Since Zippy can't play soccer, Grevin is going to sub for him!

The shin guards are a perfect fit :)

Zippy and the broken hand

Last weekend, Zippy was playing soccer when he came off just before the half thinking he had some how dilocated his left pinky finger.  After a paramedic friend tried to pop it back into place and couldn't, Zippy headed off to play the remainder of the game.  Afterwards, I looked at it and noticed the "dislocation" was not really at the knuckle but more in his hand.  When it started to swell and it looked like maybe it wasn't just dislocated, Zippy headed to the doctor's to see what was up.  They took x-rays and said he had an angulated fracture and was referred to a orthopedic hand surgeon.  He refused to have it casted because he wanted to play soccer, again, on Sunday so they wrapped it and sent him on his way.  Sunday, the hand surgeon called and said it looked like it could be manually reset without surgery so yesterday we headed back to the doctors to have it reset.   Zippy was  a trooper even when they put him in this ancient torture device.  It was like a metal Chinese finger trap that went over his finger while weights were added to his arm to help gravity lengthen and straighten his finger. 

Zippy wants some sympathy so he wanted me to take this pic :)

After they tortured him with this device and some poor jokes from Zippy, the doctor came back and started to work on popping the bone back into place.  Her first attempt was not successful so they ended up having to cut the cast off and redo it.  We were there for almost 3 hours and they finally got it where it needed to be.  The doctor said Zippy was the best patient ever and as she walked out the door said not to believe him, he was in a lot of pain!   He did convince the doctor to let him come back in 3 weeks instead of 6 in hopes of getting something other than a hard cast so he could play soccer again....

Soccer & Banana-Life is Good

Latest Obsessions

Grevin's new favorite thing are tractors.  There has been alot of road construction in our area and he kept calling everything a "big truck" so daddy decided to teach him the difference between diggers, backhoes, bulldozers, excavators, etc.  We bought a few books and Grey is obsessed with tractors.  All of them tend to be his favorite which I think is so cute to hear him say :)

Also he has always loved shoes.  A friend of ours gave us a pair of her son's rain boots which are about a size too big still for Grey.  I was cleaning his room out the other day and he saw them and immediately called him his work boots (just like daddy's work boots!).  He loves to wear them in the house and tell us bye and that he is going to work.  When you ask him what he does at work he says "clean" and grabs a rag or broom and starts "cleaning".  I am glad someone in our house likes to clean!

Train Town

The birthday girl!

We headed off to Train Town in Sonoma to help celebrate Lulu's 3rd birthday.  I am a little bummed that my camera battery died about half way through because we had so much fun! 

Grevin loved everything about it.  We got to ride a train through the woods and through tunnels to a petting zoo and a miniature town.  He was very serious taking it all in but really loved it and didn't want to get off of the train.

Riding with daddy on the train!

When we were at the fair last weekend, he was not big enough to go on any of the rides but luckily at train town, he could ride them with daddy.  He didn't want to wait to ride any of the rides, he kept running up to the gate, saying "ride, ride!"  He was not happy when we had to wait for the carousel but I think it was worth the wait for him because he didn't really want to get off!

We then headed over to some of the "big kid" rides and we were in trouble.  He went on the ferris wheel first and I wasn't sure how he would like the big rides...but it turns out that he again didn't want to get off.  He started again with the "ride,ride, ride" when it was time to get off!!

Getting buckled in, he looks so little!!

Waving at momma!

"Look, momma, no hands!"

We then decided to try the REAL roller coaster.  It was fast and bumpy and you could barely see Grey over the protection bar so I really wasn't sure that this was a good idea.

When the ride came to an end, I hear Grey crying his heart out.  I was so worried that he hated it and was scared.  Turns out, it was the complete opposite.  He had asked daddy for "more ride" and he said that they were done and the guy needed to come let them off.  Grey flipped out!  He wanted to do it again.  As they were exiting, he kept trying to get in other cars to go again. He was not happy that the ride was over!

It was alot of fun with lots of good company and we can't wait to go again!

Holy Cow!

Well, it is finally here.  Zippy decided he wanted to buy a cow.  At first, I thought he meant as a pet to put in the backyard and I thought it was a crazy idea. Then I thought he wanted to share a cow...you know, like get a whole cow and share the meat with 3 other families.  Well, it turned out that he wanted to buy a WHOLE cow and have it butchered and store all +/- 500 lbs of meat at our house.  Hmmm...where would we put this +/-500 lbs of meat?  It turns out, we needed to buy a BIG deep freezer.  Luckily, we decided to go with the one we got instead of the slightly smaller one because it barely fit in the freezer!  Luckily, it came all vacuum packed because I looked at borrowing a friends food saver to do it and she said it took her about 20 minutes to do steaks from Costco.  We would be looking at hours and hours of vacuum sealing if we had to do this as we have over 60 steaks...and that is not including the roasts, stew meat, hamburger, corned beef, and who knows what else.  In the long run, it will actually save us money as we spend about what we would spend on hamburger on all sorts of different cuts and steaks.  But the up front cost is ridiculous!!  I am just hoping our power doesn't go out at our house for any length of time or we will be inviting everyone we know over for a BIG BBQ!!

So far this is what the cow has cost us:
Cow:  $1,050
Butcher:  $350
Deep Freezer:  $400
So far the total:  $1800  (so based on est. 500 lbs, we have paid $3.60/lb)

Don't forget though that Zippy needed to drive to  Placerville to pick up the cow and transport it in 6 coolers back to our house.  I think it took 45 minutes for him to unload it all, too, with Reint's help.  I am going to stop complaining now though because we had the first steaks for dinner Saturday night and they were seriously some of the best ever.  Of course, Zippy thought we all needed a whole steak ourselves...his was 1.6 pounds.  Needless to say, he was full for the next 3 days....

Zippy has named the cow, Durham, and the owner of the ranch was nice enough to send us a picture of Durham before he came to live with us.  He is a polled hereford cow...and he is delicious!  You should come meet him....

Reint

When Zippy and I graduated from Sonoma State University, we headed off to Holland for a year to live with a Dutch family, take care of their kids, travel, and Zippy played amateur soccer there while getting his Dutch coaching credentials.  We haven't seen the family since our wedding which was almost 5 years ago.  Reint, the oldest boy(now 16), came out by himself, to visit, play soccer, and make the rounds with all of the old au paires for about 3 weeks.  He stayed with us for a few days and Grey loved to have him read to him.  I even had a couple of Dutch nursery rhyme books that Reint could read better than I could :)  On Saturday, we met up at Tanya's house, who was the au pair the year before us, and enjoyed all hanging out before taking Reint back to the airport.  Tanya's sister was there, too, and had been an au paire after us.  It was so nice to be able to spend time with him now that he has grown-he was about 8 when we were there.  He made me a little homesick though for Holland and now I want to go visit them and see the rest of the family!

Baby Anouk*Tanya*Me*Grey*Zippy*Reint* Fletcher* Cassie

It was so cute to see Reint playing with the kids.  We are hoping he decides to come over to go to an American University and will be an au paire for us!

Reint*Anouk*Fletcher*Grey

Notice Grey was pouting a little bit.  Grey really wanted to play on the tricycle that Fletcher was on and hewas okay with not being able to ride it until we got to picture time so they decided to ride tandem...I am not sure this is exactly what Grey wanted but it worked for awhile :)

After we dropped Reint off at the airport, we decided to go be tourists in the city.  Grey fell asleep as we were driving through so our original plans of sea lions and the piers didn't quite work out but he was awake as we started to cross the Golden Gate Bridge.  We headed up into the Marin Headlands to go check out the Point Bonita Lighthouse and see if we could see any marine animals.

 Kisses!!

"Mom, check out this cool stick!"

Exploring...

Sonoma County Fair 2010

We thought we might just skip the fair entirely this year due to our busy schedule but we ended up having time on the last day of the fair to go for a couple of hours....and I am so glad we did.  Grey had such a great time. 

We watched about 10 minutes of the acrocats while Grey enjoyed some yummy corn on the cob

Then we headed out to the kiddie carnival ride area to see if there was anything Grey could ride.  He took one look at the hydraulic cars and really really really wanted to ride them but he was 2 inches too short.  Here is how he took the news...

We went off in search of animals and tractors and this seemed to cheer him up.

The highlight of his day though was the pony rides!  This boy takes after my heart...maybe he will be a cowboy just like mommy used to be!  The look on his face was priceless...it is moments like these that all the dirty diapers are totally worth it :)

Grey Versus The Stairs

Grey is obsessed with stairs.  He loves to go up and down and up and down...and has been doing it since he learned to crawl.  He has gotten braver and braver and tries to walk down without holding on sometimes....and has always lived to tell about it.  Well, last Friday, he was trying to go see Grandpa and was going up the wooden deck stairs at Grammie's when he tripped himself up and caught himself with his face!  Poor guy...but as you can tell, it didn't phase him one bit!  He has a pretty good scrape by his mouth and a nice bruise above his left eye.  You think this looks bad, you should see the stairs ;)

Basketball Star

I love watching my boys play together.  Grey loves anything to do with a ball and loves to run, run, run!  We pulled out the basketball hoop the other day and they had lots of fun shooting hoops and chasing each other around :)

Cheerios!

I was brave over the weekend (and a little lazy!) so I gave Grey a bowl of cheerios with a little milk in it.  I am impressed at how well he did.  Of course, when he got to the bottom of the bowl, he tried dumping it out, milk and all...but other than that, I would call it a success!

Go, Oak Grove Wrestling!

Wrestling is very popular back in Oak Grove where I grew up.  We were the state champions more than we were not under Bob Glasgow, a good family friend.  Uncle Ben wrestled, too, and was state champion, too!  Needless to say, Bob's wife, Tammi, sent Grey an Oak Grove wrestling t-shirt so he could help support the team!  (of course he had to have a plum before we took the pictures and he got the shirt a little dirty...just ignore that part!!)

Russian River Safari

It was another beautiful weekend at the rive with the Samsons.   Noa and his parents came out to play, too, and the boys had such a fun time playing in the water and hanging out at the cabin.  We used to go walking with Noa and Jen all the time when Jen and I were on maternity leave together (Grey and Noa are 2 weeks apart).  We hadn't seen them in a few months so it was nice catching up.

Heading into the water to play

Noa and Grey playing hard in the water and rocks

Grey thinks it was nice that someone left a kayak out so he could play in it!

Hanging with Uncle Benny Larry on the beach

Just hanging out like the big kids :)

Sharing some snack back at the cabin

Grey chilling at the river.  Ben's mom had bought this shirt just for moments like these!

Ben and Kelly were going to a Safari themed dinner and band at the Summer Home Park Lodge and were dressed the part! We will have to go next year :)