My Old Toys

While at my mom's last weekend Ingrid got to play with lots of cool old toys.  I don't have much of anything from my childhood, but luckily my mom kept all our Fisher Price Little People stuff.  There's a town with a movie theater, garage, barber shop, dentist, post office, and fire station.  There's a hospital with a working elevator, and all kinds of people and cars.  Ingrid absolutely loved to play with them!  See, when you make something good, thirty years later it will still be fun!

I went on ebay and etsy to see if I could find some to actually bring home, but some of them were a bit too expensive for me...I did see a camper that I never had as a kid but looks pretty awesome.  I may have to get that, I'm sure Brendan and I would play with it too!

Girl's Road Trip

My grandma turned 80 this past weekend so there was a big shindig for her.  Grandpa turned 80 two years ago, so it was a weekend full of remarking how much everyone had grown since then!  Ingrid and I left Saturday morning, drove for three and a half hours, and finally made it to my mom's.  My cousin was having a bridal shower so right away we got to see all the ladies of the family.

Ingrid sang to great-grandma.

And she splashed with grandma in a bucket of water.  (oh to be so easily entertained!)

The next day was the birthday party.  Holy cow, our family is enormous!  Six kids all had 2-4 kids.  These kids have all had 2-3 kids.  It's astonishing how a family grows over the years!  Ingrid got to play with cousins, go swimming in the pool, and eat birthday cake. 

Yesterday we hung out at mom's again.  My cousin has a two year old as well, so Sophia and Ingrid played together splashing in the pool and then rolling in the sandbox.  It was an exhausting trip but so well worth it.  We don't see family often so when we do it's always a good memory making experience!

About Me This Time.

Things I've been doing lately: 
*Buying wee little teeny cloth diapers. 
*Looking through boxes of Ingrid's outgrown items. 
*Thrifting for tiny tshirts. 
*Gagging at the smell of coffee. 
*Eating copious amounts of ginger chews and drinking nothing but milk or Trader Joe's lime sparkling water.

Care to guess why?

Church Rummage Sale

I heard about a rummage sale at a local church and thought I'd check it out.  I vaguely remember the sales at my church growing up, which were very sedate things.  People's stuff laid out on tables, kindly old ladies with little change boxes, everything very mellow.  Today's sale was anything but that!  It was a madhouse!  It was in the gym, there were tables of stuff, but there were so many people there it was hard to get through.  And of course Ingrid wants to go see the toys so I lost her a couple times, trying to hold her hand but she wriggled away and ran over to boxes of stuffed animals.

After wrangling the wee one we got to check out the linen section, which did not disappoint.  I found a cool orange and pink sheet, some gingham fabric, and a Sesame Street blanket.

We did manage to look through the toys a bit and found not one but three of these Fisher Price chalkboard desks!  Both Brendan and I have fond memories of having these as kids.  This one came with all the letters, chalk, and the eraser!  And it was 50cents, you can't beat that. 

I suppose it was well worth going to check it out, although next time I attempt one of these I will not bring Ingrid.  As we were waiting in line to check out, she dropped to the floor to get something shiny and a very large old man stepped on her finger.  Oh boy did she cry.  All the old ladies doing the checkout thought she was upset that I wouldn't get her a toy!  That kind of made me irritated--no she's not a brat, she just got injured!

In other news, I got some more cloth wipes done for the etsy shop.  I love these things, we have about fifty of them in our bathroom and I use them all the time!  Check it out, there are tons of new prints available!

 

A Day at the Beach

Even though it was cloudy and gloomy looking today, we went back to Independance Lake for some nature walks, a picnic, and the splash pad.  We had promised Ingrid we'd go last night, and the first thing out of her mouth this morning was "go to the beach!" 

Honestly it was nice out.  We had some super hot, muggy weather the day before, so mid-60s and breezy felt great.  We walked a little trail, dipped our toes in the lake, then ate lunch and let Ingrid splash around the splash pad.  Brendan had to leave for a conference this afternoon, so we had to make it home for him to pack.  It was just enough time to enjoy being together and enjoy some nature.

As you may be able to tell from these pictures, Ingrid's face still hasn't gone down!  We've given her Benedryl twice daily and nothing--it doesn't seem to bother her, but is she going to puff up every time she gets a mosquito bite?  We live in the midwest, there are mosquitos EVERYWHERE.  Poor kid's not going to do well during summer.

Bug Bites

Poor Ingrid got bit by something yesterday.  She's got two places where her body has just puffed up to a ridiculous size.  She was barely recognizable this morning when she woke up.  My little Neanderthal girl...

We've given her Benedryl and I just have to hope for the best.  Please please please let her not be this allergic to bee stings.  I don't know if I can handle having to carry around one of those Epi pens with me at all times!

Berry Picking

A neighbor has a few strawberry plants along the sidewalk and has encouraged us to pick ones we see are ripe and look good.  Ingrid has been obsessed with this, and loves to walk by there.  I decided we should go to an actual farm and pick strawberries, ones that I'm pretty sure have never been peed on by a dog.  We met up with friends today and picked nearly four pounds of berries!

Ingrid and Ben had fun running through the plants.  I felt bad at first but after seeing how many other kids were doing the same thing, I'm pretty sure the people at the farm wouldn't allow kids if they weren't expecting a few trampled berries.  Jami and I tried to wrangle the kids to picking the ripest, best looking strawberries, but all Ben wanted to do was pick the green ones (he thought they were golden raspberries!) and Ingrid always picked the muddiest ones, which she would bite once and then throw in the box. 

It didn't take long to fill up our box.  I could've gone on for awhile longer but I knew I'd end up with all these strawberries and not know what to do with them.  Plus we'd just gotten a pound each of blueberries and raspberries, so we have berries coming out the wazoo right now.  Luckily, I have my trusty allrecipes.com to go to and find great recipes to use them all up.

The one I tried today was a berry cobbler.  Yum.

Here's the recipe:

1/4 c. butter, melted in baking pan or pie pan
mix together 1 c. flour, 2tsp baking powder, 3/4 c. sugar, 3/4 c. milk, 1/2 tsp. vanilla, 1/2 tsp cinnamon
Pour batter over melted butter, then add about 3 cups of fresh berries on top.  Do not stir, it bakes over the fruit and gets all golden brown and yummy looking.  Oh, and I topped the fruit with a little brown sugar.  Because I can, and I wanted to!












I'm envisioning some waffles and berries tomorrow for breakfast, and perhaps making some more jam.  Again, yum.  I love summer fruits!

Taste of Ann Arbor

Yesterday we took advantage of living so close to downtown Ann Arbor and walked there for a street festival.  There were tons of tents from all the local restaurants and we got to try ribs, corn, beans, pad thai, and of course cupcakes!
It was so crazy weatherwise yesterday.  First it was sunny and bright, then gloomy, then pouring rain, then back to sunny.  We walked while it was sunny, got there to gloom, and stayed through the rain.  Ingrid could've cared less about the rain, she was just enjoying seeing everyone, listening to the music, and eating tons of food.

A lady from the paper was taking pictures of her, so Ingrid is now online in a slide show about the event!  Check it out here.  She's about 58 seconds in.  There will be pictures in the Sunday paper, too, so we'll have to get it next week and see if she made it in there, too.

 Once again so glad we moved and so glad we live where we do.  I enjoy our time here in Michigan so much more now that we're by things!!

Going for a Bike Ride

Once upon a time, a friend in Milwaukee gave us one of those bike carriers that go behind the bike.  Her mom had gotten it to carry her two Corgies around, haha!  But the dogs didn't like it and we were having a baby, so we got it.  Yay!  It sat in Brendan's parent's garage for two years, and we finally had them bring it when they came for Ingrid's birthday.  Brendan set it up and Ingrid was so excited to go for a ride!

We had to get her a helmet of course.  How cute is she?  She would wear this thing everywhere if we let her.  Which may not be such a bad idea, notice her cut lip?  She fell off the bed.  Twice.  And got a black eye to match the fat lip.  Sigh...that kid is so clumsy!

I foresee lots of daddy/daughter bike rides this summer, which leaves mama home alone enjoying time to herself.  Yay!

I finished my quilt yesterday!  It turned out so wonky but I'm choosing to see that as being unique and homemade.  If I wanted perfection I would've bought one from someone who knew what they were doing!

I used one of my new tags on it.  I love these!  I got them from this lady on etsy, if you ever think you need a nice sew on tag for any of your crafts, get some from her.  She'll help you design something if you don't see one you like, and they are super affordable. 

Splash Pads are Awesome!

Today we went to a nearby park which is on a small lake.  The park is amazing, it has a bit of everything you'd need.  There are nature trails, a disc golf course, beaches, a playground, tons of picnic areas, and a splash pad for the kids.  We got there early and played on the playground and ate strawberries while waiting for everyone to show up.

I have to admit, I hate swimming in small lakes.  They seem dirty and weedy to me, I'm constantly worried that I'm hitting fish or seaweed with my toes.  I'm a big baby, I know.  Growing up by Lake Michigan, though, it's hard to expect less.

Anyway, so this park has a really cool splash pad, which has fountains, sprinklers, all kinds of ways of water to shoot out and up for kids to run through.  It doesn't have any standing water so you can kind of let your kid run around and not worry so much about them getting in trouble.  Our friends showed up and we spread out blankets and piled all our food in the middle, since the kids kept wanting whatever their mom didn't bring.  We ate and ran in and out of the water and enjoyed the morning.  It's only 15 minutes from our house so I think we'll be back often!

My Quilt

It's still not done.  I've been plucking away at it, and it's huge, so I should expect that it's going to take so long.  However, the whole point of making it was because it's hot and we have a down comforter.  Anyway, I got all the squares sewn together and have found it's still too small.  So I'm adding a border and then hopefully it will be big enough to cover both the man and I. 

And then hopefully I'll be able to just whip on the backing and be done with it!  Ingrid will enjoy it, as her favorite spot in the house lately is mama and daddy's bed.  Every morning (at 6am, no less) she runs from her bed into ours to read a big pile of books.  She demands we stack up at least ten books, and then will sit for ages, carefully paging through each one.  It's so funny to hear her read them to herself, I just love it!