hot air balloon festival

a while ago, parker and i went to the highland village hot air balloon festival. they have balloon races, food vendors, rides for little kids, and music. however, i think we got there a little too early. the races were at 7 am, definitely wasn't going to get there that early. food vendors weren't open when we got there, so we couldn't eat anything. so we were left with walking around the gift vendors and checking out the rides.

on our walk to the event. he was ready to go! (he was actually running, even though it doesn't look like it)

our first ride was the merry-go-round. he was his first time and he loved it.

the funny part was that he kept turning around and saying the the "forseys" were coming to get him :)

it was extremely hot this day and they had kindly put up misting stations.

the festival was right on the lake, so we made a little trek down there.

he also rode on the little train and totally got a kick out of that one.

and the coolest part was the pink firetruck! it was a breast cancer firetruck. you can sign the truck for anyone who has/had breast cancer. it was awesome!

and to prove how hot is was...

those red cheeks, sweaty hair, and a lot of water :)

sneak peek

we know he's our child because he likes sushi :)

parker's chalkboard is now officially complete. i was able to find a little container at ikea to put his chalk in. it was in the "as-is" section for $.10!!! what a deal!

and the sneak peek...

it's not finished, so details and more pictures are coming.

what's parker up to lately?

a few pictures to let you see what parker's been up to lately:

baking.

playing in the water with reed...

and with worms.

attempting to work out.

legos.

helping with dinner (which helped him to actually eat :) )

golfing.

and lining up cars...everywhere!

stay tuned for some new additions to our house.

a three-day catch up

i got lazy on thursday and never posted about the day, had to work friday night, and so now i'm posting all 3 days (including today) together. get ready :)

thursday i wanted to go to the park to let parker play and then we'd go for a walk afterwards. jesse wasn't too keen on the walking idea, so we ended up going to a different park so that he/we could play basketball. he ended up calling our friend jacob and he came out to play with jesse. which turned out better because jesse wanted more of a workout from it and i definitely wasn't the person to do that for him.

parker does NOT like to be dirty. i've determined he's not really a boy haha. if he gets something on his hands, "yucky mommy yucky." anything in his shoe, he has to stick it in the air, "yucky mommy yucky." he won't continue until it's off his hands/shoes/legs/etc. i'm working on this one.

he tried to chase after a butterfly...wasn't too successful on that one. but it was quite entertaining watching him run all over the place :)

the boys playing some basketball. it was quite hot this particular day. we were burning up, everyone bright red. and i somehow was the only person to get a slight sunburn.

after our morning at the park, we had the afternoon with reed again.

i find parker to be quite interesting with his toys since reed has started coming over. i pull out old toys that he never uses and that would be good for reed. and the second reed starts to play with them, "parker's toy mommy." all these toys sit right in front of him in his room everyday, yet he doesn't play with them. but if anyone else dare touch them, he gets upset. again, still working on the sharing concept.

friday i started the day off trying to let parker play in the dirt...since we're having the "being dirty" issue. when we were doing the yard work in the front, he wanted to help and was kinda playing with the dirt. so i bought him some gardening gloves and a little shovel. i took him out front and told him to go play in the dirt, go dig. didn't want to but for about a minute... :( but he did look cute!

we even found a fuzzy white caterpillar and 1 of the hundreds of rolly pollies in our yard.

i have also started to experiment with big-boy undies. not going so well so far. i spoke with 1 person a while ago about potty training their daughter. he said they just put her straight in big undies and she didn't like the feel of the pee running down her legs, so she quickly learned to tell her parents that she needed to potty. well, parker will tell you he pottied, but still hasn't grasped the before part to that. and it doesn't seem to bother him that much. it seems this is going to be much more difficult than i was hoping.

his big-boy undies and his favorite new chair. an outdoor foldable monkey chair that he wants to take EVERYWHERE.

and finally, we're at saturday. today my dad came over to see about wiring a wall with cable. we're trying to rearrange our furniture in the living room and move the tv to a different wall, but it doesn't have a cable hook-up. and lucky for us, my dad is the expert :)

parker ran to get his tools to help my dad. how cute! he's such a sweetie :)

dad started getting everything together and was all excited because he figured it out (there were a few run-ins to start). and he joked he was so good, until he dumped everything out of his tool box...

sorry dad! i had to. :)

needless to say, he got everything hooked up like i knew he would. i forgot to take a finished picture before i pushed the sofa back. but it's all hooked up on the inside. now he just has to hook it up on the roof. so hopefully in the near future we'll have a completely different looking living room! i'm excited about the prospects of that.

and so tonight i will be relaxing and waiting for jesse to come home. i'll be watching leap year and starting on a new project for parker. and as of right now, it looks like this:

you'll have to wait for the finished product to see what it is! stay tuned for next time :)

water fun

since we decided to keep parker home for the summer, i've been trying to find free/cheap fun things to do. over in highland village they have a water feature that shoots out water and i've seen a ton of kids out there playing. so today i decided to take parker. luckily, no one else was out there when we went :)

he was very hesitant at first to go by himself. i had to stand with him at one of the spouts for a while. i kept sticking my foot out to get him to do the same. most kids love running through the whole thing, but he never would. he mainly stood by 1 the whole time. he's a strange child at times.

he was trying to stick his head in the water/drink it. and he was quickly stopped for trying to drink it. you could smell all the chlorine just from standing by it.

today was also the first day that reed came over!

he is my friend katy's baby boy. he's 1 and absolutely adorable. we've babysat him 1 time and parker had a blast with him. just baby this and baby that. and was even upset when he had to go to bed because he couldn't play with reed anymore.

well, today marked the day they get to spend a few days a week together for the next 10 weeks. parker now has a playmate and i, obviously, get to experiment with taking care of 2 kids. it's a handful! but lots of fun watching them together. katy and i are hoping for BFFs haha.

parker gave reed kisses because he started crying. how sweet :)

and that would be parker trying to "talk" to reed. he started at a good distance and gradually got closer and closer.

i think this is 1 of my favorites! they were watching shark tale.

katy said reed loves to put in and take things out, so i found this lovely little toy in parker's room. he loved it!

so we played this fun little game of "reed's gonna get you." parker was running around everywhere the whole time, but every time that i started to walk around reed would follow me. so i decided to tell parker that reed was gonna get him. so parker would proceed with squealing and laughing...reed would start to smile. so i'd start leading reed towards parker and EVERY TIME parker would run and get on the rocking chair. and this is reed "getting parker."

and parker had to protect his toys haha.

day 1 went well...we'll let you know how the rest of the days go! definitely going to have to work on the whole sharing thing. i kind of thought parker might be somewhat ok at it since he's been at daycare with a bunch of other kids. but not so much. it'll be a project.