The first half of June

Let's see, 3 of the 4 birthdays are over and Father's Day is over.  Now just a very important 1st birthday and a 7yr anniversary to celebrate and we'll be clear of June celebrations.  Here's where we've been:

Mom, Amy and the kids came to visit.  We had a great day of the kids playing together.  We even went to Safety Town and let the kids ride their bikes and play on the playground.  Ryan was so brave on his bike that it made Caleb braver on his.  Thank goodness! That was a fight we were losing.

What's summer without a carnival? That weekend we head to Tremont for the Turkey Festival.  Yes, we had turkey for lunch.  It was yummy!  Caleb got to ride on the rides and we promised Owen his time was coming.  Here is Caleb and Gabe enjoying the bumper cars...A LOT! 

A super-classy picture in front of a carny trailer.

 The absolute best reason to go the Turkey Festival is to watch the famed Bed Races.  Teams of 6 build a racecar that is shaped like a bed.  They have one "driver" who sits on the bed and then a team that pushes the bed down the road.  Halfway through they have to do a chinese fire drill and then complete the race.  Good times!

Owen is officially a big boy! He had his first haircut this past week.  I could have waited longer, but it was killing Gabe that the hair around his ears made him look like Peter Boyle from Everybody Loves Raymond.  So when he made appointments at Shorty's barbershop for himself and Caleb, I told him to go ahead and make an appointment for Owen too.  This is the before picture:

If you can believe it, this is the picture of him when it was all done.  He was sad that we took his sucker away, but never cried a bit during the whole haircut.

The final result.  Very well trimmed around the ears and back of the head.  Still a few sticking up at the crown, but they still need to grow a bit.

Simon turned 2! All the cousins playing on the floor with the loot!

Happy Father's Day! Don't my boys look so handsome!

Daddies are the best!

Watching and waiting for friends at the front door in jammies (and a Steak 'n' Shake hat).

Caleb is taking "WeeBall" this summer.  This is the first step before he goes to TeeBall.  He loves it! He's learning how to throw the ball, run the bases, hit a ball off a tee, and so forth.

And well, sometimes a super-hero just has to practice his fishing in the backyard.  Gabe took Caleb to the lake today for his first fishing trip.  Gabe caught two little fish, but Caleb didn't catch anything.  I think he still had a lot of fun though.

Oh, what a confused little boy we're raising! (But cute, nonetheless!)

Travelin' Fools

June is proving to be just as busy as May, but is that really a surprise?  We're about to embark on 4 birthdays, Father's Day and our anniversary.  Yikes! But here's a recap of what we did at the end of May.  You can expect a big drop in posts while we do life for a bit in June and then I'll give an update.

1st Baseball Game of the Season
Gabe got free tickets to a Cornbelters game, so we decided to take the boys.  It was free to sit on the lawn, but you had to pay more money if you wanted seats.  We decided the lawn would be good so Owen could crawl around.  They neglected to tell us the lawn was at a 90 degree angle.  We had to do our best to keep our kids from rolling down the hill.  It was fun...but we only lasted 2 innings.  Now we know. :)

Memorial Day
We drove over and had a fish fry over at Aunt Candy's house.  I'd like to share more pictures of our afternoon, but they mostly consist of Caleb and Gracie running through the sprinkler.  And while that's cute, we didn't plan ahead for sprinkler festivities, so we let Caleb run around in his underwear (they live in the country).  No underwear pictures for this blog.

Vacation to Indianapolis
This was Owen's first real vacation!  Don't they look excited?  We decided to make a vacation out of going to visit Gabe's mom in the hospital while she had her (second) knee replacement surgery.

Our first stop was the Indianapolis Zoo.  Both kids really enjoyed it.  I thought for sure Owen would sleep through most of it, but it must have been exciting enough to keep him awake.  Caleb got to feed a giraffe some sweet potatoes.  He later informed me that giraffes clean out their noses with their tongues.  Hand sanitizer, anyone?

Each kid got a souvenir.  You probably can't tell in the picture, but Caleb opted for a grabber with a huge tiger head on top.  It was so much fun, he fell asleep in the car playing with it...makes a good headrest.

Wednesday was set aside for visiting Marilyn and just relaxing.  Then on Thursday, we headed to the Indianapolis Children's Museum.  Boy did we go at a great time.  They had this huge Transformer in the lobby, a dinosaur exhibit, a Lego exhibit and a HotWheels exhibit.  Caleb was in heaven!

 Digging for artifacts....given our recent pink-eye epidemic, I was very wary of putting those googles on.  I'm happy to report that there have been no incidents since.

 Hee-hee! Caleb and Owen driving in a cool, blue car.  I also have a pic of Caleb driving.  Right as I snapped the picture, three little girls hopped in the front and back.  He looked like quite the man in his hot rod.

 Hanging out with mommy in the Lego exhibit - too many little pieces for the little man.

Both boys got to ride a horse on the huge carousel.  Owen loved all of the lights and rockin' away to the music.

ISU/Walker Hall Reunion
Every year all of my college roomies and their husbands and kids try to get together to do an ISU Reunion.  Generally everyone comes to Bloomington because it's centrally located.  However, our families are ever-growing and my house can no longer easily fit the 10 kids (all 6 and under) and 9 adults.  So we decided we would do a picnic at the park.  Oh, how I prayed for no rain! We did get a little and it was chilly, but we made it work!  And had a great time!

Jennie with Owen.  I think she was his favorite - lots of smiles for Ms. Jennie that day.

Caleb played a little baseball with Ben Schwab and the other little boys.

I'm so proud of my husband.  He convinced Cody to play a pick-up game of basketball with these two 22yr old guys at the park.  He's still got it!

Jenny and I are starting photo albums of Maggie and Owen....in case they get married someday.

And of course, the lovely ladies.  I must say, we look GOOD!  As mentioned on Facebook, we've really improved ourselves in 10 years.  Yes, it has been 10 years since graduation.  Oh how far we've come! 

l-r: Aubrey, Jenny, Jennie, Sara, me

Mother's Day

We had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend, despite all of the sickness.  Gabe really wasn't feeling very good on Sunday, but he was still a trooper.  He got up with the kids, fed them and made me breakfast in bed.  Yeah! And besides my wonderful Mother's Day gift from my boys, I also got a special gift just from Caleb.  He came in the room and said, "Mommy, I got something special for you! It's for your face and it has princesses on it!"  I am now the proud owner of 6 Disney Princess lip glosses shaped like hearts.  But wait, that's not all!  They're also rings, so you can wear one all day. :) Yes, I wore one on Monday during most of the day.  He was so proud!  The things we do for love.
We headed to Danville shortly after that to spend Mother's Day with Gabe's mom and to go to church with everyone.  This will forever be known as the Pink-eye Mother's Day as I am sporting my ever-so-lovely glasses for all my pictures.  I am more than thrilled.

Caleb has been into making drawings of our family lately.  This was his first one.  He drew it by himself and brought it upstairs to show me.  I was so impressed and felt so proud that he did such a good job.  And then I looked at Owen's picture.  I said, "Buddy, what does Owen have on his face?" "Oh," he replied, "that's snot."  Classy.

Matching jammies!

Busy, busy, busy

The Myers family has seriously been going non-stop recently.  The only reason I even have time to post this is because Gabe made a last minute decision and took Caleb camping tonight.  So now that I have Owen in bed, I can concentrate on the blissful, wonderfully free 3 hours I have ahead.  Don't you feel lucky that I'm choosing to spend some of that time blogging!  So here's the rundown of our comings and goings:

Gabe made Caleb a new wooden ramp for his cars, complete with a parking lot at the top.  It was his first project since completing his workbench.  Caleb loves it, of course!

We had some cousin time this week.  If only Owen could have been in the pic too.  But we felt pretty impressed that three of them would actually stay in one spot, let me take more than one picture of them, AND smile.  

We had a whirlwind weekend last weekend.  We left B/N right after school on Friday to spend some time with the Schwabs down in Litchfield.  I had my first-ever pedicure.  It was fun to have some girl time!  Then off to Highland we went, only to get a good night's sleep and then head to St. Louis in the morning for the 5th annual Strollathon.  Sophie was totally in on the fun with her purple hair for Team Sophie.  Fredbird made an appearance before the game later that day.

My dad and Owen getting ready to stroll.  Doesn't Owen look cute in his little purple Team Sophie shirt?  Heehee.

My aunt Debi let Owen wear her sunglasses. He thought that was pretty great.

Let the stroll begin! A one-mile stroll through Tilles Park.

 Did I mention it was hot that day?  Oh man, you just never know what you're going to get at the beginning of May.  The first year we took Caleb it was freezing.  I suppose we're glad it didn't rain, but the air conditioning at the restaurant later felt fantastic!

A pretty great family pic from the day. This is post-stroll...that's a lot of happy faces for all the sweat and hunger we had going on.  After the stroll we went out for lunch to celebrate Mother's Day.  It's becoming a rather nice tradition - maybe not always on Mother's Day - but we were together and that's what counts.

After the stroll and lunch, we jumped in the car and head back to B/N.  We all showered, ate and then headed out for Gabe's Brass Band of Central Illinois concert.  They played great!

The next Monday, Ruthie invited us to go to the zoo with her and Victoria.  It was Owen's first trip.  My favorite part was watching them watch the meerkats.  Owen just giggled and giggles trying to catch the one that was pacing back and forth on the ledge.

Looks like we really wore him out - yeah for good naps!

And this one is kind of random, but my friend Julie was kind enough to bring her two little ones out to the Strollathon to support Team Sophie.  Lillie is still pretty little and she was sleeping in her stroller, so I just had to snap a photo of her sweet little feet.  I love baby feet!