Summer 2020 (July-September)

JULY

Grant went fishing with Grandma and Dad over the 4th of July weekend.  He had a great time and caught a few fish!

Our house is making progress!  It is so fun to go almost every night to look at our house and see the progress. We have had to make a few changes so far.  We had them raise the garage, change out some windows in our family room that didn't open and widen the hallway upstairs.  You can see things so much clearer in person versus a floor plan.  They weren't happy about the changes but they did them. We had to pay the changes.

We moved into a town house until our house is complete.  We are happy we found an option to stay somewhere for a few months.  There are some positives and negatives about the town house but it works for a few months.  We don't have to do yard work for one!  It is hard to fill up this water table because the outside faucet is in the garage in this town home so I take a big bucket and fill it up to fill the water table.  It works for now and Blake loves playing in the water table.

We have been having problems getting Grant to sleep and to stay in his room at night.  We are now laying in his room until he is asleep and it is taking FOREVER.  We are going to have to do something different because we can't keep doing this.

There is a pond close to our town house so we walk over there and look at the duckies!  It is a fun thing to do when we just need to get out of the house but don't want to go too far.

The boys wanted to tell everyone Happy 4th of July!

We took Grant to swim lessons.  He is learning slowly but surely.  We hope he can be a confident swimmer!

We went to Aunt Randi's house over the 4th of July and the boys were excited to go on a boat ride.

The boys love monster trucks right now!  We only have a few toys out and one of them that Grant and Blake love are the Blaze monster trucks Auntie Kellie gave us.

Here is a video of me being annoying and demanding and asking Blake to do all the tricks he knows!  He is so cute and such a silly little boy!

Taking another stroll to visit the duckies and watch the pond!

The boys have been loving the cars movies so I got them some light up Lightening McQueen shoes!  They loved them!

We saw Aunt Leslie and had to say goodbye to her on the way home.  So cute listening to them say her name.

Grant is playing soccer with some of his friends from daycare.  They are SO cute to watch.  I wouldn't say much soccer is getting played though.  At one point they were all holding hands and playing ring around the rosie.  It was the funniest thing to watch! 

Grant got an ear infection right before we left for the lake.  We wanted to get his ears looked at before we left so now he is on an antibiotic for it.  We think he got an ear infection at swim lessons even though they say you don't have to wear plugs in clean water.  Now we are going to the lake with both boys on antibiotics!

We made it to the big lake!  That is what Grant calls Lake Michigan.  It was a fun but exhausting week.  We stayed at the bus spot which was nice to have our own space for naps and early wake ups.  The weather was amazing though and we loved the early morning time at the beach.  We had some lunches at Aunt Nicki's and the boys loved her "spicy chips" or BBQ chips and the name has stuck.  They did really well on the car ride especially with the long drive. Our car was packed to the brim. Makenna played with Grant a lot which was nice to keep him entertained.  Uncle Mit dug a hole with Grant also.  Uncle Jeff took Grant fishing.  He even caught a few fish!  These boys are busy so we had to keep them active!

It is fun to watch Blake learn new things.  He is counting and, of course, being silly about it but oh so cute!

Grant found some Batman masks at Aunt Kellie's and loved them!  She even let him take one home and he wore it in the car.

AUGUST

Grant is playing a little more soccer and doing a great job.  It is a lot of playing with his friends still though.  It is just a nice reason to get out of the house and burn off some energy Saturday mornings.

Grant says granola bar so silly!  You would have no idea what he is saying but we love it. 

The house is getting closer to to being done!  The bookshelves are being put in the wood around the stairs.  That was put in by accident and we are so happy they did that because it looks so good!  The house is getting sided and hopefully painted shortly after that.  I took a few videos to send to my Grandma but its looking good so far!

Blake has his favorite Llama Llama books he has memorized. He loves singing to me before bed.  Such a cute little boy!

Greg made fidget spinners for his work and Grant took one.  He got frustrated when he couldn't initially do it but figured it out and he was so proud of himself!

We had a HUGE storm come through today.  They called it a derecho which is basically a huge storm with hurricane like winds.  It came through but did not last long.  It did quite the damage though!  We went to our house to check on water damage and there was some in the basement but that was expected since the windows had not been sealed.  The boys enjoyed splashing in the water though!

Blake is wearing his santa PJs in August.  Makes sense!  So we are getting him to show us who Santa is and what Santa says.

We met Jackie, Milo, Jess, Cade, Lenny, Corbin at the park.  There were a lot of little boys!  They had fun playing around at the park and it was nice to catch up with my friends.

We went to the Blank Park Zoo!  The favorite part was the train, of course.  They also loved feeding the goats!  Blakes laugh and excitement is just to precious to watch!

The boys always have so much energy when they go to Nana and Papa's house on Sundays.  Uncle Mit got stuck wrestling with them.  They boys loved it!

This is a rare moment of the boys playing quietly and nicely together.  I had to capture it on video so I know a few of these moments actually do exist!

They both just looked so cute drinking out of their cups together watching TV!  I hope they become the best of friends.

Grant made a monster truck out of magnetic tiles and he was SO proud of himself! 

The governor closed down bars this weekend due to the covid numbers.  This weekend is Greg and my 5 year wedding anniversary and we are going biking and to stay the night at a hotel.  So we were talking about how we can't go to bars on our ride and apparently this was very upsetting to Grant.  Such a funny video!

We had to go to the grocery store to pick up a few things and Grant was a big helper!  He loved having his own cart!

I can't believe we have been married 5 years already!  It has flown by and we have experienced a lot of life in those 5 years.  We've had 2 kids, bough a house, renovated a house and are currently building a new house!  It has been a fun, exciting but also busy and exhausting 5 years.  Here is to hoping the next 5 bring us lots of happiness and joy!

SEPTEMBER

Our house is painted and looks so good!  Next up is the brick.  We are supposed to be in mid October so fingers crossed we are!

This bounce house has been a life saver to keep our boys busy when we don't have a basement or much of a backyard. They love it!

Blake still loves to wear his Thomas helmet and we don't steer him away from it because his head needs all the protection it can get.  He is just such a clumsy kid.

Blake is dancing to the TV and he is just the cutest little dancer!

I've been trying to brush teeth while they are in the bath just to speed things up once bath is done.  Bedtime is taking a lot of time so we will see if it works.  You can also see a spot where Blake fell again.

Blake gets 3 birthday parties this year!  Since we are in our town house we split up the family celebrations.  First was the Young family celebration and it was Lightening McQueen themed!  We got out the bounce house for all of the cousins to jump on. 

We went to Cape Cod for Greg and Caitlin's wedding.  It was a cold weekend off of the ocean but it was fun!  It was very strict with covid restrictions to that was a bummer.  We couldn't all sit together at one table and couldn't dance at the wedding.  Silly rules that we somewhat followed but it was nice to get away with Greg and no kids for the weekend.

Blake got more cake and presents on his actual birthday!  He is one spoiled little 2 year old.  He loved all the attention and presents.

The last celebration for Blake's birthday was the Chaliks.  He got some more cool presents so who knows where we are going to store all these new toys in our town house!

Grant was helping Nana do the dishes after dinner and he was the best helper!

Blake does some of the cutest things these days.  He is acting like a gorilla here and it is just so cute!

These moments are my favorite.  I love all the cuddles and I know they don't last forever so I will cherish them while I get them!

We took the boys to the pumpkin patch in September because it was so nice outside!  The boys loved it!  They got to feed some goats, so on a tub ride, play in some corn and jump on an inflatable.  I would say it was a success!

The boys were playing a game in the backyard and playing together well-ish.  This lasted awhile and they thought it was a fun game!

The house has made a lot of progress this last month.  This month has been all the fun stuff to see-the finishing things.  We are supposed to move in the house in 2 weeks.  It seems like there is still a lot to do but we can't wait to move in!