Jonah's Quiet Book

 Woohoo! I finally finished Jonah's quiet book. He's been asking for one since I gave Henry one for his birthday. Sadly, I didn't have it finished in time for Jonah's birthday, but he was still excited to receive it once it was finished. It turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself! Definitely a labor of love! It was fun to make Jonah's since I felt a little more free to personalize it. I was pretty nervous about Henry's but Jonah's was more relaxed and fun. I made his cover with a velcro strap to keep it closed and some soccer ribbon to make handles to carry it around. I bought those cute little soccer ball beads somewhere and really wanted to use them. So, at the last minute, I decided to use them on the cover as part of his name. I don't know how long they'll last since every kid who sees them (including my own) try to yank them off!!

 First two pages are the Robot Factory. This page took a lot of time and hand stitching but it was really fun to do. I got the idea from the most amazing and talented quiet book maker ever! You can find her incredible work here. Jonah has a big fascination with robots, so this page was perfect for him. All the robot pieces are attached with little snaps and can be moved around to create all different types of robots.

 The chicken, eggs & hen pages were really fun too (and pretty simple!) The eggs are attached with velcro, so he can move them around. The little chickies come out of their eggs and can rest under mommy chicken's wing. Henry seems to get a kick out of this page. Jonah, being a typical boy, prefers to keep the eggs and chicks stored inside the big fish's mouth!!  Ideas for this page came from this fun site here.

I really wanted to put at least one Bible story into the quiet book, and of course it had to be Jonah and the Big Fish!! This was actually the first page I did. I wanted the fish to be very different and in no way able to be confused with a whale. (Pet peeve - it's NOT Jonah & the whale!!!) He loves opening up the fish's mouth and storing all sorts of things in it.

 I gave him a few things to keep in the fish's mouth: a Jonah (who needs a face & hair - oops!), a little zebra stripped fish, an apple (why not?) and a funny little snake I picked up at Ikea.

 I knew he needed a pirate treasure chest as well. He likes pirates and he LOVES anything with keys. So I bought a little luggage lock and tied the keys next to the chest. I put some fake money from the dollar store inside, along with some jewels (from Joanne's) and a beaded necklace, although this ends up storing way more than just those items! He's only been playing with the book for about a week and already the ric rac holding the lock on is ripping off. I'll have to play around to make it sturdier. This is his FAVORITE page, so it will be getting a lot of use!

 After making Henry's book, the road was both boys favorite place to play. So I knew Jonah would need a road too. I didn't want it to be the same as Henry's so it finally hit me - the boy loves Cars (the movie) so do it up like Radiator Springs! It took a bit of work, but he really likes it! He knew right away it was Radiator Springs. I wanted to put fabric Cars cars inside the buildings, but after searching everywhere I couldn't find any that were small enough. So, as a last resort, I used stickers. They will probably get yanked off at some point, but I can easily replace them! So all the buildings open to reveal the car that lives there. I also included a Lighting McQueen car in the "garage" for him to take out and drive around.

 Jonah has always loved school buses, so I included this funny looking little bus. The door opens up and inside are some cute little children finger puppets (Ikea for $5 - score!) I wanted him to be able to practice buttoning as well, so I made the tires button on and off.

The last page is not his favorite - yet! I want him to be able to practice tying a shoe, so I found this cute little shoe idea from Pinterest. It was pretty simple to make and once he takes an interest in tying shoes, I think he'll enjoy it more.

Sequoias - Part 2

 We tried to do a few different things each day we were up in the Sequoias. There are actually a lot of really great hiking trails, nature walks and caves to see. We scoped out a few that wouldn't be too difficult for a two year old and a pregnant mommy - Jonah and Dan were in good enough shape to do anything! Dan found a great walking stick he was excited to use. But when he saw how disappointed the boys were to not have their own walking sticks, he chopped his in half with the ax and gave them each a piece. They were SO excited! We decided to visit the General Sherman tree, which is the largest living tree in the world. It was a pretty easy hike to get to it, but we were at 7000 feet elevation, so we all took it a bit easy.

 The boys with their walking sticks posing next to a "Charlie Brown tree".

 My guys hanging out in the forest.

 Part of the General Sherman Tree - it's too big to fit in one shot!

 We found this cool hollowed out part of a tree and were allowed to go into it.

 After we got to the top and saw the tree, we sat down on the cozy benches they had and enjoyed a snack.  The boys were revived and ready to run back up the trail!

 Love my boys! They wanted to hold hands and run all the way. I think it was a little over a mile!

 Trying to catch Daddy!

 One of my favorite pictures of all time!

 Jonah looking like the dapper dude next to another giant sequoia outside the gift store.

 This cave was inside the gift store. The boys had a blast running around in it pretending they were bats.

 Next, we drove to the fallen tree that you can drive your car through.

 Plenty of room!

 The boys right after we drove through the tree. They thought it was so funny!

 After driving through the tree, we came to a really cool meadow right in the middle of this huge forest. So we decided to walk around it for a bit. Since you can't walk through the meadow, there was a cute little trail that lead around it. It was so peaceful!

 My boys at Crescent Meadow

 Hamster in the Meadow

 On our way back up the path to the car, we came upon three pretty good sized bucks just doing their deer thing. They didn't seem to be bothered by us at all! In fact one of them came right down on the path and wouldn't move. Clearly we weren't going to make him, so we just enjoyed the view and got some more pictures!

 This guy came right on the path - I'm not even using a zoom lens here!

 Next, we drove over to Morro Rock - not the one in Morro Bay, a different one! It was a huge granite mountain that had steps carved into it. There were over 400 steps. It was a long way up! Henry and I made it about 2/3 the way and then pulled over in a little resting area to hang out and eat some trail mix. It scared me to death to take the boys up there but Jonah was fearless (just like his dad!) So Dan took Jonah the rest of the way up. Luckily, he said Jonah was a little concerned at how high up they were so he was listening and minding perfectly!

The Fearless Duo at the top. Jonah couldn't wait to come down and tell me about a lizard he saw at the top! So funny!!

Vacation in the Sequoias Part 1

 This year we decided to take a camping trip for our family vacation. We found a great campsite up in the Sequoias, where it was nice and cool. Since we were going the last week in August, temperature and weather were very important!  And it was only about an hour and a half from Grandma & Grandpa! So we bought a new tent and all the gear we needed, made a ton of different lists, somehow packed our car to the gills and headed up!  The boys were SUPER excited. I don't think they had a clue what to expect, but they saw all the "cool" new toys (otherwise known as Dollar Tree specials!) that were allowed to go in the dirt and they knew it had to be fun! So we got up to our campsite and set up camp. That took quite a while!  But once we were set up, it was nice and cozy. They boys had a blast getting dirty. And I mean DIRTY! As in, I didn't know it was possible to get that dirty!! There were several hiccups in our camping trip that took a little fun out of my sails, but overall the kids had a blast and will hopefully remember this as a fun experience.

 Our campsite. We knew it was near a creek but we had no idea there was a rocky cliff on one side! Not fun when you have two very active little boys racing their cars around. We lost several cars over the cliff. Thankfully Daddy retrieved them all and we didn't lose a kid over the side!

 Jonah loved this dump truck (thanks Costco!) He collected every. single. rock. in our camp. Totally not kidding. And thankfully he dumped them all right outside the front door of our tent!

 One of his treasures.

 My manly dudes.

 Dan would go on daily stick collecting hikes. He took Jonah with him down the rocky cliff to collect some bigger sticks. Jonah was elated!!

 The boys did SO good sleeping in the tent. I was a bit worried. We didn't have room to pack the pack & play for Henry so we figured he'd either sleep with us or with Jonah. Well, we put him at one end of Jonah's inflatable bed and Jonah at the other and they slept perfectly!! I took a ton of blankets (it got SUPER cold at night) and they stayed snuggly warm!

 Every night we'd go down to the little village for showers. In order to beat the crowds, we usually went around 4. Obviously no one was going to bed at 4, and we didn't want the boys to run around in the dirt after they were clean. So we put them in the tent for the night with Dan's iPad! We had some fun Peppa Pig cartoons and a few Disney movies on it. This was a huge hit! We'd make dinner, bring the boys out to eat, put them back in the tent, clean up, then we'd all watch cartoons/movies and eat snacks before bed. It was my favorite part of each day!!

 Playing with toys and watching cartoons.

 One of the days, a deer came right through our camp! It nibbled on some plants and mosied through our camp! It wasn't sacred one bit! The boys LOVED this!

And we saw a few of these.  Not quite as fun and cute as the deer! This guy was right down our rocky cliff. Made me a little happy to have a rocky cliff in our camp! Thankfully, all the campers were very aware of bears and lots of people came into our camp to watch it. The boys were still in the tent so they didn't get to see it, which meant the bear didn't see them! It was actually fine, the bear just did it's bear thing and went away.