Randomness

I don't know much really, but I have some good pictures to share. Last weekend Erin, Mike, Max, and Lauren came over for dinner. It was particularly entertaining because Gus and Max had on the same shirt! So we tried to take a few twinkie pictures.

Max meets one of the baby chicks

Gus's first taste of brownie!

Max and Gus wreak havoc with the dog water


Gus has been particularly entertaining with the dogs lately. Here he is giving Satchel some love.

He LOVES Lucy - she just makes him crack up constantly. He is still brave enough to climb on her, but she usually jumps away immediately which of course makes him laugh more!

Another recent favorite - crawling over the top of Satchel (and other things as you'll see in the video). I guess Lucy doesn't sit still long enough for him to crawl over her though.

I often let Gus play with whatever he can find in the kitchen while I try to do dishes or cook. The other day he was somehow able to get the blue pyrex bowl out of my stack of bowls (see them on the right), as well as the pastry blender out of the basket next to the bowls. He loves making noise with anything, so this was just entertaining because he was smacking the pastry blender on the bowl. Future chef, perhaps?

And now, Gus's most recent trick - he loves to crawl over the wood ledge thing under our coffee table. The first few times he did it he ended up hurting himself, but now he crawls over it like a pro! One less thing to dust, I guess.....

They're here!

Grrrr, I hate this blog. Anyway, the chickens are here! They arrived in the mail on Tuesday. There was just a small cardboard box on the doorstep, and here they are! They were shipped as one day old chicks, so I guess in this picture they are two day old. So very cute! Lucy was very confused while they were sitting on the kitchen counter.....she couldn't see them, so she was going crazy hearing their 'chirp chirp' and not knowing what was going on! Kevin came home early from work to take care of the chicks, and put them in their home for the next few weeks - a big rubbermaid tub with food, water, and a heat lamp. The two yellow chicks are Delawares and the brown/black ones are 'Jersey Giants'. I think they will be inside for a month or so, then they can move into the chicken coop Kevin is getting close to finishing.

Here's a picture of their current home:


This weekend was my first mother's day! Friday night we celebrated with June (and Matt), Saturday I went wine tasting with mom and Jess in Augusta (you can see Jessica's blog for pictures of that....), and spent the evening with grandma Plocher, then sunday we went to grandma Lovekamp's. It was very busy, but is always nice to see family!

Here is Gus crawling towards me in grandma Lovekamp's backyard - he has a very funny look on his face.
Trying to take a decent picture of me and my baby on Mother's Day....I seriously think I'm the least photogenic person in the world!

And finally a couple of videos. First a short one so you can see the cute chicks, and then one of Gus....he was being really jabbery so I wanted to take of movie of him talking, but then he quit after I got out the camera. He is still cute in it though.

We're on the mend....

So I still can't figure out how to write before pictures on here. As soon as I have time, this blog is moving to wordpress..... Anyway, there was a random picture of Gus in the bathtub for you.

I am happy to report that everyone in the Thole family is finally on the mend. Kevin can hear again, thanks to his ear specialist puncturing his ear drums and suctioning out all of the fluid. It was a week ago today that he had this done, and it seems he's fine now, so hopefully that won't be a problem again. I think it's a pain how he normally can't hear me well, so this was a new level of painful as far as communication goes. We more or less just didn't talk for 2 weeks.
Gus went back to the doctor last week too, and he still had an ear infection. So now he's on new antibiotic....and sleeping better again, so hopefully he will be better soon.
I also had a respiratory infection, but I think I'm recovered. My biggest problem has been just aching from playing softball - we had two games in the last 5 days and I HURT! I am just old and out of shape, but hopefully playing softball will help.
So here are a few pictures.

Gus randomly crawled into Lucy's crate. It was very cute, but then he couldn't figure out how to get out, poor kid.


The day that Kevin could hear again, he decided to go buy Gus a new toy - I guess just because he was so happy to hear again. So this is Gus's new toy. He likes it, but it slides across the rug when he leans against it, so I need to figure out how to fix that.

Smiley Gus

Funny face while drooling on/biting the coffee table

Gus LOVES the dogs. He often crawls up to them squealing, and he loves petting them. This picture is out of focus, but you can see how happy Gus is to be playing with Lucy.

Sunday evening we had friends over, so we were trying to keep Gus up a little late to avoid sending our guests home early. He played on the floor for awhile, but then got a little tired and decided to collapse just like Satchel.

Not much else going on. I'm very grateful to Jessica for giving me some memory cards that work in my old camera so I can keep taking pictures! We mailed in my broken camera to see if what was broken might be under warranty (obviously I didn't tell them I dropped it)....so hopefully we'll hear something soon!

A couple of videos

These are mostly for you Jenny, since most of the other people that read this aren't interested in videos of Gus not really doing anything. Hopefully you can hear Gus's blabbering over the tv. And in the one video where I start saying 'Eeew gross' that is to try to get Gus to smile - it's something Jackie does.

Stormy Saturday

I tried to post this Saturday, but the internet wasn't cooperating. Anyway, it's just a video of what the yard looked like with the part of the tree down.

Spring is Sprung! And....my camera is broken :(

Ok, I'm going to have to get rid of this blogger blog soon cause it's really annoying me. I uploaded pictures first cause that's what I always had to do first, and now it won't let me type above the first picture. Well, I'm not gonna mess with it now.
This weekend, I had the luck of getting two free tickets to the Schlafly Repeal of Prohibition festival from Jen and Brice. After securing Uncle Matt as a babysitter for Gus (hooray!), Jackie and I went to the Bottleworks to meet up with Jen and Brice. This was very similar to the Hop in the City, except there were far fewer Schlafly beers, and there were three visiting breweries from Michigan. So I had fun tasting all the new beers, and maybe only had one or two Schlafly pours all afternoon. But we had a good time.
As I mentioned before, my camera is messed up. From time to time, I can get the lens to come out and it takes pictures, but I didn't realize that they are blurry on the left-hand side. And at this point I can't get the lens to come out again. So I'm going to take it to a camera repair place on my way home and see what they tell me.....
Anyway, later in the afternoon we saw two random guys from Highland, and apparently at some point we thought it was a good idea to take a picture with this guy, Dustin Luber. But we had a very good time.



The weather was beautiful this weekend and I would have loved to work out in the yard, but I'll have to organize another Gus-watcher to get some new plants in. But here's a blurry picture of one of my flower beds - my spirea is going crazy, and I even have poppies blooming. It's crazy!


Kevin didn't work on it this past weekend, but the weekend before he started building his chicken coop. It is much larger and much more elaborate than I was expecting. He still doesn't know where in the yard he will put it, but at the moment he has built it too heavy to move off the patio. So we'll have to have some kind of dinner party so we have people to help move it when he's ready.


This is my favorite dog, Satchel. For some reason this picture isn't blurry at all. Hmmm. He was very much enjoying the sun and the grass.

And I would probably get in trouble if I didn't post a picture of the kid too. Here is Gus in his high-chair seat thing....he is looking so big! This was the first day he wore real shoes too, and they are Vans similar to ones like his dad has! Btw this is Gus's Cheerio-eating face.

So I guess I'll be cameraless for awhile. Unfortunately, I have also found that the camera on my iPhone doesn't work, seemingly the only casualty of going through the washing machine. I guess I can try using my Flip video camera, I know you can get still images from movies somehow. We shall see......

Some Videos

Here are a couple of videos.

First, Gus's current favorite toy (other than non-toys that he shouldn't have like cords, candles, and DVDs) is his choo choo....and he just learned how to roll it around on its wheels.
The second video is a bit of Gus stealing Lucy's bone and Lucy stealing it back.