How we like to show our Patriotism!

So the end of May and most of June was rather uneventful.  Life calmed down a lot and we did a lot of small projects around the house and yard.  We transplanted some front yard plants and tended the garden.  I spent many a day visiting the doctor to find out why my shoulder hurts so much of the time and have now been enlisted in weeks of physical therapy to strengthen some muscles and loosen others in my shoulders, back, and chest.  But the real fun started the end of June when we skipped town to play at the beach.

After a long Friday in the car driving, a damaged tire, and Atlanta rush hour traffic we made it to the tail end of a little party some of my high school friends threw together while several of us were in town visiting.  After such a long day I forgot to take any pictures, but we had a great time catching-up and watching our kids in the pool.  Several of us were also having a hard time believing that it was ten-year reunion time.

Saturday we got up early to get a new tire and stopped by The Container Store and IKEA (both of which I miss living by desperately) before heading the rest of the way to Grandad and Didi's beach house for fun in the sun and a Happy 4th.

We spent about every day at the beach since it was a short walk across the street and down the boardwalk.  Josh and Hannah diligently tried to master the are of building the perfect sand castle.  After a few days practice Josh was starting to master the  bucket shapes and then Grandad taught Hannah how to smash them with her feet.

 

Hannah also got the chance to try out her new Puddle Jumper and loved the freedom of bobbing with no one holding onto her until she got worn out and needed to be carried back to shore to play in the sand.

We went to the Carolina Beach fireworks on the 3rd.  Hannah thought that they were pretty, but was not a fan of the loud noise of being up close.  Luckily Mommy, Grandad, and Daddy where there to protect her.

We decided to take a morning off from the beach on the Fourth and head over to the Fort Fisher Aquarium.  We met the Albino Alligator who Hannah thought was awesome.  You could walk around almost the entire habitat and Hannah had fun running around to the side the gator was at and talking to her.

Grandad had fun showing Hannah various crabs and starfish in the interactive tank.  She didn't seem to be able to make-up her mind about the crabs and all the pokey parts.

 Hannah got pretty goofy for a while around the fish tanks.  I think this is where she got bored because even though it was a tank full of sharks and manta rays and such to her it was just a bunch of fish.

 We took turns posing in the shark's jaws

 Hannah's solo pose was my favorite.

In the afternoon we had a great shaving cream fight with the neighbors (the camera was not present for the event to protect it) which Hannah hated.  She did not understand the fun in getting everyone and everything all "messy"and screamed in protest to all of the white fluff.  After a nice swim to rinse the mess off and to appease the toddler we had nap time, and great barbeque at the church, and headed home.

On the 5th we took the Ferry across the river.  Hannah thought that was really cool, but didn't understand why she couldn't go swimming in the water.

 Hannah decided that Grandad was more fun to ride around all the shops than the stroller.

 Hannah almost took her nap in the hammock shop and only got out when she thought we might actually be leaving her.

 We also had fun wandering around the Christmas House.  It sells toys, Christmas decorations, candy and ice cream.  How can you go wrong?  Grandad also had a nice chat with Bishop Edgley who was eating ice cream with family in the gazebo.

 Hannah spent a lot of time that afternoon chasing the sea gulls around the beach yelling, "GET BACK HERE BIRD!"  We kept finding birds just for her to do it because it was so funny.

Much to all of our disappointment the week came to a close too soon.  We loaded up the van with a few extras and headed home.  We also made good use of the library card when we checked-out a pile of Curious George and Elmo DVD's for the ride.  We have these speakers that are no louder than headphones and when the car got too loud on the highway we would turn around to find Hannah like this so that she would not miss a detail.  It worked and was really cute.

Catching Up: Part 2 - The first half of May

Hi, there.  Josh here again.  Enough was packed into this month that I think that it would be best to split it into chunks based on events.  The first half of this month was consumed by two major happenings.  My trip out of town for work and our trip to Colorado for a Thevenin family get together.

Starting May 1, I was out of town for about 8 or 9 days doing geotechnical exploration work (doing in-place tests and collecting soil samples for lab tests).  I was on Whiskey Island, one of the barrier islands in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana.  We are involved in the preparatory engineering work for a restoration project on the island that will build up the dunes and beaches and establish a marsh on the protected side of the island.  The weather was beautiful for the most part and the work went relatively quickly, which was a blessing, because the location is highly sensitive to poor weather conditions, and we could have spent many a day not even getting to the island due to wind, wave, rain, and lightning conditions.

While I was gone life carried on for Amanda and Hannah.  They managed to make the best of it, though Hannah developed a cough and we found out she has ear infections in both ears (poor thing).  Not long after I left, Amanda and Hannah went to a nearby strawberry patch with some friends.  At the strawberry farm, she discovered the joys of the merry-go-round...

...had fun visiting the animals at the petting zoo (here she is with some pigs)...

...and she even rode on a pig (a statue of one, at least).

Here she is with her good buddy Evelyn, hanging out with the crows.

After she got home, she explored the wonders of the giant puddle/lake that is our driveway during/after a good rain storm.

A couple days after the strawberry patch adventure, the weather was hot and sunny, so Hannah decided to experiment with streaking through the sprinklers.

She also developed her first notable allergic reaction while I was gone (to what, we aren't sure, but she had big welts/hives up and down her legs and on her torso).

After I returned, we had a day of transition where I unpacked from my work trip out of town and we packed for our family trip to Denver.  The main reason for the trip was for Benjamin and Emily (Amanda's brother and sister-in-law) to be sealed in the Denver temple to their son Damon, whose adoption was finalized a couple months ago.  We extended the trip beyond the ceremony to include a fun-filled family affair that stretched from Friday evening, when we got in to Denver, to Wednesday morning, when we left.

Here are the girl cousins with their DiDi in front of the temple

Here are all the cousins together.  From left to right: Hannah, Addyson, Cade, and Damon.

After posing for pictures for a little while, the kids had to let off some steam.  They played a rousing game of "Chase Addyson" Which went something like this:

Addyson would run away while Damon and Hannah chased.

Addyson is much faster than the littler kids, so to make it more fun she would occasionally play dead.

This would result in her being tickled by the little ones to wake her up.

 

After which she would run off and the game would start anew.

Later in the vacation we had a general grand ol' time.  We walked around Boulder.  Hannah and Addyson raced each other on more even footing than their own two feet...That is, Hannah used my feet and Addyson used Grandad's feet.

The kids had a ton of fun playing "Ring around the Rosies" with Grandad and DiDi.

We all went swimming at the hotel. Here is Hannah in her floating ring.  It restricts her mobility, but keeps her head well above water, which keeps her more comfortable in the pool.

DiDi helped Hannah and the other kids renew their love for bubbles.  Here is some video evidence of the fun that was had.

Hannah also nurtured a relatively undeveloped love for climbing stairs.  We live in a single level home, so she doesn't have a ton of opportunities to stair climb on a day-to-day basis, but between the stairs at the cousins' apartments and the stairs at the hotel, she more than made up for lost time.

Catching Up: Part 1 - Easter/April

Hey everybody! We have been a little remiss in posting with how crazy things have been in the last little bit.  I won't try to make any excuses for it, because when it boils down to it, the reason is we just didn't make the time.  On a side note, this is the first time in over a year and a half that I have written a post.  Anywho....

Easter time was a lot of fun. We didn't do anything special for the day itself, but Hannah did wear her new dress, which is adorable.

We wanted Hannah to wear her new Easter hat as well, but she is kinda funny about hats.  In order to convince her it was a good idea, we took turns modeling it.  Here is Max with the Easter hat on.

Here I am with the Easter hat on.  I had to wear it on the back of my head to get it to stay.  Nice look, right?

 

 Here is Hannah, finally deciding to wear her own hat, and cute as a button to boot.

In other news, our garden has been doing pretty nicely.  Here is a look at our little garden bed right around Easter time.

And here is our first official home grown garden veggie of the season.  We picked it at the end of the month and used it in a delicious pizza.

I don't remember how much we have said about our Koi Pond.  We didn't want it, but it came with the house and was a mosquito and drowning hazard anytime there was a significant rain.  Well, we finally got rid of it.  One of my co-workers' husband had been looking for one and we exchanged it for the dirt to fill in the hole.  Once we took the rocks out and pumped it dry, it was a cinch to pull it out of the ground.  It left a neat little koi-pond-shaped negative space when I pulled it out.

That's April in a nutshell.  Another update or two for what has happened so far in May should follow shortly.

As a parting note, Hannah has taken to helping out around the house from time to time in whatever way she can.  Take a look at this clip from mid-April to see what I mean.

March

Another busy month in the Pruett house hold!  We started out the month getting our new vegetable garden box finished and planted.  Between meetings, fun with friends, and taking away Hannah's pacifier we have had a little time to start the spring cleaning and projects around the house.

Hannah has recently taken a lot of interest in the potty so we have been doing a lot to encourage it.  She almost always poops on the potty and even occasionally asks to go pee as well.  And she is not shy about pushing you off the potty if she decided that she wants to go before you.  Unfortunately she has also taken a great interest in toilet paper as well and I found the bathroom in this condition after she wondered in without me.

Hannah isn't always causing that much trouble.  Actually lately she has been helping Daddy while he unloads the dishwasher in the morning.  It is hard to tell on the video but she keeps saying "Here you go" as she hands Josh the dishes and "Bless you" when he sneezes.

We finally got the curtains for our living room after a lot of debating and planning.  Here they are with our chairs complete with Hannah and Max in one of their favorites places together.  Hannah loves having a chair all to herself while Max hangs out on the back watching out the window.

We had a lot of fun celebrating St Patrick's Day.  We went to the parade which was a lot more Mardi Gras than we were expecting.  We thought that Hannah would love it, but she has started to get shy around large groups and with all the music blaring from the floats and bands she spent most of the time hiding.  We forgot our camera, but here is a link to our friend's blog that has a picture of Hannah with Daddy and some of her SWAG.  Later that night we made corned beef and cabbage and we all had fun wearing the extra leaves as hats.

I had the great responsibility to be in charge of the Spring Picnic and Easter Egg Hunt in our congregation and I had a few crazy and stressful weeks leading up to it.  It was a great success and everyone had a lot of fun.  Hannah had a lot of fun having us show her where the eggs were to collect.  Then she realized that there was candy inside and she sat down and started opening all the ones that she had and had no interest in looking for any more.  Thankfully we all survived despite my shoulder crapping out on me (I have since started seeing a doctor about it).

We finally had a weekend with no responsibilities and used it as an excuse to stay around the house and get things done while watching/listening to the LDS General Conference with all of the leaders of the church teaching us about how we can become better followers of Christ.

We did take a little time and sort through the parade finds.  Here is Hannah showing some off.

February

We have had a lot going on around here.  At the beginning of the month we had all of the windows in the entire house replaced.  And we were pleasantly surprised that it only took one morning. Now we don't have to worry about the wind blowing past our faces while we sleep with the windows closed, no more ripped screens, and no more BB hole for Hannah to try to stick her finger through.  Here is what the old aluminum one in the Living room looked like.

 And here is the new double-paned, energy efficient vinyl one.

We also had a nice little family party for Josh, who turned 29.  Hannah took on the task of quality control when we made the cake.  Here she is inspecting the frosting.  She took her job seriously.

 We also had fun making our own Valentines.  Here is Hannah diligently working on the one she made for Daddy.  Drawing is one of her favorite activities and I was impressed at how well she stayed on the paper almost the entire time.

 Then we all got sick for Mardi Gras.  We decided to forgo parades this year and try to get healthy.  We watched a lot of TV as Hannah is demonstrating.  For better or worse, after a week of illness Hannah has learned to tell me which show she wants to watch on Netflix.  Her favorites are "up Why" (Super Why), "Hat" (Cat in the Hat), and "Busy" (Busytown Mysteries).  She has also learned several of the songs on the shows, kinda.

 We also had lots of warm healthy food.  We recently discovered that Hannah LOVES Chicken Noodle Soup.  So much so that when she ran out in her bowl she stole the ladle from the pot and started eating from it.

Here is a little video of Hannah and her baby doll, Baby.

New Video Camera

We have been enjoying making use of the new video camera that we got for Christmas and thought we should share.

Here is Hannah enjoying her new swing.

Practicing her animal noises.

This one was especially funny.  The other day while Josh was stretching before he did his push-ups Hannah realized what he was doing and layed down next to him and started doing her own push-ups.  It took us a few tries to get it on video, but now she has been doing them every morning with him.

We got this one on Saturday while we were making use of the 70+ degree weather with some yard work and Hannah wanted to be involved.

 

We hope everyone is having a great 2012 so far like we are.

Christmas Time

We got so wrapped up in the preparations for Christmas that we forgot to keep everyone updated with our progress.  So here is a quick recap.

We were really excited to have our first Christmas at home in our own house.  We decided to go all out.

Having always traveled for Christmas we never had our own stockings so Josh and I spent every night for a week making them.  I will try to do a post about the details of making them soon, but for now here they are on the wall (we don't have a fireplace). Check out the stack of Amazon.com boxes hiding in the corner.

 When we were cleaning out the stuff that I had stored at the parents before the move I found a ton of hunter green felt leftover from some poodle skirts that I made in high school.  With the help of my new best friend Pinterest, I had a great idea for a Hannah friendly tree.  I attached it to the wall with spray adhesive (it fell off after about 2 or 3 weeks of being played with, but with a little extra spray went right back up) and then cut circles out of some red and white felt for ornaments.  I have great plans to make more elaborate decorations for next year.

Hannah loved it! there was many an afternoon where she pulled all the ones that she could reach off as fast as she could while I tried to put them back on.  She normally won.

 Here they are in the room flanking the entertainment center.

 Here is our glorious tree that we bought the week after Thanksgiving so we had plenty of time to admire it.  It is about a 6' tree on a 2' table so it reaches the ceiling and is mostly out of reach of little fingers and paws.  The presents only made it under on Christmas Eve because we found little kitties like to climb them to get to the lights.

We almost lost it one afternoon when I heard a sizzling after I turned the lights on.  Luckily I was right there and found the smoke coming from the side of the tree.  There was a short in one of the lights (which explained why half a string went out) that melted the plastic and was starting to catch the branch on fire.  With my electrical knowledge I fixed it with no problem, but we are counting our blessings that I was there and paying enough attention.

 In non-decorations news we got the chairs for our living room.  They were on order before Thanksgiving and finally came after most of our guests had left and didn't get to try them out.  I also found the lamp and its twin at TJMaxx while shopping for gifts and fell in love.  They go on either side of the couch on the end tables that I have not yet found.  The table in the picture I also found at the Maxx; it is headed where our Christmas tree is, in between the chairs, but we haven't seen that yet.

 We normally have tamales around Christmas and decided to share the love by inviting some friends over Christmas Eve.  We had a great day cooking and cleaning.  Hannah even got into all the fun.  She saw Mommy and Daddy in aprons and felt left out so we put the smallest one we had on her and she had a blast!  Here she is chewing on a ripped corn husk while Daddy is putting them together.

And here she is showing off her Christmas Cheer!

Here is a video of Hannah with her two favorite presents both of which were from Grandad and Didi.  Santa felt a little upstaged.

 She still wants in the swing anytime she sees it even though we haven't gotten it hung yet.  Daddy's arms have gotten mighty tired trying to swing her on his own.

Thanksgiving 2011!

We had a full house for Thanksgiving and it was a crazy blast!  I missed posting last week because life was really busy in a boring way.  Lots of cleaning, washing sheets, sorting piles of junk and whatnot.

Monday late in the evening family arrived!  So we went from three people and one feline hardly filling the house to being overrun.  Grandad and Didi drove out from North Carolina with Jake and Josie, their border collies, and they picked Grammy up in Atlanta on their way.  We were so excited to host our first out of town guests in the house that we didn't realize that the next few days would involve being constant referees between all living creatures below waistline.

First the dogs were trying to eat the cat and Hannah ran screaming from the dogs every time they looked at her.  Then Max realized that this is his house and the dogs were more scared of him so he spent the rest of the week chasing them around.  Hannah finally warmed-up to the dogs to the point that she could walk toward them and maybe even touch them if she was holding someone's hand.  All the while Max still runs from Hannah if she gets too excited about his presence.

We were so excited that Grandad brought his chain saw!  He spent Tuesday morning taking two little trees from our side yard to try to save the fence.  We were also busy around the house with meal preparations, but tried to take breaks for time outside so the animals didn't kill us all.  We went to the park on Wednesday morning and let the dogs and Hannah run around.

Here is Hannah and Didi chasing after the dogs and Grandad.

 Here is Josh and Max chasing after Hannah who found that it is really fun to run down the hills.

Here is Max pretending Josie isn't there while Josie is just hoping to find a way to be dominant.

 Hannah with Grandad and Didi.

 Having so much fun on the swing.  She actually cried when we tried to get her on the slide and then cried more when we had to go home.

We even stepped out for Cajun Cuisine on Wednesday night.

Now for the main event.

We started Thursday morning with the Turkey going in the oven.  I tried a new recipe that I found on Pinterest because this was my first full turkey and I didn't want to mess it up.  It worked great!  The main point is to cook the turkey breast down.  This is how it came out of the oven at the perfect temperature.

  Then after another hour of cooking sides and rounding up the troops we laid out the spread on the buffet counter. (Just to let you know the candied yams were made out of left over homemade sweet potato baby food and they were a hit!)

Unfortunately since I am the resident picture taker and I am also the resident cook there is a shortage of pictures.  I did snag this one in the morning of Hannah stealing the entire bag of potato chips off the table and stuffing her face... and her hands.

After dinner I clocked out for the day and didn't get any more pictures.  Josh then drove down to pick-up his brother, Jason from the airport because our house wasn't quite full enough.  When they got back we served up pie!

Friday morning we said goodbye to Grandad, Didi, Grammy, and the dogs.  Then we all succumbed to illness.  Josh's tummy went on strike and the faucets on Hannah and My noses jammed in the on position.  We tried to make the most of it and entertain Jason, but we were confined to the house Friday.  Saturday Josh was feeling better so we got out and about a little despite the rain.  We introduced Jason to some Cajun food and finished off the night hanging the chandelier in the dining room (which was a little late for Thanksgiving due to minor delays) and rehanging the mirror.

Unfortunately last night Jason joined the club with a sick stomach and our colds got worse.  Talk about a rough weekend.  It really makes me feel that the stress of preparing a holiday meal was almost a walk in the park.