Zoo Fun

While Emily and Jared were at camp all week last week, Connor and I made sure to keep busy doing as much fun things as we could! One of our outings was a trip to the zoo with some good friends we met at preschool.

Connor and Cody REALLY enjoyed standing at the glass and watching the walrus swim right by them. They would laugh and laugh! (Connor is the kid with the monkey hat on, which drew a lot of attention, I might add!)


There is also a new exhibit called The Scoop on Poop, and there was this photo opp:

DARN BUGS!!

We were at my aunt's house swimming in her backyard pool over the weekend. Jared wanted to lay on his towel in the grass and read his book in the sun for awhile. Suddenly we heard him shout out and start crying that the "stupid flying ant" bit him. I rushed over, and sure enough, you could see a small mark on his face where something had bit or stung him. It never swelled or welted, and although it bruised almost immediately, but never got worse than this:


The picture was taken later in the day after I slathered his face with Auqaphor because it was all dried out from the chlorine! (His cheeks were flushed because he'd been running around outside)

Whatever got him, definately gave him a good pinch/bite/sting (SOMETHING!). Four days later and the bruise mark is just as dark as it was over the weekend! I assumed it would have started to fade by now...

Tea Party

A very nice older couple lives next door to my IL's, and back when Emily was about two years old, she started calling the wife "Auntie" Adele, and it stuck! Adele was thrilled and she's been Auntie Adele ever since.

Auntie Adele's grandchildren currently live in Singapore because of their dad's work, but they have come to visit for a few weeks every summer, usually around July. My kids adore the grandchildren, and they're all pretty similar in age to each other, so it has always worked out very nicely.

To do something fun while the grandkids were visiting, Auntie Adele planned a tea party, and invited my three kiddos, along with another family they know. All the kids had such a good time, and there were all sorts of cookies and sandwiches and cupcakes to choose from.

"First Band"

Dan and one of his "band" members finally coordinated a practice of sorts over the weekend. First time since Connor got the electric guitar for his birthday from Gram and Grandpa Dan. Connor was OVER THE MOON about being allowed to go out and play one song with them before needing to come in for bed.

He was BIG-TIME rocking out!








After the song was over, I brought him inside to start getting into his jammies for bed, and he was PUMPED, loudly saying things like, "That was the awesomest night EVER!" "That was SO AWESOME!" "That was my favorite night of my life!" "I can't believe I had my first band! It was so awesome!" It was so fun to see him that excited and animated about it!

Nothing like your "first band" and the "awesomest night EVER!" to give you good dreams at night. *grin*

Now, we just have to teach him how to actually play the guitar and we're set!

Gardens Week 7

I apologize if anyone is getting sick of seeing our garden pictures, but we're very proud of the gardens, and are still enjoying seeing the changes from day to day!

Jared's garden:


Jared's bean plants are growing little flowers now!


His pumpkins have two vines that have reached the ground


AND it appears the pumpkin vines are about to start flowering (Even though Emily's pumpkin vines are MUCH smaller than Jared's, even hers have tiny little flower-to-be looking things on them):


Connor's radish greens got SO tall, that they were flopping over, digging themselves up, and dying. The only thing we could think of was to cut the greens down by half and hope for the best. So his garden looks really messy and like it's dying, but the actual radishes under the ground are finally starting to plump, so I guess we'll see what comes of it:


His carrot greens are filling in, but still no actual carrot action yet (still just TINY skinny little roots under ground)


Emily's garden:


Week 6-7 comparison:

Jared:


Connor (comparison of his carrots... Since we chopped off half the greens of the radishes, it's not a good comparison of growth any longer!!):


Emily:


PS Jared requested a lettuce/mayo/cheese sandwich for lunch, using lettuce from his own garden, and he LOVED it!

Harry Potter!! (no spoilers)

A group of 8 of us got together July 14th to have a HARRY POTTER night!!

We started about 6pm with a viewing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, while drinking Butterbeer (non-beer/non-alcoholic drink recipe we found online) and eating pizza.

At 10:15pm, we headed to the movie theater for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, timing our arrival with the 10:30pm opening of the doors for the midnight showing. We had VIP tickets, with assigned seating, so no need to arrive hours early to stand in long lines! WOO HOO!!! We walked past hundreds of other people standing in line (who WEREN'T lucky enough to have VIP tickets with assigned seating) and got our Special Edition Harry Potter 3D glasses and checked on our seats. Then we headed over to a nearby restaurant to have a drink and toast to a fun evening. We only had ten minutes before the restaurant was set to close, so my friend Stephanie and I shared a drink:


We had a good laugh later on when we looked more closely at the picture and it looks like we're holding hands or something. Hahahaha!

After we all slurped up our drinks, we headed back to our seats to wait for the start of HP7 pt 2, and modeled our lovely HP 3D glasses


For what it's worth, I did really like the movie, but it will take me a few more viewings before I can really separate it from the book and enjoy it for itself. I always get hung up on all the changes they make, and it's hard to appreciate the movie for itself until I've seen it a few times. LOL

I'm very sad that Harry Potter is over. No more books to look forward to; no more movies... The first movie came out 10 years ago, and I'd already been reading the books prior to that point. What will I do with myself?? (*grin*)

Connor tries to water ski

Connor really wanted to learn how to water ski, so our friends and Dan got him set up to try it out!

Dan putting the skis on Connor


Connor making sure he was sitting on the edge of the tube with the skis straight


Connor, seconds away from his first attempt, just before he started yelling, "I don't want to do this anymore!"


He did, however, follow through, but promptly went straight down on his face, and then got dragged behind the boat briefly because we'd told him to hang on as tight as he could to the handle, but we never bothered to tell him to LET GO IF HE ENDED UP IN THE WATER! He didn't want a second try... Until we were packing up to head home for the day, that is, and then he pitched a huge fit that he hadn't learned to ski yet. I'm sure it'll happen sooner than later!

Oldies, but Goodies

Once upon a time, Connor was a "Super Chunk" baby, with the dimpliest baby buns you ever saw: (photographed here at approx 8 months old)


Now? We get comments left and right from people about how they've never seen a young child with such defined muscles. Just about any time he's got his shirt off, and we're around people we haven't been around previously, someone will end up commenting (and sometimes even if we have been around them already, previous commenters will make repeat comments!). An old guy approached me yesterday and asked if we have him doing weight-lifting!! He's got triceps and biceps that buldge out as he walks along swinging his arms, ab muscles popping out all over the place, calf muscles flexing as he walks, back muscles rippling as he moves his arms. It's crazy! He's also already got a very broad chest that tapers to a smaller waist, like you would see on a grown man! HE'S BARELY FIVE!!! And his buns? I can't photograph them any longer, but you can take my word for it they are no longer dimply! *grin*

Gardens Week 6

Can I just start by saying that the kids and I are having SOOOO much fun with these gardens! It's fun to go out each day and see the growth, check if things are ready to be picked, etc. I wish we'd done this YEARS ago!!

Jared's garden: (we've gotten to take a few lettuce leaves for sandwiches, which I'll admit was pretty cool. Can't get much fresher than putting lettuce on your sandwich within two minutes of it getting picked from the garden!)


Look at the size of the leaves on Jared's pumpkin plant!


The greens of Connor's radishes are OUT OF CONTROL, but still no real radish action under the dirt. I need to measure the greens to be exact, but I would guess the tallest ones are a good 15-18 inches tall??? INSANE!! LOL!!


another view so you can see his carrots and pumpkins


Emily's garden:


Remember I mentioned one of the cucumber plants started growing weeks after the other ones? Here it is! Definately smaller than the cucumber plants surrounding it!


I wanted to show a good side-by-side comparison of the amount of growth in only ONE WEEK! Blows my mind!

Jared's:


Connor's:


Emily's:

Water Lilies

Emily picked some water lilies at the lake over the weekend. We put them in the cooler for the drive home, promptly forgot about them until the next morning, at which point I put them in a bowl of water (they were all closed up at this point) not expecting much to come of it, but mid-way through the next day, when the sun was shining down on them through the skylight, three of four opened up! They looked so pretty!

4th of July baseball

We spent the 4th of July weekend with some friends at their lake cabin, camping. They have a tradition every 4th of July with family and friends to play baseball at a school's ball field near their cabin. Jared was sooooo excited to participate this year!



Dan got like 2 or 3 homeruns hitting that soft ball! He nailed it clear across the field!


Connor was off playing on the big toy, and Emily and I were spectators. I took pictures of every single person at bat, and pictures of several of them outfield, but then promptly/stupidly formatted the memory card without double-checking they'd all burned to the CD I was making for our friends (most of the people there I didn't know, so didn't save THOSE particular pictures to my computer like I did the ones of the people I knew... but I was at least going to have the pictures of people I didn't know on a disk for my friend to share with those people... UGH!). I guess if I was going to lose pictures, at least it was of people I don't even know!! *grin* There ended up being two teams of 13, plus some random kids thrown in for good measure, and a good 10 people just sitting on the side, watching/cheering. Gorgeous sunny day, lots of laughs. And we all got to head back to the cabin to cool off in the lake afterwards! Couldn't have asked for a much better time!

Gardens Week 5

No pictures of week 4 because we were out of town for the 4th, and by the time I thought about it again once we were home, it was nearly time for the 5th week pictures, so I decided to just wait.

Week 5:

Jared's garden! Beans are finally getting tall enough to start vining up the trellis (with a bit of guidance from us...), his pumpkin plants are really taking off, and the lettuce is getting a tad bit fuller


Connor's garden! The greens of the raddishes have gotten CRAZY huge, but there hasn't been enough REALLY sunny days to plump the actual raddishes. Connor ate one that was about 1/2 inch wide and probably about that tall (shorter once Dan cut off the stem at the top and the stringy root at the bottom...LOL). His carrots still look pretty pathetic (sorry, had my big lense on and had to stand back too far and so you can't see them behind the raddishes), but they all survived the transplanting process, and are starting to get a bit fuller greens. His pumpkin plants aren't as big as Jared's, but are bigger than Emily's.


Emily's garden! Em's plants are slowly but surely filling in. She had a cucumber plant come up about five days ago, even though it was planted five weeks ago! She also had a butternut squash plant come up about a week and a half ago, despite having been planted weeks ago. We thought it was pretty funny they were so delayed!! Her pumpkins look pretty pathetic compared to Jared and Connor's, but they're nice and green and growing new leaves all the time, so I'm sure they'll get there eventually!


Dan let Connor pick and eat one of the raddishes before I got a chance to take a picture of the "1st harvest" so I had to make a big deal about the 2nd one! LOL It's still pretty tiny compared to what they should be, but he was so excited to get to pick it and eat it! This one is a little bigger than the 1st one he got to pick and eat. I think the LONG greens atop the TINY raddish is hilarious!

Gorgeous Girls

We finally had some summer weather roll through (consecutive days of GREAT weather, instead of just one at a time, followed by days of gloom/rain as has been the trend), so we got out the blow-up pool, invited some good friends over, and enjoyed several hours OUTSIDE IN THE SUN!


Little goofballs!

Summer bike riding

Emily was off with her Auntie Alisa and cousin Ali for the day, so I took the boys to a large church parking lot in our area and let them ride their bikes for a couple of hours. They had such a good time!

Lake Fun!

Jared kayaking for the 1st time


Connor kayaking for the 1st time


(Emily didn't want to try it)

The boys with their friends, Logan and Orion, all tied together, pretending to be a fire boat with their water squirters!


The boys getting ready to go tubing (another thing Emily didn't want to do)