Congrats Brandon and Candice!

My brother-in-law Brandon completed Army boot camp and AIT training.  He came home for two weeks at the end of May.  The last we seen him was in January or February (I cannot remember off hand).  It was good to see him and I know Caedmon missed his Uncle Brandon.  I have this special video of Brandon that he sent me one time when I was having a bad day.  I will play it for Caedmon and he smiles every time he sees it.  While Brandon was home, Denny and Vickie had a big family cookout at their house.  And Brandon got married to his high school sweetheart.  His first station is in Fort Sill, OK.  We wish him and Candice the very best in their new life together.  And may he be all that he can be..... :-)

Grey sweatshirt buddies!

Smack dab in the middle!

Mischievous Little Turd

OMG!!  These last 2 days have been something else.  At a flip of a light switch Caedmon is getting into all sorts of trouble.  He climbed up onto the kitchen island stools by himself and then proceeded to climb onto the island. 

He also tried to go from the arm of the couch to the arm of the chair.  The bad news is he didn't make it and he fell on the floor.  He also got stuck under our bed.  That was pretty funny actually.  He keeps throwing his pacifiers and bottles into the toilet.  And lastly, he climbed onto the toilet and then onto the vanity.  Then proceeded to throw things into the sink.  And then he was about to turn on the water and that was halted immediately.  Speaking of throwing things, just like with an earlier post where he threw things into the pool, he now likes to throw things into the bushes from the front porch as well.  It is fun to make mommy and daddy fetch things.  :-)

Oh and he also definitely wants to be more independent.  He was insistent last night at eating at the island instead of in his high chair. 

And trying to brush his teeth at bedtime has been a struggle around here lately.  So the other night I thought okay if he wants to be more independent then let's try putting a stool in front of the sink.  And I had him put his toothbrush under the water himself and put it back in his toothbrush holder (it is a submarine).  So far it is helping by him being less fussy.  In fact in the middle of the day today he wanted to brush his teeth.  :-)

The subtitle of this blog is no joke.  Our adventures with Caedmon.  It has definitely been an adventure but wouldn't change it for the world! 

Winery Festivals and Randomness

This past weekend I spent 4 hours with some MOPS women in a very big and beautiful home that is about a mile from my house.  I was asked if I would like to be part of the MOPS steering committee for next school year.  So I am going to co-lead a table with another woman who I found out lives on the next street from me.  So on Saturday we had a MOPS leadership retreat.  I am very excited to be able to get know these women more and be more involved with MOPS.

Later on that day we went to Mallow Run Winery (south of Greenwood) for their annual strawberry fest.  Although we didn't go for the strawberries.  We just went for an excuse to drink wine outside with live music and the fact that kids are allowed.  There were some other kids running around there too and Caedmon was trying to join in on their fun.  Until this one kid decided to literally run and body bash right into Caedmon.  Caedmon was fine but the other kid got a bloody nose.  Ha, shows him.  I know, I am mean.
 
It was such a beautiful day out for this event.  We were sharing shade from a small tree with a group of people who said they were from Chicago but have another house in Brown County.  Wine drinkers are like campers, you get along with most of them.  I love drinking wine and talking with others around you because everyone is so friendly, just like frequent campers.

Sorry to go off on a tangent but I have to go down memory lane to change up this blog a bit from my usual stuff.  So speaking of wine fests with live music, reminds me of this trip to Baltimore we took.  Wow I cannot remember when it was but it was several years ago and it was a Memorial Day weekend.  Tanner and I literally just got home from work so it was after 5PM on a Friday night.  Tanner then got a phone call from his brother Taylor who was stationed in Ketchikan, Alaska at the time but was in Baltimore.  He was in Baltimore because he was supposed to be picking up a boat after being fixed to sail it around the US and back to Alaska.  He called to say he was supposed to be leaving that day or weekend but something else busted on this boat and they were not leaving yet.  This was like the 3rd time now that he was supposed to leave and crap kept happening to this boat.  So he said he is stuck in Baltimore for the weekend.

So here we are after 5PM on a Friday night, I randomly said how long does it take to get to Baltimore?  We should go visit him.  I wasn't expecting Tanner to go along with me.  He looked it up and it was to take 10 hours.  Tanner said we can drive through the night and we be there by early morning.  Then we thought we should call Taylor's girlfriend at the time (now wife) to see if she wants to go with us and surprise him.  Heather conveniently (like it was meant to be) is in Indy (she was living in Terre Haute at the time) at the race track.  So of course she is drunk and is like Hell Yeah!  So I go over to the race track to pick her up and Tanner drives to Crawfordsville to meet his mom to drop off our dog to her.  And of course Heather has no clothes or toiletries with her.

I am going to guess we probably didn't leave Indy till about close to 8PM.  I drove for a little bit and then Tanner took over.  Heather obviously couldn't drive and was asleep in the backseat.  Tanner couldn't keep his eyes open so around 2 or 3AM we decided we better stop.  We stayed at this really cheap motel.  I mean so cheap that it probably took me an hour to get to sleep because I felt like bugs were crawling on me and I couldn't stop itching.  We only stayed for about 4 hours and planned to get back on the road around 6 or 7 so we could be there by lunch time. 

In case you are wondering Taylor was surprised to see Heather and we had an awesome time in Baltimore.  This is probably my most crazy spur of the moment trip I have ever taken and loved every minute of it.  So to get to the part about wine and festivals.  While in Baltimore we saw somewhere that there was a winery about an hour away that was having a festival.  We decided to go check it out and ended up having an awesome time.  There were a ton of people there.  I drank too much wine that at one point Tanner poured water on my crotch and I didn't even feel it or notice.  I remember looking down going Oh My Gosh!, what happened?  I must have not been that drunk if I remember all this right?

Us at the wine festival

No I did not pee myself!

These two were and still are so cute.

And with all of this Baltimore talk, we went to downtown Baltimore one night to Howl at the Moon.  Well it closed at like 2AM and Taylor asks some guy if there is any other place still open.  This guys points us in a direction and says yeah there is a strip of clubs that way.  We start walking and its getting sketchy up to the point that a rat literally ran across the sidewalk.  Taylor finally realizes that what the guy said was strip clubs not a strip of clubs.  So we get a cab and head back to our hotel.

I was going to post a funny video of me after the wine fest but thought I will spare the embarrassment.  I embarress myself enough as it is.  Like above and like here...

Good times, good times.  Sorry for all of my drunk memories.  Maybe it doesn't help that I have been drinking wine while writing this. Until next time.....

I Love Summer!!!

Okay so it has been awhile.  I love the summer.  We are always so busy in the summer.  This past winter I really didn't think I was going to make it through.  It was really a difficult winter for me and I just have to say I am so much happier right now.  It truly amazes me how much we need sunlight to survive.  And so far I have not complained of it being too hot.  I am going to try to refuse from saying that because after this past winter, I officially hate winter.  I would rather have it hot than cold.  Because when it is hot out I can still go outside and find ways to cool off but you really cannot go outside when it is cold out and find ways to warm up.  Reminds me of this thing on Facebook I saw that said something like, the first person to say it is hot when summer gets here will be punched.  Ha!

On Good Friday we went to the Indy zoo and it was Caedmon's first time there.  I just have to say the zoo is so much more fun when you go with kids.  The look on his face when he is like, whoa what is that, is priceless.  Caedmon rode the carousel with daddy and we all rode the train.  He liked the elephants, giraffes, and penguins.  I wondered if he recognized the penguins from the movie Happy Feet.  Here are a couple of pictures.  Tanner has more from his phone but they are not on this laptop.  I keep forgetting to ask him to get his pictures loaded on this laptop.

Looking at the giraffes

Him pointing at the elephants was cracking us up.

Group selfie. Caedmon too busy looking at the brown bears here. And also clearly tired.

We also went camping for the first time in our brand new camper at the beginning of May.  More to come on that.  Brandon graduated from Army boot camp and AIT training.  He then came home for about 2 weeks in May.  We got to see him then and Denny and Vickie had a cookout at their house for him.  We then went to Memphis to see Taylor and Heather over Memorial Day weekend.  Brandon's first station is in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  He needed to report there after Memorial Day so we got to see him one more time at Taylor and Heather's (he stopped there to visit on his way to Oklahoma).  More on this as well.

Two weekends ago was spent at my friend Becky's house to swim.  We had a great time.  Caedmon however needs to be re-acclimated to the pool again because he is afraid of it.  However he did have a great time throwing stuff into the pool such as toys, flip flops, shorts, etc.  Whatever was around the pool was in the pool.

So that is the spring and summer so far in a nutshell. I know there will be more fun trips/adventures and camp trips.  I miss my camper already.  It has been at the storage place for almost a month now.  I cannot wait till we have a house where we it can be parked at home.