Do you know what a tree lopper is?

A couple of things. We have had a week with Grandma Chambers visiting and it was such fun.  Pictures to come soon. We went on a Sunday walk to the horses (3 weeks later after the spider sighting) and...we saw the yellow fellow there, again, in the exact same spot. I touched him with a stick. He moved all about. Chloe has been talking about it ever since. She mentions that mom was scared and touched it with a stick and such and such. 

Also, she told me that i should use a tree lopper for something I was doing and I thought I mis-heard her so I asked "what did you say?" She said, "tree lopper" and then I asked her what that was. "it's the tree lopper that professor green been used on Curious George". Yep, just thought I didn't hear you right 2 year old. That was the episode we watched of Curious George earlier. Glad to know my toddler and the tv taught me what a tree lopper was. Chloe amazes me.

This pictures catches her every emotion. She is so fun and happy and my true JOY.

This is her first pair of real shoes. Somehow she made it through 2 1/2 years in crocs, flipflops, and slip on shoes. She felt SOOO big in these shoes. She told us she could run "really fast" in her pink shoes.
And a shout out to my super kind friend and to wonderfully giving people out there. The other day my friend came over with 2 huge tupper wares full of little boy clothes. I was getting a little worried that we didn't have anything for little Ezra B. and here she shows up with this surprise. She even gave us a brand new car seat to use as a 2nd of our other car and a baby swing which was my one desire after we had the garage sale. well, the garage sale money was spent and we still didn't buy a swing but now we have one...yay. I just was simply overwhelmed by her kindness. She isn't done having kids and she didn't need to be so generous but she was and I am am simply grateful and had to let the blogging world know.

Are you scared of spiders?

I am very scared of spiders. Just don't like 'em. And anyone who knows of my run in with the brown recluse, my thigh, and France knows why. Well, B-rad has fast joined my side of his dislike and fright of the arachnid. On our walk the other Sunday this is what greeted he and Chloe in their path to feed the horse. It was bigger than a quarter and bright bright yellow. 

Feeding the horses some carrots. We alternate between carrots and apples. This place is about 2 miles from our house so it's a long gorgeous Sunday walk.
Sometimes when I don't want to cook we go to the "restaurant"-a.k.a the hospital, a.k.a the front mini cafeteria. I am so grateful that B-rad gets his food paid for but still likes leftovers so we get to go indulge as a family every so often. The restaurant is right next to the escalators and Chloe LOVES the escalators.

If you are still reading you may find this amusing. I know my friend Jenny will atleast because she is a fearsome cook in the kitchen. The other day I came downstairs to find my delightful red serving spoon broken in half. Brad has used it to pry some of this candy cereal stuff he makes out of the pan. Apparantely the Karo harden a bit in the night and my favorite spoon was victim. I sortof made Brad feel bad for breaking it. Well flash forward to today when I am making homemade oreos for labor day tomorrow and i am stirring and stirring and I break my wooden spoon in half. What the? If you need any jars open you know where to come looking for muscles I guess.

What the mall is good for

I try to pay attention to all things free. Such was the case with this free activity at one of the local mall stores. Chloe got to experience several firsts. First face paint. After we waited in quite a long line it occured to me that she may not know this was going on her face. I asked her which color she wanted and encouraged a few simple shape idea and this is what she chose. So cute. I'm glad she didn't say a hippopotamus or an alligator. We would've had to wait way to long.

Getting her face painted.
They had a table set up with cookies to decorate and right behind it was popcorn and then free balloons. She finally gets that a balloon not held or tied to her wrist equals a balloon in the sky.
She loves her nails being painted so this was fun. This lady let her choose her color and then she completed it off with putting lipstick on her.
I think there was some type of sale going but we had fun just taking the free stuff!

Lots of posts coming...

I was just looking through my pictures and realize I have quite a few of our August fun so I am going to post a few for a couple of days. 

Tie Die never dies. Our cute neighbors invited us over one night and we all made these cool shirts. I think I achieved my shirt design objective (notice the bullseye). Chloe insists on wearing hers atleast 2 times a week and Brad even liked how his turned out. This was a picture of us on a Sunday morning walk. 

Here we are making our shirts. This is a really fun activity for kids if you are up for it. We have such fun/great neighbors.
Brad and I decided to give each other a quilt for this "budget friendly" Christmas. Brad's idea! So, I will post our quilt making journey. Here is the beautiful fabric. I love every piece and color and detail and pattern. The colors just make me happy the softness just makes me cozy.

B-rad's job was cutting it all out while I designed and measured and did the math. He also checked and we both rechecked my math. Here I am laying out my "vision"

...and Chloe has been very concerned and scared about alligators on the floor under her bed so we gave her a play hammer to squash 'em in the night. It has empowered her. She is up there right now "squashing". I mentioned Missouri the other day and Chloe told me "we live in Illinois" Seriously, this kid is an old soul. 

Ogres, Ogres, Ogres!

Here is the cute family. I promised Brad and Chloe a "surprise" one night after dinner and it was all contingent upon whether Chloe ate 1 bite of this food on her plate. I told Brad he had to get her to eat it and then we would all enjoy this great surprise. Well, it was quite funny to see Brad's sheer determination. Chloe wasn't terribly interested but Brad was. He wanted that surprise. So finally, she ate and I showed them the surprise which was homemade icecream in ziploc bags. You make individual servings and it's kindof fun and sciency. I didn't have salt. So we couldn't do that surprise and my two loves were sad so we improvised quickly and made greasy homemade donuts. Just a tube of biscuits and oil and sprinkles and powdered sugar glaze and you're off. Here we are enjoying our greasy donuts and some fun Sunday family time. Have  I mentioned I LOVE HAVING B-RAD HOME!!

And this...she has been a potty-going champ of all champs. Last Monday was my last poopy diaper change. Horray! I just love those saggy "underwear-pants/under-roos".

So we started with a popsicle and sticker as her reward.  Brad got a ton of stickers from his last rotation and they were all the characters that she loves like Nemo, Shrek, Tinkerbell, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and Thomas the Train. How perfect was that? They served as a real incentive. 

And then I came up with this. I actually learned something from being a teacher of kids that need visual reinforcement. I thought Chloe would be too young for this but it worked so well and let me gradually take away the edible reinforcer which was the popsicle. So we started this chart on day 2. She would color one block in each time she went and then when she got to the top she got a prize. The first time she chose a donut. The second time it was icecream. The 3rd time it was a sticker pack that I bought her and now she doesn't really use it anymore. This all took about 4 days. I gradually increased the number of boxes each time she reached the top.

As for Ogres, Ogres, Ogres. I drew this picture at church and I showed it to Brad and Brad then showed it to Chloe. He asked, "who is this?" to which Chloe responded, "you, daddy!" Have you ever been in a place you shouldn't be laughing and you are laughing sooo hard that you shake and make spasms movements and wierd noises come out of your mouth that you are trying to surpress. That's how it happened in church. I laughed so hard and couldn't resist sharing it all with you. Brad was so shocked, he then asked me, "do i look like that?"

It is an Ogre, though. We love this book by Jos. A. Smith about Ogres who eat foods that go in alphabetical order. I tell you if you want to increase the vocab of your child try this book. Chloe can finish each page and it's adorable to hear her say, "anchovy butter, more zuchini, vichissoyse, watermelon, munches nuts, oysters, necterines, key limes, tangerines and oh so many oddly paired words for a childrens book.

And that is the end of my post.

30!

30 brownies.

30 ones.- A serious wad of well deserved cash

30 ROCKS!!

     Searching for 30 surprises.

30 "presents"
  "30" smiling on his birthday.

and "30" out to dinner with his little wife.

It was like Christmas for me waiting for this big birthday to get here. He is such a good one to do surprises for and free things for. Chloe was more excited about the birthday than ever. For about a week before she talked about "her birthday" and whenever I tried to get her to keep a secret about something I'd planned for the birthday she would whisper and tell Brad the secret and then say, "it's a secret". But I was able to keep the Dan's chocolate donuts a secret that my sister shipped for us to have on the birthday morning. Chloe was so excited about it all-especially the balloons. FYI-I had an artistic vision of 30 yellow balloons but instead he got 3-one for each decade. balloons are not cheap. And not pictured was a pillow case I made for him with a number 3 on it to represent 3 decades. This guys LOVES his pillow so what better way to remind him of how much we love him than by a pillowcase.  He's the cutest guy I know. 

THE BIG EXPERIMENT. It was kind of unfortunate that we started our big experiment a couple of days ago which was to turn off our cellphones. He didn't get as many birthday texts and loves as he would've if he had his cellphone turned on. So, we begin the grand experiment of having no cell phones!! I will email people with our home phone number.

well it was a Wonderful Wednesday last

My cute friend invited Chloe and me to this fun Children's Discovery museum. Chloe gets along so well with all her kids. Chloe thinks she's 7 (like Kaylee), wishes she was 4 and relates to 4 (like Brodee) and is actually 2 (like Hattie) So it makes for very good fun. We really like this little family.

I love any chance to pose a shot of a future doctor. She takes herself very seriously as you can see. You are not seeing that after this shot she went around and started checking people's hearts.
Is it okay that I let Chloe eat the plastic food. She was really into this sandwich.
This was the neatest thing. The kids just painted this window and then there was a trough of water in front of them that they washed their brushes in and started over. My little artist!
Later that night we went to the county fair where 4H is a big deal and food and rides are ghetto as ever. It was free and fun. Seriously, why did this guy stand in the "ugly/leftover" line in heaven?
We spent no money on rides or entry to the fair but we spent on treats. That's for sure. We each had one. I got the funnel cake, B-rad and his Kettle Corn (the best is still at a little stand at the Stinger's Games in Utah) and Chloe with her icecream. (she looks a little crazy in the photo...icecream will do that to a girl) 

The best part is that we ate about 2/3 of the funnel cake which was about 1/3 too much and we decided to chuck it before the fat collected behind our ears and our cheeks started burning so we put the napkin on it and headed for the trash. I didn't get a step before I felt a tug on my arm and this woman next to me said, "are you throwing that away?" I knew where this was going and I said, "yes" and then she asked if she could have it. She ate away on our soon to be discarded food. Seriously, that may be something you think but that is something you never ever actually act upon. Happy to help her out. I may have been more surprised but about a month earlier I accidently had 2 frosties and only wanted 1 and I offered the other one to this lady at a park and she gladly accepted. Maybe when I think about eating that untouched food on someones empty table at a restaurant I will do it next time!!
Best icecream I may have eaten in a long long time. It was soft serve twist cone but instead of basic chocolate as the twist is was chunky cookies and cream. I wanted to try all 4 flavors. They also had mint cookie, reeses, and sprinkle. Oh man it was a little piece of perfect that I will have to wait for next year. I considered googling it but then thought better of it. I will be okay with my Eddy SMORES icecream for the time being.
We had some friends there who owned some sheep and let Chloe get right in there and feed her. Her name is Jelly Bean.
This girl is all about tractors and trains and trucks but she loves her dresses too.
Last night, B-rad went to Nauvoo as the volunteer medic person for the Nauvoo pageant. He left at 130 and returned at 2 in the morning. Chloe and I had a little girls night out complete with Nachos and hot chocolate and a movie. I taught her how to get in her jammies and cuddle up in front of the t.v. with mom. I figure we will have a lot of these during residency so why not get started now.
First time mowing the lawn. Not for Brad but yes for Chloe. That's good because I would rather die than mow the lawn. So between her, Brad and Ezra we are covered.