Summer Fun!

Lucas and I are back from a fun-filled visit to his Mimi and Papa's house in North Carolina (post on that coming as soon as I sift through and edit all the pictures). In the meantime, I thought I would give you a little glimpse of what the rest of our summer days are looking like :)

1. LOTS of trip to the Spray Park at Celebration Park near our house. These are from Lucas's first trip. He LOVES the water!  He runs from sprayer to sprayer giggling, dancing, and trying to get as much in his mouth as possible.

And no trip to the park would be complete without a trip to the see saw!

2. Playing with his basketball hoop in the backyard...or, as Lucas says, DUNK!

3. More water...our awesome spraying Shamu pool in the backyard...

4. Trips to the Beach at Fairview. Sand is so fun :)

5. Swimming at the Natatorium. Since it's only been mommy and Lucas there so far, we have no actual pics. But here he is all ready to go! He loves to swim and has no fear of the water. He plays in the shallow end, but never cries if he falls and gets his face underwater...just comes up laughing!

6. Playing the new game he invented for hours on end at night...carry Clara's ball in the cup and randomly dump it out and laugh. Sounds fun, huh?

We love summer at our house!

Boston Trip

Back in May, Phil and I got to take a trip to Boston to celebrate our anniversary. We got a great deal on flights and used Hilton points for the hotel, so it was a good excuse to head out of town. We thoroughly enjoyed getting away, eating in nice restaurants, and not having to worry about Lucas or the dogs for a few days. Big thanks to the world's greatest godparents, Jeremy and Becky, for holding down the fort while we were gone....I don't think Lucas even knew we were missing :)

We had a pretty relaxed itinerary while we were there...walked around the city a lot, slept in, ate out, and enjoyed all the history. I didn't take a TON of pictures, but here are some of the highlights...

Phil hanging with Mr. Revere...whose story has now been made famous again thanks to Sarah Palin!

Old North Church

Street in the North End

Mmmmm...canolis!  You MUST brave the crowds to eat at Mikes!

Vanna White waiting for his beer tour.

The only picture of BOTH of us!

And...there were samples :)

This cemetery was on the Freedom Trail tour...I thought the tree was gorgeous.

Our DUK boat.

Fenway...it looks so small in the middle of a neighborhood.

Phil with his new Sox hat.

New Scrapping

Catching up slowly but surely...(Well, at least on 2011...2010 is a whole other story...)

Caught!

Little stinker...

Yup. That is Lucas on the end table. With a box of tissues.  SIGH.

Where I Have Been...

So, instead of keeping up with my blogging lately, I have been frantically trying to finish a Quiet Book for Lucas in time for our plane ride to North Carolina. Yay for the trip...boo for three hours sharing a seat with a squirmy toddler all by myself. So...I knew I would need a distraction. I can't take all the credit for this one, as I took the idea and some template from Homemade By Jill. She has some GREAT ideas...go check her out!

Anyway...I have been working hard and am SOOOO proud of this book. I have more ideas to change/add later, but for a rush job, I think it looks pretty fantastic. Would love to hear other suggestions/ideas if any of you have them!

Here we go...the cover. I didn't make that duck...just sewed it on. Lucas LOVES ducks and would pretty much just be happy pointing to the cover over and over and saying "DUK!"

Name page...the stiff felt letters stick on their matching one on the page...right now, he just loves to rip them off, giggle, and throw them on the floor.

Colors. The name of the color is under the flap. We are working on picking colors now, so this is a good one even if he can't read!

One of my faves: the barn!  Open the door to find the animal puppets. Notice I added a duck just for Lucas! (It's in the barn...that's a rooster on my finger.)

Zippers....such a satisfying noise and feeling when you are 1!

Counting...same concept as the letters.

Buckles, buttons, and snaps. I really don't like how this page came out. My original plan didn't come to fruition, so this was a last minute substitute until I can come up with something better.

The tree...this might be my favorite as far as looks go. I think the birds came out so cute. There is also a hidden nest not pictured.

You've got mail!  Open the mailbox to get your letter!  Lucas is accepting mail from any and all friends and family :)

Tick Tock...what time is it?  Again...beyond his level right now, but the hands are fun to spin!

Shapes..."where is the...circle?"  Boring, I know. But educational :)

Let's go fishing!  Lucas LOVES pulling the fish off and putting them in the "net". This might be his current favorite page.

And last, but not least...BLAST OFF!!!

Yay for a fun book that Lucas can play with on the plane...in the car...at the doctor's office. And yay for being DONE!



15th Month Check Up

I took Lucas in for his 15th month check up today. As usual, he was a star and charmed the pants off all the nurses :)  This month, he comes in at 32 inches tall, 23 lbs, 4oz, and still a 95 percentile head.  Haha. He hasn't gained any weight since his last appointment three months ago, so we will be keeping an eye on that. Most likely, this is just because he is running off all his calories now as a super active little boy. So, we will up his calorie intake a bit and see where things stand at 18 months.

This was the first visit where the shots really traumatized him, so we had a very sad boy afterwards. But, we headed over to story time at the library with his buddy Lyra right afterwards, and that definitely put a smile on his face. We signed him up for the "summer reading club", which I think is hilarious for a 15 month old. But, they do it from birth on, so we will be logging our 15 minutes a day to earn a free book at the end of the summer. Right now, I'm sure most of those minutes will be taken up by "Each Peach Pear Plum," "Moo Bah Lalala" and "Peek-A-Moo."

Here's a shot of our little guy at 15 months old...growing up so fast!