the boy and his bapa.

[max and bapa at the lake house in the apple orchard. ]

see max. see max's bapa.

awww. nice max!

max picks many apples.

see the apple max? see the apple bapa?

look out max! look out bapa! see the apple fall! see the apple fall on max's nose.

max laughes. silly max.

bapa laughes. silly bapa.

goodbye max. goodbye bapa.

m + h jump. and a letter.

max and heather. their love for each other is always a bit of a roller coaster ride, but oh how we adore them when they are like this! their giggles are the sweetest things.

and now for the letter.

to our dear neighbors the sjobergs (the trampoline owners),

we love you. thank you for letting heather and max jump to their little hearts content every SINGLE day, usually while wearing diapers or pajamas or some other unusual clothing combination. you are the best! we always wish there was some way for us to reciprocate, but our yard just has weeds. i'm sure you could borrow max's trike..? but probably only while he isn't looking. you know how he is. sorry they always throw rocks underneath the trampoline, one of these days there is going to be a mini gravel mountain down there.

love,

the kettles.

p.s. also thanks for producing our all time favorite babysitter. we wore black and cried all day when school started again. boo.

maxth tewtow

my little dude is two and a half. TWO AND A HALF!! i can hardly believe it. really, it kills me how quickly he is growing up. i love each of his new phases, but i am so sad to see the old ones pass too.

after talking to my neighbor and deciding the kids should know their names and parents names for safety reasons, we worked on saying his name, his FULL name. or at least first and last. i think we will spring the "jon maxwell" business on him when he is a little older. anyway, we worked on it on the trampoline, we worked on it while he balanced on my hands, way up in the air, we worked on it in the tub full of bubbles (together i might add). over and over we would say,

hey dude?

what? (a word he is quite good at)

what's your name? and he would respond with

huuh? (the word for anything he doesn't know how to say or especially something he just doesn't feel like answering)

and i would continue to remind him, he would continue to almost completely ignore me, or respond with something totally unrelated. like

"uhhhh, mama tar. jaaaj. (garage) bye bye mama tar!!"

sometimes he would say just "maxth" or just "tewteow" and sometimes we would get him to pay attention and actually say it. MAXTH TEWTOW.

in the tub, he only had so many distractions and he got it down. then we moved on to my name. he started to practice saying JESSICA.

gethaaa.

it's a hard one.

JESSICA KETTLE.

yea right. he was soooo over it.

hey dude?

what?

what's my name?

MAMA. [thinking for a second]

MAMA TEWTOW.

i DIED over that one. =)

so of course when i kissed him goodnight i said,

goodnight max kettle.

NI-NITE MAMA TEWTOW.

anyway, it's late but tomorrow i MUST MUST MUST post a little 2 and a half year old update on ALL THINGS MAX.

happy weekend...

and might i suggest the salt lake city farmer's market for a little of utah's home grown goodies? we went a couple of weeks ago and got the yummiest fresh local produce. hopefully i will have time to swing by in the morning before meggie and paul's wedding tomorrow evening! i need more flowers, fresh lemonade (which didn't last long enough to photograph) and DEFINITELY more cherries. maybe we'll see each other there...

max liked the blackberries, but they were a little squishy.

he was amazed by a martial arts performing group. we probably sat in the grass eating our treats for a half hour!

of course i wanted picures of the yummies.

most delicious cherries ever.

we even ventured out and tried beets.

i was in LOVE with these zinnias...

and look how pretty they made my table!

a swell time.

we are (waah) back from sand point and we had the best time.

i hung out with my cousins and we did important things like going to dairy depot for huckleberry shakes at 11pm.

he hung out with his cousin (well, second cousin) and they did important things like jump on beds and stick their bums up in the air.

and we did important things like just be together and celebrate our 6th anniversary, which despite being in the middle of a family reunion, was super duper romantic.

i will have to tell you all about it.

i intend to blog more about the trip soon because there is so much to share, but we are so busy doing fun things that things like blogging get forgotten. but can you blame me?

pssst! and guess what? i am secretly jonesing for fall. i heart fall. i am ready to reunite with fall.

rock the vote!

just like p-diddy says on mtv. ok, while in reality, this may not technically be as important to the presidential election, in my opinion it is!! my talented friend brittany made this darling video (i LOOOOVE it) and entered it into a contest. well guess what? it made it to the top five and of course she is clearly the most deserving winner. here's where you enter in: we need your vote! if you consider yourself a good citizen and/or a supporter of democracy in general, patron of the arts, or even if you just have generally good taste* you will vote for this video HERE.

remember, it's basking in the sun by brittany asay.

Untitled from Brittany Asay on Vimeo.

* while we would hope that all you voters out there are democracy-loving-art-supporting-citizens, we will also accept votes from anarchists, art haters, anti-democratic people with generally bad taste as well. carry on now.

see ya later alligator...

we are about to get our family reunion and anniversary weekend on.

hold it. those two things sooooo should not mix.

the good news is that for our anniversary, we will be claiming the tree house.

max will be safely inside with nana.

wink!

i ran accross these old pictures of max today and they make me happy in a way i can't even explain. my sweet, sweet baby boy with chubby fingers and long hair... he is my personal version of perfection.

max the builder

weellp, it's been a hectic summer, but why not throw something else into the mix and FINISH THE BASEMENT! wahoo! we are sooooo excited! once it's done, the basement will nearly double the square footage of our house and you better believe i have big plans for all that space! a play room, big family room, a guest room and MY OFFICE! right now the office and guest room are combined, and since we have a lot of out of town guests it is a bit of a pain. 

the whole thing is framed and good think we had max pitching in. he had the BEST time! he would wake up from nap every day and say "ewwp? duys?" [translate "help guys?] he would help carry the lumber (at least he thought he was helping them), he carried boxes of nails to them, but mostly he focused on picking up pieces of their scrap wood and relocated them to his own personal pile. it was a crack up!

of course he needed his tool set:

"nailing" some wood to the door. why not?

showing off his lumber!

a much needed water break.

we all laughed so hard when we looked over to see that max added his sippy to the line up the guys drinks. he really thought he was one of the boys! good work little dude. =)

pedaling fool...

welcome to max's newest obsession: his tricycle! he can NOT get enough. he stayed up almost until midnight to see it put together and then had to sleep with it in his room that night. he just can't get enough! it comes everywhere with us. seriously. 

i was trying EVERYTHING to get max to take the perfect shot here while the sun was setting, but he threw the hugest fit. 

so we just got one of the radio flyer in all its glory.