Date Night with Brado

Wednesday's are becoming me and Braden's date night. :)

Justin plays soccer from 5:30 until 7ish, so I decided we should go out and have some fun, too.

This week we went to the Chrysler Museum of Art! It is free, welcomes kids and is a great place to explore. Braden had a great time. The museum is pretty big, so we didn't see nearly everything, but the rooms we did see he would walk into and go "oooooh" and point to things, then run to the next room to do the same thing. I think his favorite parts were the big panels of cloth artistic-ly hung from the ceiling (they were very colorful!) and all the big, castle-like stairs to climb!

Monkey had to come along for the trip, too. :)

The museum from the outside.

The view from the museum. It was a beautiful, warm evening, which made it even better.

These beauties popped up in our yard a week ago! It was so fun and random - they are not connected to a bush or anything, just random stalks that pop up the end of fall and make these beautiful, bright flowers! Thanks to the genius of my friend Linds, I was able to find out exactly what they were from the picture - Nerine Lily or Guernsey Lily. They are from Africa and do look quite exotic. I'm glad they grow here. :)

(Rachel - yes, that is the same Guernsey of the book! Supposedly a ship of these sunk right by the island and they took root there and started to grow. I was so happy I knew where Guernsey was and a little bit about it! I think we are going to have to go there someday. :) )

Monkey Boy

Well, I guess I should say monkey boyS. We have moved to our new house - and are LOVING it - and Justin has started the lessons on how to climb a tree. Not that Braden really needed the added encouragement, but there it is nonetheless.

This is what we did for FHE the other night - climb trees together! It was great fun. Braden has fallen in love with Curious George - both books and movie - and talks about him all the time. Braden was already destined to be a little monkey, being so much like his daddy, who was a constant little monkey (and still is at heart) his whole life. Justin, by the way, also loved Curious George growing up.

Creative, mischievous, cute, and climbs on everything.

That sounds like my boys.

This is our new house. We got an amazing deal and we are in a very quiet, safe neighborhood. We have so much more room, too. And there is a little tiny park just a block away that we can always go play at.

We love these Crepe Myrtle trees that line our yard. They are my favorite tree out here (hmm...maybe tied with the Southern Magnolia, it's hard to say) and they are perfect climbing trees for Braden. They were starting to lose their flowers when I took this, but they keep blooming from July until September. And it is all we see when we are sitting at our kitchen table and looking up outside the window. We love it.

This is what I found earlier today. I was in the kitchen doing dishes and I heard Brado laughing and say "high, high, high". I figured he had climbed to the top of the couch or something. I came out and found him on top of the TV!

I just started laughing and grabbed the camera to take a picture. He can find his way to the most precarious spots! A little while ago I came into the living room to find him sitting on the table that is between our couches. It is round, very unsteady, and a foot or two away from either couch. I have no idea how he got up there without tipping it over and falling. I have since found him on there twice, but the camera was dead both times so I couldn't snap a pic. :(

Megan, this is for you. :)