Daddy's Birthday

On Friday at the Wehrman household, we celebrated daddy's birthday. He was turning 32 this year, and isn't exactly happy about it, so Hunter and mommy tried to make it as special as possible.

Every morning, we are awakened by our bushy-tailed toddler climbing in our bed at about 7:30. We take turns getting up with him and letting the other person sleep in, and I will be the first to admit that Greg is the one that gets up 4 times out of 5 (which I am very thankful for!) Anyway, on daddy's birthday, I got up with Hunter. We both ate breakfast and then proceeded to make daddy's cake. Hunter now "helps" momma in the kitchen any time I am cooking something. When he sees me start cooking, he pulls up a kitchen chair by the island right away to help me. As he's only 22 months old, his "help" usually means more work for me, but I think it is so fun. I have always pictured my kids helping in the kitchen and am so excited our first is old enough to do so! We made daddy a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. Hunter's favorite part was licking the beaters after we were finished. :)

When daddy woke up, we did presents. We gave him candy, and a tshirt from Target that he had pointed out. It has his dream Firebird on it, so of course, he wanted it.

Here he is opening the box and smiling because he saw what it was. :)

Here, he is obliging me by letting me take a picture. :) He's not a picture person, but let me take it so I could update the blogger world! Greg also received an iPod Touch, which was for Father's Day and his birthday, so he's been enjoying that present for a while now.

We relaxed much of the morning, ate frozen pizza and let Hunter take a nap. I frosted the cake, with was ALMOST disastrous! It is so hot here (even with the A/C on!) that the frosting was half melted just sitting in the cupboard. After I was finished, the top layer of the cake kept sliding off of the bottom - I had to stick it in the fridge! Thank goodness, that saved it.

After Hunter woke, we decided to check out the splash park that is at the Residents' Club in our neighborhood. The Club is only a mile away from our house, and has a big pool, a splash park, a couple of slides, a fitness center, and a lap pool, just to name some of the stuff.

Hunter was a little unsure of the whole thing at first, but he warmed up to the water (mostly.)

This is the splash park, but because of the big bucket at the top that would drop water, Hunter wouldn't even go near it. So we stayed in the calm waters of the pool. He had fun with daddy holding him and splashing momma (a nice trick he picked up from daddy.)

We found some mostly shaded lawn chairs and relaxed for a bit too.

After the water park, we went home and got the mail, which included Greg's gift from his parents: a Garmin GPS. He absolutely LOVES it, and has been using it to take him places, even if he's already been there before. He is enjoying breaking it in. :) Thanks, mom and dad!

We then ate some lasagna, which is Greg's favorite meal. Then of course, we closed with the cake. It was a simple day, but I enjoyed just being with my boys, and I hope Gregory enjoyed his day too.

Friday My Town Shoot Out - Interesting or Amusing Signs

I was a little worried about this week's assignment, because we just moved here a couple weeks ago so I haven't had much time to explore yet. I was worried that I wouldn't find a sign in time, but don't worry, I think I found a great one-and it was by accident too! I decided to make a trip to the local library and found this sign in the parking lot. Now, let me say that this is the 4th state I have lived in, and never before have I seen a speed limit sign like this...

Is this strange to anyone else???

Big Boy

Once again, we're in a stage where I am amazed at how big my baby is getting. I know, I know, he's not a baby, but he's still MY baby and will be even after he gets married.

It seemed like all of the sudden during the week we moved here to AZ, he found the confidence to try (almost, I'll explain later) any word we ask him to say. So, since then, we've been working on manners. He only needs reminded to say 'thank you' (which sounds like din noo) now about 25% of the time, and the cutie pie even thanks us for changing his diaper. He says "oh no," "oh man," "uh oh," "amen," and "Bella" very clearly. He knows to hold our hand when he gets in bed because we're going to pray. And he knows at the end of the prayer at bedtime (and at mealtimes) to say "AMEN!" He's still a little confused with amen though. We sang Rockabye Baby the other day, and when I was finished he said AMEN! But we're working on it. :) He also knows to say "down" when he's finished eating in the high chair.

He can also blow his nose in a tissue, which I think is pretty impressive for a 22 month old.

He understands about 75% of what we say, and for a toddler, he's a pretty good listener. He also is OCD about closing things, which I think the Lord instilled in him for a reason. Mama has a tendency to leave cupboards and drawers open (unintentionally!) and Hunter goes behind me and closes them all.

Another baby thing he's losing is sucking his thumb. I think it's so sweet to see him do it, but Greg decided it's time to break him of it. It's funny, becuase I always told myself that pacifiers would be gone with our children before the first birthday, yet I'm having a hard time letting go of him sucking his thumb, despite the fact that he's almost two. But, I am trying to break him of it along with Greg, even if it does break my heart.

What's funny is that, like I said, he will try to repeat almost anything we say, yet when he tell him to say "yes," without fail, even when we try to trick him, we get a loud "NO!" everytime. He may be big, but he's still stubborn.

Short and Sweet

Friday My Town Shoot Out - Relaxation

My relaxation post this week is all about my son relaxing. I guess toddlers get to rest more than us adults!

Fun in the Sun

Half Marathon

Don't worry, I didn't forget to post about the Rock n Roll Chicago Half Marathon! It was August 2nd in downtown Chicago. We left our house at 5am and made the trip down there. The gun sounded at 6:30am, but they had different corrals according to your projected finish time that started a couple minutes in between eachother so I didn't actually start running until 6:55am. The weather was PERFECT and I felt great. I was so thankful that my husband (and of course our son), his dad, my parents and sister and my aunt and uncle made the trip to see me run. It was so exciting to run the track and see my family members cheering me on. I also, was so touched by the sense of pride I saw in my husband's face each time I ran passed him. It really kept me going throughout the race.

I really did feel good the first 2/3 of the race. I would walk the water stops, but besides that, I ran most of it. About mile 10, I decided to walk for a minute because my legs were so tired, but it actually hurt MORE to walk. It is a weird feeling when you run that far where you almost feel like you are numb from the waist down, and it's harder to get one foot in front of the other while walking, so that did keep me running.

I crossed the finish line in 2 hours, 22 minutes and 45 seconds. My goal was to do it in under 2:30, so I was really happy with my time being that it's my first one. I got my big honkin' metal, as the Rock n Roll Series likes to call them, which I am very proud of. I finished in 8890th place out of 14453 finishers.

There is another Rock n Roll half marathon here in Phoenix in January that Greg and I are considering doing together. I thought after I finished this one, I would want to do a full marathon, but I remember thinking after crossing the finish line that I could not imagine only being half way there! So for now, I'll stick with half marathons!

I'm Back!

HELLO BLOGGER WORLD, I AM BACK!

It has been a long couple of weeks, but we are (pretty much) settled into our new home. We have 90% of everything unpacked.

We left our home in IL on Monday evening. The original plan was to leave Tuesday morning, but with the help from my mom, Greg's dad, and a couple guys from church, packing the truck went really smoothly so we decided to shorten our originally planned 11 hour Tuesday by leaving Monday night. (What a wonderful decision!) The picture to the left is Hunter playing on a tricycle (while the truck was being loaded) that was his daddy's 30 years ago. My father-in-law brought it from home for Hunter, and he LOVES it!

We left around 3pm, with everything we owned in our big Penske truck and our 2 cars and headed for Springfield, IL. Greg, his dad, and the dog were in the truck towing the Saturn, and my mom, Hunter and I were in the Jetta. There isn't much between Chicagoland and Springfield besides crops and wind turbines. Tuesday was more exciting. We passed through St Louis en route to Tulsa, so we at least got to see the Gateway Arch. Wednesday was, in my opinion, the most boring day. We drove from Tulsa through Texas (thankfully the top, which is the thinnest part of the state,) and then to Albuquerque. Oklahoma and Texas have to be 2 of the most boring states ever. There was nothing to look at but fields, and cattle ranches. Once we got into New Mexico though, the drive started to get pretty. It was kind of cool to watch the changes happen in the land from the Great Plains to the desert. Once in NM though, there are awesome mountains to look at. I've had many people tell me that NM is a boring drive, but I thought it was gorgeous! Desert mountains are so unique in shape with mostly flat tops. The scenery just really reminded me of God's majesty. It was awesome. Our hotel room in Albuquerque looked out to a mountain. Thursday was the prettiest drive through NM and much of Arizona. We drove through Flagstaff, which is up in the mountains, and then had to make the trip down to Phoenix to the desert again. It was a little nerve racking watching the boys in the truck at times through the mountains, but they did just fine.

After 32.5 hours of driving in 4 days, we arrived at our new home. It definitely was a long drive, but we all agreed that the Lord definitely had His hand of protection over us. We hit barely any traffic in all 4 days, and had no major problems. When we arrived in Tulsa, we did discover that a tire had blown on our trailer that the Saturn was on, but the guys hadn't even felt it because the other tire next to it had picked up the slack. So, Greg called Penske and they sent people out right away to the hotel and the problem was fixed within a couple hours. Aside from that, we had smooth sailing, and we all know that the Lord was definitely watching over us.

So, the weather is hot, and the sun is bright, but our house is GORGEOUS! We have a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom ranch, and I even have my own bathroom sink! I have (almost) more cupboard space in my kitchen than I know what to do with, and I know Greg likes enough garage space for the Jetta AND his tools. :)

I am so thankful that my mom and Greg's dad were able to help us move. It was a long week that none of us would like to relive, but I know that their help made it so much easier on us, and we really did appreciate them taking the time off of work to help us out. Bella really enjoyed snuggling up next to Doug in the truck, and my mom and I were constantly googling anything we could think of to keep busy. Thanks Mom and Dad. :)

Friday My Town Shootout - Power

Ok, so on the week where we have to go throughout our hometown and capture pictures of how we get power...I was homeless. This week was the week that we moved from Chicago to Phoenix. And the cheapest way to move your home is to drive it yourself! So, it was a longgg week, driving through Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, but I'll blog about that later. But, while driving across the country, I decided to take pictures of America's power. We saw so many different types of power and I'm excited to share them with you!

The power source we saw the most driving were wind turbines. I've never seen any aside from TV before this week, so it was awesome to see how big they are, and to see them at work!


We also drove passed a power plant and saw all the hundreds of power lines coming out of it to transport the energy.

This next one is a power line corridor that we drove through, which we drove through many. It took me like 5 tries through different corridors to get a cool picture of it. Here's my best one.
We saw the big machines that pump oil out of the ground too. (I don't know their technical term!)
So there are my pictures of America's power. I have yet to discover the power of my new town here in Goodyear AZ. :) Enjoy!