May 25-June 1

Gretchen desperately wants to walk.  Last week she spent a lot of time standing up, wobbling a bit, and dropping down to the floor to crawl.  I let her hold my hands to walk around the house, and then spent the whole time tickling her palms to get her to let go.  She thought that was the best game ever.  :)  Unfortunately for Gretchen, she lunges forward more than she walks, so she loses her balance if there are no hands supporting her.  This week she's been getting braver, but still not much more successful.  She has managed to take a few steps, but only when she was busy paying attention to something else.

Keshia's wedding pictures are up!  If you're facebook friends with her, you'll be able to see all of them.  Since I assume most of you are not facebook friends with Keshia, though, I grabbed the important ones (of the flower girls, of course!) and put them below.

We spent last weekend visiting my parents.  Justine and her boys were there, too, so it was a wonderfully hectic family reunion.  Bryan and I played cards with my parents and siblings, Olivia and William chased each other through the house carrying trucks, and Gretchen and Edward... interacted (pictures of that below!).  Mom had some boxes from the garage, so we spent some time going through things that haven't seen the light of day since they were unceremoniously dumped from the Zion-house playroom drawers into said boxes just under eight years ago.  After mom, Justine, and I made a mess, we cleaned most of it back up, only to discover all the little kids making a bigger mess while glorying in their new-found treasures the next morning.  We also watched some home videos, which were pretty hilarious.  I never knew that Josef filmed Jacque doing a music video (3 times, to get the best take!).

Garden update: I have one thriving zucchini plant (memo to self: obtain a cage for it before it takes over everything), 8 green bean plants (including one that had to fight to get out of the shadow of its rather aggressive neighbor), 6 pea plants (even though I planted eight), a lot of carrots (especially in one section, where I must have gotten over-zealous with my "pinch" of seeds), and more beet plants than I started with.  I planted 18 beet seeds in one specific section, and I have beets all over my poor little garden square.  I have no idea what's going on with that, but beets are living up to their "easy to grow" reputation.  I still need to get a tomato and a couple of peppers planted, and my peas are going to need a trellis soon.

Yellow Duck has been requiring a lot of blood supply lately.  I always have trouble with low blood pressure during pregnancy (also low iron), and this time is no exception.  I find it ridiculous that I ran a half marathon less than 2 months ago and yet now there are days when I struggle to hold a conversation while standing up.  :/

Pictures:

Wedding pictures:

Pictures from Josef (the extra baby is Edward):

Gretchen and Opa spent a lot of time together:

The girls play Oma and Opa's piano:

Olivia, dancing the Hokey Pokey in front of the mirror.  No one knows why she's not wearing pants.

I hit my leg with the oatmeal bucket as I carried it up the stairs one day, and this is the bruise it left.  Bryan thinks this is a sign that we have too much oatmeal: