Fireplace

Andy recently finished replacing our fireplace with a wood stove insert. Function and beauty added to our living room.

We don't have a great 'before' picture so I took an old photo of Van at about a year old, you can see the fireplace in the background. I probably thought this was an impressive mess at the time. I had no idea. At three years old, Van's mess creating skills have far exceeded my wildest expectations.

Anyway, here are Van and Andy working on the demolition.

With demolition done, the new wood stove insert replaced the fireplace.

Added the mantle

This tall wood structure is the start of the firewood holder

 Here the firewood holder and hearth are framed in

Plywood added

Starting to place tile and stone

Done! but wait...

Two homemade flourishes, a wood sculpture and Van.

Pretty amazing transformation for our living room!

Fossils

Van found this fossil in our backyard this morning. He says it is a T-rex. Andy helped him wash it, he's pointing out the teeth.
Van says, "Rocks turn to fossils to dead dinosaurs. I found this one in our backyard."
So now he is carrying a giant rock around the house making us nervous. He carries it over to Andy's new stone fireplace. "Be careful!" I say.
"Yeah," he says, "my fossil is fragile."

(holding his fossil on the playhouse)

"Daddy!" Van yells from the top of the playhouse to Andy who is outside shoveling the deck. "Please find a velociraptor fossil for me"

Then he decided to go outside to help Andy find it.

3 weeks

These pictures are old because she's 4 weeks now, still a cute little strawberry who is always being showered with brotherly love :)

Van looks like his aunt Lisa and her family here, so cute to watch him change.

3/25/2013

I noticed Van has something that looks like a burn or a wart on his thumb.
Me: "oh no Van! does that hurt?"
Van: perks up. "I can get a bandaid!" he runs into the bathroom and easily opens the 'childproof' cupboard to bring back a box of bandaids. I don't think it hurts.
Me: "Ok give me your thumb" I apply the bandaid
Van: "Now tell me to keep in on"
Me: "Keep it on"
Van: "why?"
Me: (I'm tempted to say 'because you told me to tell you to' but instead go with,  "because that will keep it safe and let it heal."

It doesn't matter either way. About 30 seconds later

Van: "Mom, I want this off." Van removes bandaid with teeth.

***

Van and I are lost looking for our friend Laura's house.
Van: "I have an idea, no wait, I have a hypothesis"
Me: "Oh really? what's that?"
Van: "Maybe Laura lives at Dionisia's house"

An illogical hypothesis for sure, I'm pretty sure Laura doesn't live at Van's babysitter's house, but I was pretty impressed that he used the word correctly. All those hours of Dinosaur Train paid off.

***

Esther and Van at 3 weeks

We were looking through Van's baby photos and decided to recreate the one. Here they are, both 3 weeks old.

Van's picture was taken at night and Esther's was taken in the middle of the day so the coloring is off but still it's fun to compare.

Perseverance

I forgot to add something great to my list of Van facts, when he walks up a steep hill, he whispers, 'I think I can, I think I can' to himself.

Nest

Van has been pretending to be a baby bird and spends time in his 'nest'.

You can watch movies from your nest

Other fun Van things, he says, 'Mackerel, Mackerel!' instead of 'Holy Mackerel' which I say sometimes. 

This morning he said, 'I love you mom' as he was pushing a chair over to the freezer to get a snack out that he wanted. Stealthy manipulation technique.

This morning Courtney's little girl Liv came over to visit, and if she fell over he would lean down and say, 'Are you ok sweetheart?' I bet he gets that from Dionisia. 

Van's top 5 favorite foods right now

1. salami

2. corn

3. cookies

4. pirate booty

5. pineapple

We're trying to wean him off the salami since that article was just published about how processed meats cause cancer.  Yesterday I told him I ordered us a pizza and he asked if he wanted to come help me pick it up. He said 'Yeah!, and we can get corn too right?!' So we had to stop by Costco on our way to Moose's Tooth to buy corn on the cob.

Newborn photos

Svea took some newborn photos of Esther. We may have more later but here are some samples. so cute!

Smile

A caught a smile while she was dreaming. Can't wait to see that when she's awake.

More tutus

What to wear?

How is a girl with 5 tutus supposed to decide?

Being a model is tough, so I'm trying to limit it to 1 tutu per day.

(today's design was made by Van's awesome daycare provider Dionisia. Her website is http://www.etsy.com/shop/dionisiasdesigns)

First tutu

Esther has quite the collection of tutus, I thought it was time to start wearing them.

IditaZoo

Esther and I took Van to the IditaZoo at the Alaska Zoo today.
It was really cute, they had a map for the kids, which Van loved to read, he kept saying, "it says 'go to the tigers'". They had red arrows posted on the fences for you to follow; then they had checkpoints with activities and you got a stamp at each one and a prize at the end.

Following the map

Meeting Sled dogs

Sitting in a dogsled

Stopping to see the tigers

For a prize they got a calendar with all the Zoo animals in it and an Iditarod poster. I also got Van some popcorn for a treat. 

Also here are some pictures of Esther and my first walk together, which was yesterday, I don't have a picture of us at the Zoo together but we looked a lot like this.

More Esther Pics

Coming home from the hospital with her flower hat.

Van really wanted to hold her.

Hooray!