Catching Up Again

I'm behind on blogging... again. I know I had better get myself caught up before Jake's big birthday next week and Christmas shortly after that. So this will be brief.

Here's Jake after enjoying some yogurt one morning for breakfast. This may have been the day I give him his own small spoon to try out. He likes to try it and knows what to do with it, but doesn't have the motor control yet to actually scoop food and get it to his mouth.

A couple of weeks ago I took Zach and Drew to the club to make gingerbread houses. It was fun to get some time with just them and me, as I don't often get that. We met up with our friends BJ & Susan, who were their with their girls, Anna and Lucy, and their nieces and nephew and Susan's parents. We all had a great time.

Drew working hard.

Mike grew up with Susan and her family, and we have hung out with Susan's sister's family before (most recently on Halloween), so the kids were all pretty comfortable with each other. Zach and Jon, who is just a year younger than Zach, had fun discussing and comparing their houses.

I made sure to get a picture of Zach and Drew with their houses. I am happy to report that I have finally let go and no longer feel the need to help the boys have pretty, symmetrical houses. It was very relaxing to sit back and just watch them make their masterpieces exactly as they wanted them.

We went straight from the club to the mall so I could run a couple of errands, and Drew had a tough time following directions and ended up not getting to play in the play area with Zach. That was fun, sitting outside the play area with Drew, who was very mad at me, while Zach played in the terribly crowded play area mostly to make a point to Drew about me meaning what I say.

Jake continues to show similarities to both Zach and Drew. He loves balls and throwing them (like Zach), and most recently, he likes to push cars along (like Drew).

Drew and Jake even pushed cars together one day last week. Drew constantly is driving cars, and on this particular day, suddenly Jake grabbed one and crawled off after Drew with it. It was pretty sweet to see them play together.

For Thanksgiving we spent the day at Mike's mom and step-dad's house with his parents, his grandpa, and his brother Colin. We always do our Christmas with Curt & Linda on Thanksgiving. Here's Zach displaying one of his new gifts.

And Drew with a funny look on his face.

Pa and Curt seemed to be getting a kick out of this new remote controlled car one of the boys got.

Jake modeled his new reindeer hat for us.

Over the holiday weekend we got our tree put up. Zach and Drew were very excited to decorate it. They put most of their ornaments all in one area on the tree, so later I had to move some. Now the ornaments seem to be shifting up on the tree, so that Jake can't reach any of them.

After the tree was decorated, it was sit-on-Dad time.

Zach had Fine Arts Night at school last week. Here he is lined up with his classmates at the start of the show.

He had a special job of playing rhythm sticks (I think that's what they're called) for one song. That strikes me as a little funny, because during another song, the kids sang and clapped out a beat to the tune of We Will Rock You, and Zach appeared to have no rhythm whatsoever. He was constantly either behind or ahead of the rest of the class. It was quite funny and cute.

Here are Zach and his best friend Ximen (pronounced Shi-men). Ximen lives just a few houses up the street from us, and they ride the bus together and are in the same class. If Zach doesn't walk in the door after school and ask if he can play at Ximen's house, then I know something is wrong. Actually, I don't think that has ever happened. He and Ximen love to play together.

Speaking of Ximen, Zach brought home a bunch of stuff from his writing folder a couple of weeks ago, and the paper pictured below was one such item.

You may not be able to see the writing very well, but it says, "Frum Skye," at the top and "Ximen in love with Zach," down on the lines. It's hard to read because it's written in purple ink and because the paper is very wrinkled, as Zach took it from me when I asked him about it and crumpled it up. He then was nearly in tears about it, saying that there are 2 girls who are "really mean" and make fun of him and Ximen. Then I asked if he likes Ximen, and he insisted he didn't, thinking I meant like like, when really I just meant like. When I got that point across to him and he answered that yes, he likes Ximen (as in he enjoys her company and playing with her), I told him it doesn't matter then what anybody else says, and that if he and Ximen like playing together, they should. It was one of those sweet and somewhat heart-breaking moments that I know we'll have more of, where Zach gets teased about a girl. My little boy is growing up.

Not sure I like the autocorrect on this new computer. If there are weird words in places that don't seem right, I blame it on autocorrect.

I'm Back! For Real This Time

Wow, it's been a while. Let me explain- our hard drive on our computer crashed and we weren't sure we had all of our pictures. I thought I had been backing things up to our external hard drive, but apparently I wasn't doing it correctly, so they weren't there. A few days of panic, despair, and tears ensued, with us believing we had lost all the pictures from 2008-2009 (including Drew's birth and first year of life), but through Snapfish and this blog, I believe we'll be able to recover most of those pictures. Whew. However, the past month has been incredibly busy and transferring things to the new computer has been a total pain. In addition to the pictures, our iTunes library has required a lot of work. We were able to recover all of the songs we had purchased over the years on iTunes, but all of the songs we'd downloaded to our song library from our own CDs have to be reinstalled, so Mike has been doing a few CDs each night, trying to get us caught up. Technology is wonderful until it fails, right?

So much has happened in the month that I've been AWOL. We've gone from a 2007 MacBook to a 2011 MacBook Pro, and with the updated iPhoto and everything else, I'm still getting used to everything. So I have no idea how these photos will upload to the blog. I may not get them in order, so just bare with me. One thing is for certain- I can now upload 5 pictures to Blogger in a fraction of the time it used to take me to upload 3 pictures. Amazing.

Jake loves to climb. He is constantly trying to climb up on anything and everything. Recently, Mike was with him and he did this.

Here are some oranges I carved for the boys right around Halloween. I first scooped out all the flesh inside, cut it all up, carved the faces, and then loaded the orange pieces back in. The boys loved them. I did them a second time the night we went trick-or-treating and made different faces for all 7 kids.

Who needs toys when you can play in a plastic bin or with pots, pans, and a wooden spoon.

A couple of weeks ago we got our first snow. It was only a few inches- 3 to 5, maybe, but Zach and Drew were so excited. They were both out there in their snow gear before Zach's bus picked him up at 8:20. I joined Drew after I put Jake down for his nap around 9:00, and we stayed out until after 10:00.

Before going down for his nap, Jake enjoyed Drew throwing snow at him.

When I went outside, I asked Drew if we should make a snowman, and he said, "Yes! The snow is perfect because it's very wet and sticky!" So we made this lovely little guy with crazy acorn eyes.

For Mike's birthday, he treated himself to a very nice putting green in the basement. So now everybody's putters are down there, and they are one of Jake's favorite toys to play with. As I posted on Facebook, I guess it's just an innate desire for Burggraaf boys to want to hit a little white ball with a stick, because Jake could do it all day long. I'm still waiting for the first time he swings the club and whacks himself, a dog, the wall, or, most likely, me.

When Jake isn't hogging their putters, Drew and Zach like to practice their short game, too.

Mike and I went to the Zac Brown Band concert recently with our friends Troy & Jen and BJ & Carey. Going into the concert, we actually only knew 1 song by this group (we're not big country music listeners), but we like that song a lot, and we knew that given the company we'd have, it'd be a good time. And it was. Great music; not too twangy. I like how a lot of country songs tell a story, and Zac Brown didn't disappoint me with some of his.

Here are Troy and Mike, with Mike wearing Troy's daughter's hat. Oh, wait, I think that's actually Troy's hat. Gotta love a cowboy hat with Mike's purple golf shirt.

Troy & me before the concert.

Carey and Mike before the concert.

Drew, Jake, and I have a standing date on Monday's at the grocery store. Last week Drew didn't feel like pushing his own little cart, and the truck carts just don't work because they all have broken seat belts where Jake needs to sit. So after walking for a bit, I convinced Drew to just ride up top with Jake. Our normally 1 hour + grocery trip only took 45 minutes. I think maybe Drew will be riding up top a lot more often. At one point, towards the end, I looked up to see Drew kissing Jake on the head. The next thing I knew, Jake kept leaning on Drew, snuggling up to him. It was very sweet. You can tell this is towards the end of the trip and that Jake was near the end of his rope because he has his binky, which I usually only give to him at nap and bedtime.

Wow, the order is definitely messed up. Anyway, here are Zach and Drew at trick-or-treat night at Living History Farms. They went with Mike a couple of days before Halloween, and I stayed home with Jake.

Zach got to have a special outing with Dad the next day to the Hawkeye game, just the two of them. Lucky for Zach, it didn't rain on them this time, and the Hawkeyes won. I think he really enjoyed the one-on-one time with Dad and felt like a big kid, getting to sit with Dad, Uncle Will, and Will's brother Rob.

The cabinet locks are out! Jake loves to open the cabinets and see what he can find. I have a feeling it's only a matter of time before he figures out how to get the locks off. Then we're in trouble.

Sometimes I don't lock the pantry. It's ok, because for the most part, I don't care if Jake empties it out. The only problem is that he has a tendency to grab the bag of pretzels and sort of mash them up, and that's not so good. Last week while I was busy getting Drew and Zach breakfast before school, Jake got into the cabinet and was exploring. The next thing I new, he out out he bunnies and was having a little pre-breakfast snack.

Jake continues to expand his palate. One recent hit was basic spaghetti (only we rarely use actual spaghetti noodles).

Jump back a few weeks. Zach, Drew, and I carved pumpkins.

They both wanted scary faces, and they told me the shapes to make the eyes and nose, and how many teeth they wanted. We roasted the pumpkin seeds and they were perfect this year. YUM! We didn't carve the pumpkin Zach grew out in our backyard because it was still a little green. We've now picked it, but haven't done anything else with it. I should do something with it, but I'm not sure what.

Here are the boys on Halloween. Last year at Target we bought a couple of costumes after Halloween for 50% off, and Zach picked a fairly expensive Hulk one that I told him he could get only if he used it for Halloween this year. At the time he agreed, but over the course of the last year, I felt kinda bad about making that deal. However, I didn't want to buy another costume, so I was thankful that when I suggested being Marvin McNutt (one of Zach's favorite Hawkeye football players), Zach was totally on board. Drew originally wanted to be Buzz Lightyear, but again, I was loath to buy a Buzz Lightyear costume, so I suggested being a firefighter and having Jake be his dalmation, and he loved that idea. Another bonus for me- we already had both costumes! So, we spent zero dollars on Halloween costumes this year- yippee!

We went over to our friends BJ and Susan's house on Halloween and trick-or-treated with their girls, Anna and Lucy, and with Susan's sister's family. Here are the boys with Lucy and Anna as Supergirls.

And here's the whole trick-or-treat crew. Drew as a fireman, Kate as Dora the Explorer, Zach and Jake, Lucy, Anna, Abbey as Supergirl, and John as the Green Lantern (??).

The kids had a blast trick-or-treating. Abbey (6.5 years), Zach, John (5 years), and Anna (4 years) were fast and ran from house to house, while Drew was sort of in the middle, and Kate and Lucy (both 2 years) took up the back. Drew was so cute. At each house, he'd stop on the porch after getting his candy, turn to me, and shout, "MOM! MY FAVORITE! A ________!!" It didn't matter what it was; it was his favorite each time. Then, whereas the older kids would bolt off the side of the porch and run across the lawn to the next house, Drew would walk down the steps, take the walkway to the driveway, walk down the driveway to the sidewalk, and go to the next house. At one point I finally told him, "Drew, it's ok if you cut across the lawn tonight." He was just so sweet and had so much fun.

Jake was a very good sport, too.

Jake turned 11 months old on Nov. 10. At 11 months, he is just such a fun little thing. He loves to clap and shake his head when we say no. He's inquisitive and seems to really be figuring things out. He loves to see how things work. He also seems to have a bit of Drew's dramatic side (sigh).

Great, blue font. Sorry. Jake isn't walking yet, but he stands so well without holding on. Zach and Drew seemed to walk before they really felt very comfortable standing for long periods without holding on, so this is different. He did take 2 steps the other day, but nothing more than that. I think he'll be walking soon, but I don't know if it will be before his first birthday in a couple of weeks.

Here's Jake copying the silly face Drew used to do. I love it!

Ok, sorry for the absolutely unorganized, random post. I hope to get back to regular posting soon and maybe things will actually be in order again.