Blueberries and Singing!

We spent our first "Family Fun Friday" at Moorhead Blueberry Farm in Conroe. It was definitely worth the 35-minute drive to their farm. We found over 6 pounds of yummy, sweet blueberries!

Ian did a good job picking the dark berries!
He put a few in his bucket and LOTS in his mouth!


Matt found a beautiful cluster of berries!


What a fun morning!
The "I-ate-blueberries" evidence is all over Ian's face! :)

Ian has been a huge fan of singing lately. He can sing the entire first verse of quite a few songs ... and sometimes he even uses a melody! :) Below are three of his favorites ...

It's SUMMER! :)

Last Saturday, we went on our first of many summer bike rides! We all love the fresh air, Matt & Kim appreciate the exercise, and Ian enjoys pointing out all that we see along the way. We made our way to the gully to feed the turtles.
After the bike ride, we headed over to Atkinson Farms to pick blackberries.
They were HUGE, juicy, and delicious --
perfect for collecting in the bucket ...
... or eating right away! :) (Doesn't Ian look OLD in this picture??)
Ian did a good job of finding the ripe, dark berries,
and he definitely ate his weight in blackberries while we were there! :)
We enjoyed a blackberry cobbler (and blackberry muffins and blackberries on cereal ...) once we got home.
Well, Matt and Kim did. Ian decided, "I don't like blackberries!" soon after we got home. Maybe he ate too many at the farm?? Ha ha.
Ian decided curling up on the windowsill looked like just the right thing to do one sunny afternoon.
We had some friends over for a splash party today. Kim had gotten some free Expo markers to give out through HouseParty.com, so it made for a great excuse for a potluck lunch, playtime for the kiddos, and chat time for the mommas! Micah liked the pool.
So did Maddi.
Ian preferred swinging since he had done most of his swimming while helping Momma fill up the pools before friends arrived.
Brooke and Maddi tried out Ian's new pool with an elephant slide ... super fun!
We also converted our swingset slide into a water slide. Most of the kids took turns sliding down, including Christopher,
Ashton (Allen and Caleb are waiting for their turns),
and Ian.

What a fun day with friends! :)

Updates:
1. Potty -- mostly good, still not wanting to poop on the potty consistently ... even after we made a HUGE deal of it last week. Oh, well ... time should help (at least that's what we're telling ourselves!). :)
2. Pregnancy -- all is still good. Praise God! Kim felt really tired this past week, especially while wrestling with a yucky head cold. Matt has been doing a great job of taking care of things around the house so that Kim can take naps each day. :) We'll see our OB again in July.

Happy June!

Last week Thursday we went to the children's museum with some friends. Like usual, Ian gravitated toward the rubber mulch "construction zone."
So did his friend Zane!
This time, though, Ian took a HUGE interest in "going fishing" in the water table. He kept saying, "I caught a fish!!"
Ian's friend Nate was pretty good at catching fish, too.
And, of course, a trip to the museum isn't complete without spending time at the train table.
We've had lots and lots of work done on the outside of our home lately. For starters, Ian helped Daddy trim some really large branches off our tree.
Neighbor Steve lent Matt a really cool lopper for cutting off tree branches. It's so nice to actually be able to see the street clearly from our front door. We didn't even realize how much our tree needed a little haircut.
Good family friends gave us some tickets to see the Houston Dynamo (major league soccer). Kim had never seen an MLS game, and of course Matt was thrilled to see another one.
We enjoyed listening to the "Texian Army," a fan band of sorts that's super into the game.
We had great seats on the club level,
and we had a really great time! (Thanks, DeeDee and Julie, for giving us the tickets and for watching Ian so we could enjoy a night out!! :))
Matt made some scrumptious BBQ chicken drumsticks the other day, just because Kim said, "You know what really sounds good, babe??" And, let me tell you ... they tasted amazing!! (My amazing husband even watched Ian while BBQing and encouraged me to go take a nap. What a guy!)
You know how I said we've had a lot of work done on the outside of our house? I don't know if the pictures really do it justice, but we were thrilled with the work these guys did. (Let us know if you need a recommendation for handy man/painting work in your Houston-area home. These guys are awesome, attentive to detail, honest, and very reasonably priced.) They painted ALL of the wood areas on our home (the shutters, the trim, the siding, etc.)
They completely refinished our front door. It literally looks brand new, at a fraction of the cost!
They painted our garage,
replaced some old, yucky siding on the back of the garage and then repainted it,
and even repainted the metal on the top of the windows (after Matt used a wire brush and Rustoleum to treat it). Come see our "brand new" home. :)

A few weeks ago, Matt painted Ian's swingset, too. It'll look nice for years to come. :)
We found some ice cream cones in the pantry, left over from making Ian's train cake. Ian was super excited to sample his first ice cream cone.
He loved it and ate nearly the entire thing before handing Momma his last bite, saying "For you, Momma," and then crying after Momma ate it. :)

Potty training update: Ian's doing great!! Thanks to all of my momma friends for suggesting just waiting and being patient with our little man. He has pooped on the potty two days in a row now. I really wonder what clicked in his little mind, but I'm just so thankful that it did! Matt and I made a huge deal of it, busting out the M & M's again and even doing the Potty Dance DVD. Ian was so excited! He's doing very well going pee pee in the potty, too, even when we're out and about. Yay!! :)

A week ago, we had our first ultrasound. It confirmed that our little one is really little (something like 1/4 cm. when we had the ultrasound!!) Surprisingly, we could actually see the heart beating! It was too faint to hear (the tech said the heart only starts beating between the 5th-6th weeks, and our ultrasound was scheduled for 5 weeks, 6 days), but she measured the heart rate to be 103 bpm (right on track for a 6-week-old baby). She confirmed that our little one will make his or her debut on or around 1-21-12. Thanks, God, for this awesome gift! :)