Hunt Family Connection

Dates with my men :)

Wil and I didn’t sleep so well on Saturday night, so while Wil tried to catch up on Sunday morning, Graham and I headed off to Oakmont Park to play in the water and have a picnic lunch.

We set up our blankets in the shade and then went straight to the fountains to cool off a little. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to spend a lot of time in this park and it is awesome! There is the great water feature and then a spot to play with water and sand, they have swings, the cool merry-go-round thing that we discovered at another park a few weeks back, some great ride-on toys (a jeep, an airplane, and some motorcycles) and a toddler friendly climbing structure with slides. Soooo much to choose from! Graham was loving the water – running through, standing over, and even putting his face into the fountains. He also made visits to every other section of the park, but nothing held his attention like the fountains and the jeep.  He even made a little friend – a cute little girl climbed into the jeep he was “driving”. She wanted to go to the zoo, and demanded that he get out of the jeep when they arrived (tee hee!). Graham decided he wasn’t going to be getting out of the jeep – when I was telling about this later at the dinner table, Wil suggested that he enjoy that freedom in decision-making while he can…whatever daddy!

Graham and I took a break for lunch in the shade – sandwiches, goldfish crackers, and raisins (and an Oreo cookie for dessert!) then played a bit more before heading home for a nap.

After a much better night of sleep, Wil and I celebrated our anniversary on Monday while G was at daycare. We had lunch at Eugene City Brewery and then spent a couple of hours like this…

I made appointments for foot massage/treatments at Footloose – soooo nice and relaxing! We sat perched up on a cushy loveseat with tea and chocolates while our feet were soaked, massaged, and wrapped up with hot stones. The massage was definitely my favorite part – I’m hoping to go back for another one before the baby arrives.

While they were very different activities/dates, I have to say I really enjoyed spending time with my boys :)

A happy ending…

We had a bit of an adventure with Graham today after picking him up from daycare. The daycare provider took the group to the pool to play, and apparently they ran into a couple of bullies.  One of the boys came up to Graham and ripped a toy away from him, twisting his arm into a bad position. He was rather upset so the daycare provider got some ice for him and had a lifeguard check him out. It did appear to be bruised, but seemed ok otherwise (aside from the emotional trauma of course!) While the daycare provider was helping Graham, the bullies disappeared. It turns out that they were causing a lot of trouble and other parents had complained about them as well – they disappeared pretty quickly so the lifeguards don’t have their names or really know who they are. We were told that they have been “banned” from the pool for a length of time though…

So like I said, things seemed to be ok until I showed up to get Graham from daycare. He became really upset again and wouldn’t stop crying. He didn’t want us to touch his arm, and when we did he became a bit hysterical.  He refused to use his arm or hand, even when I offered to let him play with my phone. It was far too similar to the events surrounding the broken leg he had awhile back, so we were worried.  I cuddled on the couch with G while Wil called the doctor to see if he could get us seen at the orthopedic clinic. It was late in the day, but they somehow got us in. We saw the dr. that we saw for Graham’s broken leg (LOVE him) and after checking Graham out he suspected that he had “Nursemaid’s Elbow”. He said he was going to try and pop it back into place and that it would make Graham quite upset for a moment, but if that’s what it was, then it would be fixed rather quickly. While G sat in my lap he rotated his arm/hand around in a way that was rather painful to watch and Graham was indeed quite upset with him. He left us alone for a little bit to allow G to settle down and see if it had helped.  Minutes after the dr. left the room, Graham was reaching for my phone and using his injured hand to dial! It was AMAZING – like he was never in a bit of pain! 

So no further treatment is needed, but we were warned that since this happened, he could be more susceptible to it happening again. We are to be extra careful about grabbing at his arm or swinging him by his arms – stuff that can easily happen during play or while trying to help him out of the truck or jumping off of things (like he loves to do!)  As for the bullies at the pool – the daycare provider has been called by the pool staff a few times already and assured that they are doing their best to follow up on the incident. The protective mother in me would like to hunt them down (and more specifically the parents that should have been monitoring them) and make sure they are appropriately punished. I hate that we can’t protect G from bad things happening, but am glad that we were able to help make it better in this case.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

I dug up a couple pictures from our wedding SIX years ago :) One from dinner the night before the wedding, and one that jumped out at me as I was looking through wedding pics. I am happy to say that we are still standing right next to each other, holding hands through whatever comes our way. We’ve met our share of challenges but have also experienced some of the greatest joy that either of us have ever known.

We are extremely blessed to have our children, our home, our family and friends, our health, and each other. We know how lucky we are and acknowledge it often.

We’ll be spending our anniversary close to home with Graham. We usually do some looking back on the past year and talk about things we might want to work on in the year ahead. On Monday Graham will be at daycare so I think we’ll be going to lunch and then we’re scheduled for a little spa treatment in the afternoon – can’t wait!

And so it begins…

The first batch of flooring was dropped off at the house yesterday to begin “acclimating” – apparently not only are we acclimating to the house, but also to the little person that lives in the house :)

Graham found this to be a great place to sit and watch Jack’s Big Music Show.

We’re quickly learning that nothing is for certain or goes as planned with projects like this. We’ve already had the timelines and plans changes – right now they are hoping to be pretty much finished by August 4th (I will believe it when I see it!) Of course I’ve laid out the ultimate deadline  - this WILL all be done by the time September 5th and the new baby come around.

The contractor is also helping us finish the trim in Graham’s big boy room – that will hopefully get finished up next week sometime so we can start moving him in there.

I had a very nice breakfast, catching up with some friends this morning then went to a Dr. appointment – more pregnancy info HERE.  It’s going to be a HOT weekend here so we’ll be looking for ways to keep busy inside or out in the water somewhere – it all depends on how much energy I can find :)

Staying busy…

This week is flying by me – they seem to go faster the closer we get to the end of summer. Graham has been busy playing with his daycare friends and I went to work on Tuesday. Yesterday I had a long and relaxing lunch with friends and then made some progress on home improvement stuff.

We met with the contractor to finalize some details – I’m planning to meet him at Jerry’s this afternoon to pick out some window/door trim and some white paint (‘cause apparently there are many different shades of white!) He’s also planning to bring the boxes of wood laminate to the house to start acclimating them.  We also purchased a new dishwasher yesterday – it’s a Bosch, which is apparently a very well rated dishwasher.  Who knew?? I thought Bosch just made tools :)

We’ll be trying to time the delivery with the completion of the floors in the kitchen. The very hopeful estimate on that will be Tuesday, August 4th….we’ll see how that goes. 

Wil and I also started working on putting together the dresser for Graham’s room – there are a lot of pieces and we got stuck when we couldn’t find a hammer.

Finally, while Pa-Paw is on vacation we realize we provide a poor substitute for the fun times G has going to the airport with him…

This is a little ride area outside of Sears – G found that airplane and we couldn’t get him out of it :)  Now the great news is that he’s still completely and totally happy in the plane without us putting a single quarter in there to make it move.  Here’s hoping that lasts for a bit yet! 

Our Weekend or “Good Times (thumbs up)!”

Graham got to spend most of the day on Saturday with his Pa-Paw and Grandma Chery. He was SUPER EXCITED when they arrived and went running out the door. He quickly waved at me saying “Bye mommy” and never really looked back.  When he got back home I was greeted with Graham showing me a thumbs up and saying “good times!” It seems Pa-Paw and Grandma Chery have taught him something new :)

They started by taking him to Skinner’s Butte Park in the morning – they did LOTS of stuff there and took many pictures. Here are some of my favs:

You can see the whole collection of pictures here: Skinner’s Butte Park

After the park they had lunch at Oakway then brought G back home for a nap. After naptime they came back and took him to the tennis club to swim in the pool. While they were away I shopped and prepared for dinner and we BBQ’d when they got back to the house. Such a busy and FUN day for Graham – also a very good day for Wil and I to rest and recover….life with a 2-year-old is busy! The “good times/thumbs up” thing has stuck with him – it’s very cute :)

Sunday was not nearly as eventful, but it was nice to hang out around the house and just relax together. We did wander out later in the afternoon to run a couple of errands, which included grabbing dinner to bring home and eat.

Today starts the last week that Wil is teaching summer school – I think he has enjoyed it, but is also ready to have some time off. I will be returning to work to take care of some things while G goes to daycare this week (and probably on and off in the weeks to come) – I need to finish up some work from the spring, prepare for my leave, and prepare for a bunch of new employees and early entry assessment. This week we will also be meeting with the contractor to start work on the floors and trim downstairs – we have a few other tasks that need to be done to prepare for that work as well….buy some paint for the trim, shop for a new dishwasher…a little overwhelming when I think of the upheaval ahead, but very exciting :)  GOOD TIMES – THUMBS UP!

Inside fun…

It’s been rather hot outside these last few days and I don’t think today is going to be any better. I was looking for fun things to do inside the nice, air-conditioned house, and got to thinking about these paint-with-water books we had when we were little.

 
I found a Handy Manny book at Target and yesterday seemed like a great day to try it out. G painted a little bit once I showed him how it all worked, but then quickly explored other ways to use his materials…

 
…like sucking the water off of his paint brush or just drinking the water from the cup – YUM! I tried to tell him that this was “icky”, but that just made him laugh harder. Luckily there isn’t much (if any) actual paint involved in all of this, so I don’t think anything horrible will come from ingesting the water. He did stick around and complete a page for daddy though – here he is looking over the finished product:

Other fun things we have enjoyed doing inside: reading books, watching Jack’s Big Music Show (over and over and over again!), playing catch with a beach ball, and building with Legos. Legos is really a daddy thing – he’s far more creative than I am.  Look at what he and Graham came up with the other night!

 
I also took him to the mall yesterday as it was just too hot to play outside.We walked around a little and then spent some time at the mall park. There weren’t very many kids there at all when we were, so it worked out perfectly.

Looks like we’re in for another hot day today, so we’ll be doing more of this stuff and looking for other ways to stay cool :)

And now it’s a scrapbook page…

I took the photo of G and his Pa-Paw and turned it into this:

If you click on the page you can find out more about the materials used to put this together and the page that inspired it :)

Days 9 and 10 – Guest Bedroom and Linen Closet

In all I guess it took a couple of days to get these areas finished up. I’m starting to lose steam because I’m getting to rooms that I don’t spend a lot of time in and I’m just plain getting tired!

I don’t have a picture of the linen closet before decluttering, but it wasn’t really horrible to begin with. I do have a couple before pictures of the guest bedroom…

 

I think maybe some other things had been moved (or dumped) in there along the way in this decluttering process. I started by returning things that I knew belonged in other rooms to their home (mostly the clothes that were in there and a few other odds and ends. I then starting sorting through things and piled together the things that I knew we needed to get rid of.

I did part of the linen closet while working in the master bedroom, because all of the medicines and extra supplies went back in there. The rest of the linen closet kind of tied into the guest bedroom because I moved out a bunch of sheets from the closet and moved the sets that I was keeping for the guest bed into a drawer in the guest bedroom.

I know it’s not easy to see, but there are actually open spaces in the closet! I have an extra set of sheets for Graham’s big boy bed in there, and need to add an extra set for our king size bed (I’m thinking we definitely need a flannel set!)

I’m much happier with our medicines and things in there too – makes it much harder for little hands to get to.

And here is the guest bedroom now…

 
(Don’t worry mom – we’ll make sure the cat gets out before you and dad arrive AND I have a brand new blanket all put away and ready to break out…never touched by kitties!)

The totes are not a permanent fixture in the room, but are clothes that will be sorted through post-pregnancy. They bother me a little bit, but I’ll get to them eventually. Here’s the other side of the room…

I’d still like to get some curtains up on the window and maybe some sort of art on the wall, but that’s about all I’d do for now.  I have off-season coats/clothes and luggage/bags in the closet – there is also some room for guests’ hanging clothes.

And finally – the truck was loaded for another trip to Goodwill. This part feels GREAT!

So there are three rooms left upstairs – Graham’s big boy room, Sprout’s room, and the craft/catch-all room (mind you, the only “craft” I really do anymore is all contained on my computer…probably don’t need a room dedicated to craft supplies – lol) I know that a LOT of stuff has landed in there though as I’ve gone through other rooms.  I’m going to have to be feeling REALLY ambitious to take that one on. For now the door stays closed. 

We (and when i say we, I mean Wil) is going to be working in G’s big boy room this week – a second coat of paint and getting trim. I can’t really do much in Sprout’s room until G is into his new room…so for now, decluttering is on hold.

Mondays Are Special!

Mondays are very exciting for Graham… In the morning I ask G, “Guess who’s coming to get you from daycare today?” and he gets this sparkle in his eyes, a big smile on his face, and whispers excitedly, “Paaa-Pawwww!”

Grandma Chery took this picture over the weekend when they were playing outside and when I saw it, I thought it just perfectly illustrated how Graham feels about his Pa-Paw :)

Grandma Chery is out of town tonight, so it was just the boys – I’m told they had a great time. They played at a park and Graham helped make the hamburger patties they fixed for dinner.

Pa-Paw and Grandma Chery are awesome at taking pictures and documenting their time with Graham – I love that!  In fact, just got the hamburger picture a few minutes ago in my email :)

We feel so lucky to have family here to help care for Graham – they are a very important part of the village it takes to get it all done.

Wil and I took advantage of a little extra time together and went out for a late lunch together. We had a great talk and enjoyed a leisurely meal…a little different scene than when we take G with us. 

I didn’t plan on doing any major projects today, and instead concentrated on picking things up and putting them back where they belong. It was so easy to get stuff straightened up, and everything had a place to return to – yay! I filed away some things that were sitting on the desk and did a few loads of laundry. I also ran a couple of errands – Target for some stuff we need and Jerry’s to get some product information for the contractor’s estimate on the flooring (we’re planning to replace all of the different flooring downstairs with wood laminate and update the baseboard trim). The contractor came by today and took the measurements so now that he has the info about the materials we’ve chosen, he can give us an estimate.

This is a sample of the floor we picked. It looks much darker in this photo than it does in person – it’s called Burnished Cherry.

It will be installed throughout the entire downstairs and should make it all feel a little bigger without the divisions and different floor styles that are there right now.

I think this will also be a good surface to have with the cats – much easier on the allergies and to clean up.  We’re also looking at more pet friendly furniture – either a leather-like material or microfiber. I’m definitely looking forward to the updates….and to breathing a little easier.

I’ve been neglecting Sprout’s blog a little (the second child is getting cheated already!) so must go update that next. I believe the entry will be called Dance Party cause it looks like that’s what’s going on in my tummy right now!