Adventures in June.

I turned 32! Getting older doesn’t bother me but I’m starting to get annoyed by all of the gray hairs I have now.  I haven’t dyed my hair in over ten years so I’m thinking it’s about time.  

The girls had a fun week in the middle of June.  Their bio dad came into town.  It had been a couple years since his last visit.  He spoiled them like crazy and took them all over town.   I was afraid the visit would be uncomfortable since he and I don’t really get along but we were surprisingly mature and didn’t fight with each other! Woo!

We took trips to several nearby nurseries to look for trees and get an idea of what we wanted for the new landscaping.  The nursery that we ended up buying our trees from has goats that you can feed.  It turns out that Ryan really doesn’t like animals up close but he’ll wave hi like crazy from a distance.  He did like to feed the fish in the pond.  I think they were far enough away.

Kaeleigh.

I can't forget about Kaeleigh!  She is getting ready to head into middle school.  Just before school let out for the summer all of the incoming 6^th graders got to take a field trip to their new school for a tour.  When she got home we asked her how it went. Her response was, “terrifying.”  Ha ha!  There’s a sneak peek night just before school starts where she’ll find out her schedule and we can find the rooms and her locker and all of that fun stuff but she is afraid we’ll miss it!  She’s made it clear several times that we have to be in town for that.  She gets stressed out so easily.

Kaeleigh has developed her own sense of style lately.  She’s taking less of mom’s suggestions and picking out what she wants to wear and how she wants to accessorize.  There have been some hits and misses.  Misses in my opinion are always her favorite outfits.  Her teenage years are going to be fun.  I feel for my mom now that karma has come full circle. 

She asked to have her hair straightened for the last day of school.  It took forever!

Bugs...I hate them.

See that tiny speck?

Now imagine that multiplied by like a thousand.  

We had heard some rustling and chirping in our upstairs bathroom and when we went outside we saw a bird fly right into the vent leading out from that bathroom.  Since we also had a mama bird make a nest on our front porch we knew that it was baby bird season so we just decided to leave the nests until the birds were big enough and then we’d put up bird spikes to deter the birds from making nests.  Well…it was a nice idea in theory.  One day Maylyn yelled for me and when I got upstairs our entire toilet (which is under the ceiling vent) was covered in tiny bugs.  So small that they looked more like dirt until you got up close and saw that they were moving.  I called our pest control guy and he came over and said they were bird mites from the birds that had set up shop in our duct work.  He sprayed as best he could but said that we had to get the birds out to get rid of the problem.  So Bill and my brother-in-law Jeff rented a really tall ladder and evicted the birds.  Then they had to remove all of the duct work because it was packed full of years of nest building and dead bird and now these thousands of bird mites.  It was horrifying and disgusting.  Bill had to strip off the clothes he was wearing outside because they were covered in mites and I threw them directing in the trash barrel.  There was no way in hell I was putting those in my washing machine. After new duct work and lots more bug spray we are free of bird mites but I’m still traumatized by the whole thing.  Bill put up a bird guard on the outside of the house so they can’t get back in and I disinfected the entire bathroom.  Picture me mopping the ceiling. I’m so glad that Jeff was here to help Bill because otherwise it would have been me helping and I’m pretty sure I would have freaked! Moral of the story:  Birds are cute but don’t let them set up shop in or around your house.  You may not even see the bird mites until they are everywhere!

Shortly after the mite debacle Maylyn was bit by a mosquito and in typical Maylyn fashion, her whole arm swelled up.  She was bit on Saturday night and on Sunday night I drew a dotted line in marker around the swelling so I could keep an eye on it.  When she woke up Monday morning the swelling had passed my marker line so we went to the doctor.  The pediatrician recommended that Maylyn see an allergist.  We had to wait about a month and a half to be seen but the doctor we saw was so great. 

They did twenty-four different tests on Maylyn and it turns out she’s allergic to more than we realized, like cats and dogs.  But not horses, thank goodness! :)  It looks like we won’t be getting any pets. The one thing we learned from her visit is that her reaction to bug bites is not life threatening.  Huge relief!  But with the type of cells that Maylyn has, she’ll always have this type of reaction and swelling.  Huge bummer. 

She has to go back again next month for another pulmonary test to see if what we thought was asthma is really asthma or if it’s just these allergies we didn’t know she had.  The doctor put her on a new inhaler and now we wait to see.

May.

Ryan had his first trip to the dentist!  The dental office I found near us is very family friendly.  They had a little play area in the waiting room that Ryan loved and then when we got back to the exam chairs they gave him a pair of sunglasses to wear and turned on Netflix to Mickey Mouse!  He sat still the whole time!

 We explored Spokane a little bit.  There are so many parks tucked into the city.

 After the park we had lunch at a place called Anthony's.  It's right off the Spokane River so it has an amazing view of the falls.  Ryan kept looking out the window and gasping, it was hilarious!

 We started to work on potty training a little bit.  He'll sit still and watch movies on the iPad.

 May also meant our double birthdays.  Maylyn invited a couple friends over to decorate cupcakes for her birthday party.  She LOVES horses so we made horse cupcakes.

 Kaeleigh had initially thought she was "too cool" for little sister's cupcake party but then decided that it might be fun.

Ryan's birthday was the 18th.  I can't believe this little boy is two years old. Trying to get a two year old to cooperate and take pictures was fun. 

Stand still. Leave the glasses on. Smile!  Ugh.

 He fell and hit his eye two days before his birthday so it looked like he had been in a fight and got a black eye.  At his well visit he weighed 27 pounds.  His height, weight, and head circumference all fell in the 50th percentile. He's not the best eater but he does have some favorites.  Pizza is definitely number one with peanut butter close behind.  I'm doing like his doctor said and continuing to offer him everything we're eating but he's a turkey and picks at his food.  He's not much of a talker.  While his pediatrician isn't concerned about it, it worries and frustrates me.  He'll sign things like, "more." "Please." "All done." His doctor says that he has his sisters and me to answer for him so of course he's not talking.  The one thing he says consistently is Dad.  This little mama's boy refuses to say Mama.  Oh well, what can you do?

We celebrated both birthdays together with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law and we Skyped during present time with my parents so it was almost like they were there!

Maylyn turned 9 this year.  She has started to outgrow the Barbies and is now all about Lego Friends.  And she still asks for a horse every year.  Who am I kidding?  She asks nearly every day for a horse.  Can you guess what she picked as the theme of her room?  :)

I need to get a better picture of the two of them for this year but I just love seeing how much they grow and change each year.

April and Easter.

 In April my parents came to visit.  They stayed with us for a week right around Easter. It was so nice to be able to visit with them after not seeing them since we went to Arizona back in November.  
The girls decorated Easter eggs with my mom.  My dad helped hide the eggs in the backyard. (Pre-landscaping work.)  

I didn't plan my picture taking very well.  It fell right at Ryan's nap time and basically every picture looks like this:

We ended up giving him a rock and I was able to get a halfway decent picture.

We loved having a big backyard to hide eggs in and Ryan was finally old enough to understand what was going on.  Next year should be even more fun!