Fun times!

Josh, Kaitlyn and Kaia are moving away next week-so we had them over for dinner and to see them off. The kids had so much fun and we all laughed so hard at their antics. The both love to ham it up. Enjoy the pictures from our fun filled evening!

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Silly kids. Kaia has the best smile and she can really get to laughing, which only made Finnean laugh it up too!

This cracks me up. They both wanted to read books but didn't want to be too close!

Big blue eyed boy.

Finnean perfecting his ice cream licking skills.

Finnean and Kaia loved running, hopping, marching and racing down the hall. They had so much fun!

Ready, set, GO!

Peek! Finnean LOVES to hide and Peek you.

Josh and Michael have been friends for so long, it is so fun to see them with the little ones. They look like proud daddy's!

We tried to get them to play together the whole night and right before the Swaims were leaving they started playing right next to each other! Sweet little kids!

I love this picture!! Happy, happy families!

Josh, Kaitlyn and Kaia-you will be missed! We are excited because their move gives us a reason to explore another side of the state!

Non Stop Fun at the State Fair!

" Bus! Bus! Bus!"

This is all we heard all the way to the State Fair grounds. Finnean loved riding the bus and then our bus got stopped by a train-so that was even cooler!! "Choo! Choo! Bus! Look!" We were afraid that the fair wouldn't be as exciting as the bus ride there but he was pretty excited when we got there as well.

Finnean and Daddy found a "BIG tractor" and took it for a spin!

Yum Yum! First mini-donut! Last year Finnean didn't get to eat any of the our favorite snacks but this year he definitely had his share of "sh-nacks!"

Finnean loved to checking out all the baby animals. He was squealing because he was so excited!

Hi Dad!

Finnean and Daddy checking out the train!

Go "Sh-clones!"

This is the Cy-Hawk trophy and Finnean loved the Iowa State booth. When we walked by the Hawkeye booth he said "Hawkeyes. Poppa. Hawkeyes. Poppa. Poppa. Poppa." He knows that Poppa likes the Hawkeyes. I asked Finnean if he liked the Hawkeyes and he said "No Hawkeyes." :)

Family picture of the day.

We got Finnean a Iowa State tattoo and he LOVED it. He kept pointing to his cyclones and thought it was pretty cool. I wasn't sure if we were going to get him to go to sleep because it was so exciting!

Mommy and Finnean

Checking out the State Patrol car!

This is one of my favs of the day. He had a good time burning off some energy!

Finnean has been working on saying Bare Root and it sounds more like "Bare Woot" and it is so cute. Of course, he loves the "sh-clones."

Finnean and Daddy casting their kerrnal.

Peek!

Silly boys!

Fair Square!

Everyone was kind of judging the Fair Square and wondering why you would spend money on a rice crispy treat...but it was the perfect snack! I actually bought it for myself and of course Finnean wanted it. So I told him that he had to share with me and he took a few bites and then would hold it up in the air and say Mommy! I would take a bite and then he would say Daddy! and then he would take another bite! He did such a good job sharing.

Cookies!

Yes we did give him some healthy food on this date but he did have his share of sugar too :)

I LOVE this picture. We asked him..."Where is your Bare Root?" and he did this. It looks like he is very passionate about his Bare Root!!

Happy Boy! This was right before we were going home. He did such a great job at the fair and loved looking at the people and LOVED all the tractors that kept driving by. It was a great day to be out!

Love this smile.

Saturday fun!

Last Saturday we had a great day. We spent the morning running errands and made a stop at the park. It is amazing how brave Finnean is and he hated leaving the park. He cried and cried!

Then in the afternoon we hit up our first friend birthday party. Miss Kaia turned TWO last week and we had our first adventure to Chuck E. Cheese. We had a blast. As you can see Finnean took a little bit of time to warm up to the characters.

Finnean and Kaia doing a little coloring before they headed out to play games.

Michael looks a little more excited than Finnean!

Tickets!

The most exciting part of playing games! He got these tickets after playing Whack a mole!

He loved going down the slide. He just doesn't go very fast!

Cake!!!

Finnean cracks me up. Silly boy-no smiles!

Peek! The kids loved playing in the toddler area. This is one of the only pictures that we could get of them "playing" together. Everytime Kaia would come up to the glass, Finnean would run away!

Happy Boy!

He looks so old here. We just got done with the party and on our way to get a POTTY!! Finnean has started telling me that there is poopy in his diaper. So we thought it would be good to get a potty chair to just start the process. The chair was soooo cool until we actually took off his diaper and sat him down on it. He cried and cried saying "Diaper! Shorts! Diaper! Shorts!" He apparently didn't want to sit on the potty-so we will just go with the flow and hopefully he will warm up to the potty soon!

A great day to pick Blueberries...

Thought you would enjoy a little of the blueberry picking! I promise...he really does know how to say Blueberries but of course he wouldn't say it on camera!!

Pericarditis

Well...we are on other adventure. On Thursday morning Michael called and let me know that he was having some chest pains and I told him to get an appointment...long story short, he went to the doctor, got an EKG and chest x-ray, spent 5 hours in the ER and then finally admitted to the hospital around 6pm on Thursday night. We got out Friday around 4:30pm. WHEW! After so many tests we found out that he has Pericarditis, which is an inflammation or viral infection of the sac of the heart. So we have been taking it easy and trying to keep Michael from doing to much. There shouldn't be any long term affects from this so that is a positive but still really scary when you are told there is something wrong around your heart. Most cases last about three weeks. Since Michael has been having chest pains since Sunday (and didn't tell me!!!) he is about a week in. Hopefully he recovers fast. Again we are completely lucky to have such amazing people around us to make sure that Finnean was taken care of! Thank you Marcia and the Murphys!!

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Yesterday I took him out for a drive. He said he felt like a really old person and I was his volunteer that was getting him out of the house :) The good thing is on our drive we found some buffalo.

Finnean loved the buffalo but hated leaving them. He cried and cried!!

BluuueBerrrries...

Ready to pick some berries!!

Finnean and I decided to give Daddy some quiet time this morning so we headed out to The Berry Patch Farm just south of Nevada. It was so fun! We got our bucket and went into rows and rows of blueberry bushes. Finnean happens to LOVE blueberries and I was so excited that he didn't try to eat them and he only picked the blue ones. There were some red/pinkish berries and we decided that they didn't need to be picked yet!

First Pick!!

Getting down and getting a good one. He kept walking around saying " more, more, more!"

He looked so little in the big rows of blueberries.

He didn't even try to squish them!

They had a little chair for people to sit and pick away-Finnean thought that was a good idea!

It was so fun to pick our own berries, in a book that we have been reading a lot (Fred and Ted) they pick berries to eat...just like us. We had ours for lunch today!

Getting closer to TWO years old!

Again...I always say it is so hard to believe another month has gone by but WHEW! Time flies when you are having fun. Here are a few new skills, habits and words that Finnean our 20 month old little guy has picked up in the past month...

• cute new words: blueberries, mouse, mickey mouse, bye bye Jerry, piwlow (he is crazy about pillows!!) just to name a few...
• he continues to gain more independence and likes to walk down the stairs by himself (sometimes he wants to hold your hand), hates holding your hand outside, he has to pick the book before bedtime (Fred and Ted Go Camping is our current fav-Thanks Abby and Cory!!)
• He loves to DANCE!!! The dancing just keeps getting better-he has rhythm and seems to find the beat in songs. He favorite song is This Too Shall Pass by OKay Go-it is definitely worth your time to check it out. It has a marching band and he LOVES to watch it on the computer and cheers for them when they are done!
• Has been practicing drinking out of a non-sippy cup. He does a pretty good job but often gets TOO much water down the pipes and coughs/chokes and freaks me out! Today I sat a glass of water down for him and he knocked it over within seconds, bust out laughing and said "Uh-oh!" So I smiled and got him another glass (with not as much water in it) and sat it down. He picked it up, took a big drink, sat it down and said "Ahhhhh!" Like "boy that was refreshing!"
• He has been picking on Jerry a little bit more these days-but still loves him so much.
• He is crazy, crazy, crazy for fruit.
• Every morning when he is walking upstairs with Michael after getting dressed he says..."JERRY!!" and then "Nana!!" and then "MILK!" I know he loves his breakfast and Jerrydog but where is the love for Mommy!?
• Perfecting his power walking by pumping those arms! He also can do a great Downward Facing Dog-he has been working on his yoga poses.
• He gets mad and has tantrums every once in a while but is still pretty mild mannered.
• He pretends to go Night-Night. O boy it just melts my heart. He snuggles up and snores.

As we are sitting here trying to think of all of the neat stuff he is doing...what comes to mind is he just seems older. He is turning into a really awesome little kid. He acts silly, funny, sad, mad, he pretends, he is just flat out hilarious. We find ourselves saying, "I think he is a genius" and "jeez-i know we have said this before but he is cute!" at least 2-3 times per week! He just cracks us up and makes our little our world so happy. We hope you enjoy the stories and the pictures we share with you!

Trip to the Park!

Finnean the Explorer.

It is so hard to believe that he can get up and down the steps like a big kid all on his own. He holds on to the rail and just gets where he needs to go!

They were discussing going down the slide. Finnean did not want anything to do with it at first. Then Michael went down and went to play on the swing, next thing we know-Finnean is heading down the big slide all by himself! He just needed to do it on his own time!

He was "Peek"-ing me!

On a mission!

After all that playing and sweating...you need a bath!! Finnean likes to play in the tub but sometimes he doesn't like to get his body or hair washed...which is the whole reason we are int he tub! Silly Boy!