State of the Family #39

 Once again, I lack in my blogging skills.  Lots of fun going on in this family over the last month. I had to go through my pictures to remember everything that we did.

Pouting about the noisy fireworks

Mr. Pyro and Miss Firecracker having fun iwth smoke balls

Of course it started off with lots and lots of activities for the 4th of July and we had fun gatherings with friends and had a good time at the activities in DeWitt.  There were inflatables, a parade, outhouse races, and awesome fireworks.  We had some of our college friends down one evening and had a great time catching up.  Miss Thumb Sucker was not impressed by fireworks and was quite comical to watch when they were going off around her.  Noisy Man is a pyro like his father and will become quite dangerous in his preteen and teenage years. I am afraid. 

We had a fabulous trip to the Henry Doorly Zoo with Mommy's best friend and her adorable Daughter I.  The play day had been in the works for over 2 months and had to be rescheduled over 5 times before we finally made it.  It was worth the wait though, as all time with her is!  We even got to see them twice that week, since we got to celebrate I's 2nd birthday with her later that weekend.  What a treat!

T-ball season finished up the 2nd week of the month and I have to say I am a little bummed.  The games were a lot of fun and the kids always had so much fun with them.

Family vacation came smack in the middle of the month, but I'll post all our fun adventures from that on another post or this one will be 10 pages long!

Since vacation we have had fun swimming, watching daddy shoot skeet or trap or whatever they call it, out at the gun club and lots of fun park play dates.  We have also been having a great time enjoying all of our garden produce.  We have a pelethora of zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers and cherry tomatoes!

Last week was our county fair.  Cousins C, L and R always come down for that week and it was like a whole other family vacation, but at home.  We went swimming with them, rode all the rides at the fair, went roller skating (which was a disaster) and went tubing.  Again, lots of late nights but well-behaved kids minus the roller skating fiasco.  I guess it is just pretty hard for tired 3 and 5-year-olds to roller skate.  They were too tired to try very hard so they just got frustrated and mad.  Miss Firecracker surprisingly did better than Noisy Man, especially attitude-wise.  There was a miscommunication in who was coming skating and we found out too late that there wouldn't be anyone to hang out on the side-lines with Miss Thumb Sucker.  We also found out we couldn't just skate around holding her, which was our back-up plan.  So she was miserable stuck sitting on the outside of all the fun with nothing to do, always wanting the parent that was out on the roller rink floor. 

All of the kids had a blast riding all the rides at the fair.  Daddy was a little more daring than mommy's comfort level with the rides he let them do, but mommy ended up being the worry wart, as they always got off every ride with huge smiles on their faces, asking to do it again.  It was so gosh darn hot that we really didn't get to fully enjoy the fair like we do most years.  We skimmed through the animals and such, but never even made it inside all the 4-H and vendor exhibits to check everything out.  Mommy was pretty bummed by this as these are usually her favorite parts of the fair.  Mommy and the kids snuck out one morning while the daddy's were golfing and looked at the rest of the animals and watched a bit of the horse show, but the exhibit places weren't open yet.

This is the caterpillar that Noisy Man caught on one of our green bean plants in the garden.  Just 2 days after its captivity it made a chrysalis in his bug cage and came out, of course, a beautiful butterfly.  Daddy said it was a black monarch.  This is the pic we got just before we let it go.  It was quite the summer science lesson as we got lots of books from the library on caterpillars and butterflies.

Now we are to the end of July already and it is only 3 weeks before Noisy Man starts his first day of Kindergarten.  I am not sure I am ready for that, minus the fact that I can go grocery shopping with only one child instead of three. 

Noisy Man had been begging to do a lemonade stand for quite some time. 
Finally, we had time to get it done.  He made $7, just enough to mail a
 shoebox for Operation Christmas Child!

State of the Family #14

When I started off these SOF's I figured they would be in between other random posts that I made up time in my head that I had to type. . . now it seems I struggle just to get these in here for the preservation of my memories. I am finding this will be a good thing to have in the future as I struggle to remember just what we did over a week!

Miss Thumbsucker's sleeping habits have once again declined. . . but that is enough whining about that. I am sure you all get tired of hearing about my lack of sleep. She is now determined to figure out this mobility stuff. She wants to crawl and stand up so badly. She will lean over on her hands from sitting up and get to her knees, but that is about it. When she tries to go anywhere it usually ends in a nose dive and belly flop. Which her belly is still her least favorite place to be. It is quite comical to watch her in the process of trying though. She also really wants to be able to stand up next to something. If she gets your fingers, she can pull herself up, but hasn't quite got the strength to grab onto other things and get on her feet yet. Plus, if she did, she is still very wobbly and would probably fall over or smack her chin/face on the side of whatever she grabbed onto. She thinks whenever she is standing she is in her jumperoo and can just bounce. I guess she'll have to learn not to do that the hard way.

Miss Firecracker is totally into pretend play the last few weeks. Whenever she and her brother (or any other child) are playing, the scenario always starts off "I the mommy and you the baby." Or some other type of role assignments. She is usually the mommy though so that she can boss whoever she is playing with around. Every once and a while she will decide to be the baby so that they will wait on her hand and foot. She is ornery, but she isn't dumb. I tell you, this girl will be the end of me. I can't quite decide if she is going to be a princess girl or a tomboy at this point though. I really don't think she'll pick either. She is whichever the moment calls for. Princess factor: When getting ready to go to the fair last week, she made me get her a new pony tail holder because the one I had didn't match the bow that was going over the pony. Tomboy factor: She rocked the hay bale jumping at G'ma and G'pa's this weekend along with riding the horse that she refused to get off!

Noisy Man had a blast this last week while cousins Caleb and Lane were in town for the Gage Co Fair. There were cows and pigs and horses and carnival rides and ice cream and swimming and hay bale jumping and horse riding and doing chores with G'pa and daddy and so much more his head is probably still swimming! Speaking of swimming, this kid is going to give me a heart attack. Three days in a row this kid has had 3 different lifeguards on the edge of the pool or lifeguard stand, ready to jump in and get him. Until they see how calm mom is about it and wait just a second more before they actually jump. OK, so I shouldn't be calm about it, but when it happens almost every time we are in a pool and it doesn't bother him at all. . . I don't have too much to worry about when I know I (or someone) can reach him fairly quickly. It really does him a little good to be scared by it just a touch. Now if only he WOULD be scared by it. Lets see, Monday he jumped off the tot dock in the YMCA pool when the swim teacher was out swimming with his sister. I had to yell at her to go grab him. Tuesday, he tried to jump into his swim ring while it was in the water rather than wearing it while jumping in, and missed the ring. I was about 10 ft away so it took me a few strides in 4 ft water with Miss Thumbsucker on my hip to get to him. And Wednesday, he flipped the tot dock over while the swim teacher was once again helping his sister. This is why we are in swim lessons. The kid HAS to learn how to swim before he kills one of us!

Daddy had flashbacks to his very hot fair days this last week when G'pa started talking about Noisy Man showing lead line horses next year. But he had a blast riding the rides with his kids on the midway. . . once again, still a kid at heart when it comes to carnival rides. He has also surprised the heck out of me waking up 2 nights in a row to Miss Thumbsucker's crying and actually going to settle her down for me. It was a very nice surprise!

I have been trying to catch up on housework and laundry all week from being gone so much for the fair and other family activities since everyone from the VW clan was around this weekend. I still have a ways to go. I also majorly slacked in the workout dept. so I am trying to catch up there as well. I am TOTALLY loving my new Nike + system for my ipod though. It rocks! I have successfully upped my running pace to a 10 min mile though! This is up to a 5 mile run, so we'll have to see if I can keep that pace up for a 10K I am thinking of doing next weekend. I haven't done a 10K since the beginning of June so I am excited to get into it again.

Here are some pics from the fair!