Joel is 7 months!

Joel is crawling around like crazy and I just know this one is going to be trouble! He moves so fast and gets into everything he's not supposed to. Joel's 5th tooth broke through today, and he's no longer a vampire baby. The other one should be coming through any day. This also means he's a bit cranky from all of this teething. I always tell people he's my serious child, because it's so hard for people to get a smile out of him. He loves to be outside, especially on the swings!

Happy Birthday, Alex!

Alex's birthday falls at the end of June, and this coincides with a new Pixar film release every year. We've made it a tradition to hit the movies for his birthday, and this year Nicole got to go see Cars 2 with him. In preparation for the movie, we made Nicole a Lightning McQueen car.


Alex was going to be gone for his birthday on the Scout camp, so we celebrated early with some ribeye steak and rootbeer cake. Yum!

Briar Bush Nature Center

A couple of weeks ago, Alex had to go to Scout camp for 5 days. This meant I was all alone with the kids. We kept as busy as we possibly could so that the week would go by quickly. One place we headed was the Briar Bush Nature Center. It's about 5 minutes from our house, and in the 3+ years we've lived here we had never been.

It's a cute little place, with turtles and birds and snakes. And there are some nice trails for a nature walk. It was perfect for the amount of time we had, and Nicole loved seeing the animals and running around.

New bike

Nicole got a bike for her birthday from her grandparents, but sadly we haven't been as good at taking her out to ride as we thought we would be. She rides the bike around the porch as best she can, but there's only so far you can go on an enclosed porch. So, a couple of weeks ago we took her out to the parking lot behind our house and she did such a great job!