dribblin' drew

Saturday was Hannah's 2nd soccer game, and well... Drew has made a lot of progress since the first game. We have Hannah who would love more than anything to be off the field, and Drew who would love more than anything to be on the field playing.   We are thinking Drew may have a little athelete in him .. and well, Hannah has a little princess in her and would much rather be in ballet class :)

Fireman Drew

Drew's favorite toy these days is his little fire truck he loves to play with on the drive way. It even has a little fire hose on the back that he loves to squirt not only everyone that he sees, neighbors included, he likes to squirt himself. Hannah loves pushing him all around the driveway and yard while they are both full of giggles having fun.   Now that the weather has finally cooled off a little and the moquitos have tapered off, we are able to spend more time outside in the evenings having fun. Todd and I are loving those adirondak chairs, we can sit back, relax and watch them run around having fun.

Drew kept saying... " I sqwert ewe" to everyone he saw... it was pretty funny.

Hannah's 1st Soccer Game

Yesterday was Hannah's 1st soccer game. She is in the "Happy Feet" league in Roswell. Happy Feet does 1x week practice at her school, so we thought we would try this out. Watching a soccer game for a bunch of 4-5 yr olds is pretty interesting. There are 6 players on each team. There are 3 girls and 3 boys on her team. There were 2 boys that cried that entire time and wouldn't play, another girl who laid in the goal most of the game, and Hannah who ran the opposite way of the ball for the first half of the game. To Hannah's credit, they played against all boys, and some of the boys had played for a few seasons already and had moves, I couldn't believe it. Hard to imagine, but the "Eagles" lost about 30 to nothing to the "Dolphins" on Saturday, but who's keeping score anyway?

The highlight of the game is that Hannah actually made contact with the ball 2x in the game when the ball accidentally came her direction. Progress... more fun next Saturday!!!  Go Eagles!

East Cobb Parade

Today we went to our first annual East Cobb Parade.  The kids had a blast and picked up more candy than they usually get at Halloween. All the schools, clubs, and small companies marched in the parade. Hannah got a real kick out of all the cheerleaders and dancers that we saw.  And Drew, he LOVED the fire truck and the fact that we got to ride on a trolley on the way home. He sat there with a big smile on his face the whole time :) 

Little Miss Hannah was really busy gathering candy on the street, she did not miss a tootsie roll, sucker, starburst to be found... 

Here's the crew..  Blake, Drew, Hannah and Luke. Or as Drew would call him  "uke". Drew is obsessed to say the least with Blake and Luke. I think he gets so excited to have little boys to play with. In fact, Drew likes them so much, he generally greets the play dates with biting them!?  Yes, we are still working on Drew and his choppers. Wasn't he suppose to outgrow that by now?  Jen and Kurt were nice enough to have all of us over before the parade for a delicious breakfast and we could walk to the parade from their house, then off to the festival.  Thanks Jen and Kurt!

I am finding East Cobb is an interesting place to live. Or as Kurt reference today, we live in "East Snob". The people are all very friendly, no one really seems to be from here, just about every conversation you have when we meet someone starts with "where are you from" and "how long have you been here... do you like it"?    A wide mixture of places from all over the US seem to relocate to East Cobb - Marietta. Good schools, nice community, convenient to Buckhead and Midtown offices, restraints and night life ( not that I know what that is anymore) , and while the houses are more expensive here because you are paying for the good schools, it stills seems to be cheaper than where everyone relocated from, can't beat that.   People do take pride in the community, the neighborhoods and schools. We think we made a good choice!  I think Hannah and Drew will enjoy growing up here. Already learning we need to get Drew into "East Side Baseball" and Hannah into "NASA" North Atlanta Soccer Association, or perhaps we can go Atlanta style and attempt "ALTA" Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association... We'll see.. she seems most excited about cheerleaders today ?  Took me a few months here to understand the activities, places to go, and where the kids were probably be spending their time over the next 10 -15 years :) But we are getting there...  

Now.. just one more year until our next East Cobber parade :) (insert sarcasm)

Labor Day Staycation Day 3

Not Michael Vick.  Drew Steinemann here.... Football/ Hockey Player. Drew LOVES putting on helmets, imagine that... ? We went to the Children's Museum yesterday we well as the Aquarium where the kids got to have all kinds of fun. Drew had fun trying on all the sports gear for Atlanta..

Hannah was working hard learning Grandpa's favorite sport.

Fireman Drew went  fishing

Hannah was working hard on moving balls through tunnels, pipes and wheels and seeing where they landed.

All in all, a good day at the museum, but think it was maybe a little too young for Hannah, probably just right for Drew.   They had much much more fun at the aquarium where they say whale sharks, memo, dolphins and HUGE groupers as Drew would say.

And today... Dad is working really hard on making his first meal in his new smoker. He has a "butt", Brisket, and Sausage going on the smoker. The Jarrett family is coming over tonight, we are hoping no one leaves with stomach aches :) Wish us luck on our first southern style BBQ smoker style.

Go Gators! Kickoff!

It's kickoff today for the 2011/ 2012 season. Now that we are living in SEC country, thought we should kick off the season with some cheers for the Gators. Hannah and Drew love dressing like daddy :) They both do the chomp quite well, and while Drew is starting to talk a lot these days, he can very clearly articulate "gators", "albert", "football" and "chomp chomp". The boy was taught early and well for Daddy.

Drew is near impossible to get a picture of, but we tried to get the trio in here.

Don't worry Ohio, they will be sporting buckeye gear next weekend. As Hannah likes to tell us, "Mom, Dad.. I can go to any school I want to, even if it is not Ohio State or Florida right". Of course we say yes, and I quickly whisper... bulldog..... bulldog....

Go Gators, Go Buckeyes!! Hope we both have fun and winning seasons ahead!!

Labor Day Staycation Day 2

What to do when you can't get to the Fl beaches due to a tropical storm? Head to Lake Ranier Island Beach of course. After all, Hannah did tell me it was the best day of her life after we went last time, so we thought we would enjoy the lake, water park and beach one last time for the season. And it was, of course, a success. The kids loved it, it was a great family day. The picture above is of them as we were leaving waiting for Dad to get the car. I am pretty sure they could had stayed there all day if we let them!

Miss Hannah buckling up for safety. Her favorite park of Lake Lanier is the wave pool. We make her wear her life jacket in the wave pool since she tries to get as far out as she can. She seems to have out grown her fear of trying just about everything over the summer.

My Lil Drew.. well, he just likes running around and purposely falling in the sand. I don't know what to do with this little guy. You can laugh or cry with him. Never a dull moment.

And what's better than burying feet in sand. They made sure Dad's feet were covered up real fast.

Great day, and we are looking forward to going back next summer!! Maybe even stay for a weekend and take advantage of the parks and recreation areas, once the kids get a little older.

Tomorrows agenda is weather dependent. We have options of a hot air balloon festival ( intriguing), aquarium, children's museum or braves game. Gotta wait and see what the weather has in store for us, stay tuned.

Friday night fun time.

And part II of our day today we went to the pool tonight with Holly, Zach and their girls Maddie and Lilly. We are so lucky to have met them. They just moved here from Mpls as well and happen to be living about 10 houses away with Holly's parents until they move into their house in a just a few weeks. I will be quite sad to see them leave the neighborhood as it has been really fun having them just around the corner and little Maddie and Hannah have already become good friends. Their birthdays are just 4 days apart, and they are like two peas in a pod. They were a little shy with each other at first but are having so much fun now. They are only moving about 10 minutes away, so we will be sure to see them once they move.

And here are the 4 of them eating pizza, Maddie on the left, Lilly on the right, and of course Hannah and Drew. Lilly is about 4 months younger than Drew. I am pretty sure Drew scares Lilly. She is a sweet, quiet little girl.. and then there is wild and crazy Drew coming from every direction.

And finally, Drew's had a big debut tonight of jumping off the diving board. He had a crowd of about 12 people waiting for him to jump. Todd was the in water right under the board ready to catch him. He was really cute, he would stand at the end of the board and bounce saying "ready, set go" but there wasn't a "go". Took him about 15 minutes to get the courage to do it. Finally he did, the crowd cheered, and off he went, jumping off the board non stop for the next 20 minutes.

And since we are going to make the most of our missed vacation... tomorrow we are going to go to Lake Lanier again. Hannah asked me a few weekends ago when we were going to go again because "it was the best day of her life"... so, we will make the most of our lake beach instead of the real beach. And we have a list of fun things to do and see for the rest of the weekend, stay tuned. We are going exploring :)

Labor Day Weekend Staycation 2011

We are making lemons out of lemonade this weekend. As I was packing for our vacation to Destin, FL with the Renick family, I thought I would check the weather to see if I needed a sweatshirt, not knowing I was going to read out a tropical depression hovering over our beach vacation location for the entire weekend. So, after discussing with the Renicks, we decided to move our trip to Nov. It might be a chilly beach vacation by then, but we'll have fun. Better a little chilly than hurricane like conditions. Todd and I spent 3 hours online last night trying to find a last minute condo in Hilton Head with no luck. The ones that were left had good reason to be left.. ick. So.. here we are. We are going to make the most of our 4 day weekend here in Atlanta. Not what we had in mind, but day one was a hit so far. We started the day at the zoo. Hannah and Drew both loved it, and we loved that it was not crowded, no lines, and really no people in the way. We felt like we had to zoo to ourselves. Kids loved it, we loved that they loved it.

In the picture above, Hannah thought it was cool to see all the big pictures of the animals before we even walked in the zoo.

And above is our roaring lion Drew. He thought it was really funny to stick his head through those animal boards... He was there for a long time just roaring having a great time.

One room down, many more to go...

Sunroom/ family room off the kitchen. View from the kitchen.

View from the couch... if I actually had time to sit down, I would recognize this view a little better. For now, I see it as a goal I hope to one day soon reach, to sit down, relax and breathe, perhaps even turn on the tv to something other than smurfs, diego, or elmo.

We have been in our house for 3 months now. It has been a whirlwind over the last 6 months, moving here, starting new jobs, having two crazy little kids and figuring life out. We have made effort to warm up our home and decorate a little. It's hard. Something I also thought I would enjoy doing once we got settled into a home we were going to stay in. Now that reality has it, I really don't enjoy it at all. Working full time and having a 2 and 4 year old leave little time to mull through magazines for ideas and going to stores on weekends to find the perfect items. So... for now, one room at a time. I am giving myself a 3 yr goal for completion. Better than my original 6 month goal :)

Here is our latest work in progress, and quite honestly for me, the most fun room in the house to decorate. I love pink, Hannah loves pink, so pink it is. We've got all shade of pinks in there. It is hard to see, but some pretty shades of blues, greens and yellow ins the flowers to soften the pepto bismol feel you may get when you see it. Once we get all the wall decor done, I will send out updates. I love having a girly girl room... so fun.

And... soon, we are off to Destin for the weekend. I was looking forward to some beach R&R as well as spening time with the Renick family ... that is until I just saw the weather outlook for the weekend. We might be in Hurricane path and spending more time indoors than out. Hmmmmm... What time is that gator game on?