Making Memories: July 2012

Monday, July 30, 2012

History Lesson

While I was at my Grandma's last month we spent some time looking through some of her collections of photos. She let me take whichever ones I wanted so I thought it'd be fun to take pictures of the pictures with my phone and put them on the blog. My family is from Germany and my maiden name is Bodenmiller. My Dad found our family crest up at the lake and had a great laugh when he saw we had connections to another family- the Schrek family... that explains so much we're descendants of Shrek haha!

Here is a picture of my Great Grandpa Theodore (Ompa) in Germany at his job Iron Works before moving to the USA.

This is a picture of my Great Grandma Martha (Oma) and the boat she rode to the USA in 1927. If I remember correctly she met my Great Grandpa on this boat ride. Oma is the one with the big check mark through her hat. Hey, if things continue as they have been maybe we'll have one of these photos on our boat ride out of here? Ha!

This is their son, my Grandpa Ted

This is a picture of Grandpa Ted and my Grandma Norma on their wedding day. A cute story about my Grandma and Grandpa, they met at their college the University of Toledo. My Grandpa was in the fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon whose pin was a heart and my Grandma was in the sorority Pi Beta Phi whose pin was an arrow. When my Grandpa proposed to my Grandma and 'pinned' her it became a heart and an arrow! How sweet is that?

For their wedding they drove to Angola, Indiana with some friends to elope at this little white chapel.

They had two kids my Uncle Brad then 18 months later my Dad. Here they are after getting buzz cuts at the barber.

Hanging out on their front porch. Doesn't my Dad (on the right) look like my nephew Max?

Here is my Dad's Senior portrait. He had some pretty groovy hair back then.

We really have been going to the lake all our lives, here is my sister in August 1982 six months old.

And then I came along two years later!

Hanging out with my Mom. Look at those curtains behind her- I don't think Julie Andrews would want to make lederhosen out of those!

My Sister and I would always want to play beauty parlor with my Grandma. She would get her hair brushes out and her bag of makeup.

I wish I had a post-picture of the beautiful clown...errr makeup styles we would do.

In our Christmas dresses. I'm not sure what the photographer's image was for this photo. Am I daydreaming about my sister?

When I was growing up my favorite cake was angel food cake with pink frosting. My Mom would make my cakes and they were always the best ever! This was my fourth birthday and my big gift for the year was my talking Mother Goose doll. Mother Goose would read stories from her books aloud to me, she was the coolest toy ever.

Here with are with my Oma and new brother David. We were so excited to have our new brother. I remember being in the waiting room wearing our Koala bear big sister shirts. My Oma and Ompa built some apartment buildings in Toledo and then when she was older she lived in one of the apartments to manage on sight. I remember when we would go to visit while my Dad did maintanence around the buildings we were roam around her apartment looking through old photos and playing with her matchbox cars. She would always buy us a bucket of KFC chicken to eat while we were there.

Here I am with David at our old house in Toledo, Ohio. The backyard had huge lilac bushes that smelled so pretty. I also remember thinking this bathing suit was really cool.

This is a picture of my Great Grandma Grace (my Mom's Grandma) my Grandma Norma and my Oma. David is opening a present so this must be a Christmas or birthday party.

I don't remember the name of this doll but I do remember how much I loved her. Her little bow had a light inside that would glow when I pushed the heart on her chest.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

What's New

Testing out the jumparoo

Today Johnathan is 4 months old and yesterday Johanna reached 21 months. When she gets to 24 months I'll start saying she's two so until then I still get to call her by month. I can't believe she's almost two! But I really can't believe JJ is already 4 months.

In JJ news he has been enjoying his jumparoo for a few minutes a day. He likes to spin the duckies and flip the pages of the book but only for about five minutes then he has enough and wants out. He is still a big cuddle boy and doesn't like to be on his own much, he much prefers being where the action is. He makes 'dinosaur' noises as like to call them when he's bored and wants to do something different. A cross between a cry, screech and growl. He has mastered rolling from his tummy to his back is now working really hard on going from his back to his tummy. He is wearing size 6 month clothing and has about one week left of his size 2 diapers.

Jeff has been gone the last few days for a bachelor party so while he's been gone I've started JJ's crib transition. He's been taking his 9 AM nap entirely in his crib for anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours. His 1PM nap is usually a little longer so he starts in his crib then ends up finishing his nap in bed with me while I catch up on computer stuff. For bedtime at 8PM and he has been sleeping in his crib for about 3 hours before he wakes up to eat and join us in our room. Baby steps! One thing I learned with Johanna is not to push their schedules too much because they will fall in place as soon as they're ready. So he can take his time getting comfortable in his room, I don't mind him in ours :)

Can't go potty without some reading material

Johanna is still a little goofball that has us laughing all day long. She is still talking up a storm and knows what seems like hundreds of words. She has flashcards of animals and knows 37 out of the 50 animals, some of which I don't even know where she's learned! She will be the girl in class getting in trouble for too much talking I just know it... She knows circle, triangle, heart and square and can draw a circle with her hand. She loves to sing songs and sings as best she can to the songs from Tangled, Beauty and the Beast, Jesus Loves Me, Edelweiss (the song from the Sound of Music) and the ABCs. She counts 1-2-3-4-7-8-7-8 and knows orange and pink for colors and everything else is usually blue. Her favorite foods right now are cherry tomatoes, raisins and hot dogs. She recently got 4 molors bringing it up to 10 teeth with two more bottoms slowly making their appearance. She is in size 2 clothing and size 5 diapers. She is still napping from 1 to 4 and sleeping from 8 to 7:30. Oh and I should add she has been obsessing over her dresses and nightgowns. Some mornings it is so bad she refuses to take off her nightgown or dress as she calls it.

Playing beauty parlor

Her biggest milestone is forming mini sentences. I always thought the newborn stage was the cutest but this beginners talking stage is turning out to be so adorably precious! Here are a few of my favorites:

"Snuggle Me!" (wants us to snuggle with her)

The full sentence while we were at the Apple store last night: "Mama, home. Baba, milk. Snuggle me, eebee!" (her favorite night time show.)

"Hold You!" (wants us to hold her)
"I sorry, Mom!" (she says this for everything)

"Shut the door" (not sure why she picked up on this one, but it cracks me up!)

And my favorite is she when she tells me she loves me "Mama 'ov you!" all on her own!

Friday, July 27, 2012

Lake Logan

Alright! One month later and I'm finally finishing my last Ohio post. Just in time for our next trip at the end of August... On our last day in Hocking Hills we decided to have a picnic lunch with my Mom and Dad and spend some time at Lake Logan before heading back North.

Lake Logan was about a ten minute drive from the park close to the highway that we needed to be on so it was the perfect way to stretch our legs before our car ride to Columbus. Johanna loves to jog. Recently Jeff asked her if she wanted to go for a run with him. She happily said yes but as soon as Jeff strapped her into the jogging stroller and headed down the street she had a fit.

He brought her back home and said that she didn't want to go for a run. But immediately Johanna was pounding on the door leading outside saying "run! run!" Turns out she DID want to go for a jog, but she wanted to do the jogging herself!! Now that we know how much she likes to run we take her for 'jogs' around the neighborhood to wear her out.

Testing out the squishy sand again, not so sure what to think.

Hmmm...this isn't so bad...

Once she warmed up to the water she had a blast splashing in the water.

Of course she didn't want to leave. We stayed all the way up to her nap time then loaded back into the car for the one hour drive to Grove City, Ohio.

This trip to Ohio was so jam packed with family time I didn't have much time to see many of my friends. Luckily we were able to squeeze in a visit with my friends Lindsey, Drew and Shira along with Lindsey's family. It was their first time meeting JJ and the first time I got to see Lindsey and Drew's home even though they've lived there for a year!

Kaitlynn is Lindsey's niece and she is five years old. Johanna loved spending time with her and especially enjoyed learning how to use iphone speakers. They were so cute together!

Now she's hooked and insists on using our earphones too every time she gets the chance.

Thanks for having us stay at your beautiful home Lindsey and Drew, we love you!

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Instagram

You know you're getting old when you jump on the bandwagon of popular media outlets years after they've gained popularity. I've recently decided to jump in to the instagram world after seeing the company CEO on a commercial thinking what in the heck is instagram? Turns out its a free photo editor on your phone that can transform pictures into something different and fun with the push of a button. Or, should I say slide of a finger. Anyway, here are a few instagrammed photos from our past week.