Mmmm beer, followed by laughs and toofers

Kevin and I went to the St. Louis Brewers Heritage Beer Festival on Friday. Kevin was actually the one that wanted to go, and typically if he wants to go anywhere I try to go along with it. There were 14 local breweries and more than 60 types of beer! So here we are ready to try it all.

They had a HUGE tent, and just one really long row of tables, and the beers were arranged by style. I was disappointed, because I would have preferred to try all the beers from each brewery at a time.....but oh well. Here you can kind of see how long the tent was. Crazy big!
All in all, I think we tried about half of the beers, and found a few we really liked!

While mom and dad drank beer all night, Gus spent his first night at Aunt Jackie and Uncle Allen's. I guess he was good. Jackie was tickled that the only poopy diaper was while she was gone, so Allen changed it. Haha. After picking Gus up on Saturday, we headed to mom's for the afternoon, and eventually went to the Schweizerfest parade. Unfortunately it started raining when the parade was supposed to start, so I had to entertain Gus in the car for awhile while we waited. Not fun. But here he is playing with the steering wheel.


Eventually the parade did start, but it wasn't long before it started raining again. So we stood in the rain for awhile, but we gave up before most of the floats even came by. Oh well, we tried.

I had a video that currently won't upload....so I'll try again later.

BALL!

Gus has been obsessed with his Illini basketball recently. I also think he tries to say 'ball' (apparently he also tries to say 'bubbles' at day care, where they play with bubbles a lot). But he loves to bounce it and chase after it. Here he's even wearing an Illinois outfit and playing with his ball.
Gus also loves to stand up and look out the front door. Here, he and both dogs are checking things out. You can see I quit trying to snap this 12 month size outfit that doesn't fit him....

Gus also loves pulling on Lucy's tail. It's hilarious because she's jumpy, so as soon as he pulls on it, she jumps up and runs off, making Gus laugh.....then Gus usually follows her to get at least one more tail pull out of it before he starts doing something else.

I haven't taken pictures of Gus and Kevin lately, so I thought I would. Gus was being PERFECT but Kevin wasn't cooperating. The one picture I finally got with Kevin looking and his eyes open, Gus wasn't as cute. But look at this kid!

He recently had his messiest lunch ever. I think he was rebelling because I was giving him baby food I was trying to get rid of, and he's more used to regular food now. So he kept grabbing the spoon and smearing the food all over. I think this was the first time I had to give him a bath after he ate because he was that dirty.... He's also generally been making this face lately. Maybe he just discovered his lips?

Sunday my friend Lindzy came over with her son Joey. Joey is 9 months old, but I'm pretty sure he'll be walking before Gus. He also has a crazy lot of hair! But they enjoyed tearing my kitchen apart.

And, as promised, here are the ugly chicklings.

And here's a movie of Gus playing with his ball.

Gus is a jabbermouth

I had been wanting to make a movie of Gus being talkative, but he always stops when I get the camera out. So here he was talking and playing and then went on to play with Satchel, so it's a little long. But cute, of course, cute.

And then there were three.....

I'm very sad to tell you that one of the chickens passed away this weekend. Kevin has no idea what happened.....but he was downstairs and he heard this awful noise, and when he walked over to the box they are in, one just keeled over. So now we're down to three. I keep meaning to take a picture of them with my camera but then I forget. But right now they are pretty ugly - kind of in an awkward teenage stage I guess. Sometime I'll remember a picture though.
Kevin worked very hard this weekend to get the chicken coop finished. Finally by Monday evening he was ready to move it to its permanent home (and I finally could have my patio back!!!). So his brother came over, and Travis, who was in town visiting Agnes, also offered to help. However, the three of them were still having a hard time moving it. So the neighbor came over and helped too. It was a pretty comical process, but I didn't think to get my camera til they were almost done. So here they are, nearly to the final resting place against the fence. We're planning to have a 'coop warming party' in a couple of weeks when the chickens move outside. Should be a good time.
Other than Kevin working really hard on stuff at home, we were otherwise busy as well, but I forgot to take any pictures. We had grandma's birthday party and fish fry, and another day Gus and I went to Lafayette Square Park with Lauren, Erin, and Max for a walk. We spent Monday at home except for a trip to Tower Grove Park with Old Man Satchel, who managed to walk for about 20 minutes (although then he needed me to lift him back into and out of the car....).

I have a few pictures from the previous weekend though. Gus and I went to the Botanical Gardens for awhile and I took a few good pictures of this cute kid.



Then this picture is from grandma's house - Gus was looking outside at all the cats and dogs. He's in his diaper because it was about 90 degrees outside and mom and dad hadn't yet turned on their AC. HOT!
Coming soon, hopefully....a video of Gus the jabbermouth. He talks SO LOUD and SO MUCH! But it seems usually by the time I get the video camera out and he sees it, he shuts up. So that gives you something to look forward to.....

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!