typical 3rd child

poor ryan...he's your typical 3rd child.

• no pictures of him around the house yet...except 1 hospital shot

• doesn't even have his own room yet...still sleeping in our room

• plays with everything...little transformer pieces & polly pocket pieces

• scrapbook...don't even ask

• homemade birth announcement...oh wait, emily made those! thanks, em!

• stroller...definitely broken in by olivia & garrett

• safety gate on the stairs...too much of a hassle

• baby book...see answer to scrapbook

i could go on & on...

but the last example of ryan's 3rd child status is his 1st birthday. with the other 2 kids we made a big effort to have it really close to their bday. well, july is a busy time for the lee/vogel families. so ryan's birthday celebration got postponed a bit. we just celebrated it this past weekend.

well, ryan you know we still love you!!

it could be worse... we could have given you used toys like sam got :) (just kidding, missy!!)

our weekend

this weekend we did our first craft show...the venetian festival in st. joseph. we didn't know quite what to expect. as it turned out we were really happy with how it went. people loved our stuff and we sold tons :)

our site was pretty neat, too. we were up on the bluff overlooking lake michigan. we had one of the sites that didn't have trees/bushes directly behind it. so everyone kept stopping in front of our booth to see the lake.



the booth next to us was a really nice woman who made jewelry (like about a zillion other booths there). she was totally normal, but some of the other vendors.... well, that craft show lifestyle attracts some interesting folks & their wares. tim & i are trying not to get sucked into that crazy world!

waiting...

well garrett's surgeon is even stranger than we thought. turns out he forgot to get garrett's surgery scheduled. when he said that his surgery would be on wednesday, he was giving us the surgery date of his previous patient.

so the decision was pretty easy. we've chosen NOT to entrust him with our little garrett. we are waiting for a referral to a new surgeon. hopefully it doesn't take too long as we'd like to get this whole thing finished up soon.

a big squeeze hug!

our conversation the other morning...

olivia: mom, last night i felt this big thing pushing on me when i was in bed. do you know what it was?

me: um, no. what? (i'm thinking she's going to start in on her "i'm afraid of monsters under my bed" saga)

olivia: i'll give you a little hint. it's like the wind...you can't see it, but it's there. it was god giving me a big squeeze hug!

i guess the "no monsters" sign she made me put up on her bed is working :)

p.s. the picture is of olivia on our last camping trip. she was very proud of her sandwich. she made it herself...bread, pepperoni & parmesean cheese. yum yum! i didn't complain since this is the first sandwich she's actually ever agreed to eat. now she has one at least once a week with a nice stack of extra pepperoni on the side. she's also convinced garrett to like these sandwiches too. i'm guessing she'll be known as the "kid with the strange lunch" at school!

7 years...

happy anniversary!
i love you :)

look who's 1!

happy birthday, ryan!

wow, this year has gone so fast. a year ago we welcome you into our family. it's been so fun watching you grow. you're a little boy now with your own personality. you love getting up in the morning and going into the big kids rooms. you giggle when you see them still asleep. you love to give kisses to anyone anytime of day. one of your favorite places is the meijer bakery. when you see the bakery counter you start shaking with excitement. thankfully they always have a batch of free cookies out. you are crawling all over the place and the big kids are super excited for you to start walking. we love you tons! thanks for being a part of our family :)

i'm an ogre!

when we were on vacation last week, we noticed a marble size lump on garrett's back. i took him to the dr tuesday and he recommended that we get it removed. so yesterday we met with the surgeon.

garrett is afraid of basically all medical personnel. so as soon as the nurse brought us into the room he started crying. she knew just what he needed. she brought him a shrek toy...the one that came in the mcdonalds happy meals. it's a big plastic shrek that burps and says "i'm an ogre!" well it worked perfectly and garrett was super happy.

the surgeon came in and started trying to talk to garrett. garrett just looked at him and kept pressing the buttons on shrek. so the only responses the surgeon got were burps and "i'm an ogre!" it was pretty funny. this continued the whole time he examined garrett.

the surgeon was quite a character, too. he said he'd seen a similar lump about 10 years ago, but he couldn't remember what it was called. then he proceed to tell us that he is suspended from the OR this week because he's behind on his dictation. ok, too much information buddy...you're supposed to make us feel confident in you!

well, our little ogre boy is scheduled for surgery next wednesday (provided all the dictation is done). so say a little prayer for garrett that all goes well and one for us cuz it's pretty scary to think about all the "what ifs."

ectothermic anyone??

monitor lizard (garrett actually touched one!)

the other night wendi & i took the kids to a reptile exhibit at the library. here is the description the library provided...

Walk, run, crawl, or slither your way here to spend some time with amazing reptiles.
Join Naturally Wild for an informative, hands-on experience! For all ages.

mmmmm...where to start. first, the room was packed with lots and lots of little kids. the oldest were maybe kindergarten. so you'd figure the speakers would tailor their talk to the audience. nope!

the hands-on experience consisted of a power-point presentation of reptiles. they showed 6 reptiles, only 2 could be touched. at one point when they were talking about reptiles being cold-blooded, they tried to get the audience to come up with the term ectothermic. yea, cuz that's what a lot of little preschoolers talk about.

i'm thinking they teachers need to watch a few diego episodes. that should give them a clue as to how to teach kids about animals!

p.s. here's the definition of ecothermic...teach it to your kids!
animals which must use heat acquired from the environment and behavioral adaptations to regulate body temperature

expensive pictures

sunscreen... $8
state park annual pass... $24
campsite... $30
beach umbrella... $40
great weekend with family... priceless

getting sand inside your camera... expensive

time to shop for a new camera shop...

chef garrett

tonight after we all finished supper, garrett got left alone at the table. he was supposed to finish up his ham. we checked on him after a few minutes and the ham was gone. good job, garrett. or so we thought...

as we cleaned up the table, tim cleared garrett's spot. empty plate & glass half full of chocolate milk. being a fan of chocolate milk, tim decided he'd finish up garrett's glass.

yup, you guessed it. tim got chocolate milk AND ham. yum yum!!

so a few lessons learned tonight...

• never eat garrett's leftovers
• if garrett ever opens his own restaurant...eat at your own risk!