The New Blog

So what do you think of the new blog design?? Isn't it awesome? This was designed by Kevin's cousin's wife, Melissa (thank you so much again!!). She is incredibly talented and runs her own home business doing graphic design. She just recently added blog designs and I was lucky enough to be one of the guinea pigs! If you love the blog layout, be sure to check out Color Me Happy to see Melissa's wide array of photo cards and blog designs.

Get Down and Give Me 20!

This is our way of keeping Carson in line. ;-P JUST kidding, by the way! Carson's been doing push-ups while he's been trying to figure out the mobility thing and I am finally getting around to posting a picture of one. Carson's still crawling slowly (which I'm not complaining about!!) and I think last night he finally figured out that he was moving while he was crawling. He crawled all the way across his bedroom to get to Jet. He wouldn't crawl on the wood floor in the hallway outside his room, though... we'll see how long that lasts, I guess. :)

We're Mobile!

Carson finally started crawling today! He's been working on it for over a month now and has been so close for weeks. He finally wanted his little piano bad enough this evening to crawl to it. Still going very slow and he doesn't get too far before he decides to lie down, but I'm sure it won't be long and he'll be cruising around everywhere making me lose my mind! :-P He also finally figured out how to drink from a straw today, too! Guess it was a big day for him - haha! I've been trying for a month now to get him to drink from a sippy cup, but he hasn't really liked it much. So I picked up some straw cups to try, but he's resisted them the last couple weeks, too. He just wanted to drink like a big boy, straight from the cup. But finally today he started drinking his apple juice from the straw for my Aunt Jeri. He was so proud of himself... and Kevin and I are, too! :-P

Spicer's Orchard & Fencing

This past Saturday we took a trip to Spicer's Orchard just south of Fenton. We met up with Grandpa and Grandma Holleboom, Aunt Julie, and cousins Anna and Joel. It was a nice, hot day and the orchard was very busy, but we all managed to have a good time. Carson was a trooper, running on no afternoon nap, and was in good spirits until about 10 minutes before we decided to leave but then he fell asleep in the stroller so we had a bit more time to look around. Anna and Joel had fun playing on all the kids' stuff around the place. We picked up some apples to make applesauce sometime this week and just enjoyed a nice afternoon out together as a family.

Traveling for Kevin and I seems to be done for a while. These past few weeks have been chaotic, with Kevin gone to Indiana one week, me in Texas the next week, and Kevin in Tennessee and Virginia last week. Now we're back to "normal" and we're all glad to have the family back together again.

Sara's dad came over on Saturday morning and then again on Sunday afternoon this past weekend to help Kevin work on the fence. They were able to get fencing down the north side of the property, got the gates on the back chainlink fencing, and got the lines marked out on the south side. We seem to be in a bit of disagreement with the crabby old lady neighbor to our south on the property lines. The things she says always contradict themselves, making no sense on what she thinks is going on. The house to the north of us is a newer one (built in 2001 or 2002) and has the property lines staked out. We took the information from the township and on our taxes, which says we have 165 feet of frontage on Linden Road. So we measured out from the property stake on the north side 165 feet south. It ends up being a good two feet or so further than the crabby old lady to the south believes it should be. She just about lost it last night when she got home and saw where we'd measured it to be, threatening to take us to small claims court and all sorts of nonsense. So I'm calling today to get a land surveyor out there to see where the lines actually are, this is just getting so ridiculous. The crabby old lady isn't happy we're putting up a fence and has been causing us headaches ever since we started. So hopefully we'll get a surveyor out there this week so we can get all this drama settled.

Welcome to Lake Holleboom!

This is what our front yard looked like yesterday with all the downpouring of rain we had. I still can't believe we got so much rain so quickly. The ditches couldn't keep up and so all the low-lying yards just flooded. We're about two feet below our neighbors to the south (the crabby old lady), so we pretty much got all of their water. And we're about even with our neighbors to the north (the young couple with the 1-year old son), so their yard was flooding pretty badly, too. I was glad to see the water levels had gone down a lot overnight. That was a relief!

Just some pictures

A few posts back, I mentioned we got a fancy new outdoor swing from my parents as an early Christmas gift. I hadn't uploaded the pics at that point yet, so here it is... Carson loves it (which is why my parents actually wanted to get it for us as part of our Christmas).


And here is the bistro set and loveseat that Kevin and I bought (on major clearance at Home Depot, you wouldn't believe the deal we got!). And hopefully next year we'll get an outdoor table set... and build ourselves a deck or patio.


And because I'm in a picture mood, here are some recent ones of Carson these last two weeks...

This one you can see his two teeth on the bottom... this was just after they came through, though. You can see them really well right now, I'll have to take some more pics.

"Peas" don't make me eat these...

Tonight we gave Carson his first organic peas. He wasn't too crazy about them, as you can see from the pictures. I think he might end up liking them after a few tastes over the next couple of days, but we'll see. He didn't have as strong of an "eww factor" as he has when we give him green beans. Once he knows we have just plain green beans, he refuses to open his mouth, he just doesn't like them at all. So I mix them with sweet potatoes and he'll eat them. I'm hoping he'll eat peas by themselves. I think they actually taste pretty good - way better than the beans. So we'll see.

Carson got a little frustrated with me tonight and was throwing small fits. I kept tricking him, giving him a few bites of sweet potatoes, then slipping in a bite of peas, then a few bites of sweet potatoes, then bananas, and so on. He's not crazy about bananas yet, either. It takes him a little while before he begins to like some foods... like bananas, applesauce, green beans. He now loves applesauce and tolerates bananas, still hates the green beans. He still loves his carrots and pears - still probably his two favorites. And he really enjoys his sweet potatoes, blueberries and peaches. And I hope to add peas to that list in the next few days. I guess we'll see...

Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day weekend this year for us was known as Jaime's Wedding Weekend. One of Sara's best friends, Jaime, married Jeff on Sunday, August 31st. Sara was her Matron of Honor. The weekend began on Saturday with manicures, pedicures, and lunch with all the bridesmaids and mothers. Saturday evening was the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner at Italia Gardens. Then Sunday was the big day. Everything was absolutely perfect! Jaime looked gorgeous, Jeff looked handsome, and everyone had a fun time. Carson got to spend some extra time with Grandma and Papa Moore on Saturday during the rehearsal and dinner and then with Grandma and Grandpa Holleboom on Sunday during the wedding and reception. Monday morning, the three of us headed over to Jaime's mom's house for a brunch and to watch Jaime and Jeff open their gifts. Today Jaime and Jeff are headed to San Francisco for their honeymoon. It was a very busy, very fun weekend and Sara was honored to be a part of it. There are tons of pictures in the Shutterfly albums if you'd like to check them out (link to the right).

After the brunch, we headed out to Flushing for an organic farm tour of Whetham Organic Farm, after which we stopped at Almar Orchards, an organic apple orchard. After that, we met Sara's parents up at Home Depot to check out a fancy swing for the backyard that Sara's parents found for a potential Christmas gift for us. We ended up getting the swing, plus a brown polyresin loveseat, so we finally have someplace to sit in the backyard. We put the swing up last night and tried it out - very comfy and its very cute! Carson is going to love having it. I'll update with some pics once I upload them from the camera.

Future MSU Basketball Star in the Making

The title says it all... :)

Carson's Baptism

On Sunday, August 24th, we had Carson baptized at Faith Lutheran Church in Grand Blanc. Thankfully, Carson made it through the service and baptism fairly well. He did fuss a little during the baptism, but he did much better than I'd expected... I'd worried he'd be screaming during the baptism. We had all of our close relatives and a few close friends join us for the occasion - we had forty people overall! We asked Uncle Danny and Auntie Jaime to be Carson's Godparents. Godparents today don't serve the same purpose as they did traditionally, now they are more of a christian mentor rather than more of a guardian as they used to be.

After church, we all came back to our house for a BBQ and to visit. The weather was perfect, not too hot, not too cold, and it was great to see everyone. Carson was slightly out of sorts, with his eating and napping routine messed up, but he did pretty well overall. We were able to get some updated pictures of the four Holleboom grandchildren and the four of them were able to get some good playtime in together.

I'll be uploading lots of pics of the baptism in our Shutterfly albums soon (link to right), so check them out in a bit.