Stella...almost 4 months!

I can hardly believe Stella will be 4 months old in a couple of days! She sure has changed a lot. She doesn't have the nighttime crying fits anymore, she can roll from her back to her tummy.

She can push up with her arms when she's on her tummy. She loves to smile.

She loves to giggle. She tries really hard to talk. She can go days without crying at all...as long as someone is nearby she's a happy little baby.

Reeve and Kyle are super wonderful at taking care of her and giving her lots of positive attention and tons of love.

She's very interested in picture books now, and Kyle is great at reading to her.

She really enjoys it now...he's been reading to her since she was in my belly!

So sweet!

Usually we see a lot of rainbows in May & June...this year we've caught some beauties in August. It was really amazing to see the rainbow go right through the cloud.

Tom is such a great, attentive, and loving Dad!

He likes to carry her on his front...I like to carry her on my back. Kyle took the picture that is below...

We set up a booth for our business at the Local Energy Excellence Fair that was in Mauston...it was our first booth for the business. Reeve and Kyle were excellent salesmen! They really got into it...handing out brochures, coupons, and calendars.

August Visitors

My folks came up in the beginning of August for a visit to meet Stella for the first time. They also brought us many beautiful house plants, and some much needed furniture...desks and book cases :-)
It's always fun when we have visitors to go downtown to Elroy and eat at the Pizzeria Viking and then go to the movies at the historic Elroy Theatre.


My Mom got to test out our new baby/toddler back carrier. Stella LOVES it, my Mom loved it...I love it! We can get so much done and Stella is happy to be involved or she can go to sleep very easily in it.

We played our new favorite board game...Harry Potter Clue.


Some family pics by our apple tree and weed garden:


The outfit that Stella is wearing is one that I wore!!! My Mom brought me some of my very own baby clothes!!!
Now here is a picture of Stella in the outfit (from Hawaii...my parents used to live there)

and a picture of me in the outfit...I'm a little older than Stella wearing this outfit...she's 3 months and I was about 20 months...good to know she will grow into it! Guess I was getting ready to board a train?

Some precious pictures of Reeve holding Stella


Some pictures of our solar hot water panels and flowers in front of our house:



My cousin Racheal and her husband Aaron visited us on there cross-country move from Vancouver to Halifax!!!

Short but sweet visit :-)

GJ/Jess Visit...continued

I apologize for being so pokey about posting! Summer is here and there is soooo much to do. Right now the boys and I (with Stella on my back) have been taking care of our friend's animals while she has been away on vacation. She has two pigs...we have to check their food & water and spray them with a hose if it's real hot. They scare me, so when I go in their pen I carry a big stick. I don't know why they scare me they just do...they're big and they snort...Tom says I should fit right in with them. She has two bulls...Ricky & Henry...they're very sweet and don't give us any trouble. Kyle's job is to go into the hen house and check for eggs...today he was proud to say that he saw the hen lay the egg and he brought it out to me right away...it was still very warm! Then there are the rabbits...about 8 adults and 15 or so bunnies...today Kyle saw 2 of the bunnies loose in the woods! They must have escaped their pen (I secured the latch tighter today). It took Kyle & Reeve all of 20 minutes to catch the two bunnies. The bunnies all get fresh water, rabbit pellets, and hay. All I can say is that I am sooooo glad we don't have animals to take care of...I have a hard enough time taking care of my garden.
I've also been working on a brochure for our solar & heating/ac business. This weekend we have a booth at our Local Energy Excellence Fair. I need to work on updating our website, but that will have to be another day.

So after our huge day of adventure in the Dells & Hustler we decided to travel down to Madison. First stop...State Street. It was Saturday, but we had missed the Farmer's Market, yet there were still a ton of vendors out. We were searching for a place to eat and I couldn't get over how crowded State Street was...then I saw a sign for Maxwell Street Days...a huge sidewalk sale event on State Street. Masses of people...I was searching for a tiny cafe called the Radical Rye for us to eat some yummy soup & sandwiches...I couldn't find it anywhere, so we stopped into the Land's End shop to ask...the cashier looked about 16 and she just gave me the most puzzled look, then a customer gave me another very strange look and said that the Radical Rye has been gone for a very long time...it was at that point it HIT me that I hadn't been to State Street in nearly 10 years! Whoa! The crowds and that shocking bit of reality sent me into a great confusion and we ended up walking down to the Memorial Union and eating in the University Rathskeller...we all felt like students. There were crazy frat kids runny around in goofy get-ups. After lunch we took a walk on Lake Mendota then went over to the Olbrich Botanical Gardens. We got there at 4pm and most of it was shut down, so we had a walk around the beautiful gardens.


On Sunday we had brunch at the Fountain Chateau and listened to some jazz music by Simply JP.



After brunch we went to the site where Tom's been installing some solar hot water panels. The pic below was taken on a different day...Tom is the guy in the blue shirt holding the panel.

It's right on the Omaha bike trail which connects to the Elroy-Sparta trail. I thought the tunnel was a pretty close walk, but we met some bikers along the way that told us it was a couple of miles from where we were...so we just walked to the bridge.


Tommy took Monday off and we headed out to La Farge and saw where he helped install three large photovoltaic tracking arrays.



We went from there to Viroqua...a town we could very easily live very happily in...and we ate lunch at the Viroqua Food Cooperative. We took the scenic drive to the Mississippi River and up to La Crosse.
In La Crosse we went up, up, up to the Grandad Bluff and looked out over La Crosse and all the way over to Minnesota and Iowa on the other side of the Mississippi River.



We went across the bridge and walked around the park on the Minnesota side. It was a great day of travel.

GJ/Jess Visit First Full Day

Hard to believe it was a month ago! We had a super fun time with GJ & Jess while there were here...first time ever to Wisconsin for both of them.

The first full day they were here we really packed a lot in. We started off by going down to the Wisconsin Dells and taking the Duck tour over land & water...

it was super cold, but Jess kept little Stella warm. Look they have the same expression on their face...priceless :-)




Kyle & Reeve got to drive the duck on Lake Delton.


We ate lunch at the Cheese Factory Restaurant (100% Vegetarian). We all had the grilled cheese because Rachel Ray said it was the top 5 best grilled cheese in the country. We burned off our lunch by hiking around Devil's Lake...well we made it a quarter of the way around...the hardest part. We climbed up to the highest bluff to have amazing views of the lake...Kyle got a new name: "KKKKKK" I was a bit nervous with my enthusiastic kid getting waaaayyyy tooo close to the edge. We compared it a lot to the hike up Stone Mountain in Georgia, but I think Stone Mountain is safer.









We came home then went out to eat in Hustler at the Hooterbowl. The restaurant & bowling alley is in the old Hustler Elementary school...you get to eat in a classroom and they put the menu & specials up on the green chalk board. We were the only ones bowling...they put the gutter rail up for Reeve and Kyle. It was their first time ever bowling! So sheltered!