Almost There...

My apologies, once again, on my lack of posts.  This spring has been BRUTAL with endless meetings, paperwork, and packing.  BUT...in just a few short days the school year will be behind me, and a summer with my energetic, busy boy will be ahead of me.  I cannot even begin to put into words my excitement!

Vinnie has been very busy these days.  He continues to army crawl, but is moving much quicker now...baby proofing the house is in our very near future.  He loves to chat and giggle, even when he is playing by himself, and he has a new found obsession with balls.  We drop him off at daycare and put a ball in front of him, he is content as could be, and usually playing with that very same ball when we pick him up.  Jon picked up some at Menard's the other weekend and he couldn't be happier about his new toys.  Check out the video...

We also enjoyed a wonderful Memorial day weekend with the Gibas family.  The kids enjoyed time together...Vinnie just loves his cousins!  We got out the kiddie pool just for the occasion and Ella enjoyed splashing in it with each of the littles.

 

We have been enjoying the beautiful weather by doing a lot of updating on the landscaping of our house.  I mentioned earlier that we removed the overgrown and borderline dangerous bushes in the front of our house...I finally have some after pictures.  Despite our lack of landscaping knowledge, we're pretty happy with how it turned out.  I even managed to squeeze in a project idea I found on Pinterest by making a hanging plant out of an antique collander, and I cannot leave out the adorable 2710 pots from my students that are nestled in the corner by our front door.  I find myself lingering as I pull out of the driveway in the mornings, taking in all our hard work before I pull away.  We are very pleased (and think the neighbors are too)!!

With the quickly approaching summertime, I promise...MORE POSTS! :)


 Until next time...
All our love from Iowa!

Family, Baseball, and Ear Infections, OH MY!

...Just love that smiley face!

I was doing SO well!  Since January, I had successfully posted weekly...and then it kind of fell apart.  With the end of the school year quickly approaching, THANK GOODNESS, I have been stretched thin with meetings, paper work, and packing.  The idea of a delightful summer full of adventures is keeping me sane these days, and there is less than a month until that is our reality.  Who knows, maybe I will be able to swing a few posts a week during the summer...but lets not get too ahead of ourselves! 

Vinnie meeting his Great Grandma Betty and Great Grandpa Vic.

Since our last post, we have traveled to Omaha, Nebraska for a fantastic weekend of family.  With the help of Dave and Phyllis, we managed to see ALL the family in Nebraska in just two days.  They hosted a wonderful gathering on Saturday afternoon.  We got to enjoy beautiful weather, great food, and tons of family.  What fun for Vinnie to meet everyone!  The next day we traveled to spend some time with Sue, Jack and Nathan before heading back to Cedar Rapids.  Vinnie, as usual, was such a great traveler.  We hope to make more trips like that in the near future!

All the Wennstedt/Hemje/Keimig Littles...9 kids under 7 years old!

Lunch with Sue, Jack, and Nathan.

9 month photo shoot.

Vinnie also turned 9 months since my last post.  Our well visit to the doctor went great.  He continues to grow, but remains a peanut compared to his peers...still in the 3% for his weight, 10% for height.  As Jon says, someone needs to be a horse jockey! At 9 months he can sit on his own, is working on crawling, but does more rolling than anything else.  He has 2 teeth, one on top and one on bottom and is working on the other two on top and bottom.  He loves feeding himself and can clap and cheer.



This past weekend, Vinnie got to experience his first baseball game!  The weather was perfect for outdoor baseball Friday night, AND the Cedar Rapids Kernels were playing the Twins affiliate, the Beloit Snappers.  Vinnie even learned to clap just in time to cheer on the Twins top prospect, Miguel Sano as he hit a killer homerun!

1st Baseball game.

Perhaps the baseball was just too hot for Vinnie to handle, because Saturday morning he woke with a low grade fever.  Thinking it was just from the two teeth making their way in (we're now on our way to 4 teeth!), we decided it was just teething, and ventured out to some garage sales.  As the morning wore on, Vinnie got more and more miserable.  By late afternoon, after fits of screaming and ear tugging we headed to urgent care, where we found out that he had a double ear infection.  Poor guy!  That is 4 ear infections in 4 months!  He is still hanging onto that fever this morning, so we've decided to have a low key day at home and hope to have him back to his spunky self by Monday.

There are about two more busy weeks on the horizon, and then things start to settle down at work for me.  We will have the Gibas family visiting over Memorial Day weekend.  We always look forward to that time with them...and it is even more exciting now with a chance for all the kids to play together. 

All our Love from Iowa,