Volleyball - Love it!

For the past 11 weeks I have been playing volleyball on Monday nights as part of a team for a city league. The girl who put together the team had to ask me multiple times. The only reason I said okay was because they were short one girl player and weren't going to be able to sign up. I hadn't played in 10 years or so and was worried I would make a fool of myself.

But, I absolutely LOVED playing again. Yes, some of my skill is gone. And, yes, we weren't great and lost every game until the last one but it was still fun. I keep asking myself why I never played intramurals in college.

Nate filled in last night since two of our guy players were going to be gone. It was fun to play with him too. We may have to start finding a regular babysitter so we can continue to play together. The next season doesn't start until the fall. What am I going to do without my Monday night volleyball games? It was so good for me to be able to step out of the "mommy" role one night a week and do something I used to love.

Jump!

He wants to jump so badly!

Favorite Words - for now!

Preston makes me giggle all the time with the way he pronounces certain words. Currently my favorite words are ones with "l" or the double "l". He's always had an over active tongue - always rolling it when he was little or licking things - and it really shines when he says words with "l" in it. Here are just a few:

"Hello" - check out that tongue action!

"Umbrella" - not sure if you can tell but he rolls his "l" here too.

"Cock-a-doodle doo" and a few other noises. We also love his fire-engine! Sorry the image is bad but we loved his noises. He's hard to video these days. He gets cranky because he would rather watch than be taped.

"Hammer" - ever since we did our house projects he's been obsessed with hammers.

Finished Wainscoting

Last week we finished painting the wainscoting. It took one layer of primer and two layers of paint before it looked just right. We love how it turned out. It sets the dining area apart, adds a little style, and almost makes the area seem bigger. Now we just need to fill those bare walls!

Birthday Boy

Nate is one year older - and I guess, wiser too. Nate's requests were simple this year. Burgers on the grill and root beer floats for dessert. Seriously?!?! We chose to celebrate on Saturday and I had grandiose ideas of what would be fun to do. Afterall, the news had been promising a wonderful weekend with the warmest days of the year. It was finally going to be warm and sunny! We were going to go on a walk to get doughnuts in the morning and eat them at the park so Preston could play. Then, we would go on a hike or geocaching with a picnic lunch. After naptime we would go swimming or to one of the many splash parks in our area.

However, when we woke up on Saturday is was cold and super windy. We managed our walk to get doughnuts but came straight home deciding even the walk almost wasn't worth it in the cold. Instead, we ran some errands. The afternoon proved to be a little sunnier but still breezy and cool We did go geocaching, which is always fun.

We don't go geocaching enough anymore. It seriously is the best way to spend time together and get outside. We found 3 of 5 attempted caches all within walking distance of our home. We're a little rusty on our searching skills I guess. I can't stop thinking about the one that eluded us the longest. We searched for probably 20 minutes. Maybe we'll go search again tonight! The cache is at a baseball field. We had fun just playing around the area though.

Preston inspecting one of the caches while Dad logged our find

Preston using the GPS

Preston learned how to climb the fence. He started all on his own - Daddy just was spotting him

Determined little boy - made it all the way to the top

He was so proud. His smug smile said it all.

Our Little Reader

Preston has a new love for books. There were many times this past week that I would look over and he was contentedly reading by himself. It's also the first thing he wants to do every morning. His new favorite book is a Richard Scarry book that has three books in one. I love that he loves to read!

House Projects

Nate's break hasn't been all play and no work. We have exhausted ourselves this past week trying to fit in as many projects around the house as we could. We did a lot but still only covered about a third of our list. Many of the things we did have been on our "to do list" for months. We put up new curtain rods in Preston's room and the front room, which required filling the previous holes, touching up the paint and hanging the new rods. I hemmed the curtains in Preston's room and made curtains for the front room. Yikes! We cleaned the windows inside and out. We scotch-guarded our couches. I repainted a mirror for above our couch. We took down the shelf from above our couch, filled the nail holes and re-painted getting ready for the new decorations.

And, our biggest project included putting up fake wainscoting in our kitchen area.  We are almost done with the wainscoting. It took a lot of time trying to get straight lines on the walls for the chair rail. A little bit of time cutting the wood and trying to figure out the correct way to cut a return. Then even more time lining up the individual boxes and caulking all the spaces between the box and the wall. Then came the priming and first coat of paint. The wainscoting still needs a second coat of paint before it will be fully done. We are getting so close.

It's amazing how all of these projects seemed to take twice as long as they should have with Preston running around. We also seemed to make quite a few trips to Lowe's and Home Depot within the week.  I guess that's what usually happens when working on projects. All in all, we felt like we got a lot done this week.

Here is our completed entry-way. We did this right before Disneyland. We finally finished the bench. 

The curtains I made.

Our kitchen before work began

Preston loved helping Nate with all things tools. Here they are ready to cut wood with the miter saw.

Chair rail up!

One wall of boxes up

All the boxes up

Stay tuned for the completed pictures! We are planning to finish early this week.

The Most Magical Place on Earth

Nate had a little extra time off in May. In fact, he's basically had the whole month off. It started with our already scheduled trip to Hawaii. Then, he got a new job, which doesn't start until tomorrow. So the way things shook out between the end date of the old job and start date for the new job coupled with the vacation to Hawaii gave him a month break. Not too bad, right! It was a much needed break since he had been working many many long hours.

Nate and I decided to take advantage of the time off.  Thanks to the help of Nate's mom and sister, Nate and I took a quick jaunt down to Southern California to the most "magical place on earth" without Preston for a few days. We had a blast! There were those brief moments where we missed our little boy, but overall, it was great to be at Disneyland and California Adventure without him. We spent every minute we could at the park going from one ride to another. We rode all the rides we wanted to - multiple times and we didn't have to worry about anything. In fact, we even traveled light around the parks - no bags! I didn't carry anything but my park pass and Nate only carried his wallet, sunscreen and camera in his pocket. (It was so nice not to be lugging around a diaper bag.)

Neither of us had been to California Adventure before and we thought it was so fun. I can't wait to see what rides they add to the park. There was a ton of construction going on.

We loved our time away and Preston had so much fun with Grandma and Maren.

Getting ready to see "Captain EO" - 3D has gotten so much better since it was created!

Mad Tea Party

Mickey Shaped Beignets in New Orleans Square. Yummy.

Checking Out Toon Town

Tower of Terror - We loved it.

Can you guess who scored what?

We rode this ride 4 times so Nate could try to beat me...