It was another nice day for the lake! Dusty started the morning out right by catching a huge crappy. Max was with him so he is now Daddy’s good luck charm.

We had a nice time down by the lake and pretty much didn’t leave the water until it started raining that evening. We got in some goofy golf.

Max and Rory enjoyed some snacks while cheering the teams on.

We took the kids for a boat ride to get some ice. Rory’s first time and she did great! I’m hoping to get in some more rides today.

Don’t worry, we also did some water sports. Here’s Chris and his step brother Elijah coming in after a rough ride.

Thankfully the storms passed over the night and the sun is shining. I’m signing off; it’s time to go out-fish my husband!

Memorial weekend has started out pretty great. The weather is excellent and the kids are having a great time playing at the beach. Max is throwing sand all over the place with his new beach toys that Grandma and Grandpa got him and Rory is attempting to eat everything in sight; sand, seaweed, lake water, you name it and it has made its way into her mouth.

Grandma is trying to turn Max into a movie watcher. He was officially allowed to watch TV when he turned 2 and Grandma has been patiently waiting to start showing him her vast collection of movies. Today she popped in The Land Before Time and got him to sit with her for maybe 10 minutes to watch it. I have to admit, I was pretty happy with his disinterest in the TV!

We also were able to meet up with a bunch of my cousins and get a picture of all the Gazdik great grandbabies. Left to right is Taylor, Gavin, Jayden holding the twins Bodin and Jude, Rory, Max and Quinn.

Lastly, I found the self timer on my camera so naturally the first picture had to be a family shot. Yes, we really are this cute in real life too!

Can't wait to spend some more time outside. Although, I think I'll be covering up most of the day, lobster red isn't a good color on me. And I had SPF 50 on all day, stupid fair skin!

I guess I have officially become a part of the blogging community because I was just tagged for a blog chain! Well technically, Jean already tagged me in her blog for her Feature Friday, but this is my first tag to join others in posting about 7 things that make me grumpy. I don't know where it originated but I'm guessing the list is to commemorate the seven dwarfs. So here goes!

7 Things That Make Me Grumpy!

1. If I don't get my alone time. By this I mean, I can get things done for myself outside of our home. I need this, if not once a week at least once every two weeks otherwise I become very upset. It's impossible to put myself first when I have the whole family to take care of, so give me those few precious hours to get out of the house and get things done for myself or suffer my wrath!

2. Last minute plans, or plan changes. Yes, I understand you can't have everything planned but I hate, hate, HATE when things get switched around at the last minute as it usually means more work for me as I have to adjust everyone to the new schedule and usually have to pack the diaper bag differently.

3. Not having a lunch to take to work. Dusty and I have always been really great about making extra food at dinner so we'll have lunches for the next day. Now that Max is eating more and Rory has started sampling our foods we haven't had as much left over which means no lunch ready to go.

4. Being unable to tell people what to do. I'm sure many people share this irritation with me. Some examples of this: Not being able to tell the car behind me to stop tailgating; I'm already going 30 in a 25 MPH zone and we just passed a cop! Listening to the morning show on my local radio station make fun of some celebrity for having "flabby skin" less than a year after giving birth to twins! Watching someone else use the computer; I don't care who you are, everyone has their own way of opening programs and meandering around the internet but trust me, my way is always the best way!

5. Not being able to find a local church that I like. I am determined to have my children attend Sunday School when they are old enough as I want them to know and understand God. Growing up we always attended a church that was outside of my school's district and I hated that and really want to prevent having to do that with my children. So far, I have not found a church that I can connect with to motivate myself to start going on a regular basis and I'm pretty sure we'll be branching out of our community real soon.

6. Feeling helpless. I'm an organizer and a planner and I will do whatever I can to try to get control of a situation. If that isn't possible, I'm not happy at all.

7. Parenthood. Don't get me wrong, parenthood is so incredibly rewarding most of the time, but there are lots of other times that it gets me really grumpy. Having Max rip out my tomatillos, Rory spitting up on me as we're heading out the door to start our day, and planning the kids' appointments around both Dusty and my work schedules are all fine examples of when parenthood makes me grumpy. I think it just comes with the territory.

Well that was fun and now I get to tag some of my blogging friends and family!
Life of the Woolley's
The Horejsi's
The Becker's
Line Adventures
Get Lowe!
Dana and Brooke

I wandered out to the garden last night to get some pictures as promised. (It was too hot and humid to do it any earlier this week.) As I was snapping my pictures I found a salamander! And yes, this was far more exciting and meant much more pictures were taken of it then of the garden.

Max was on hand to help me out so he got to see the salamander and assisted with finding a safer place then our garden for it to go.

Here's the start of our garden:

First row is of tomatoes, we did a bunch of different varieties and I'm excited to see how they all turn out. The second row is pepper plants, mainly jalapenos since we're nuts and love them and of course lots of other hot peppers and a few colorful bells.

Third row so far is just lettuce and it doesn't get the protective black plastic as it would burn the plants off in the summer. (We'll be adding more to this row as you can tell.) The last row is eggplant and zucchini.

We still have seeds for beets, carrots and beans but haven't had a chance to get a seeder and plant them so that will be coming up shortly. I'm on my second attempt to get the tomatillos started before planting them into pots around the house and we have two pots on our deck filled with cilantro, basil, rosemary and parsley. So I think we're well on our way to getting some delicious meals this summer and fall!

I have started so many blogs in my head that I am getting myself confused on what I have and what I have not blogged about! Sorry, but this is going to be an accumulation of 3 different things that have happened over the week. Bear with me and I promise some really cute pictures!

During the garage sale cousin Jody had a really cute lion costume one of her kids wore. She let me take it home for Max and Rory to have to play with. Max found it and now at least once a day he insists on putting it on.

The nice thing is that he has learned how to put it on and take it off himself so I'm not usually doing too much work. Although I believe that may be part of the reason he insists on putting it on and taking it off!

I also was able to go and visit Becca, Al and baby Conan this past week. They let me take a bunch of pictures of Conan in hopes that they will find a good one for the baby announcements, and I also got some family pictures and other fun shots. I'm by no means a photographer, I just have a nice camera, so we got some fun shots for them to chose from. Afterwards little CoCo was getting just a tad bit fussy and I was so proud of myself as I put him to sleep on my chest! I guess once you have kids you really do get "the touch". So I had to have Becca get a picture of me with the sleeping little man!

Lastly, on Sunday, Dusty's family all got together for dinner at Grammy's and Dido's to celebrate Mother's Day together. The "big" kids were so funny as they ran around the house chasing each other. They also were very well behaved and even got to sit at their own table all together!

Grammy wanted an updated version her grandbabies so here's the result - only one crying baby!

Still to come this week - pictures of the start of our garden! We spent a good amount of time out there and let me tell you, I'm the queen of the rototiller! haha

Yesterday we all loaded up and headed over to the farm. Too bad the weather didn't cooperate much and we ended up spending most of our time in the shed just hanging out with everyone. The good news is we got in calf feeding 2010. Most of you know, Max has an obsession with cows and he's been hanging around them since he was 10 days old.

He had a great time feeding Harold yesterday, so much fun in fact that I ended up having to leave him and Daddy to attend to Rory. She missed out on this fun event and I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep up the tradition with her if we don’t go back out there soon. Sleeping sure can ruin the fun! Anyway, here are the best pictures from yesterday’s fun.

Max also got to help Daddy drive a tractor and sit on all sorts of different tractors. Mama was either working around the greenhouses or attending to Rory so she didn’t get any other pictures. I did however get this gem of Max passed out in the car on the drive home.

Needless to say, he had a fun time and used up all his energy!

Well so much for the tomatillo plants! They were growing so nicely too, I just smiled at them when I came home. Less then 20 minutes later I look at them and the plants disappeared with dirt all around. I don't know how he got to them, I had them pretty much out of his reach, I guess that is what I get when Max is in one of his destructive moods. Oh that boy! Attempt #2 at seeding the tomatillos tonight I guess.

Rory is 8 months old today and already showing her curiosity. If you look, you'll notice her 8 month sign is all beat up, the girl would not leave it alone! She also wouldn't just look at me and the camera and smile, she would either squeal and move which resulted in a blurry picture or look away and smile. So I guess I'll have to settle with her looking away and smiling. She's still so cute it doesn't matter.

Max of course was there to help out and when I picked Rory up, exasperated because I couldn't get a good picture, I turn around to find Max showing me that he'll sit and smile nicely. So I got a picture of him too. I figure, at least someone will do it right!

I am so happy that the weather is finally warming up! Today there was just a slight breeze and in the shade it was very comfortable. Dusty cooked our whole dinner on the grill and I decided it would be nice to have everyone eat outside. Max and Rory seemed to enjoy the change in scenery, although Max did try to push the rules a bit more and Rory was a bit crabby since she didn’t get a long enough nap. The way I see it, had we ate inside they probably would have been worse; at least outdoors they were distracted.

Here I am feeding Rory.

Dusty took over attempting to keep Rory happy so I could eat. I went to take their picture and Max starts screaming “cheese” and throwing his arms in the air, so I had to get him in the picture too.

Max was extremely dirty today too. Between his obsession with the sandbox at daycare and all the time they spent outside, (and we certainly didn’t go inside when we got home) he was extremely dirty. I know I say this a lot, but the picture says it too: “he is all boy!”

Here’s my big girl just being giggly while lounging with Daddy. She would go from whining to smiling whenever you’d talk to her but then she’d go right back to whining after she got over the attention you were giving her!

In gardening news, I had decided to seed 3 tomatillo plants. They made it 3 days on the windowsill before I found dirt all over the floor and the plants all turned upside down. I thought for sure Max had killed them but I scooped them up and put them back in the cups to see what would happen. About a week later I saw a sprout, and now the second one is showing one too. Looks like we’ll have our tomatillo plants after all!

I can’t wait to roast and can them, I love tomatillos and since they apparently are quite the weed in the garden, Dusty’s family won’t grow them. (We plan to keep them in a pot away from the garden.) It’s going to be so fun to have tomatillos to offer them this year! It isn’t often I get to have a food they don’t already grow.

I knew I loved Max, and that I'd continue to love Max more and more every day. I did not realize, however, that my love for him would also grow as I watch him interact with his sister.

On Saturday while we were packing everything up Rory was getting crabby but I had to leave her in the stroller because if I picked her up then I wouldn't be able to finish packing up everything. After about 10 minutes of her whining, I look over because she has stopped to see that Max has climbed into the stroller and is sitting/standing in front of Rory and talking to her and giggling at/with her. It was so incredibly adorable and made me so proud.

Today while dropping Rory off in her classroom I told Max to give Rory a kiss bye-bye. Instead of kissing her he went to grab some of the toys. I took his hand and tried to get him to leave but he started to pitch a fit. So I get down to his level and calmly tell him to tell me what is wrong. He instantly makes a kissy face (more like a fish face if you've ever seen it). I asked him if he wanted to give Rory a kiss bye-bye and he instantly says "yup". So off he goes to give his sister a kiss, who, by the way, turned away from his first attempt so he had to move to her other side to get her. It was really funny and both me and the teacher were laughing that she was playing hard to get to the boy who so adamantly wanted to give her a kiss!

I sure do love those two and I'm sure as Rory starts to interact with her brother more I'll feel the exact same way towards her! I tend to learn more from my first, the second gets to remind me how fast it goes!

I am so exhausted! Saturday was not nearly as busy as Friday was, in fact a lot of garage sales didn't even open and many of them were closing down before noon. We stayed open until 2 and then decided to pack it all up since we really only saw very few customers and I'd be surprised if we even sold $100 for those 6 hours we were open. Lyla and Max played very nicely for the first part of the morning together; here they are sharing some snacks and just being goofy.

After we loaded everything up we all headed over to Katie and Andrew's for some delicious steaks, potatoes, salad and watermelon. It was just the type of meal to commemorate the first warm day in weeks and the end of a rather successful garage sale. (Oh, and Katie has the sunburn to prove how nice the weather was, she is quite red!) Rory got to have her first taste of watermelon. She even was a good sport and let me finally get a picture of her teeth. She sprouted the right one a while ago but it keeps poking up and now the left one must have shown up as it wasn't there when I saw her on Thursday. Don't mind the boogers, she is still ill (I know, what's new.) Dusty had to pick her up from daycare on Friday because she was sick and at her doctor's appointment the ear infection was gone with the meds so hopefully it stays gone and this is just some virus passing through.

Andrew was quite the chef and I had to post this silly picture of him all serious behind the grill!

It was such a beautiful day, hopefully tomorrow will be just as great since I will finally not be working a garage sale. I could use a little R&R!

The first day of the garage sale was great! We had an awesome turn out and I'm exhausted. We were out setting up on Thursday until 10pm which most of you know is WAY past my bedtime. I was up by 6 to get an early start on my day and by 7:30 we started setting up and already had people showing up. Here's a picture of the garage while we were setting up last night.

Here's Katie and I being very productive sales women.

The best upsell of the day goes to Chris who showed up with Brayden. First we sent him shopping with a list of things to find and then he came back and was able to sell an autographed Timberwolves's picture to a boy in a Timberwolves's shirt buying a Timberwolves's jersey. Yeah, real hard upsell there Chris, but I'll still give you the credit.

Hopefully tomorrow will be just as busy - I'm getting closer and closer to my, oops, I mean, our, new playset!

This blog is for my cousin Jean. She has decided to take on gardening and also is looking for landscaping ideas and was bugging me to post some pictures of our recent landscape changes and also the garden.

As I stated a while ago, we removed the woodchips around our house and put in rock. We moved the woodchips to a larger garden that Dusty will be slowly working on filling with perennials. Here Dusty is mowing are yard - you have to look way in the back too see him, and a quick view of the partial garden. (I couldn't get a good view from our little deck and it was too cold to go outside - it snowed later that night!)

Here's a view of the rock around our patio. I absolutely love it and I'm so happy we moved the woodchips that would just blow around too easily with the wind bouncing off the patio. We also have a grill and swing on the patio but you can't see them as they are tucked around the side.

Lastly, here is the start of our ginormous garden. The posts are up but we have to put a fence around it still. And yes, Dusty is mowing on by. Don't mind all the weeds, we aren't going to worry about putting down grass seed until after we put in the pull barn and playset this summer, maybe next year we'll work on that!

Nothing is planted in the garden yet, we'll start that in a few weeks after the weather cooperates. Just a side note, Dusty's family owns/runs a greenhouse so he has lots of experience with gardening and refused to let me have a nice little one. Plus, the garden is being shared between Dusty and I along with my sister Andrea and her boyfriend Chris who live behind us. So at least there will be some help with the weeding!

This Mother's Day I was extra lucky. Not only did I have both my beautiful babies to celebrate with, on Saturday I also had my Goddaughter, Lyla! Max and Lyla had a great time playing together and Rory just enjoyed watching them with her big blue eyes.

On Sunday Yoyi (pronounced "chuch-chi" which is Ukrainian for aunt) had Sunday brunch for all of Dusty's family. It was very nice, and I enjoyed seeing the family. Thankfully the sun warmed it up a bit and we could enjoy the outdoors. Here are Katie, Andrew and Anna soaking up the sun.

I had Dusty get a picture of Max, Rory and I playing outdoors tonight before dinner. I mean, it is Mother's Day, I should have at least one picture with my babies!

Lastly but oh so importantly; many of you may remember when I posted about the baby shower we had for my very good friend, Becca. I'm so excited to report that on Thursday, May 6th at 10:55pm little Conan James decided to arrive!

He weighed in at 8lbs 6oz and was 20 inches long. Max and him had almost the exact same statistics, they weighed the same but little Conan had a 1/2 inch on Max!

Max still has a big head! He is in the 85th percentile for his head circumference. He has moved up the charts with his height to the 50th percentile at a staggering 2 feet 10.5 inches, and is still happily smack in the middle for his weight at 28 lbs.

I did the height predictor chart, as you can do this once they turn 2, and they predict Max will be 5'10" as an adult, about the height of his father. I guess we'll have to wait a few years to see how this prediction plays out!

While checking Max out we discovered that he has an ear infection. Seriously?! How do my kids keep getting ear infections? We are not going to medicate him, the doctor gave us a prescription to fill only if he starts to show symptoms of his ear bothering him. She thinks it was brought on from his teething so hopefully we can avoid medicating him and it will just go away on its own.

We also scheduled an appointment for Rory to have her ears checked out as we always do for when she completes her medicine. She of course has not cleared out her ear infection. So she is on her second set of antibiotics. We go back with her in 10 days and if the ear infection is not gone we have earned ourselves a visit to the Ear, Nose and Throat doctor to discuss tubes. I guess to be a candidate for the surgery you need to have 6 ear infections in 6 months or an ear infection that won't go away. Rory is currently at 4 ear infections in 5 months so she doesn't qualify there, but her ear infections take an awful long time to heal so if this one isn't gone by the end of her meds we will be heading there. I'm not trying to think too much about it until I know if we'll have to go there. I've heard lots of positive things about tubes, and both my sisters and I believe two of Dusty's siblings had them, but surgery is still scary so I'm not going to worry about it until I know we have to do it.

Max is officially a 2 year old today!

Now that he is getting older we have to start figuring out what, if anything, we will do to commemorate his special day. I mean, we will have a birthday party but they won't always fall on his actual birthday, so what do you do to mark this special day?

This morning I did with the obvious and went into his room singing "Happy Birthday". What makes it even more memorable is that Max was mad when I came into his room and started crying, but by the second line of the song he sat there smiling at his silly Mama. I may not be Daddy like he wanted, but singing Mama will do after all!

We bought some cookies yesterday for Max to take to daycare to share with his friends and teachers today for snack time. Of course, when we brought them home and set them on the counter he found a way to knock them down and get a cookie into his mouth before you could even utter "oh no". That definitely made Dusty and I laugh, of course at the most inappropriate time - as he did it!

Outside of that we don't really have any special plans, and really, I think that is just fine. We will be spending the evening together as a family. We may sing "Happy Birthday" again after dinner, but ultimately Max knows he's very special to us so I don't think we need to do a lot. As he gets older, maybe we'll start asking him what he'd like to do and customize it to his wishes. But for now, we'll just relish in the fact that we now have a two year old and celebrate all that we have accomplished together in the past year.

Here's to you Max Man - we love you and are so proud of you!

Cousin Jessica's shower was on Saturday. Cassie (and Theresa) put on a very nice shower where we had delicious food provided by all and lots of fun games. My new favorite baby shower game came from there. We had to guess the top 10 boys and girls names for the year Jessica was born. It was tough! And really fun! Here's the blushing mother-to-be!

Rory escorted me to the shower and was quite the angel just playing happily on her blanket while the party was going on. (Max and Daddy were off doing their own thing that afternoon.) Ashley, Rosie and Suzanne were all excellent at keeping both Lyla and Rory entertained throughout the party!

I realize it is Wednesday and I'm still blogging about the weekend. It was just that busy and I don't have much of a choice here. This is the last post for last weekend, and hopefully the last weekend that is that busy for a while!

Max had a great time chasing me around on Monday with the new tractor that GG got him. We put him in his new raincoat and let him enjoy the rain/puddles that were there. He enjoyed his time out in the rain!

Now that I wrote about the party, I have to add a few more pictures just because we took so many and some of them are pretty funny. Here's Randy flying the kite with the fishing pole and all the adults watching on. (The kids were running in the yard watching, just for the record.)

Lyla and Max decided to try out each other's frosting. I mean, there's nothing wrong with kissing cousins according to Elvis so we might as well just photograph it. They'll come in handy for embarrassment when they're older!

Grandma was being silly as always and Max just loved it! Look at Allison and Lyla look on in awe, not everyone gets a grandma like that!

Max got a whole bunch of tractors from Uncles Ed and Cecil, their girlfriends, Katie and Kailey, and of course cousins Allison and Oliver. Needless to say, Cecil and Ed were quick to help get them all out of the packaging and assist Max with playing with them. This is how I found them at the end of the night, such boys!

And let's not forget to get a picture of Oliver. He was either being fed or sleeping most of the time so he didn't make it in many pictures. Here he is eating with mommy.