10 months

Liam is growing and learning so quickly, and every couple of weeks I catch myself thinking "this is my favorite stage!". It is just so fun to go through all the milestones with him :)

This month he has decided to get picky with his food. Bummer, I was hoping to avoid this stage. The weird part is he spits out stuff like bananas and strawberries! But I can't complain too much, because he still enjoys chomping meat and veggies with his 8 teeth!

He likes to give kisses, but he's pretty aggressive with them so it just looks like he's attacking our faces!

His absolute favorite activity is climbing the stairs! I probably spend half my day following him up the stairs, then carrying him down so he can climb right back up again.

When he's not climbing the stairs, he very much enjoys opening and closing things: books, doors, the dryer, laptops... anything that opens and closes.

It seems he can make every sound and sound combination humanly possible except for mama! And I swear he's doing it on purpose! When we try to get him to say mama, he looks right at me and laughs...
But he gives me great hugs and kisses, and smiles when I come in the room, so I know he loves me :)

 BEST KIDS EVER!

straight A's

On her last day of school, Jenna got her first report card:

I didn't want to be the annoying mom who made the teacher stop and pose for a picture, so I quickly snapped one when she was saying goodbye. So precious!

Jenna loved Mrs. Robinson!

Jenna is more excited than ever to start "real school" in the fall.
In the mean time, she is doing hours (seriously) of "homework" (Kindergarten workbooks) and we plan to spend as much time as we can at the pool :)

zoo animals

We went to the zoo with some friends a little bit ago, on a day when it wasn't quite raining (just a light mist) which was a welcome change to the 1000-degree days we've been having lately.

Liam wasn't too impressed, even when he was five feet from a monkey:

Jenna loved them all, but was beside herself with joy when we finally saw the parrots!

You can just barely see the red to the right of her head, but it's there!!

We all enjoyed seeing and learning about the flamingos. The zoo went to a lot of trouble to get them to breed in captivity, and they are the first to accomplish it!

I feel like I haven't talked much about the Madsen Family, but we love them oh so much! They have a son Jenna's age, a daughter Liam's age, and live a stone's throw from us. Elena works from home so I will often watch Huck for the day, and in exchange she lets me use her car when I need it. Jenna and Huck are best friends, and we all get together for dinner and game nights at least twice a week. Don't know what we would do without them :)

Jenna, Huck, and the biggest fish ever!

Liam and Harper being adorable :)

Grandma's visit

Paul's mom came up to visit us for the fourth, and we had a great time! Our days were so packed full that we just collapsed in our beds every night!

Wednesday night we went to an adorable little local Italian restaurant. It's a nice place, but I knew it would be alright because my kids are rockstars in public :)
We eat pretty early, with the "old" crowd, and they all ooh-ed and aah-ed at Liam while he smiled at everyone. Jenna entertained herself by drawing a map of the restaurant:

On Thursday we took the metro into D.C. to see the parade in the morning. It was pretty cloudy when we arrived so we didn't think about shade when we got our spot, and I got a good sunburn when the sun came out. Everyone else got a little pink, but I definitely got the worst of it.
I had told Jenna that Daddy's favorite part of the parade was the soldiers (she asked, so I just said something). Every time she saw soldiers, she got so excited "Daddy, Daddy! Look, there's the soldiers!" :)
We enjoyed waving our flags and watching the performers, balloons, and floats!

We waited in a huge line to get into the National Archives to see the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and Constitution (worth it!).
We stopped by the Museum of Art for Jenna - she's been asking to go for a couple weeks. It was funny to see which ones she thought were "beautiful" (basically anything with a girl in it), and she really liked the sculptures as well.
Then we hopped back on the metro and went to the Arlington National Cemetery. We had planned to visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but it was a pretty far walk. We didn't want to risk Liam getting a sunburn, and Jenna was starting to get tired. So, we just read a little in the visitor's center and saw some of the graves.

That night we had a BBQ, watched National Treasure, played games, and lit sparklers with our good friends, the Madsens.

On Friday Paul stayed home with the kids so his mom and I could go to the temple, then we all went to Nationals baseball game. Paul got tickets from his Miller Lite guys at work, so we had to wear lanyards and wrist bands to get into our "VIP" area (except the kids, of course).

Paul and Liam even got on TV:

One of our friends was watching the game and texted this to us :)

...which we all thought was so cool, until Paul realized he is wearing a Miller Lite lanyard while sporting his BYU hat! Fail!

Someone in our ward was giving away a kids bike, so Jenna also had her first big bike ride that day:

On Saturday Jenna went with Daddy and Grandma to Home Depot Kids Workshop, we went to a BBQ with a couple families, and then to see the Laurel city fireworks, which is always awesome!

 How many kids can we fit on Paul?

probably more, but this time it was 4 :)

loves his daddy :)

On Sunday Grandma made us a delicious breakfast, and we all got to hear Jenna's talk in Primary! She wrote most of it herself, but since we did it that morning I had to help her read it a little more this time.
Grandma left after church, and we missed her as soon as she walked out the door! We sure love our Grandma!!!