't really thought much about leaving the kids. I have a ton to do to get everything ready and I have very little motivation to do any of it now. There's always tomorrow!
• If you need a good laugh, here is what Cole told me today... "I will poop, then you will wipe my butt, and then we'll make Tate's birthday cake." followed by "Mo-om, I'm done! It's a funny one."
  

Behind the Scenes of Cattle Feedlot - From a Vegan Perspective

I found this link on a dairy blog. Seeing how there is so much negative press for agriculture right now, this was a nice change of pace. I was skeptical to read it at first, but I was pleasantly surprised. The author did a fantastic job of dispelling a lot of myths and keeping it honest. So read it here.

I Got A New Car! Whoohoo!

Isn't it pretty? I really didn't want gray, but our options were pretty limited. They had a very nice blue one, but it had 11,000 miles on it and to me that's not really considered new anymore. If I'm going to pay the price of a new vehicle, I want a new vehicle. But that's really here nor there. I got a new car!

We had been talking about getting rid of the van for a while. Pat absolutely hated it. I liked it, but there were things I really didn't like and I'm willing to bet that by the end of the summer we would have had to put a new motor in our power doors. That was our main reason for sending the van down the road. Power doors and gravel roads don't mix.

We did a little shopping around, online and at the lot. For us it has to be a short process. We are limited to Chrysler and GM dealerships anywhere close and those vehicles are not an option for me. So we have to drive 2 hours to get a decent selection. I know, I know, "buy American!" I'll buy "American" when I can buy a vehicle and not have it depreciate faster than I can pay it off. I'll buy "American" when after a year or two it doesn't sound like I'm driving a convertible when I'm not. I say "American" because what does that really mean anyway? I don't think 100% American really exists.

So here you are, my car reviews.
What I didn't like about my 2007 Honda Odyssey EX minivan:

• no auto headlights or DRLs
• The second row middle seat was pointless unless you know someone who is only 6 inches wide.
  
• Only 3 latch plates - in a minivan! Aren't those supposed to be geared toward families?
• No MP3 port

What I will miss:

• The storage! I was packing the Pilot and I miss the center floor storage, the second glove box, and the middle dash storage.
  
• the radio controls on the steering wheel. ( We got the bare bones model Pilot)
• the window shades for the kids.
• My kids being able to climb into the van and their seats on their own
• Being able to open the doors with the push of a button
  

What I love about the Pilot:

• The auto headlights
• The 4 latch plates
• The evenly split 2nd and 3rd row seat. No 6 inch humans required!
• The MP3 port! I'm so excited to listen to my music without static from the radio!
• Not worrying about dust in the doors
• It looks a whole lot cooler than the minivan, and I'm all about appearances! :)

We also test drove a Toyota Highlander. I really liked it, but there were a few things I didn't like. It had the mini seat like my van had. The 3rd row didn't have a split so it was all up or all down which left no room for storage. If we have a 3rd kid, family vacations would be interesting trying to cram 3 kids across the 2nd row so we could have room for luggage. It only had 2 latch plates which I just don't understand. Everything else we loved so we were nearly sold on the Highlander but needed to go try out the Pilot first. I'm glad we did. The Pilot is bigger than the Highlander but not huge. Price-wise they were about the same. The Pilot isn't terribly powerful, but I don't plan on towing much more than a paddle boat, if that. Our other vehicle is an F350, so it's not like I need a towing vehicle. Although, Cole keeps saying now we need to get a boat. At any rate, I'm glad we went with the Pilot, cuz it would have been stupid to buy something we didn't like. I'm hoping we'll keep this more than 3 years. My van was just starting to get good gas mileage...

June Review

I know, June isn't over yet, but by the time I post again, it probably will be :)

• The boys started swimming lessons. Cole's were every morning for 2 weeks. He wasn't the strongest swimmer in his class, but he did ok. I learned that he can be bought with donuts. After realizing that his teacher wasn't going to make him go under water, I tried bribery, and it worked! I'm hoping to hit up the pool a few times this summer so he can get more practice.
• Tate is also in swimming lessons, with me. We go twice a week and he is doing pretty well. He's more daring than his brother, but not overly so.
• Cole got his kindergarten shots. His doctor likes to do them at age 4 since their memory isn't quite as good and they are easier to restrain. When she broke the news to him he cried and flinched every time he heard a door in the hallway. Try getting a urine sample out of a 4 year old after 4 shots. We had to go back on Monday to attempt that and he was almost in tears when the tech said the nurse would call with results. I think he was terrified she'd come give him more shots.
• Cole's stats: 31"=21%, 36.8 lbs= 55%

Upcoming events:

• Pat's 10 year reunion
• Cole's first birthday party
• Cole's dental visit to attempt to fill a cavity
• Family trip through our dairy Co-op
  

Family Vacation 2010

A couple of weeks ago we took a family vacation. This was the first real vacation we've taken since Cole was just over a year. It still involved a wedding, but the wedding only dictated the location, and wasn't the majority of the trip. Anywho, our trip didn't start out so hot when only 2 hours into it Tate looked like this:
We stopped on our way out and bought a tent for our first night. Just so you know, 2 small children in a tent in western North Dakota, in early June, don't equal a good night's sleep. Cole did fine. Tate was another story. He refused to go to sleep until it was dark, so with the time change that was close to 11PM our time. Then the temp dipped down into the 40s and he had thrown all his blankets out of the pack n' play. So for the first time ever we had to have a child sleep with us. Three people on a partially deflated air mattress (air compresses when it gets that cold) equals not so much sleep for mommy.
To top it off, the boys were up at 5:30 AM our time. We managed to hold them off for another half an hour and went to breakfast. Then we packed up and went to a park until the dinosaur museum opened.
The museum was ok. It was a lot of rocks and not so much dinosaurs, but it was something to do and the boys didn't care. Next stop, Theodore Roosevelt National Park:
If you have never made the trip west, I highly recommend it. There is a 36 mile driving loop around the park. The ranger at the gate told us it would take an hour and a half. We exited 3 hours later. We stopped and hiked trails, took pictures, chased prairie dogs...
The boys got a little lesson in flowers,
like this gorgeous blue flower. I've never seen anything, besides the sky, so naturally blue.
We saw wild horses and their foals.
We even saw a lone buffalo.
We stopped in Medora, the home of the Medora Musical. We didn't get to see the musical. I would have liked to, but we had a wedding to attend!
We spent one night with a college friend and headed to the wedding and reception on Saturday. Tate loved dancing.
Cole did not.
It was great to see so many "old" college friends.
So side story, we stayed at the old Super 8 in Lemmon, SD. From here on out we will call it the Creepy Clown Motel. When I went to check in, the office was jam packed with clowns. Ok, I'm not scared of clowns, but they are pretty creepy and a lot of people are afraid of them. Why would you display them in your hotel office??? Anywho, it was a place to sleep and we survived. I did have some flashbacks to that horror movie where the couple gets locked in their hotel room. No idea what it's called, and never seen it, but anywhoodle...

We even had time to see some petrified wood before we left town.
On the way home we stopped at Storybook Land. It was a good break for the kids and I thought this sign would have been helpful about a year ago:

So there you have it, our vacation in pictures. I've got some blogs written in my head, and maybe if you are lucky I'll actually put them on the computer! Wouldn't that be special?

School's Out For Summer!

Ok, so it's been almost a month since Cole's last day of school, but I have had very little blogging time lately.

Cole's last day went well. They had the parents meet the kids and we ate lunch, had recess, then finished the day with story time. It was a little precursor for school readiness next year. During recess, the teachers were telling me about the petting zoo and farm safety day the FFA put on that day. Apparently Cole, being the farm kid that he is, piped up and started sharing about the cow that had died and had stuff coming out of her. We had an older cow who gave birth to a large bull calf and had prolapsed (expelled her uterus) and died the previous weekend. He's so full of wonderful information. Anyway, the teachers had told him that that was sad that the cow had died, but he isn't too bothered by death. He has a basic understanding that things die and aren't around anymore, but he really hasn't lost anything important to him, other than Benny the goat and Cole was too young last summer to get it. Death is a natural part of farm life and right now that's all he needs to understand.