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Sorry for falling behind with updating, but we’ve actually been pretty busy lately. We just returned from Greg’s parent’s house. We were there almost a week visiting with his family and had a great time. We took some photos and will post them shortly. Also, today Miles is 9 months old! So hopefully we can get his measurements posted and his picture with “Percy the Penguin.”

A few weekends ago, we headed to Menominee for Leah’s cousin’s graduation party. Here’s a pic with Miles meeting his cousin Emma.

Graduation Party, June 12th

Emma, Grandpa Russ and Miles

Below are a few pics from Memorial Day weekend in Nahma (almost a month old already).

Memorial Day Weekend 2010

Touching the water for the first time

Henry and Josie recently celebrated their first birthday! Well, there wasn’t really a celebration, but they were born approximately a year ago. And we’ve really ignored our fur babies on here since Miles was born, so I thought I’d do a quick post about them.

If you were to ask Josie, she’d tell you how we starve her. We never give her food and when she cries because the hunger pains hurt her tiny belly, we just ignore her. See? See how her ribs stick out? Seriously, this is how she acts. She is still compensating for being the runt of the litter and is now much pudgier than Henry.

What do you think these items have in common?

Give up? These are all things that Josie has stolen. She is a klepto. All of these things we have found in her mouth at one time or another. I was playing on the floor with Miles one day when she walked by us and I noticed something shiny in her mouth. I took it out and, yup, it was a quarter. Then another time she stole Greg’s camera memory card and walked off with it. We got it away before she could get too far. She has carried away batteries and pens quite a few times. At 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday, I could hear her out in the hallway. She had a bracelet.

“See how sweet I am? Don’t believe these lies.”

And the fact that she can’t jump hasn’t stopped her. She’s somehow coerced Henry into being her accomplice. He’ll knock things off of the counters for her. Henry, who we call Spidercat, can jump crazy high. And there is no door jamb he won’t scale.

For some reason, the early morning makes them go INSANE. I don’t know if they’re like Birdman, where they get their power from the sun, and they lose their power over the dark night, but I had hoped they’d grow out of it as they got older. No such luck. They play “bet you can’t get me!” around and around and around the center of the house at 5:30 in the morning. It wakes Miles up at least two or three mornings a week.

“We have absolutely no idea what she’s talking about.”

Miles laughs at them and tries to pet them whenever they walk near him. Fortunately they don’t seem to care that he pulls their tails and yanks out hunks of fur.

As I’m writing this, Josie just walked past me with one of Miles’ blocks in her mouth. She’s batting it around and laying on top of it. I can’t even imagine how weird and calm our life would be without them!

I’m hoping my terrible 24 hours are up, but I’m afraid to say that they are in case I’m just asking for something else to happen. It all started last night when I was doing laundry. I washed and dried one load and then put the second load in the dryer. Awhile later, Greg mentioned that it seemed like the dryer had been running for a long time. I realized he was right so I got up to see what was going on, and apparently (we hope) the thermal fuse or whatever had broken so the clothes were all still wet and cold. It was 10:30 now, way past my bedtime, so I took some of the clothes out and draped them over chairs and my drying rack and went to bed.

Miles had gone to bed around 7:30 or so and he woke up crying at 11:30. Greg went in and gave him his pacifier and he went back to sleep until 11:45, so I fed him and he went back to sleep for the rest of the night. When the alarm went off at 6:00, I was exhausted and fell back asleep until nearly 6:30. This set me way, way behind so I was rushing around trying to get ready.

All of this rushing around explains how I managed to crack my forehead against the car while I was attempting to get our stuff in it. Then when I was backing out of the garage, I don’t exactly know how it happened (maybe I had a mild head injury?), but I managed to scrape my car along the trim in the opening of the garage door, leaving a dent, scratches and scrapes. And of course, we’ve just been talking about getting a new car. There’s goes the trade-in value.

When I went to visit Miles at lunch, he threw up on me. Thankfully this time it was only all over my jeans, sparing my shirt. At least I didn’t get a whiff of puke every time I moved all afternoon like last time.

After I got home after work, I decided to put up a clothesline in the kitchen to dry the rest of the still-damp clothes that were in the dryer. I tied one end to a cupboard door and the other to our coat rack. I have no idea why I thought the coat rack, which is free-standing, could support the weight of the clothes. So, naturally, it fell over after I put a shirt on the line. I picked it up and put some of the coats back on it. I didn’t finish because Miles started crying, so I left it for Greg to do. He started putting the coats back on it, and as soon as he put the last one on, it fell apart. Yeah, I broke it. He taped it back together with packaging tape, but we’ll have to get a new one.

Hopefully this is the end of it (the computer is still functioning so far) and tomorrow will be a better day.

Last weekend we decided to try taking some of our own maternity pics in the back yard and we’re both pleased with how they turned out. The weeks are counting down and we’re both pretty much set for the arrival of the little one. Last week we finished our last birthing class and the week prior I took a Dads 101 class while Leah took the breastfeeding class. The baby’s room is almost complete with the exception of a dresser and some stuff on the walls. The kittens are growing fast and keeping us busy. They like to hang out in the baby’s room every so often. Makes you wonder if they sense someone else will be joining the household soon. Other than that, not much has been happening. Yesterday was supposed to be Leah’s company picnic but they canceled it due to the hurricane-like weather we had. Instead, we decided to go see the newest Harry Potter movie. Probably the last movie we’ll see at the theatre for awhile.
This weekend we’ll be heading down to Nahma for Labor Day and we’re praying the weather will be nice. This could be the first summer we didn’t swim! It should be a good time with everyone around and also Leah’s final baby shower.

So we’re nearing the end of January already, can you believe it? Six months from now we’ll be swimming. I just have to keep telling myself that when it’s -15° like it’s been the last few mornings.

So what have we been up to the last few weeks? Well, we’ve been ice fishing a few times. We haven’t caught much yet, but hopefully soon. And we’ve been watching Netflix movies. Wall-E: great. Tropic Thunder: funny. Wanted: awful. And how sad is it that I can’t really think what else we’ve been doing?

This weekend is our annual KFC Super Bowl feast. Not as exciting as it sounds, it involves us bringing KFC home and eating it in front of the TV while we watch the game. We’ve been doing this tradition for the last 5 or so years and it’s the only time we eat KFC all year. I’m rooting for the Cardinals. Kurt Warner was my fantasy quarterback (after Tom Brady was gone after the first game), plus I like to root for the underdog.

We’re still house hunting, but haven’t found any lately that we want to see, which is disappointing. I keep telling Greg that we’ll find our perfect house but it gets frustrating.

And we’ve been watching American Idol. Have you guys been checking out the auditions? They haven’t been as bad as in past years, which is nice, but I’ll be glad when we get to the actual competition.

We’ve been having some losses in our fish tank lately, unfortunately. In the last two months we’ve lost 5 or so fish. We got four more on Sunday but that doesn’t fix the problem. We’ve bought some testing strips to try to figure out what’s wrong with the tank and Greg faithfully checks the water and dumps chemical in. The water is looking better, so hopefully we’ve gotten things taken care of.

Wow, when I read about our month like this it seems so boring! We do have quite a bit planned for February so it should be more exciting. We’re going to a hockey game, one of Dayna’s cheering competitions, the U.P. 200 sled dog race, and Kami and Ryan are coming to visit us for a weekend. Should be fun! (Plus it’s a short month and there will be Valentine’s candy!)