A few more Summer Catch up Pics

Ben had THREE whole weekends off in August!! Plus the one Saturday he was on call he only had to go in the morning for rounds! It was a great month and we had lots of fun with him around. Evrett really likes food, so naturally he likes to help me cook. He will push his green stool over and help me make dinner. He really likes when I let/help him use sharp knives to cut things. My mom gave us a kid cook book that he likes to look at and pick recipes out. He and Ben made us pancakes from the book one morning:

Ross and Melissa Quijano, in our ward, called us up and said that a local arcade fun center was having their annual $1 days. All rides, mini golf, mini pizzas, and rootbeer floats were only $1! Ben hasn't had any extra work so we couldn't afford to go, but the boys really wanted to so they each pulled $10 out of their piggy banks to fund our fun day. We played Mini Golf and EVRETT WON a free game b/c he made a hole in one on the last hole. So funny! Then we went on lots of rides, watch Ross win 3,000 tickets at one game, and ate yummy food.

It was also our summer of Pets. First came the frogs that were found in Grandpa's pool filter. We helped them back to the pond down the street, but Evrett talked about the frogs every time he saw the pool.

Can you see the Frog with Brannon?

And then one saturday morning Ben found a baby squirrel in our yard. We left it for a while for the mom to come back, but she didn't. We took it to an animal shelter place but they wouldn't keep it and told us to build a next onto the tree and the mom would come back. Well, she didn't, and Ben and I....with our ANIMAL HATING hearts...couldn't bear to see the poor little thing freeze to death so we did some research online, bought some formula for it, and feed it from a syringe for the next 6 days.

Evrett was very fascinated with it and kinda went hysterical the first time he saw us try to feed it. The next feeding time Evrett went and got his favorite cake cookbook to pick out a cake to make for the baby squirrel :) He also asked if it was his "Baby brother" :) funny kid.

We named him NUTTS and he was pretty cute. But on the 6th day I went to feed him and he wouldn't eat or swallow when I forced the milk in his mouth. He wasn't moving much either so I put him back in his bed and left him there until Ben came home to find that he had died. Poor thing. I'm not sure we helped it or caused it to suffer longer (probably the latter) but what do you do? There was a chance he could have survived and we did out best. Poor thing. He was our first and last pet. At least until another half dead baby animal ends up in our hands.

First day of school

Today was the boy's first day back to school. Well yesterday was, but it was only for one hour. Doesn't really count. We had family home evening the night before with a lesson on the holy ghost as our constant companion and remembering to choose the right and how we are different ("because we are MORMON!" Bran shouted) which makes the boys very Brave and Strong. Ben then gave each of the boys a Father's Blessing. There was a sweet spirit there and each of the boys were very reverent and I could tell they knew what a special thing this was. For the next couple days whenever I heard Brannon pray he'd say that he was grateful for the blessing Dad had given him. I think it helped too because he went off to his first day of Full day school very brave. He later told me he was crying in his head because he wanted to stay with me but that he stayed brave and didn't cry for real. It was very bittersweet knowing that my boys are growing up!

Evrett did the cutest thing during the blessings. He is very good at sitting/kneeling for prayers with his arms folded and attempting to close his eyes. His whole face s crunches up all wrinkly and forms and big smile just to get those eyes closed :) Ben gave a blessing to Colin first, then Brannon, then was going to be done when Evrett (who is almost 2 and a half) jumped off the couch and shouted "MY TURN", climbed up on the chair and immediately folded his arms and scrunched his eyes closed. He sat that way for the whole blessing. I hope I never forget that cute face.

So that is about where the happy tender moments end. They came home from school today GRUMPY. Both had scowls on their faces from the moment I saw them. They do not like sitting at "BORING" school all day long. I kept questioning what had happened, thinking something specific had caused them to be sad, but nothing...unless you count having to sit in a chair all day, no recess, boring music, and worksheets. I think Brannon just needs to get used to full day and hopefully will start to find it fun. Colin just needs to make some new friends. There are only 2 kids in his class from his class last year. One boy that doesn't talk much and one girl that didn't want to sit by him because she has a girl bestfriend in the class. He was excited at first to make a new friend with the boy he was sitting next to, Miguel, but then he said every time he tried talking to him, Miguel would just grunt back and never said anything. I reminded him that it took him a couple months last year to make good friends with the boys in his class. Hopefully it will be a bit quicker this year! Oh it is hard to send them off all day into the hands of someone else! They are such precious tender things in a world that can be mean sometimes! I just pray that they can have a good experience and education here.


Here is their picture on the first day. They really are best buds. I hope it stays that way! We don't have much extra spending money and they really didn't need any clothes so I let them each pick out one shirt from the clearance section in Target. They picked the same one and wanted to be twins on the first day of school. It was so sweet. I was worried that some jerky kids might make fun of them but no one said a thing. The school is 86% hispanic and I'm starting to think that they are just naturally really nice people. The parent's I have talked to and the kids I've interacted with have all been that way.

Beach Fun

We were able to go to the Chicago "beach" a few times this summer. The first time was with some people from the ward. Below is Colin and the Garner kids dumping water on Ross Quijano...a guy in the ward who is TONS OF FUN. He is like a big kid and spent the whole 5 hours at the beach playing with all the kids and one other husband, Davis Staley. Brannon told them they were way more fun than the moms who just "sit there and go blah blah blah all day long" (chat :) We have pictures from this day thanks to Ross and his underwater camera!

They built and destroyed Sand Pyramids

They made Sand Angels

And Sand Zombies

And bubbles under water :)

Evrett had so much fun he asked to go back everyday. Sometimes he got ready by himself:

So I finally took them back 2 more times with some other moms & kids from the ward.
Downtown Chicago. We are at the 31st beach here:
but on our next outing found the 12th st beach which was beautiful!
So we brought Dad on his last Sat. off for the summer. It was a blast! They played lots of water games and frisbee games. Dad was really sore the next day from all the running around. We don't get very many days off with him + nice weather so we cherished this day.

A quilt for my Sister

This December we will have a fun new addition to the Hartmann family! And it will be beautiful and PINK! :) My sister is having her first baby and we found out recently it is a girl. So I finally get to dig through my stash of girly fabric that doesn't get much use around here AND get a few new fabrics that I wouldn't normally buy! I started these blocks after cleaning through my bag of scraps and noticing a bunch would make a cute girl quilt. I started it with no plan or layout so it is far from perfect and balanced and all that quilter's stuff, but I love it anyway. It was fun and basically free since the only thing I had to buy was the batting.
I just love the cute heads poking out behind the quilt :) Colin tried soooo hard to stay behind it but just couldn't help sneaking a peek at me.

Still trying to "hide". You can see Brannon's enthusiasm at holding up, not only fabric, but PINK fabric :)
Since I hadn't done any planning I was really bugged at myself when the yellow chenille I had on hand was 2 inches too short for the back!! But then I remembered seeing on some quilting blogs that they add a pieced strip like this to the back to make their backing big enough...it worked perfect.
Hopefully I will get to finish a few more girly things these next few months!

Gone Totally Private

This is the point where our family blog has gone completely private....as in no one else knows it exists. I am suddenly unable to keep up with the internet world: facebook, reading others blogs, replying to emails, etc. and have been having a lot of anxiety and stress over my to-do list. My mom said the best thing for anxiety is to cut something out instead of trying to do more so after thinking about it I decided the blogs would be a good place to start. We've made some wonderful friends but trying to keep up reading all their blogs & facebooks and comment on everything has become too time consuming. BUT I still want to record things for our our family records. I've also struggled with posting on our public one because there are things I'd like to write for our family history that I don't necessarily want others reading. And I'd also like to brag a bit about my wonderful kids and family :) without feeling bad about how it might make someone else feel reading it. So that is why I decided to start this one just for our family. It's the easiest way for me to record our memories and such without any inhibitions or added stress. Hopefully I can keep up with it!