Hank is back....this time with a sister!

Hello all! Well, I have a perfectly good excuse for stopping the blog. Pregnancy, Jason's new job, closing my business, moving across the country, and having a baby. However, we are now settled and I'm going to make an attempt to go at it again. There are just so many good stories to share with the family. I can't stand to lose these memories. I hadn't thought about the blog in months and then two days ago, Hank started walking around with his imaginary baby wombat. He pets it and when he's busy with his trains, he hands it to me and says, "mommy, hold my baby wombat, DON'T DROP HIM." I wasn't sure whether I should be worried about this interesting turn of events or laugh, but either way, I thought that it was a story worth sharing! So we're back. With lots of excitement, adventure, and laughs. And, now with the addition of Merli, we're having twice the fun!

The little helper

In the last post, I told you all about the negative helper. Well, he was in his prime this week since we had a big project going on that involved lots of tools, noise, and men. We built a deck. Boy, was he involved and in the middle of it all!

Here is a picture of the deck project:

And here are a few videos of the negative helper:

So deck building went late into the night and around 7:30, I made the mistake of attempting to take Hank inside for a bath, dinner, and bedtime. This did not work. Hank became completely hysterical when I brought him inside. He wouldn't eat. He fought me on the bath and he kept crying and pointing to the back door. So I did what any good mother would do...I gave in. No bath. No bedtime. And Hank ate Dino Buddies outside in the backyard between hammering and measuring the deck.

fun with Uncle John

Today Hank and I made chocolate chip cookies and as if he has some kind of super nose, Uncle John walked in just as they were coming out of the oven. Amazing. Anyway, Uncle John lets Hank get away with all kinds of stuff, like sitting up on the counter and eating too many chocolate chip cookies. Here is some video of Hank and Uncle John playing a really fun game that never seems to get old. You may need to turn down your volume because Hank hits some high notes on one of these!

the negative helper

We're in the process of trying to get our house on the market this weekend and have been knee deep in house projects all week. Hank loves house projects. He loves to help. However, we refer to him as the negative helper. Jason will gather all his tools, go to some spot in the house, and start working on a project. Well, Hank is right there, ready to help! Except Hank projects aren't the same as Jason projects and every time Jason turns around to find his hammer or his tape measure, Hank has disappeared with the needed object. Hank loves tape measures and hammers. He's very good with them too. He holds up the tape measure against something and pulls out the tape, then he mumbles to himself, puts down the tape measure, picks up the hammer, and begins to hammer that spot (this upsets mommy and makes daddy very proud). Then when he's hammered enough, he's back to measuring, mumbling, then hammering again. This would all be very cute, if he wasn't hammering my newly wallpapered bathroom and if Jason wasn't always having to stop his projects to go find his tools. We bought Hank plastic tools, but he immediately was on to the fact that they weren't "real" tools and kept trading them out for Daddy's tools.

The Hank Report will be back...later!

I'll be better about updating. It's been a busy week! Check back later on!

97 degrees and rising

One of the nice things about Oregon is the temperate climate. We usually max out around 80 in the summer, but mostly sit in the mid 70s with no humidity. It's really, really nice and makes up for the lousy winters. However, today it hit 97 and since almost nobody in Oregon has air conditioning, it's pretty miserable. My friend, Kelly, invited Hank and I out to her place today to play in the kiddie pool with her son, Matteo. I wish I could post all kinds of fun pics of Hank and Matteo splashing around in the pool, however, I forgot my camera. So instead I'll just post some pictures of Hank when we got back to the house. We're scheduled to go out again next Tuesday, so I promise I'll remember the camera next week. (I know, I know, a Hank blog doesn't do much good if I don't remember the camera....we're back where we started with no pics....)





So in the evening, Jason does push-ups. Hank also does push-ups, but needs to work on his form a little. Sometimes he gets tired and just rolls over. We need to work on that. Here's Hank doing push ups with Daddy.

After push-ups, Hank has dinner. Here's his dinner for tonight- dino bites and zuchini. My father taught me that presentation is everything.

And after dinner, we clean up. Hank is very good at loading and unloading the dishwasher. We believe in child labor around our house. You should see him work the dustbuster. He's amazing. I'll get that on video next time we clean the house....which could be days or even weeks from now...

So I'm getting pretty good at this if I do say so myself. Pictures AND video. My mother must be absolutely out of her mind right now with so much Hank overload!!!!

Hank has a big zuchini!

In Oregon, everthing is big. The trees, the mountains, even our fruit and vegetables. Below you will see Hank with a zuchini that we picked today out of Lynden's garden. Lynden makes wonderful zuchini bread and we'll probably get 10 loaves out of this zuchini alone. There were many more.

Hank scraped his toe on a rock while we were watering the garden today (The Brown's went away for two weeks, so we are looking after the garden). He didn't act like it hurt too much, but he was very interested in the scrape and kept pointing at it and looking at me. I washed it off and left it alone. Hank wants everyone to look at his boo boo. We went to Safeway and Hank showed his toe to the lady at the checkout stand. Then he showed his toe to the man in line behind us. We all discussed Hank's toe and that made Hank very happy.

(error message- I'll try to upload pics later)