Milwaukee

Our decision to head to Milwaukee for labor day weekend was primarily based on weather.  We knew we needed to head north to escape the heat and it turned out to be a pretty great decision.  We had great weather, still a little on the hot side, but not too uncomfortable.  We stopped in Kenosha first.  I had hoped to go to the beach there, but it was a little too windy.  Fortunately, they were having a huge car show in their quaint down town streets.  We had fun walking around and picking out our favorites.  (They were also having "Cheese-a-polooza"but we didn't get to sample any of the Mac'n'cheese or grilled cheese sandwiches).

 

 In Milwaukee we were lucky enough to be there the weekend of the Harley Davidson custom motorcycle show.  (The largest one in North America).
As you may have guessed there were SO MANY motorcycles at the HD headquarters & museum.  We were perhaps a little out of place with our double stroller, but it was really cool to see all the bikes.

 

 

 

We ate at AJ Bombers, another great diner featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.  My peanut butter burger was fantastic.
Downtown Milwaukee is beautiful. There's a beautiful river running through it and we had fun walking along the river walk looking for the Bronze Fonz...

 

 

 

Jane loved running everywhere and thought it was pretty funny to not look at me at all when I had my camera out.  I ended up chasing her all over the place and got tons of pictures of her running and giggling uncontrollably and just a couple times I tricked her into looking my way.

 

August

Here's a few random photos from August, our first full month in Indiana.  We really didn't do a ton of exploring that month.  I feel like I spent most of my time trying to get our home set up, but here are a few things we did do.

Apple Picking
She mostly liked dragging the bag of apples around.

Raspberry Picking
Jane likes raspberries, but I couldn't even get her to try one while we were there picking.  She LOVED picking them, though and gathering them in her own bucket.

 The Indiana State Fair
We love Chris' evening schedule that makes it possible for us to go do fun things in the morning together.  As I understand it, the state fair gets pretty crazy, but on a weekday morning, it was pretty nice.  Jane loved seeing all the animals and even got to go on a pony ride.  She was SO excited to ride the horse and saying "get on horsey" over and over.  When she finally got her chance, I put her on the pony and she started calmly repeating "no? no? no?" (She says it like it's a question).   She was nervous, but she held her breath and made it through the whole ride.

 

 Midwest storms
We had some great thunderstorms and lots of rain in August.  The thunder would just go on and on forever and I have never seen lightning go on and on like that.  Jane loved playing in the rain... or playing with an umbrella.

 

 Peter wanted to come play outside too.

Indianapolis Ribfest
This was actually one of the first things we did here.  We went down town and enjoyed some prize-winning ribs.  It was fun to see downtown.

 

Sodalis Park

 

 Love my little celebrity, rodeo queen.
Also, check out my orange kitchen before I finished painting it a sort of sea foam color.

Peter - 7 months

 Peter is an exhausting little ball of energy these days.  He is always on the move.  He does a quickly little army crawl to get around and he’s obsessed with the garbage can foot petal, those little caps that cover the bolts on the toilet, and the fireplace grate.  So yeah, pretty much anything completely disgusting.  I am blocking and redirecting and trying to get him to play with boring old toys all day.  If I am on the ground, though, he is climbing on me instantly.  He’s pulling himself up to couches, stairs, and anything he can and it kind of freaks me out since we hardly have any carpet in our home.  (I know hard-wood floors are all the rage these days, but I would choose carpet in a heartbeat.)  Even our plush shag rug doesn’t soften the falls quite enough.  Our well, he’s a rambunctious little boy and bumps and bruises are likely to be a way of life.  He smiles and laughs so easily and we just love it.  He loves making spit noises with his tongue all through church.  He’s a little noisy, but so happy.

Peter still gets up 2-3 times a night.  I HATE IT.  He was getting up once a night for a while before we moved, but for the last couple months he’s reverted back to a newborn sleeper and it’s really taking its toll.  A lot of my days start with turning on Curious George for Jane and letting Peter crawls around the living room while I doze off on the couch.  Parenting fail?  Maybe, but I’m too tired to care.  We’ve done some sleep training so he goes down pretty well at night, but it doesn’t seem to help in the middle of the night.  Also, he has been having really bad diarrhea/diaper rashes for the last few weeks, so I always feel like I need to check his diaper when he cries at night. 

He just had his first tooth break through a couple days ago.  That explains some of the sleep problems, but I don’t find it too encouraging.  We have to go through this how many more times?  Still he’s so happy and good natured during the day, it’s pretty easy to forget how rotten he can be in the night. 

Peter is getting close to sitting up on his own, but he’s not quite all the way there yet.  He can last for about half a minute before slumps over.  I can’t believe he can be so mobile, climbing and pulling himself up all over the place and still not know how to sit up.  Maybe he could if he’d hold still long enough to learn it.  He just knows he can crawl, so why sit around?     

Our Provo Home

We loved our Provo home.  Sure we had hot water issues from time to time, and we NEVER got the yard put in that our landlords promised, and our master bathroom was so small you practically had to stand on the toilet to look in the mirror, but it was a great house for us.  The 2100 sq foot house was a complete remodel for our landlords.  We originally contacted our landlord Jeff regarding another property and he told us about this house he had recently purchased.  We first saw the place while it was under construction and signed the papers there start renting it at the end of August 2013.  We were assured that it would be finished by the time we moved in.  Because there would still be some outside work to be done and the kitchen cabinets wouldn't arrive until after we moved in, the landlords gave us a great deal on the rent. In the end, we returned to Provo and found the house was no where near ready.  They put us in a hotel for a week, but the progress was RIDICULOUSLY slow and we eventually pressed them to let us move in while they continued to work on the kitchen and front area.  It was a HUGE pain, but in the end turned out to be a huge blessing.  The landlords let us live in the home rent free for the first two months while there were still workers coming every now and then to finish something.  In the end, we loved our home.  It had 5 bedrooms and 3 full bathrooms.  I used the front office as my project room (which was awesome!), but we spent most of our time in the great room.  We were only in this house for a year, but in that time Chris finished his Psychology Thesis AND his MBA, Peter joined the family, and we created lots of amazing memories.

 

 

 

 

In July we packed up everything and headed to Indiana to start the next chapter of our lives.  Time to make a new home.