I guess you can disregard half of the next post. I fixed my blog!! Yay!! I don't know what I did, but I did it. Do you like my new look?

Good news and bad news

First for the bad news. As you can probably tell I messed up my blog. I'm not really sure what happened. I was trying to change my template, which I've done before, to a nice fall background. I was playing around with it and next thing I know everything's gone. My posts are there of course, but all the extra stuff is missing. Hopefully soon I can figure it out...or should I say Nathan. He's the more computer literate person in the family.

The good news....Charlotte is ready to potty train!! We started Sunday night after we got back from Indiana. Once she started she hasn't stopped. I bribed her with cookies to begin with and then she must've realized how easy it is. The first day she got out of the bathtub to go and came up from downstairs to go. It's great!! Hopefully she continues to like doing it.

About our trip to Indiana. It was short. My Grandpa Asay and Aunt Sheila were visiting from Utah so we went to see them. Cade was supposed to get baptized but Tyson hurt his arm and had to have surgery so that didn't happen. I enjoyed seeing some old friends from the Beech Grove Ward at the Relief Society Dinner and Broadcast.

Did I mention I went to Book Club the other night? We discussed Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. It's a good book and we had a nice discussion. I was glad I went. I still miss my old book club, but this will do. :-)

Play Time

This is the playground at our apartments that we spend lots of time at. Brooke always says, "We need to go to the playground and meet new friends." We almost always find someone to play with.
This is where Brooke likes to park her bike. Many times there are lots of bikes around this tree. Sometimes the kids knock their bikes down and if Charlotte rides one of her bikes over, she likes to put it on its side as well. She likes to be like the big kids.
This is Brooke riding her bike back to our apartment.
Charlotte and I went for a walk this afternoon. Actually we were looking for daddy and Brooke. I guess they had gone on a walk too. These are a couple pictures I took. There are some big trees here and the kids like to hide in them and play in them.
These next pictures are of Brooke and Peyton who lives next door. Her and Charlotte are becoming good friends. They are only a few weeks apart. Peyton's brother Landen is good friends with Brooke as well.


That's about all that's going on here. We're not very exciting. I went to Brooke's school on Tuesday to volunteer in her class and every Tuesday from now on. Charlotte and I go to the library on Wednesday's for story time. I'm excited for Book Club on Thursday. I'm not done with the book yet but probably will be by then. It's called Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. It's a very interesting book about Chinese girls whose feet were bound at a young age and also about their arranged marriages. I enjoy historical fiction. I hope I enjoy the people at the discussion.

The Bulldog

So I was driving around town the other day and noticed all these bulldog statues at different businesses. Hmmm...I thought. I guess it's Ferris Spirit, they are the bulldogs after all. I ended up asking someone and that's basically what it was. I guess a bunch of businesses decorated them for the first home football game. I thought it would be fun to go around to a bunch of them to take pictures with the girls. They've seen them and thought they were fun too.

This was at a dentist office, hence the "smile"

This was at the library, which is actually the first one we noticed when we went there a couple weeks ago. Charlotte wanted to say "hi". Brooke is not in this picture because she was trying to climb over it and fell and scraped her head and nose, hence the next picture.

She said, "is it still going to be there tomorrow?"

Mommy and me

With Brooke in school, Charlotte and I get to spend lots of one on one time together. Yesterday we went to the Library for Story time. Today we met some friends at the park. This is Hemlock Park that I found one day driving around and took Nathan and both girls one night. It's a fun park with lots of little secret hideaways and tunnels and fun things. I didn't take my camera the last time so I took it today. Hemlock Park is also the start of the Riverwalk so it runs right next to the River. The morning is a great time to go because there is hardly anyone there. In the evening, when we went, there were lots of bigger kids playing kind of rough.

Breaking Dawn

So I finished Breaking Dawn. Now, I was a fan of the other Twilight series books, but I just didn't like this book. Is anybody with me on this? The pregnancy thing gets me. If a vampire is nothing like a human and blood doesn't flow from his veins, then how can one help to conceive a child? Then the whole pregnancy itself was almost devilish. I thought a little alien baby was going to come out of Bella. The way the author described the birth was just so gruesome. And the baby!! It grew so rapidly and matured so fast. And then Jacob imprinted on the baby. EEWWW. Too much. I know it's all fantasy but this was too much for me.

Our home

So this is our home for the next two years. We live in family student housing in a 3 bedroom townhouse. We have a sandbox in front of our townhouse. In the back we have walkways where the girls can ride their bikes and play also. Not too far out our back door is the playground which I sometimes let Brooke go play with her new friends. I can't believe the amount of children whose parents let them roam around the complex. I must be overprotective.

Lake Michigan

We had a GREAT time in Ludington at Lake Michigan. I had wanted to go Labor Day weekend but it didn't happen. (Something about college football starting). So, Saturday was my birthday and I got to pick what I wanted to do. Woohoo! I couldn't sit around this boring town anymore so off we went. Believe it or not, we had never been to any part of Lake Michigan even in Chicago. It's only a little over an hour away from us so we had to take advantage of it. Our neighbors did go Labor Day weekend and they recommended we try a restaurant called Bones and Butts for lunch. Not really sure why it was named that. It was a hole in the wall place that served bbq and brisket type stuff. Nathan had to ask someone where it was and I thought they would think we were crazy, but they knew exactly what we were talking about. Thank goodness. :-) It wasn't hot enough to swim (there was one girl about 10 swimming in the waves but she must have been crazy) but the girls loved the sand. Especially Brooke! It was just a very relaxing trip and a great way to celebrate my last year in my 20's.

This is taken at the Lighthouse

Close up at the Lighthouse

Far away of the lighthouse, the kids and Nathan in the bottom left corner

walking back to the beach

walking along the beach

another place we found along the highway, very secluded

playing in the sand

we found another playground

dad and Brooke decided to bury my feet in sand

the kids passed out on the way home

We will definitely go back next summer when we can swim!!

Brooke's first day of school

This was taken at Orientation.

Brooke has to get up very early to go to school. It's hard for me too. Most mornings she says she is still sleeping. She goes to all day kindergarten. I was afraid that when she got home in the afternoon she would be tired and cranky but most days she's in a pretty good mood. Her teacher is Mrs. Davids.

Update

So we finally got our internet working today. Such a long story and I'm not really going to write about it. I have lots of GOOD stuff to blog about though. There isn't a whole lot to do in this town but there are lots of parks and walking trails so we've been taking advantage of them. There is a 2.5 mile Riverwalk through the middle of town that goes along the Muskegon River and stops at different parks along the way. We have walked/rode bikes along half of it and we found a great park along the way.

on the bridge over the river

the park we found along the way

And then we found some deer. We have seen lots of deer and apparently in the winter they come right up to our back door. We also saw some turkeys on our drive to Lake Michigan this weekend. More on that later.