Nathan's Weekend Getaway

While Todd and I were in Holland, Nathan was spending a delightful weekend of his own in grandparent heaven! My penchant for taking lots of photos was inherited directly from my father, so luckily I have lots of photos of my adorable boy and his fun weekend to share!

What better way to kick off the weekend than with a popsicle??

Checking out the bumblebees and pretty purple flowers.

He looks like such a big boy in this picture!

Whee!

Talking to Mommy on the phone.

This kid loves to read--awesome!

Sunday breakfast with Grandpa

Checking out the slide at a playground in Alto.

Anniversary Weekend Getaway

My birthday present to Todd was to plan a weekend-long getaway for just the two of us to a surprise location. So Todd knew we were going, but didn't know where! Mom and Dad helped with this plan by taking care of Nathan for the weekend, and even met us part of the way on Friday night to pick him up so that we could save an hour in our drive time!

Our destination was the cute town of Holland, MI which is a hair over an hour's drive from Kalamazoo, and right near Lake Michigan. The town happens to be the home of Kalamazoo College's rival, Hope College, but once you let go of that, it's a great place! :)

We stayed at the very cool City Flats Hotel, which is located right downtown. It's a pretty new facility, very modern decor and each room is different.

After sleeping in on Saturday (such a luxury!) we headed to a local Dutch bakery, deBoer's, for breakfast. As advertised, and reviewed online, it was delicious!! Busy, but worth the wait.

After breakfast we wandered through the Holland Farmer's Market (it's great, probably out of this world at the height of summer when all the fruits and veggies are in season) and spent the rest of the morning poking around the little shops all along 8th Street downtown. The shopping worked up an appetite, so we decided to stop at Kilwin's for a nutritious lunch of ice cream!

What is the perfect follow-up to ice cream for lunch, you may wonder? Well, I have your answer--a brewery tour! We headed over to New Holland's brewery headquarters and took a tour. It was interesting, and the samples were plentiful (no, don't worry, I didn't drink them--Todd graciously had my share as well as his!) but I have to say that all of our distillery tours in Kentucky set the bar extremely high, and New Holland fell short. I got the impression that they haven't been offering tours for very long, and it seemed pretty amateur. But, again, beer samples, and we got to take home pint glasses, which was pretty cool.

After the tour we headed back to the hotel and took a nap (another luxury!) then went to dinner at CityVu, located on the top floor of our hotel, and even went to see a movie (Bridesmaids). The next morning we slept in a bit, had breakfast at a great little greasy spoon diner called The Windmill, and headed back to my parents' house to pick up Nathan.

All in all it was a fantastic and relaxing weekend!

Helping in the Garden

This weekend's weather was pretty darn cold, grey and rainy. This of course is not the weather I would have ordered for a May weekend, but I decided to make the best of it and do some greatly overdue weeding, taking advantage of the wet soil for easy extraction. When Nathan woke up from his nap, he assessed the situation and immediately determined that there were too many weeds for me to pull by myself-- "I can help you!"

Daddy helped him put on his froggy boots and gardening gloves and my little helper came running out to help me work more quickly and efficiently (didn't you know that a toddler helping with a project always means it is quicker and more efficient? No? Hmmm).

We worked hard and got all the weeding done, so now we're ready for a fresh layer of mulch--just have to get it ordered and spend some quality time with the wheelbarrow and shovel.

21 Weeks and Ultrasound!

On Friday, May 13th, Todd and I arrived at the midwife's office first thing in the morning for our 20 week anatomy scan. Our ultrasound technician was really nice, and was really great about explaining all of the measurements she was taking and the little body parts and organs we were looking at. It is really amazing what you can see on the ultrasound--all four chambers of the heart, the kidneys, the individual vertebrae, and the baby wiggling all around. Of course the tech started from the top of the head and worked her way down, saving the gender reveal for the end. The baby was being a little stubborn (our child, imagine that!) and kept putting hands by the face and crossing legs to make measurements a little tricky.

Given how few girls there are on our family trees, we have all just been assuming that this baby will be a boy. So, imagine our surprise and disbelief and excitement when the tech told us that this little bean is a GIRL!!!!!! My eyes immediately filled with tears, and both Todd and I kept asking the tech to check again, just to make sure. And sure enough, from every angle, it's a girl!!! Wow. So unbelievable and wonderful--we're going to have a daughter! Nathan's going to have a little sister! Amazing!

All of her measurements were right where they should be, and the ultrasound results were declared "unremarkable," which is probably the only time that you ever want to hear that your child is unremarkable. Her heartbeat was 143bpm and going strong. Todd and I were beaming all day! Now I'm more excited than ever to start nesting and preparing for this new little one.

I apologize for the terrible pictures--I was photographing the ultrasound prints, which are on really shiny paper.

Our daughter's profile

Girl!!!!

Demonstrating her ladylike tendencies--in this photo we are looking down on the tops of her legs, which are crossed at the ankles.

Sweet little baby feet!

My growing belly at 21 weeks. It's starting to look like there's a baby in there!

Big Boy Seat

We've been talking about moving Nathan out of his high chair and into a booster seat for awhile now, but just haven't gotten around to acquiring the booster seat itself. A week or so ago I found one for $2 at a garage sale--score! A few days ago I finally cleaned it off and installed it. Nathan thinks he's pretty darn grown-up in his big boy chair!

Mother's Day

We spent an absolutely gorgeous Mother's Day up in Grand Rapids with my parents. Except for our meal, we spent the entire visit outdoors, playing in the hammock, along the front walk, and in the awesome park that is right across from my parents' house. It had been awhile since we had been over to their house, and it was really nice to check back in. Nathan particularly enjoyed playing with his toys that live at Grandma Gail and Grandpa John's house.

N tried out the hammock, but it felt too much like lying still and relaxing, so he quickly moved on to more active endeavors.

Carrying his basket of cars out to play in the front yard.

Nathan and Grandpa John inspecting the fleet.

Seriously handsome.

In Nathan's world, a Corvette and a Jeep are equally likely to go off-roading.

Racing Daddy to the playground.

Slide!!

Me and my mommy. :)

Sandbox time!

This was our mother-son Mother's Day photo shoot. Can you guess which one of us had this idea, and which one wanted to go play with the tractor?