Let's Eat!

We headed over to Logansport on Thanksgiving to have lunch at Josh's Aunt Gayle's house.  The food was delicious of course, and it was great to see the Bowyer side (well half of them) and hang out.  And it is an awesome perk that Josh has cousins who are younger and love to entertain our kids!  (Thanks Brody and Luke).  Dave brought every single new toy he received for his birthday, so he had lots of cool stuff to show off.





Ike taking off with Aunt Em's gatorade.  He kept running away with it.











The boys playing with Luke.

Uncle Scott named Dave the sheriff for yet another year!

Ike and grandma Bertie.  Dave was in the picture but he was so frowny I cropped him out of it!  One of these days he will smile in pictures again...








I mentioned in my last post about the bad storms we have had recently.  Well, one of those went through grandma Bertie's neighborhood and tore apart one of her outbuildings.  We drove by to check it out...not much left of it.

Josh posing with the old barn.









Finally, Ike found some old kitchen decorations of mine behind a cabinet and was so pumped.  Who doesn't love a giant fork and spoon?  Here's a video of the kids playing with them.

I love this look of concern and am dying to know what he is thinking.

Dave is a 4!

It is just not possible that my little baby can be four already.  He always refers to himself in future years as, "mom, when I am a 4, I will be able to write my name" or "can I watch that movie when I am a 10?".  I find it super cute for some reason!  Anyway, he's just our little ball of energy and we couldn't be more excited to watch him grow up!







From his Christmas picture photo shoot.














Some of Dave's favorite things:

Book- Any Pete the Cat, Fox in Socks, Butter Battle Book, The Pigeon Series

Song- Lorde's "Royals", "What Does the Fox Say?", Miley Cyrus' "Wreckingball", Relient K's "I So Hate Consequences"-this one is still going strong for about two years!

Movie- This is always the movie he has watched most recently.  So right now it's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

TV Show- Transformers (the 1980s version) and The Amazing Spiderman

Food- Anything chocolate, lots of veggies (broccoli, pot roast carrots, green beans), and almost any kind of meat.  He is still not interested in many starches, except french fries of course.

• Dave loves playing with his switch-n-go dinos and rescue bots.  They all go on extremely elaborate adventures, which usually involve lots of ramps and lego people or superheroes who need rescuing.

Some of Dave's not-so-favorite things:

• Naps.  Sleeping in general.  Blech, how is this still a problem?!  Most days he does "quiet time" in his room with the Kindle, and on days he does not nap he generally goes to sleep pretty easily.  However, he comes into our room every night and sleeps on our floor.  Not ideal, but at least we are getting some sleep!
• Any kind of casserole.  For instance, he loves broccoli, cheese, and chicken all separately.  But put them in one dish and he turns up his nose.

He is able to draw maybe 5 of his letters so far, and knows how to spell a couple of words (out loud, not writing them).  He constantly uses vocabulary that I do not expect a kid his age to use (accurate, understand, appropriate, realize, etc.).  For some reason, he believes he can speak Spanish and frequently makes up words and then says they are the "Spanish version".

Here's a video of him entertaining himself during a storm.  We had to chill in the bathroom for a little while the other day during some intense storms.

We had a party for him on Saturday since Josh was on duty for his actual birthday.  My mom was up visiting, so she was there, along with Josh's parents and Emilee, our neighbors Stacey, Jason, and Bennett, and our friend Greg (works with Josh and is one of Dave's many BFFs).

 He was soooo excited about the cake.

It was so much fun to make.  I love that he has definite opinions about things now.  When I asked what kind of cake he wanted, there was no hesitation!

Getting ready to blow out his candles.









Dave was not at all patient about opening up his presents.  We told him that he had to wait until we all finished eating before he could open any up.  So, he went around checking how much food everybody had left and encouraged us all to eat faster.  Finally, it was time to get to the presents!

Greg and Dave checking out his presents.

He got two new switch-n-go dinos!








For his birthday, we took him to the Creation Museum in Cincinnati to show him the dinosaurs.  Josh and I are not young earth advocates as the museum presents, but it was still cool to see a lot of biblical scenes depicted and Dave got to see lots of cool dinosaurs (and a really really awesome insect exhibit).  Ike seemed to enjoy it for the most part, and may have gotten really into the dinosaur den (he climbed straight in and I had to go rescue him...oops).  We stayed the night with Josh's friend Dave and his wife Jess, and then went to Ikea on our way home.  I think Dave enjoyed his little birthday trip; he is not one to shy away from any kind of adventure!







Posing on the triceratops.

Ike crawled into the dinosaurs when we weren't looking.  I had to go in for a rescue.















Josh and Dave with a dinosaur.













Dave helped me build a coat rack for Josh's office we got from Ikea.  He can be very helpful if he is feeling like it!

Random Happenings

Not a lot going on around here...gearing up for Dave's birthday, but that's about it.  It's been frigid the last couple of days so the kids and I have been holed up inside.  Gamma came for a visit to celebrate Dave's bday, so Josh and I have been able to get some stuff done around the house.

Here are some pictures of what the boys have been up to.

Ike loves flipping Dave's table around the living room.

Helping me do dishes by spilling pasta into the dishwasher.

















Dave showing off his fox shirt.  He is obsessed with the internet phenomenon, "What does the fox say?".

Ike helping me clean the house for Dave's party.

He found some new boxes to climb on when I was getting Christmas decorations out.

Hanging out in the nice warm garage-I love that it is heated!

Josh was such a trooper helping me put lights up in the freezing cold.  If you look close, you can see snowflakes.

But it was worth it!  I love Christmas lights!

First Snow and Early Thanksgiving

We have had the craziest weather lately.  Thankfully, the really nasty stuff missed our town, but storms did some damage to many towns nearby.  Before all that hit, we had our first (albeit small) snow of the year.  Dave was so excited to check it out.  I got him all dressed up for it, and then he predictably only lasted about two minutes.






"It's freezin out here mom!"














Last Saturday we had Thanksgiving with Josh's mom's side of the family.  It worked out great, and even though Josh was on duty he was able to be there for most of the time.

Ike with Christyn.

Sophie posing with a tennis ball.

Caleb was excited to throw apples to the horses.

Obviously Dave was in on that fun.

We all went to the pool after eating to burn off some calories!












After Thanksgiving, we went over to our friend Greg's house for his yearly Christmas decorating get-together.  He made lasagna and the kids and I got to see his fantastic decorations.  And Ike basically took down every ornament from his tree.  It's going to be a long month keeping him from attacking Christmas trees!

Then on Sunday, it was super warm before we got hit by the storms.  Dave finally saw his opportunity to fly his Spiderman kite, so we went outside between the scattered rain showers.

Running for cover after it started raining again.

Ike was so excited to be outside, I think he really misses it!

Week in Evansville

Josh had a week of vacation to use up, so we headed down to Evansville to chill with my family.  As usual, we just hung out and spent time with everybody.  I got almost all of my Christmas shopping done (it is incredible to be a 10 minute drive to all the stores!), and Josh saw pretty much every movie that was out in theaters.

I didn't take very many pictures, you know because of all the relaxing, but here are the ones that I got!






Grandpa giving Dave shooting pointers. 

Dave and Uncle Tony.

Opening up his birthday presents.  He got Optimus Prime!!

Dave helping papa Charlie make ricotta gnocchi.

Ike was trying to eat the frozen garlic bread.

Ike and Ben.













We had such a fun time:  lots of good food, seeing grandpa's finished house, and hanging out with relative we hadn't seen in a while.  Josh, Tony, Ben, and I (along with two of their friends) almost won a local quiz night, and Tony and I had a blast jamming out to Miley  :)  We got to play a couple new games, and the ultimate bonus-we got to sleep in every morning.  Catching up on sleep is my number one goal for any vacation!

Ike Turns 13 Months

Our big guy turned 13 months while we were in Evansville last week.  I just don't feel it is possible that he is that old!  Before we left, he had his 12 month check-up and he is sitting solid in the 80th percentile all around (23.5 lbs and 31 inches). 







Looking so grown up!













Ike has been his usual happy self this past month.  He definitely has learned to throw tantrums...his favorite right now is to stand up and then bend over to where his head is touching the ground (like downward facing dog if you are into yoga).  It is hilarious.  He has learned to blow kisses as evidenced in this video.  Ike has also started learning animal noises (he only really knows sheep right now but I'm working on a few others).  He loves to talk and babbles constantly.  Here is another video of him seeing himself while I record.  

Ike has learned a couple new words:  milk, night-night, and he says the words he already knew more often now.  He has started to really play with Dave, which also means that they now have to learn to share...that should be fun!  Ike still loves to climb on everything, I constantly find him standing on the table.  He walks all the time and has started doing some pretty awesome dancing. 

He makes this face at me all the time.

Sitting at the desk I played with as a little girl.

Hanging out with Papa Charlie.

Looking inquisitive.

You know, just having some M&Ms.  Everybody else eats those in their birthday suits right?