Happy 4th of July!

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July (or a Happy Birthday party for America, as Adam would say). He thought we were going to America's house yesterday as we were driving to our party. We had a wonderful time yesterday with a group of people from church. I volunteered to bring the dessert, so I spent some time Monday researching on the internet for the "perfect" 4th of July dessert. There were several sites that had a cake with strawberries and blueberries on it in the shape of a flag, but I personally don't like fruit and cake together, so I wanted something else. I found a site with an Uncle Sam hat made out of a 13x9 pan, which I thought would be perfect. I'm including a picture of how it turned out. I thought it was cute.

Before we left for the party, Adam wanted a baseball cap like Beaver (we have cable for 6 months on special, so Adam and I have been watching Leave it to Beaver on TVLand). On the prior day's episode, Beaver was in PE and couldn't hit the baseball, so he moved his hat around and was doing silly things so the kids would laugh at that instead of the fact that he couldn't hit a baseball. Anyway, Adam put the hat on and immediately moved the brim around like Beaver. I thought it was cute...not sure if Beaver should be his role model...but at least there were always consequences to his actions on the show :-).

The boys had a great time at the party (as did Dan and I). There was a tree fort and a rope swing for Adam to play on with all the other kids and Andrew loved walking around everywhere. It was a little more difficult at this party...since this was the first time Dan and I couldn't rotate watching Adam and socializing...since we now had to watch both kids. I don't know how people with more than 2 kids do it!! I'm going to include a few pictures at the party, too.

More Birthdays!

May, June and July are very birthday intensive months in our families...2 birthdays in May, 4 in June, and 5 in July. So, we have lots of birthday parties! We visited Dan's family this weekend to celebrate his mom and his nephew's birthdays. Since Dan's mom normally makes everyone else's birthday cake, I volunteered to make her cake, so she wouldn't have to have a store-bought cake. I didn't have time to buy roses at the cake decorating store (like I usually do...I really need to learn how to make them myself), so I bought a stencil that allowed me to make some vines around the edge of the cake. I thought it turned out really cute (and so did Dan's mom). The boys had lots of fun, as usual, with their cousins, and Andrew showed off his new walking skill to the family. I'm including a few pictures from the party (as well as the cake).

Andrew is Walking!!

Andrew has officially entered toddlerhood!! He actually took his first steps about two weeks ago when my parents were in town (what are the odds they'd get to witness that...plus his first tooth..when we only see them a couple of times a year at the most). Well, last weekend, Andrew's cousins were visiting and they loved walking around holding his hand, so he got lots of practice walking. So, he was able to take a couple of steps together. Now, he's walking across the kitchen. He can even take turns and stand up without having to pull up. We're in trouble now...I guess I'll have to figure out what to do when Adam's running one way and Andrew's running the other...because I won't be surprised if Andrew's running next week :-).

Sprayscape

I'm finally getting to the millions of pictures that we took while my parents were here. On their last day, it was 92, so we decided to go to a park that has a "Sprayscape". Both the boys had a great time...and my dad a good time carrying Andrew through the water. Mom and I were able to sit in the shade under a tree and watch the boys.

It's funny...the first time we came here was last summer with our Homebuilders group (a parenting group at church), and Adam didn't really like to get the water in his eyes (just like in the pool and in the bath), but this time, he didn't care at all...he was soaking wet! Andrew has never minded water in his face, so he thought it was fun, too...although he gave almost no expression while my dad carried him through the water. He's a serious one!!

Here are a couple of pictures of the boys in action...

Father's Day

It's been a long time since I've written, but I've been really busy. My parents came to visit for about 5 days, so we had to pack a lot of activities in. I'll post pictures from their visit later, but I wanted to write about Father's Day first. It was really nice to have my dad in town for Father's Day. I don't think I've been able to spend the day with him in a long time. Hopefully, we made the day special for both the dads!! I was really excited about giving Dan and my dad their gifts, so I made them open presents before church (thus the boys are still in their pajamas). The boys got Dan a digital photo frame for his office at work. Dan is always asking me to print off pictures to have newer ones of the boys at work, so I thought this would be perfect. He'd always have lots of pictures, and they'd always be recent. I think Dan is really enjoying his gift...now if he could just get to work and quit staring at pictures of the boys :-). We also found a coffee mug while we were camping that said "Greatest Opa". Since my dad is Dutch, I thought he'd really enjoy that.

Our church's baby dedication happened to coincide with my parent's visit, so they got to see us dedicate Andrew to God. After church was the highlight of the day for the boys...we went to Guernsey's (a really good local ice cream place...they are a dairy and make their own ice cream). We had sundaes inside, and the boys got to play on the rocks outside afterwards. All in all....a good day!

Camping

We went camping last week with some friends, so I wasn't able to post. We had a great time. Adam absolutely loved camping (he always does!) and Andrew was a trooper. Our friends have older kids, who were willing to play with Adam, so Dan and I were even able to relax a bit also. It's funny, this campground had really old playground equipment (just a big slide and some swings), but that didn't stop Adam and his friends from playing there all the time. Adam also was entertained by the clusters of trees between our site and the playground and an old tree stump. I still haven't really been able to sift through all the pictures I took, but I'll include a few pictures that really say it all about the weekend...

Zoo

We went to the zoo this afternoon with Dan's sister, Julie, and her family. We had a great time with them, and Adam and Andrew loved spending time with their 5 cousins. We had a great view of the animals...most of them pretty close up. Anyway, I'll include a few pictures so you can see all the fun! As you can see from the first picture, Adam spent a lot of time running from animal exhibit to animal exhibit with his cousin Ricky. Plus, he loved looking at all the animals. Andrew liked it when his cousins played with him in the stroller, and he took a nap. It was a pretty hot day, so the kids loved the fact that they had a misting sprinkler out to stand in and get cool. God was really watching out for us...it was getting darker and darker as it got closer to closing time. It started to sprinkle a little bit as we got close to the parking garage, and as soon as we all made it under the covered parking, it really let loose with a really heavy downpour. Luckily, we missed it!!