Happy Mother's Day!

So I actually thought Mother's Day was the weekend before last, so we had sent out a Mother's Day gift to Grandma a whole week early!  We decided to paint Grandma a little sunflower:

And Mommy got a nice ring holder - painted by Graham as well. We are into shapes right now, as you can see:

And then, this past Saturday - I decided to make some chocolate covered strawberries. It was my first attempt at them.  I tried to drizzle some white chocolate on them but that clearly did not go so well!

And Graham was my handy helper... at eating the leftover chocolate! YUMMY!

On Mother's Day itself, we decided to go to the zoo. Graham was so excited! I love how his ears are curled under his cap.  Too cute!

Why is it so difficult to take family pictures these days?!

Charlie continues to love these fruit pouches even more!  And they are so convenient!

Charlie got tired of being strapped in the stroller, so we decided to put him in the wagon instead. He loved it!

We had to be sure he didn't try to escape! 

After our usual route, it was time to head over to the playground.  Graham was clearly excited about it!

Here's our chubby little Charlie- trying to take his hat off!

Post-fall from a bench... and still smiling.  Yup, Mommy's fault (again!):

Graham loves playing at the playground:

It definitely wore him out!

And Charlie too! It's cute how he's holding onto his little birdie.

I'm glad we went in the morning because look at the traffic going to the zoo as we were leaving.  Bobby would have turned around and we would have gone elsewhere!

As for presents this year - a nice card and new pink pajamas! Soft and cozy and coincidentally the brandname started with the letter "C" too.  Nice touch, daddy :-)

As for flowers, I got this from Graham - a little art work from school:

And Bobby said that the roses are in the backyard.  Nice one, daddy :-P

We did get some new flowers and ground cover for the front yard this year. I like this one:

And this one... although the more I look at it, these flowers are starting to look more like weeds. Ha!

We're going to see how these hydrangeas do in the front:

I hope this summer will be kind to our plants.  I wished our azaleas would grow bigger quicker so it covers more ground. I suppose you can't do too much if you're saving them from the discounted section! And funny enough, none of them are the same color. There are like 5 different shades of red and pink!

And look... blueberries!  So those little white flowers just come off and then the berries are formed.  And I was blaming the birds pecking at them. Who would have known!

And oh, daddy weed-whacked the peonies plant AGAIN this year!

Charlie and Graham's new ride

Graham's ride got upgraded to a new tricycle.  I want one of these!

Charlie got his first ride too.  Okay, so it's a hand-me-down, but he doesn't know it (yet) :-)

It's been nice to take walks after dinner these days.

Graham probably wished there were puddles on the road all the time.  He loved taking his tricycle over it!

Gosh, our boys are growing up so fast!

Charlie is 9 months old

Charlie is 9 months old... can't believe he'll be 1 in three more months!  Today was his doctor's appointment.  He weighed in at 18lbs 8oz and at 17 1/4" tall - both below 25% percentile.  Does this kid really look like he's below 25% percentile??!

All was well and happy at the start of the appointment:

And then, uh oh... after the finger prick:

Charlie was out like a light by the time we got home.  Poor fella!

There's been a lot of progress this past month with Charlie. He has improved a lot on his crawling and loves to crawl with his favorite (chew) toy - a block:

He's also able to sit himself up more easily now from the crawling position:

We've discovered some new toys for Charlie.  Funny enough Graham didn't really play with this one a lot so Charlie is making up for lost times:

The walker is also coming in very handy for Charlie.  Even without walking yet, he's already getting himself into things!

He's starting to be quite a big boy!

And is the happiest when he's with his Mommy:

Ahhh... love the snuggle bug but I can't wait until he gets over the separation anxiety!

Garden update

I'm so glad it didn't freeze the other day!  All the flowers/plants in the yard are budding and we finally have our first rose of the season:

And I can't believe this pine tree is still alive!  It has new pines up top and also little green pines coming up from the bottom of the tree trunk.  I suppose we really should plant it in the ground somewhere in the yard.

The sage is blooming nicely:

And I can't wait to see the blooms on these day lilies. I planted them for my mom a few years ago and after the flowers had wilted, Bobby thought they were weeds! So glad he didn't do a very good job weeding :-)

As for the blueberries, we did get a lot of flowers but I think the birds have been getting to them first!

I just put a net over the plants so hopefully we will eventually get some blueberries this summer.

New kitchen countertop

We finally made the decision to get new kitchen countertops now knowing that we will be in Tulsa for a few more years with Bob's new job.  Alright... Mommy wanted to replace our old laminate countertops :-)  We went with a light quartz color since our kitchen doesn't get a lot of natural light.  Here's the before:

And here's the after:

I guess you can't really tell a whole lot of difference from the pictures, but trust me... the quartz feels and looks a lot better!  Although, I told Bobby that now with the new and fancy countertop, everything else in the kitchen looks so old!
Here's the other side of the kitchen.

As you can see, we still need to work on our backsplash.
Here's the countertop up close.  You can somewhat see the light-grey and brownish veins in it.

Well, looks like the projects in the kitchen continues now that we've started with the new countertops.  Backsplash next and then, the cabinets - that's going to be a challenge. Who knows when we'll be done!

Bassinet buddies reunited

Back in October 2010, we were traveling to Malaysia via Dubai on Emirates Airline (great airline by the way, especially when you have kids!). On that flight, we met a very nice couple - Ray & Angie, who was also traveling with an infant - baby Cora, who was Graham's bassinet buddy.

Graham was only 5 months old then.  Look at that face!

And 2 1/2 years later, look at them now!

And they played great together:

"Monkey see, monkey do!"

And funny enough, we now have Charlie and they now have Elijah!  Here are the four of them:

Hopefully it won't take another 2 1/2 years before they all meet again.  Thanks Angie and kids for coming by to visit us while we were in Phoenix this past April. :-)