Our Move to Michigan: July and August

We moved out of our house in Olathe, KS on July 15th.

Here's one last picture of Brandon in front of our house right before we left. We drove from KS to St. Louis to stay for the night. St. Louis is where Krzysztof and I met, and we have so many nostalgic places that we love to visit there. Unfortunately, we didn't have any time to go to any of them.

We did, however spend a few hours at the zoo. Brandon looks pretty excited about those penguins.

The penguin exhibit at the St. Louis zoo is one of best we've ever seen, and the chilled air inside was especially appreciated on this day because it was 95 degress outside. The penguins were just about the only animals in the whole zoo moving around at all.

Here's a worn out Brandon and me with my 22 week baby bump.

We drove from St. Louis to Kalamazoo for the night, and then it was on to Waterford, MI. Our friends Blain and Sarah in Waterford graciously allowed us to stay with them for a whole week until our temporary condo was ready for us to move in. They, along with our other Waterford friends Brandon and Stephanie did tons of babysitting for us while we house hunted with our realtor during that week. I don't know what we would have done without them!

Brandon and Trevor (Blain and Sarah's son who is 6 weeks younger than Brandon) had so much fun playing together all week!

Trevor has a dog at their house, and the boys were very amused by feeding the dog little scraps from their trays. Brandon also found out it is fun to feed Trevor that way too.

This is at Brandon and Stephanie's house. They have 2 boys. Christian is the one pushing Brandon. All of the kids LOVE this car! It is definitely the most sought after toy at this house.

After our stay in Waterford we moved into a small condo in Royal Oak. The Detroit zoo is in Royal Oak, so we became members. They sometimes have evening events for members, and this was at one of them.

Blain, Sarah, Trevor, and Andy and Erica came with us this particular evening. This is inside the polar bear and seal exhibit.

Brandon and Trevor attempting to give each other a hug.

And here they are with the dinosaur masks they gave out to the kids.

This is also at the zoo, on their train! But this is another day when Sarah and I went just with the 2 boys. We really took advantage of our zoo membership! Brandon and I went almost every week while we lived in Royal Oak.

These boys LOVE riding this train!

This is the zoo train on yet another zoo visit...this time with Daddy.

Here's a good indication for you that Brandon is not bypassing typical terrible two behavior. Staying with me when not strapped to a stroller is not his strong suit right now. He often runs off, and he really doesn't care if I follow him or not. On the other hand, he will occasionally just lay down and protest moving any further as you see here.

This is back in Waterford on our friend's pontoon boat.

These boys will probably be driving boats like this before we know it.

There was a neat event for kids in downtown Royal Oak in August. They had all kinds of fire trucks, police cars, mail trucks, tractors, etc. for kids to climb in.

Ok, last zoo picture for a while, I promise. This trip to the zoo was with Kalina (Krzysztof's sister). She was in town with KZ's parents to visit with us and KZ's uncle who was also in town.

We had a nice family gathering with everyone.

We were still living in Royal Oak during the Woodward Dream Cruise, an annual event where people come from all over the country to show off their classic cars and cruise up and down this one highway for a whole week. Our condo just happened to be right off that road, so we were right in the middle of all the action (neat for car watching and people watching...bad for traffic!).

On the Saturday of the Dream Cruise week, the whole area along that stretch of road is transformed with food and store vendors, thousands of spectators on bleachers and risers, stages with bands, and tons more. They had a kid area with things like bounce houses and balloon artists. Brandon love it.

Here's one more picture...this one is inside our condo of our little All Star, ready for a run in Daddy's shoes (with Gigi the monkey).

It's been great to be back in Michigan so far!

July Family Vacation to the Keys

In the beginning of July, we went with Valerie's family to the Florida Keys for a week long vacation. It wasn't the most ideal time for a vacation for us because we were moving to Michigan less than a week after returning, but the vacation had been planned prior to knowing about our move. It was good to get away nonetheless, and it was great spending time with family. The group included Valerie's mom, dad, sister Christie, brother-in-law Andy, nephew Drew, and his friend Harrison. We rented a house on Marathon and also a fishing boat that could be docked on the canal behind our house.

Brandon loved playing on the boat.

Here are some pictures of a boat trip we took with the whole group:

Brandon and his Mimi.

Brandon and Uncle Andy.

We also spent time in the pool at our rental house.

Brandon's birthday was just a week later than this trip, so we celebrated his birthday there.

He loved the emergency vehicles on his cake!

There was another special thing about this cake. We found out the sex of our baby a few days before leaving for the vacation and decided to use Brandon's cake to reveal the news. I had them put either pink or blue icing in the middle of the cake. We skyped with Krzysztof's parents during the cake cutting and revealed that we are having...

a little girl to the extreme delight of the grandmas!

Brandon enjoyed the cake.

He got a little messy, but didn't get too crazy with it.

Fishing was definitely one of the most important activities of the trip.

Most of the fishing was done in the deep sea with just the men aboard due to the rough seas out there. I got to go fishing twice closer to shore, and it was so fun! I was catching fish within 1-2 minutes of throwing my line every time, which makes me very happy because I'm not a very patient fisherman (fisherwoman?). I also was the only one to catch a grouper. It was unfortunately not quite big enough to keep (and that's not the grouper in the picture by the way!)

Like I said, the men did all the deep sea fishing, and the first few days they didn't have too much luck. Two days before we left, however, they struck gold. They came back with 5 tuna, 1 mahi mahi, and they also caught a big barracuda (which they didn't keep).

Needless to say, we ate well that night and everyone except us went home with enough fish to fill the freezer. (Everyone else could drive home, and we didn't think it was smart to risk arriving home to find all of our clothes smelling like fish.)

Here are the proud fishermen!

Cleaning fish was another activity that took up a lot of the men's time, especially after that big catch!

One of the days when most of the boys went fishing, the rest of us went to the beach.

The second time I went fishing, Krzysztof took Brandon to the 7-mile bridge for a walk.

One of the most memorable things we did was a swim with the dolphins experience. Well most of us, anyway. Apparently dolphins are a risk to pregnant women, so they didn't let me near them, and my dad opted out of the experience since he did it in Mexico a few years ago.

It was still fun to watch everyone. There is my sister Christie going for a pull with the dolphin.

And here is Krzysztof giving their dolphin a massage.

During downtime at the house, Papa's iPad was a great entertainer for Brandon. It's amazing how well someone who's not even 2 can operate that thing.

Here's another cute picture of our happy boy at the house! Not much entertains him more than wearing someone else's shoes.

After we finished our week on Marathon, the 3 of us went with my parents to Miami for the night. We stopped to feed the tarpins before leaving the keys.

We also stopped near the Everglades. This was at an awesome fruit market called Robert's Not Here. They had great tropical fruit smoothies and all kinds of fruit you've never heard of or seen before.

Then we went to an Alligator Farm. Touristy as it was, it was pretty neat to see so many alligators and crocodiles in the various exhibits and to see an alligator wrestling show. An interesting fact we learned is that the everglades are the only place in the world where both alligators and crocodiles live in the same habitat.

The highlight of the Alligator Farm was going on an Airboat tour, which is really why we went there in the first place. It was so much better than we even expected. We had to wear earphones because the boat is propelled by a really loud exposed automotive engine.

The scenery of the everglades was beautiful, and the driver did several fast 360 degree turns which made it fun.

In Miami we went to dinner at a really good Cuban food restaurant with my dad's cousins. (Even Jimmy Buffet knows that everybody has a cousin in Miami!) We stayed at a beautiful hotel on the harbor.

The next day we went to the Miami Seaquarium before our flight back to Kansas City.

It was a great week, and we are so thankful for that time with our family.

Spring 2011 (catch up part 1)

Has it really been 5 months since I made a Blog post? Life has thrown us a few curve balls in the past few months, so this will be the first in a series of posts to catch everyone up!

Curve Ball #1: In March, we found out we are expecting our 2nd baby! We are really excited yet completely terrified at the thought of having 2 kids. Most of our friends with more than one child have assured us that it can be done, but then again, they don't have a Brandon at their house. We're hoping for a much calmer, laid back child to offset the spirited and often strong willed (yet fun and lovable) one we already have.

Here's one thing we did this spring in Kansas City:

For Mother's Day we went on a fun walk and picnic at Shawnee Mission Park. Sometimes Brandon is so good at playing by himself and reading books...

But this devious smile should assure you that it usually doesn't last long before he takes off in the other direction.

While Valerie's mom was in town, we went to the best children's farmstead ever, Deanna Rose. One of the best activities they have there is the chance to bottle feed baby goats. The first time Brandon did this, he was not a big fan. The goats are pretty competitive with each other for those bottles, and they like to jump up on little kids. You have to use some strength to keep the bottle in the goats mouth as they can pull it out of your hands easily. This was Brandon's second time doing the bottle feeding, so he was now all pro.

The 2-handed technique works the best.

Curve Ball #2 came to us on May 31st. We got a call from the landlords of our house. They informed us that they had decided to move back into the house and try to sell it, and we were to be out in 30 days. 30 days! After much debate, they extended it to 45 days. It was a long few weeks as we figured out what to do. Should we buy a house in Kansas? Should we find a temporary place to rent? Everything was so uncertain because we were supposed to already know Ford's plans for Krzysztof's job at that point, but they had not made any decisions. We didn't know how much longer we would even need to be in Kansas. And where was this baby going to be born? With some pressuring, and after several weeks of waiting and waiting, Ford finally decided to go ahead initiate a move to Michigan. If the process had gotten delayed any longer, we would not have been able to get out of our house in time! We had very little time for packing and organizing, but luckily Ford provides packers and movers, so there isn't too much prior preparations that had to be done. We just had to separate out what we needed for a temporary apartment in Michigan and what we wanted for storage.

We started the process of getting together with friends for one last time, and stupidly we didn't take pictures at most of those gatherings. Here's one picture we did take from a dinner at our house with some of our "Brewing Friends." The funny thing about this group is that out of the 4 couples, 3 of us were moving away from Kansas City in the coming weeks! Ed and Kristin were moving to Iowa and Ken and Stephanie were moving to Seattle. Warren and Kristin are staying in KC.

This is your first glimpse of my growing baby belly by the way.

And here is a picture of Brandon with the best babysitter that he loves - Julia (or JuJu as he calls her). She was so helpful to watch Brandon a lot during the moving process.

More to come in the next post!