Sept Craft Night

Despite not being able to make it, I was happy to hear that craft night this month was a success. This is not the best picture, (it looks much better on my doorstep.) We made personalized doormats and although mine seems kind of generic it was a really easy craft. Just a coir mat, some tape, and spray paint and you can have it say whatever you want. Scott had some really good ideas for what our should say but I wont share those here. (Most of the girls did their last name.) Thanks so much to everyone that helped.

Michigan

We went to Michigan last week to see some friends, (Springers and McMurry's you know who you are.) and to visit Scott's' brother Todd and family. We had so much fun, mainly because of the kids. Ethan, Hannah, and Rylee have so much fun playing together and causing trouble. While we were at Todd & Michelle's house we went swimming, went to the beach, and had a fun day at a hands-on farm. Hannah enjoyed having us so much that she came up with some pretty creative reasons why we shouldn't go back home when the week was over. It is so nice to be just a short drive from family when we live all the way out here.

The best part about Rain is....

The MUD!!!!! It has been raining all week, so there was lots of good mud to play in. I tried to keep Ethan out of it at first, but I soon learned that it would be impossible to keep him from playing in it. Mud is just way too much fun. It is amazing how much fun boys can have with a shovel, a dump truck, and a little mud. Luckily he didn't get too dirty.

The best part about playing in the mud is having a bath afterwards.

Especially when it's a bubble bath.

Buckeye Fever

Only 18 days left until the first game and Buckeye Fever has already hit Columbus(I don't even think more cow bell could cure it). You can feel it in the air, people are getting excited, we are getting excited!! We didn't end up getting season tickets this year, because we are going to be gone so much this fall so hopefully we can still go to at least one game. I need to go shopping to find Ethan some new Buckeye gear for this year so he will be ready for the start of the season. This is my favorite picture from last fall (Ethan got into the bananas while Dad was "watching him," more like watch football in the same room as him.) He has gotten so big since then that last years football clothes don't fit of course. So time for new ones.

Anyways just thought we would share our excitement for the up-coming season with you.

Look mama....eggs

Note to self; "don't leave your two year old alone in the kitchen for extended periods of time." I went up stairs for literally 2 min. this morning and came back down to find this. I could tell by the look of startled mischievousness on Ethan face that he knew he was doing something wrong. It was just too funny, how could I get mad at him? He was completely covered in egg so it was not a quick clean-up, but it was when he started licking his fingers that I decided it was bath-time. On the bright side I was forced to clean my kitchen for the second time in one day so now it should be sparkling. For those of you that have never had the pleasure, egg is not the easiest thing to clean-up. I had to mop three times to make my floor not sticky any more.

We just love our curious little guy.

State Fair, so HOT!!!!

We must not be very smart because we picked the hottest and most humid day of the entire summer to take Ethan to the Ohio State Fair, what were we thinking? Despite almost dying from heat exhaustion we actually had a fun time. Let me just say this; if you like to people watch you would love the state fair in Ohio. The best part about the fair is you can buy any type of food you like, just as long as it can be deep-fried. They have all the usual stuff like deep-fried Twinkies, or hot dogs, but they actually had a sign advertising deep-fried peanut butter & jelly sandwiches! (Who thinks of this stuff?) One booth was selling deep-fried cookie dough, and of course the most popular item is the deep-fried snickers bar.
Ethan loved seeing all the animals of course. He thinks it is so fun to reach out and touch them, he just gets a little nervous when they make sudden movements. His favorite animals were that baby chicks and ducks. He would stick his finger in the cage and laugh hysterically while they nibbled on his finger.

We went on a few rides. Ethan liked the helicopters

FARM DAYS at cosi

We went to FARM DAYS at cosi (which is a science center for kids right downtown on the river.) Ethan, who was grumpy at first and didn't want to play with anything, finally decided it looked pretty fun and had a great time climbing on all of the tractors and pretending to drive them. He especially liked to climb up into the really high ones. He loves trucks and tractors and all the usual boy stuff, but it was really neat to see how big everything is and to get right up close to them. I'm sure at his size it was quite overwhelming to see some of those really big ones.

Nice city scape picture of Downtown Columbus.


Ethan got to milk a pretend cow. He thought it was so fun to pull on the utters and see water shooting out.

Farm living!!!

One of the tractor wheels.

I'm a John Deer man

I'm Two

"Happy Birthday to me!" Ethan turned 2 last Saturday. We taught him to say "I'm two" so of course he said it all day long. When ever we would sing the birthday song to him he would yell out "HAPPY," because that is the only word in that song he knows. We had a fun day. We took him swimming in the morning and then went to a park to eat lunch. Later in the afternoon we invited some of the neighborhood kid to come over and eat cupcakes and play. I lost count of how many Ethan ate but he definitely enjoyed them.

Too many presents.
Ethan with his friends Eli and Justin

Fish Lake

We left Lake Powell and drove straight to Fish Lake for the Gleave family reunion. Fish Lake was gorgeous, of course, and it was fun to see all the cousins there with their own little kids. We only stayed one day but I enjoyed catching up with all the people I don't get to see very often. Ethan loved running around in the fresh mountain air and he was happy grandpa was there to chase him.

Just in case you can't tell from the pictures

Ethan loves corn on the cob.

Lake Powell

We took a short but really fun summer vacation to Utah at the end of June. The highlight of the trip had to be the five days we spent in Lake Powell with the Yeates Family. It was the perfect week to go because we had such nice weather, and surprisingly Ethan did really well on the houseboat. He loved his life vest so much he never wanted to take it off, which made life easy on us. He mostly just played in the sand and shallow water on the beach. He loved having almost all of his cousins there and had so much fun playing with them. But his favorite pass-time had to be throwing rocks or hunks of mud at anything that moved. He was pretty sneaky about it so you never knew until you got hit that he was coming after you. He was appropriately named "the silent but deadly one."

Watch out, Ethan has a rock!!!

Ethan and Rylee were best buds.

"Captain of the ship!"

Ethan loved being on the boat, especially when he got to sit in the drivers seat. He looks like a natural don't you think.

Nine of the Eleven grandkids made it to Powell this year.

More kids = more fun.