And the number one reason...

...you do not hold the cereal bag by the wrong end is:


He was EXTREMELY upset that it happened, but I told him mistakes happen and we might as well take a picture of the giant mess before we cleaned it up!

Santa, the genius

Conversation I had with Connor yesterday:

Connor: How come Santa is so much smarter than everyone else?
Me: I don't think he's smarter than everyone else. We're both pretty smart, right? What makes you think Santa's smarter than everyone else?
Connor: Well, he knows how to check the lists twice, and he knows which list is which to know who's good and who's bad, and I think that's pretty smart!
(he's got me on that one!)

And just because we're on a roll, I'll share two more funny conversations we've had with Connor recently!

Connor: Do you know how you can be really cool?
Dan: I don't know, how?
Connor: You get a really big fan and turn it all the way up.
(be honest, you weren't thinking the COLD type of "cool" were you??? I was fully expecting him to talk about having on sunglasses and wearing a rock n' roll t-shirt or something!! LOL!!!)

Connor: I know two of the letters in feet. F and T.
Me: Great job Connor! Can you hear the letter sound in the middle of the word? (as I proceed to sound the word out for him letter by letter)
Connor: I hear E!! If there was an "i" instead, would it be "fight"?
Me: Fight does have an "i" sound in the middle, but f-i-t would actually be fit, and YOU have lots of fits, don't you?
Connor: Yeah, and that's how come you know how to spell it, huh?

I ♥ this kid!

Lately, he uses that treadmill more often than I do!! He takes it so seriously, too. Gets on his workout clothes, strips off his shirt, tracks down a water bottle...

CUTE!

I have the CUTEST helper in town!


He helped his daddy clean up the patio, driveway, and yard after windstorm #2 blew through our area. He thought he was pretty hot stuff muscling that leaf blower around the yard. Gotta love a man with power tools/equipment. LOL!!!

Thanks for all your hardwork Mr. Connor! XOXO

Picture day outfit

Connor's preschool class had their individual and group pictures taken last week. Connor was so excited for picture day, and bounced right out of bed and got himself dressed (while I was totally unaware he was even up, since he usually ISN'T at that time!).


I'd had the sweater vest in mind, but the rest of the outfit needed some help. However, he was so stinkin' pleased with his choice, and I didn't want to crush any feelings OR cause a major tantrum by making demands, so I had to be VERY creative and used my persuasive "powers" to the best of my ability.

I talked him into a long-sleeved button up collar shirt that goes with the sweater vest by reminding him that Jared wore a button up collar shirt with HIS sweater for picture day, and told him that mommy really wanted the pictures to look similar on the wall. He went for it. Talking him out of the shorts was a much longer process. If it'd just been his individual picture (from the chest up, as most school pictures are), I'd have left the shorts alone, regardless of the cold temps and pouring rain; I'd have been willing to cut my losses on that one. Except, EXCEPT, it was also the GROUP picture day, which meant FULL BODY SHOT. The shorts HAD TO GO. I ended up managing to talk him into wearing the shorts the next day instead. PHEW!

Gotta love that he took some initiative, though, right?!?

Man of many talents

Connor was wearing not one, but TWO mail carrier jackets from the Clifford exhibit at the Children's Museum. And while he was wearing TWO mail carrier jackets, he was scooping up plastic food off the ground with the gardening tools from a different part of the exhibit. Dan and I had a good laugh!


He also took up some sewing


took a stab at being a truck driver


Drove a ferry


Tested out being a cashier


was a construction worker


a home-owner


a professional pouter (it was nearly time to go home and he wasn't very happy about it!)


a grocery shopping firefighter


a painter


a window washer


and a break dancer.


He was also (without photographic evidence), a firetruck driver, a bus driver, a gas attendant, a Mexican restaurant employee, a hiker, and the curtain guy in the theater area.

All in a day's work!!

Man Overboard!

Connor was "sailing" at the Children's Museum when he decided to jump ship!!


He then proceded to flap his arms around, and informed us he was swimming. Ha ha! Notice that he remembered to wear his "boat coat", and that he has it properly fastened...

A stack of bones

The boys and I decided to stack a few of Clifford's bones end on end to see how tall the bones were compared to the boys:


For the record, Connor is 2 1/3 bones tall, and Jared is 2 2/3!! *grin*

Lesson Learned!

Connor started taking swimming lessons at the YMCA this week (first time he's ever had lessons). The showers in the Family Changing Rooms have both a regular over-head shower nozzle and a hand-held nozzle. There's a knob to turn to choose which one you want to use. After one of his lessons, I stood in the shower, carefully aimed the hand-held nozzle away from me, then turned on the water to test the temperature to shower Connor off with. Instead of the water coming out of the hand-held nozzle, which was aimed away from me, it came out from the over-head nozzle, which was aimed STRAIGHT AT MY FACE!!! FREEZING cold water blasted down all over my face, hair, and arms as I tried to protect myself, and I scrambled to turn the water back off. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!! My hair toweled off without much evidence of having gotten wet, and somehow, my legs escaped being more than just mildly damp (nothing really even noticeable visually), my face towel-dried, but my shirt sleeves were SOAKED. Thankfully, it was a dark shirt and pretty thin, so it didn't show too much and dried rather quickly!

You'd better believe I plan to more carefully check whether the water is set to come out of the hand-held nozzle or the over-head nozzle from now on!!!!

FYI, Connor has only had two days of swim lessons so far, and he's done fantastically! He sticks his face in when they tell him to, jumps in when they tell him to, etc. I'm very impressed!! His siblings weren't cooperative AT ALL at his age. I guess the difference is that Connor has been asking for lessons, instead of us forcing them on him like we did his siblings... LOL When Connor puts his mind to something, he follows through, so I've no doubt he'll be swimming in the near future!!

Swim lessons

Between Emily and Jared, we've spent many a fall evening, and many a summer morning, at the local high school pools, paying lots of money, and getting very little results (less to do with the quality of the lessons, and more to do with the willingness--or lack of willingness--on the part of my children). We ended up taking a long (two year) break from swim lessons, hoping maybe as the kids got older, they'd have more of an interest in learning how to swim, and we'd get better results for our money.

Fast forward two years, and Connor started expressing an interest in having lessons (due to the disasterous attempts with his older siblings, we've never actually tried him in lessons yet). After a few weeks, he was still pushing the idea of having swim lessons, so we decided to take him seriously and signed him up at the YMCA and signed up for lessons (we picked the YMCA over the local high school pool programs because he can do morning swim lessons before heading to afternoon preschool, which saves us from having MORE evening activities for now!). He didn't love gymnastics, soccer season was torturous (for us) and he didn't love it either, and swim lessons seemed as good as anything else to try out.

He had his first lesson yesterday, and he did GREAT. He was full of smiles, he was a good listener, was cooperative, and patient. He did everything the swim teacher asked him to do (including sticking his face in the water AND laying on his back in the water with his ears below the surface of the water). AND... AND, he even happily jumped into the water into his swim teacher's arms!!! I was BLOWN away. This was night and day from how swim lessons with Emily and Jared went (typically, lots of crying and loud refusals to put faces near water or jump off the edge, etc). It was also night and day to how he behaved in my friend's pool over the summer (screamed bloody murder and clung to my arm while I attempted to show him that he could float in the water while wearing a life jacket).

When Connor puts his mind to doing something, he typically goes right ahead and does it, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he charged forth and fully participated today. I'm still a little nervous about how his next class will go, but yesterday's was a huge success, and I was/am ONE SERIOUSLY PROUD MAMA!!! GO CONNOR!!!

Pumpkin Patch

Connor's preschool class got to visit a cute little farm about a half hour away from where we live last week. They got to have a little hayride, then pick some apples off the actual trees, dig up some carrots, choose a small pumpkin, and then got to feed some bread to the chickens! The kids had a BLAST!





Connor has hauled his pumpkin all over the house, proudly showing it off to anyone and everyone who will listen (and since we haven't had many visitors, he's had a very grudging audience of older siblings who are sort of at the "WE KNOW, WE KNOW!" stage at this point...LOL).

We had hopes of getting the entire family to a pumpkin patch this year (something I don't believe we've done since Connor was just a few months old), but we never ended up with a good weekend. I guess we'll be buying pumpkins from the grocery store again this year (and that's assuming there's even any left!).

At least Connor got to go with his preschool class!

The good, the bad, and the ugly

I'll start with "the bad, and the ugly" by telling you a brief story:

Once upon a time, (three years ago, to be exact), someone stole a piece of equipment from Dan's company. Dan was recently alerted to it's presence on Craigslist and contacted the police, who pretty much told him they have more important thing to deal with.

**Really? Someone reports they've found their stolen property listed on the Internet, and you can't be bothered to help them recover it??**

It was listed FAR cheaper than it's actually worth, so Dan's bosses gave him the "okay" to just go ahead and buy it back, which he did. He bought it on his way home from work last week and had to bring it home with him until heading back to the office the next day.

Which brings us to "the good." Connor and Jared LOVE construction equipment, and thought this machine was about the coolest thing ever.

You can't really tell, but CJ's all seatbelted in, and he's obviously having a great time!!

Fisher-Price Little People

We acquired our first Little People set when Emily turned one and we got her the zoo set. She LOVED it, and we quickly ended up with several more sets. Once Jared was born and was having his first Christmas and birthday, we ended up with a few more, and then Connor came along, and we ended up with yet a few more.

Little People have taken over our playroom.

Recently, several months had gone by and the Little People had gone seriously neglected, so I started to brainstorm what we should do with the sets (sell them on Craigslist? Give them to my baby niece? Donate them to Goodwill? ETC?). I hadn't really figured out officially what to do, when suddenly, Connor made the decision for me:


We're keeping them! For awhile longer, at least. Connor hooked several of the sets together into a little town, and sat in the middle for TWO HOURS, playing quite happily. Then he begged me let him leave them out so he could play with them again the next day. Which he did. And the next, and the next... We could certainly use the space the shelves by getting rid of the Little People sets, but I refuse to part with anything that will keep Connor entertained for that amount of time, even if several months DO go by between use! LOL

Splish Splash

One of my major complaints about the house we live in is that the driveway doesn't drain properly when it rains (there's a low spot that collects water), but it was hard to find complaint with the puddle yesterday when Connor was having so much fun!





The look on his face CRACKS ME UP!


Calling it a puddle is a bit of an understatement; it's more like a small POND... We jokingly refer to it as Lake ___________ (our last name). LOL!

Super Powers

Connor has super human strength, I've decided. How many four year old kids can lift their own body weight without breaking a sweat? And how many kids can then hold themselves in that position for a decent length of time?

At a local playground, Connor wasn't tall enough to see through the telescope, so he reached up, grabbed onto it, and pulled himself up so he could see through it; then he held himself there for quite some time. It wasn't a prolonged struggle to get all the way up either, he whipped himself right up without even attempting to use his legs for help. It was amazing!

Connor's 1st day of preschool

Connor had his 1st day of preschool yesterday. He was "so uh-cited"!!


There are so many A, B, and C names in his class that in alphabetical order, he's further down the row of cubbies than Emily and Jared ever were! Crazy! You can see there is an S name that uses the cubby in a different class...




He had a great day and actually even sang songs and did the hand gestures at circle time!! AND he volunteered to sing the ABC's to his teacher infront of the rest of his class (he didn't sing it very well but he was willing to attempt it, which is major progress)!!! This is huge!!!!

Mutton Busting

Jared did some mutton busting (sheep riding) at our local fair last week! He was REALLY nervous and tearful at the last second, but he finally decided to go ahead and go through with it. His ride lasted for 2.37 seconds! He had decided to back out initially, then after they held the awards ceremony for the kids that participated, he changed his mind, so they went ahead and let him go. His time would have gotten him a 3rd place medal, but since they'd already held the ceremony, he was out of luck. The photographer had also already left the arena by the time he took his turn, so I wasn't able to purchase any photos of his ride. I DO have some video from my own video camera, but I don't currently have a way to get it off my video camera and onto the computer to share. AND, the guy that opened the gate ended up being in the way for a lot of it, too, because I expected him to move left after opening the gate, but he stayed right. At least I have SOMETHING. Jared was very stone-faced/traumatized looking immediately afterwards, but he spent the rest of the night vocally wishing he was younger so he could do it again next year (age 6 is the cut off and he'll be 7 the next time the fair rolls around).

Connor was paid for and all geared up, but he screamed and took off running when they called him for his turn. He wants to try again next year, but I'm not sure I'm willing to pay the $10 again. They don't return your money if your kid refuses to go!

SOCCER!!

The boys both had their first-ever soccer games over the weekend. They were SO EXCITED!

Connor is in a little preschool league where they have practice and games in the same 90 minute block of time each weekend, and teams only have 5-6 kids each. Typically the coaches are parents of the preschoolers, but they couldn't get enough parents to sign up, so they hit up the high school for volunteers. Connor has to two high school soccer players for coaches, which he thought was pretty neat!

They started the kids off with some stretching:


Then they moved into some soccer warm-ups, such as toe taps on the ball:


After some running warm-ups, the game began!

Connor was totally FEARLESS in going after the ball, taking it away from other people, and didn't hesitate charging into the group to help his team:








The problem is that while he totally has the personality for the sport, he had zero idea what the whole point of the game was, so after he'd gain possession of the ball, you were likely to see him doing things like this: (putting his foot on the ball so no one else could kick it away, and giving them all the stink eye! LOL!)


And sometimes if he couldn't make it go quite where he wanted it to, he'd reach out and pick it up and set it down where he wanted it. LOL! I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him and all the other little kids running around on the field with no rhyme or reason. Talk about FUNNY, and totally ADORABLE!

Jared's team has been practicing once a week since August, but this was their first game. For the first game day of the season, there was actually a Jamboree, where each team got to play three short games instead of one regular one.

Jared has a much more timid and hesitant personality compared to Connor and he spent a large chunk of his time doing things like this:


and this:


and this:


and this:


AND this:


And even this: (and we BEGGED him not to have his shirt tucked in, but he went totally OCD over it and it bugged him so much we finally gave him and let him wear it however he wanted... LOL!)


Towards the end of the 2nd game of the Jamboree, he started feeling a bit more confident and did some running with the group of kids (he hung towards the back, but at least he was moving!)


Then he got a tad more into the thick of things, but you can see on his face that he's still unsure of it all:


Same with this one, though I'm not sure how well you can see in the reduced size. Jared's looking off to our right, and ever other kid is looking off to our left. He's running along, but only because the other kids are; he's not making any real effort to get into the game.


His team-mate scored a goal!


GO JARED! He's getting the hang of it:


For the 3rd game, the other team didn't have enough players, so they asked for kids from J's team to volunteer to be on the red team instead. One of his good buddies was on the red team, so J volunteered. The red shirt turned him into a whole new kid; look at him go!


It was a LONG day, but it was great seeing the boys out on the field, having a good time. I look forward to seeing what the rest of the season brings for them both.

I'm also investing in a golf umbrella, because I can't expect the gorgeous sunny day we had over the weekend to last throughout much more of the season!!!

The proof is in the picture

Connor had a powdered donut for breakfast

Fun with the boys

On Tuesday, the boys and I went rollerskating in the morning with some friends (I never could get all three little boys together for a picture, but at least got my two!)


After rollerskating, we went to the zoo. Jared has been bugging me to take him to see the polar bears (his favorite animal) for WEEKS, but it just hasn't work out. We made a special trip just for him...and the polar bears were sleeping where you could barely even see them. LOL (which means we'll need to take another trip again soon so he can see his "polies")

We did see a deer wandering around (not within the zoo, but near the parking lot and entrance)


And we got to see the baby tigers (can you see the top of the one's head behind the mom?)




Emily and Connor and I had been at the zoo the week before and the babies and the mom were right up against the glass and the babies were jumping all over the place, but of course, I didn't have my camera last week!

We saw the Clouded Leopards (which are usually snoozing WAY up high in their enclosure, but were actually laying down on the ground this time)


I think the big cats are so pretty!!!

We saw huge fish in the aquarium:


And we saw a cute Gibbon, who I'm convinced was posing for the camera!


And we saw much, much more! The boys had a great time and were EXHAUSTED at the end of the day.