Saturday, August 9, 2008

Bad Blogger...

Bad Blogger...
So, I essentially have to catch up on the entire summer...I have a lot of reasons for not blogging, but to say we have been busy sums it up fairly well.I will do my best to include some summer highlights...

At the fair

We went with Phil, Tracy, Lilly, Ella (new addition to the Shenkle family, I know, I should have a picture) and Joy to the Clearfield County Fair. Megan liked watching all the people and thought the animals were okay. She was more interested in running (as fast as her 14 month old legs would carry her) all over.






Helping with the dishes

As mentioned in previous posts, Megan has a thing for water (bubble). A few weeks ago, before her bath, I thought I'd see what she thought of "helping" me with the dishes. I put a towel down next to the sink, sat her on it and gave her a little cup. She sat for 10 minutes, dipping her bowl, rinsing her bowl, dipping her bowl, rinsing her bowl, dumping her bowl, well, you get the picture. She would have sat longer, but I finished up the dishes. She threw a little fit when I put her down.

The pictures below are from Sunday after church. I had told Chad about her helping me and he didn't believe it, so we took off her dress and she repeated her performance.


The only problem now is that any time I'm at the sink, she starts to point and whine because she wants up to play!

Settlers of Catan

When we went to Kentucky last February, our friends Kristin and Greg taught us this new game, "Settlers of Catan." It may be the best game ever and we quickly purchased it ourselves and started having Settlers parties. The downside to the game is that it is only for 6 players and with our group of friends, there are about 15 people for any given activity. We felt kind of snooty inviting people in groups of 4. One of our other friends decided to buy the game, so we expanded and had 12 people playing at the same time.



In case you are interested, the game is like a combination of Risk and Monopoly except better because all players can be engaged in some aspect of play on every turn. I won't try and explain more than that because it is a little complicated to explain initially, but if you are a gamer, you should consider this as your next game purchase.

A few of her favorite things...

I was ironing a few weeks ago and I put Megan's gate up so that she couldn't accidently pull the iron over or do something equally horrible. I checked on her every few minutes and on one of my trips in, the below scene is what I found. She had crawled into her chair by herself (didn't know she could do that) and apparently thought ahead to bring some reading material with her. Either that or she got up the first time and realized she had nothing to do, so she got down, put a few books on the chair and got back up...When she saw me come in, she used all the momentum she could muster to rock the chair wildly. This is just one part of a current chair trend. She likes to sit in chairs of all kinds and tends to sit in said chairs with a grin that seems to say, "I'm big stuff, I can sit in this chair." I'm not sure I completely understand the fascination, but I enjoy the resulting stillness that sitting in a chair tends to bring.



Megan is not into raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but here are a few of her favorite words:

Ball (definition is currently being expanded to include circles)
Bubble (which not only means bubbles, but liquid of any kind)
Book
Baby (any person)
Daddy (says the name of whatever parent is not around at the time)
Mommy
Wee (translation swing)
Duck
Dog (which sounds a lot like duck, but I'm going to count it)
Cracker (sounds like cu-cu, but is discernible as cracker)
Milk
Beep (made when she sees anything with buttons)
Hi (but only when she is holding a phone)
Na-na (banana, which ironically she will say but rarely eat)
Uh-Oh (when she is preparing to drop something)
No-no-no (always in multiples and always after I tell her no)

Hocking Hills

In the middle of July, the Warner family all got together for a long (but not long enough) weekend in the Hocking Hills region of Ohio. A gold star goes to anyone who actually knows where that is...It is a region southeast of Columbus. It's a beautiful area with tons of hills, sandstone cliffs, caverns and forests.

Here is part of the family exploring "Old Man's Cave," so named for a recluse who chose to live in the cavernous area during the 1870s.



Megan, despite the fact that she loves to walk, run, crawl, hop, roll, etc., was quite happy to be in the pack unless I stopped moving.



She loves all forms of water and will walk right in regardless of shoes, socks or possible dangers. After the picture below was taken she threw a major fit because we wouldn't let her in the water.


The next day we got smart and brought her sandals which were much easier to remove and thus she was allowed to play more. The below picture was at the end of a fairly strenuous 3 mile hike. I let her get completely wet because the diaper and outfit were coming off soon anyway,






Here Megan and Jonathan were having a pillow fight.



Mom and Dad very graciously paid for the cabin as dad's "retirement present" to the family. Somehow I'm not sure it is supposed to work that way, but it was a very nice cabin and it had a hot tub.



On Sunday, we spent the morning at Lake Logan, where Megan again ended up in the water. We also went to the pool on Friday, but I didn't get pictures. She has absolutely no fear of water (other than she doesn't like having water run over her head) which is fun on one hand, but a little scary on the other.


Water video

Just a short clip of Megan playing in Lake Logan.

Pianists!

So I think Lily, Caden and Megan are all destined to be piano prodigies...They are all so keenly interested in the piano when they come over. This particular evening (July 3), all the "daddies" (Chad, Matt and Phil) went to the driving range while all the "mommies" (Me, Kim and Tracy) kept the kids occupied. The guys were originally going to play golf using their father's day gift certificates, but it was rainy. Instead, everyone came over for dinner and they hit balls at a driving range that has rusted out cars for targets. Yep, that's all I'm saying...