We have been here about a month now and have already gotten our money's worth out of our zoo passes. If it's been a few days since we've gone, Shane will tell me "we haven't been to the zoo in a looong time." They both love it, and have yet to show any inklings of being tired of it. Shane makes it his personal mission to see all the animals every time we go, and luckily the zoo is not so huge that that is impossible, but it's big enough that it is still fun. Here are a few pictures from our recent outings
The sea lions really like when you rub money in front of them
We always have to stop and sing "I like to move it move it" when we see these guys.
Marissa says this komodo dragon is her favorite.
Marissa was timidly holding her lettuce out for the giraffe but couldn't quite bring herself to get close enough
So big brother stepped up for her.
Bless her heart, she is sure not afraid of the goats, they take quite a beating from her.
Upon seeing this bronze turtle Shane yells, "Oh look, it's a dead turtle!! Did somebody shoot it?"
Cute Sadie along for the ride. I have to admit, there are a lot of babies at the zoo right now and I feel like I can relate to the mamas ha ha.
Sometimes I feel like I'm having deja vu with Sadie. Sometimes when I am holding her, I will think to myself, is this really a different baby or am I just back in time with one of the other two? As far as my memory serves, she looks pretty similar to the other two, though when I look back to pictures they don't look as similar as I had imagined.
(Sadie)
(Marissa)
(Sadie)
(Marissa)
(Sadie's eyes are a lot darker than Shane's or Marissa's were.) Maybe it's partly that I'm using pretty much all the same things I used with them, especially Marissa's clothes since they were born around the same time. They generally like the same sorts of things (being swaddled, taking a bath when they get fussy at night, staring at the fish mobile on their swing), or maybe I have just gotten used to doing things a certain way. Also, we were kind of at a little break for Josh around the same time for both Marissa and Sadie. Except for one thing- I got a little spoiled with Marissa sleeping through the night so quickly!
Here is our little house, or at least some outside pictures of it. It is smaller than our last house because there is no basement and no upstairs, but the living areas are bigger and we have an attached garage (woohoo!).
Here is the backyard looking from the side of the house. There is not a fence but behind it is some really big bushes and a field so the kids can't get too far.
They have loved the yard and have really been playing together a lot more.
Course one of their favorite places to play is on the side of the house where there are a bunch of little rocks, or "nuts" as they like to call them, you know, since they are chipmunks.
Josh has been working hard on the yard, this is what it looked like when we moved in. Shane for one was thrilled with all the flowers (dandelions) in the yard. There were a couple days in Saginaw when it was supposed to be spring and it snowed and he burst into tears and said, "I wanted flowers! It's just not beautiful!!" In fact one of my friends was over one day and was talking to him and was saying it was a beautiful day and he informed her, "No, it's not beautiful. There are no flowers or leaves on the trees." So he was very happy to see "flowers" here and told me "I always wanted flowers!" and picked several for me:)
This is from the front yard looking down the street, it is a cul-de-sac and there are a ton of kids.
In pretty much every neighborhood here there are at least a couple lakes. I can get a pretty good run in going around all of them.
We love that our neighborhood is kind of on the edge of the city and right next to that big field so it has a country feel to it but it is five minutes away from a huge shopping center with a Target, Kohls, Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, etc. It can sometimes be hard to find places to rent instead of buy, but we feel like we lucked out big time with this one because our landlord only posted it on some obscure sight that only people as "thorough" as my husband would find. She really liked Josh from talking to him on the phone and when we came down to look at the house she offered to let us stay the night in it and had an air mattress and table all made up nice for us and she even stocked the fridge with snacks for us. And when we moved in she had her daughter who has a little business on etsy make us a welcome package filled with goodies. Basically, we are really really happy here.
We blessed Sadie on our last Sunday in Saginaw, which worked out really nicely. We were happy that Josh's dad and my dad could both fly out for it, even though my dad had just been there 2 weeks before. We had fun spending time with the grandpas on Friday night and Saturday,
then went to church on Sunday morning where Josh did the blessing with his dads and a few other priesthood holders in the ward.
Our little family of 5!
And cute little Sadie Jo. She was the first of our babies to not cry during the whole blessing and to not poop all over her dress :) Before her blessing I went back and looked at what I had written down about the other two's blessings just for fun. Josh blessed Shane that he would have a love of learning- that has definitely come to pass! He blessed Marissa that she would be a peacemaker in the home... hmmmm, still waiting on that one ha ha. One of the things he blessed Sadie with was that even though she was a 3rd child that she would be a leader and stand for what was right.
We got home from church and had a quick lunch before Josh's dad had to leave, then a couple hours later my Aunt Pat and Uncle John came to help us finish packing up the house. We thought we were pretty close to being done when they came, but we quickly realized how wrong we were and were so, so glad to have them there.
Here is Pat on one of the only minutes she was not packing or cleaning up the kitchen like a mad woman. They were both a ton of help and I don't know how we would have done it all without them.
They stayed through Monday night, we finished up the loose ends on Tuesday and my dad and Josh pretty much packed up the whole truck before the men from our church even showed up. (I think my dad was trying to show us how young he is in light of a recent birthday... we were impressed!) We left Wednesday morning and made it to Fort Wayne without incident, and the rest is history. Which means now I need to start posting pictures of the house! It is almost ready...
Between having a baby and packing up the house Marissa's birthday didn't get a ton of thought but hey, she's only 2 and I think she was pretty happy anyway. Since our birthdays are a day apart we just celebrated together this year on my birthday since it's first. My parents were still here and we went to Olive Garden for dinner,
and opened up her presents. She is a good little present opener, she gets excited about whatever it is. She got a coloring book
and some bracelets from Grandma Dettinger,
some babies from Grandma Elkins
some shoes, a book, and a doctor kit from Grandma Nebeker
and also a new comforter from Grandma Dettinger for her big girl bed.
Do you think she liked it??
Pat even came out a couple days later and brought her these fun blocks
We also had my favorite spice cake.
A few things about Marissa at 2:
-She loves her little sister, but is still learning how to channel all that love. She especially loves her hands and feet and cannot resist squeezing them, and on a few occasions biting them.
-She can melt hearts pretty quickly with her hugs, she molds right into your body and will give them pretty freely to anyone who asks.
-She is really pretty easy going as far as being with other people. She LOVES nursery at church. We have visited quite a few different ones through all our travels the past few months and she always goes right in without any hesitation.
-She loves going places with me. When we go grocery shopping she will say "Woo hoo!! We at Kroger!" (Only she says its "hoo hoo", which I love!)
-I think her daddy may be in trouble with her. She already had a crush, on an older boy (my friend's 5 year old). Every time we would go to the Y she would say, "Sam be there?" And she couldn't keep her hands off him. She also loves giving hugs to her little friend Enzo.
-Her favorite things to do lately are to play with legos or blocks (she is always saying "let's build a house!"), play "store" with Shane, read books,.and of course eat, she's always down for that! She will often say when she wants something to eat, "Pease, I so hungry," as if she is some starving orphan.
-The other day she was reading one of the David books and I asked her what he was doing. She said, "He's picking his nose. I pick my nose too!" Oh dear. She is always a mess, and still drools a ton too.
-Apparently she has a pretty good memory too. I started realizing that as Shane and I were saying the articles of faith at bedtime, she was listening and catching on to a lot them. We just finished the 13th, and the other night I asked her if she could say it and with a few prompts she said pretty much the whole thing! So I pulled out the video camera and had her do it again for me. She gets distracted midway by Sadie's feet, but there are some pretty cute parts so I am posting it and then another one that is not quite as cute but that she says it a little better in.
I wanted to document Shane's latest obsession- Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers. No, it is not on TV anymore, but he somehow got hooked from watching it on youtube, and I found a DVD on Amazon. He has assigned each of us characters (luckily there are five Rescue Rangers and five of us) and calls us by those names often. Here we are, left to right: Dale (Shane), Gadget (me), Chip (Marissa), Zipper (Sadie), and Monterey Jack (Josh).
He likes to get Marissa (and anyone else that will) to play Rescue Rangers with him, which usually involves someone needing to be saved from a mean something. And because I love cheesy tie-ins, I will lead right into documenting my parents time here by saying that after that awful awful week they were our Rescue Rangers!! They were here for 2 weeks, and helped us out so much. Here are just a few of the ways:
They took the kids to an Easter egg hunt complete with a helicopter dropping the eggs,
and held Marissa tight when said helicopter was a little too scary.
They took them to the park on the one nice day,
and then took us to Chuck E Cheese when it had rained for about the tenth straight day.
Good thing they brought this raincoat for Marissa,
and this adorable little outfit my mom couldn't turn resist buying Sadie even though she knew she probably wouldn't need it for too long.
(It's also a good thing we moved because after another visit with completely crappy weather my mom vowed she would never come to Saginaw again ha ha)
They told scripture stories way better than mom or dad,
snuggled babies and read lots and lots of books.
They shared their food with us,
and even thought we were cute when we were making our "crusty face"
Basically, we had a lot of fun and are so glad they could come!
