We are once again changing things around here. Due to some issues with accessibility, we'll be moving back to an open blog.
*ahem*
If those of you who have been able to access the blog would kindly stop rolling your eyes and refrain from commenting that the others haven't missed much, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thank You.
I have a little bit of an excuse for the past couple of weeks.
I headed West ...
And my traveling companions were ...
Sporty Dwarf
Disgruntled Dwarfand
Fuzzy Dwarf
We didn't do much sightseeing.
Although Echo kept trying to see beyond the backyard ...
And who could blame her? Things were so interesting out front ...
We did get in some shopping ...
And Julia played her first computer game (I love the way she nods her head to tell Natalia that "Yes, she can take that lawn mower and mow the lawn") ...
Dax was busy, too. He showed Grayson how to walk :)
The kids were super helpful on the way home ...
And didn't complain at all about not being able to sit in their high chairs to eat their peanut butter sandwiches ...
But lest you think I'm some kind of SuperWoman that drove the nine hours straight by myself, think again. We took a little detour to a lovely lake house in Gallatin, TN where Julia was able to ride the "little boat." (She remembered going out on the boat the last time we were at Aunt Bev and Uncle Richard's house. When we got to their house this time, she told him all about how she was going to put on her "pinck like jackek" (pink life jacket) and go out on the boat. And there was no way Uncle Richard could refuse! But the big boat wouldn't start so he ended up taking Julia out on the "little boat" aka the jet ski.)
The kids did really great on the car ride(s), but Echo was by far the best traveler of all of us. Next time, maybe I'll take her with me and send the kids an alternate way ...
(And, yes, I did take my nice Nikon with me. I just didn't turn it on. In fact, it hasn't been used much this summer at all. Which is a little bit of a bummer, but I'll try to do better!)
And just to make this post even longer, I'll tell you that my brother finally installed Photoshop on my computer and so I zipped over to Pioneer Woman's website to download her Action Sets so I could play with our pictures. (The one of the kids in the box went through her "Boost" action and the "Slight Lighten" action. She's going to make my photos look good!)
The Seventies Action is by far my favorite ...
But I also like the Old West ...
We've officially locked our blog. We'll miss the random comments from people that came across our blog from a Google search for "Noah's Wife's Name" and those people who dropped by from other blogs where we (okay, Joanna) left comments. However, we started the blog primarily to keep family and friends informed about our adventures since we live so far from so many of you. We are just going back to our original intent (with a little expansion to include our new blogging friends!).
If you have friends that read our blog, we're happy to include them. Simply send an email address along to us (thebouldins@gmail.com) and we'll send them an invitation to view our blog.
We have not yet discussed what will happen to the Flickr account. There is a good possibility that our pictures may have limited access soon as well. If this happens, I'll send out another e-mail with instructions on how to get a Flickr account and how to add us to your "Friends and Family" list.
We are headed to Hattiesburg on Saturday to spend a week with my parents. Grandma and Grandpa Brown will be up from Florida so this is a perfect opportunity to let them meet their new great-grandson. I'm sure we'll be seeing plenty of Grandma and Grandpa Steele as well. My brother and Jenny will be around for the weekend. I'm looking forward to seeing how she looks growing my nephew!
Before we leave, we've got an appointment at the ENT for Dax's tongue, Dave has a trip to NO and I'm baking tons of graham crackers for the trip! (Plus cleaning the house, doing laundry and packing) All that to say there will be a bit lacking over here on our blog. But when we get back we should have fun pictures of Julia and Dax: First Beach Trip to share :)
Yep. This is still The Blog O' The Bouldins. We just look cooler now! While randomly clicking on friends of friends of friends' blogs, I found Nikki's Blogs for a Cause blog. For a small fee, she gives your blog a whole new look. The money goes towards her humanitarian trip to the Dominican Republic this summer and also to a "Cause of the Month." We helped girls in Haiti and got a cool new template for our space.
As for the name in the header ... Dave and I have a website at twostories.com ... we just never really did much with it beyond designing a home page. The name "Two Stories" fits both his profession as an architect and mine as a librarian. I always liked that name. And the name "Cheese" on here was more as a joke ... this was originally going to be primarily a blog of pictures, not words. Plus, Dave really likes cheese. But we spent so long coming up with the idea of Two Stories ... I hate to waste it. (The twostories.blogspot.com was already taken by these two weird people writing fiction ... They didn't even use it for very long.)
I'm glad our 400th blog entry is a happy one ... even if it's not a "THE BOY IS HERE (FINALLY)!" entry.
It does look like we've beaten the virus. Julia was back to her old happy, chattering self yesterday. I'm feeling tired, but it's the same old pregnancy tired that I was before. Dave's been hard at work and probably had the worst time of it since he didn't get any IV fluids to speed his recovery and his work load has been particularly brutal. Some fun stuff did happen before getting sick ...
1) Aunt Bev came to stay Thursday while David was in New Orleans. We had a good time together, ate some yummy food and entertained ourselves watching Julia play. Bev brought Julia a great puzzle that Julia keeps playing with. We are constantly being hounded by her as she brings pieces over one by one for us to hold and then takes them back to the puzzle board. Bev also declared that Julia needed a real tunnel instead of a box so after dinner we headed to Target and she bought her one. Julia loves it and goes back and forth through it over and over and over ...
2) Christopher watched Julia while Bev drove me to my doctor's appointment. It was nice to have someone else in charge of Julia for a bit and also not to have to drive myself. Quickly turning to check my blind spot is getting more difficult! :) The doctor visit went really well. Next one is tomorrow.
3) My friend, Carole, made an emergency grocery run for us on Sunday. When I called to tell her what had happened and request that she get us some Pedialyte from the store, she immediately agreed. When she showed up, she had a TON of good groceries for us to eat as we recovered. I'm so thankful for our friends here in Knoxville.
4) My parents came up all the way from Mississippi for Monday and Tuesday. They took over and did all our daily housekeeping chores and cooking and cleaning and laundry and disinfecting and taking care of Julia. We were able to rest and relax and recover. It was so great to get up this morning and just have to worry about getting Julia's breakfast and nothing else. It would have taken me weeks to get myself and our house back in shape. Thanks!!
5) Dave's family burned up the phone lines keeping track of us and how we were doing. It was obvious that we were at the front of their minds all weekend as we toughed out our first "All Family Sickness." :) We felt so loved!
6) Even though we were really sad Christopher caught the bug, we were happy to have a "dry run" of "Please meet us at the hospital NOW" before Dax's arrival. It probably won't go exactly the same, but we learned some things to do. You know me and my plans. I like to have as detailed of one as possible ... so I'm reworking steps in my mind based on our experience this weekend!!
7) I used an entire bottle of Clorox Anywhere Hard Surface Disinfecting Spray cleaning Julia's toys. Hopefully after the disinfecting Mom and Dad did along with this, our home is safe to visit again!! Our next visitor should be Dave's mom to help out us when Dax arrives!! OH BOY!!
1. When we went to pick Julia up from the nursery yesterday morning, she was busy playing with one of the toys. It was basically a big, plastic, circular bottom half of a house. It had a mailbox and a door and some toys along the top of the wall. Julia would stand in front of the door to open and close the mailbox a few times, then she would open the little door and go inside. After stumbling over to one of the walls, she would spin the toys once or twice, toddle back over to the door, open it and go out. Rinse and repeat. Over and over and over. The nursery ladies said that except for a brief break to try to grab another kid's bottle, she had been at it the whole time we were gone. And when she saw us, she didn't stop, either. Dave put on her sweater as she played and just ended up grabbing her mid-door-opening. It was pretty funny. She was VERY intent on her play. Not a care in the world for the other three kids screaming and crying in the room with her. The nursery ladies were pretty impressed with her ability to entertain herself.
2. Someone visited our blog because they did a Google search for "What is Noah's wife's name" I hope we were helpful.
Jamie was relieved to see Echo in some pictures recently posted to the Flickr account. She was concerned about our pup. Well, no need. Julia and I include Echo in many of our daily activities. Echo finds this extremely stressful. I took a video of her during one of Julia's tummy times. You wouldn't think that this is a scene that Echo sees every day since she spends most of her time circling and sniffing Julia while whining worriedly. You can see her sneak in a few licks of that right ear, though.
Click here to watch Echo during Julia's tummy time.
(And I know it's hard to believe people with so little social life could find something to write about for 200 posts, but this is indeed Post Number Two Hundred for our blog. Go out and celebrate.)
Dave and I have been working on an easier way for everyone to access the pictures posted on this blog. We also wanted to be able to post more pictures without exceeding our limit here at Blogger. (Plus, we figure we'll be too tired to write very many cute little stories about each picture.) So, while we will still post to this blog, if you've been waiting for us to quit our yapping and just show pictures, you can visit our Flickr photo page. There is a permanent link set up in the column to the right.
Most of the pictures will be available for you to download and will also be of a high enough quality for you to order prints for yourself if you wish to do so. This way, everyone can get a copy of the pictures they want without waiting on us to e-mail the higher resolution images.
We've added some albums to practice and get used to the process before The Peanut's arrival. You can go browse through those if you'd like.
It's been a while since we've posted any pictures other than the two of Echo. Could be that I'm holding out for the dream ... "Why hello, Nikon D50! Where have you been hiding?" Or it could be that I'm just lazy.
It could also (probably) be that there is just not that much going on that's photography worthy.
I promise, by Halloween, I'll post some pictures. Really.
One thing:
I have turned on word verification. Make sure you type in the letters at the bottom before clicking the "Publish" button.
I'm not sure what's going on with the Comments. I've had trouble getting my comments to post, and other people have told me their comments aren't showing up, either. I'll see what I can figure out. (That makes it sound like I actually know enough to identify AND fix the problem. HA!)
Dave and I had a good time last week seeing my parents and Grandma Steele. Grandma and Mom brought us tons of goodies for the baby. Once I get caught up with my housework, I'll take the time to take pictures and post them.
Dad spent all his time painting the kitchen. It looks GREAT! I'm so excited about it. I won't take pictures for a bit because I want to show off the finished product, and Dave and I still have doors to paint and hang as well as returning all the food and equipment to the cabinets.
The Peanut is moving around all over usually just as I lie down to sleep. I told Dave that I'll be glad when she's out and can kick him for a change! :) I love feeling her moving around in there. (Still no name ... )
Sometimes you do something stupid and are too stupid to even realize it until someone points it out to you. Apparently I misunderstood "Moderate Comments" on the blog. I thought it just meant I could randomly change what other people said to make them look stupid. Not so. And so no one makes the same mistake I did, I will let you know that it means that you have to approve any comment made. And it doesn't send you an email or post the comments until you approve them! So, everyone who wondered why I suddenly hated them and didn't respond to their comment I apologize (except for Christopher who just left a smart ass comment to point out my error :) Oh, and I also apologize for all the mean things I've thought about people during the last four months when I thought no one cared and quit reading. I'm glad I didn't post anything mean.
I have now turned off "Moderate Comments" and will spend the next few minutes replying to comments left since April.
Update: I have answered comments left on the following posts
Weekend
Still Alive
Fruits and Veggies
Smooth Puppy
167 ...
The Peanut's First Pictures
Other blog names I tried before this one: bouldin.blogspot.com daveandjo.blogspot.com The first is some guy in NY. The second is a couple that (supposedly) quit their jobs, sold their house and started off on a trip around the world. This is not us.
Since the first (and only) person we've had leave a comment in the offical comment area is someone neither of us know, I'm glad I didn't post the pictures of our house! We may have ended up with surprise visitors.
They probably would have come for dinner if they knew we were having Cheesy Mexican Rice. Yum.
Sporty Dwarf
Disgruntled Dwarf
Fuzzy Dwarf
