Vacation, Shee-O's and Shoes

We are back from a week and a half of vacation! Needless to say we are in desperate need of schedule and normal!
Ethan did surprisingly well with the 20 hours of travel each way.

We left Saturday morning and traveled to Memphis where we stayed the night.
Sunday we traveled from Memphis to Dallas and visited Jason's cousin Rachel & her little guy. It was so great to see them and catch up!
Monday, Memorial Day, we left Dallas & Rachel for Houston. It was so HOT in Houston. I am talking 100 with dew points in the 70s. HORRIBLE!
We had one day where the humidity dropped enough to go to the zoo.

We also made a stop to the Children's museum which had a whole floor just for little guys 36 months and younger. How cool! Except mom forgot the camera. Pictures coming from Grandma soon :)

But, thankfully, we weren't there for being outside. We were there to see my cousin Jeremy graduate.

Just before we left, Ethan learned his new favorite word/thing, "shoes". The boy has figured out that we need shoes for going outside. So, now he finds his shoes, says "shoe?" walks to the door, sits down and tries to put them on all by himself!
Now that we are back, he is trying to say his favorite snack "Cheerios" but it comes out as "Shee-O?" We are definitely growing up. He also goes through phases of wanting to feed himself without any help from mom or dad but usually we have to intervene to make sure more food goes in the mouth and less to Smokey :)

Once we made it home we noticed that our recently planted garden had been feasted on by the local wildlife so Jason made sure that a fence went up right away. Two nights ago, we had a disappointed deer standing outside the fence and having a staring contest with Smokey. We may have to take more precautions to protect our food!

This week has been pretty quiet except a stop to pick strawberries which turned out a bit disappointing since it was the last day or two of picking. Looks like we'll have to stock up at the farmers market since we only got 2.5 quarts from picking. The crazy warm spring has really messed with the fruit this year.

We are also wrapping up some loose ends from previous home projects (aka, the bathroom). Jason just finished installing the bottom baseboard trim and we are going to do the touch up paint. We are hoping to paint the exterior doors in the next week or two as well. Some days it feels like home projects will never end! We hope to work on the laundry room this summer yet too since the windows are desperate for replacing. It is shaping up to be very busy but we are so blessed!