Fire Station Open House

Our city had an open house at the fire station about a week and a half ago. I knew that the boys would love it, but I was a little bit wary of going. Last year, we went, but my mom was with me and Andrew sat in a stroller the whole time. Adam has a hard time staying with me when he's excited...and I knew he would be at the fire station. Well...I thought we could at least try to go.

I knew there was no way that Andrew would sit in a stroller...so I let him walk. I prepped both of them before we got out of the car. They had to stay with me, and if they (namely Adam) got too far away, the code word was, "freeze". That worked when we first got there, because the instructions were fresh in Adam's mind, we were early so there weren't huge crowds yet, and Andrew is always a bit timid when there are a large crowds, so he wanted me to carry him and was clingy.

The boys both got to shoot a fire hose and put out a fire, sit in some fire engines (good thing they check them out before they're used again...who knows what Andrew's breaking in the picture of him in the driver's seat), Adam threw a ball to knock down a girl in a water tank, they dressed in fireman costumes, and Adam crawled under the "smoke" in a fire. And...Adam was pretty good...he only escaped me a couple of times :-). Andrew really did have fun...although he looks so serious in his pictures. It was funny...Adam was getting dressed up like a firefighter. Of course, Andrew had to do it also...although he only wanted to put on the boots. He was quite mad when I took the boots off of him. Needless to say, the boys were both wearing snow boots later in the day... I got some strange looks from people in public (since it was a warm day). Speaking of warm days...it was pretty hot, but you can see that Andrew was wearing long sleeves. I had dressed him in some normal summer clothes, but then he decided that he just HAD to wear this long sleeve shirt. I thought, why not...he'll get hot and then we'll take it off. No, he wore it the entire time were there :-). Two year olds!!

I am way behind in my posting...I still have camping pictures to do...and I guess I never really did much for Andrew's birthday, but I thought I would start with the most recent pictures first. My blog really helps me with my journaling for scrapbooking...now I can actually remember the details when I get to scrapbooking events about a year later! I hope everyone is having a great summer!

Happy Father's Day!

Wow...it's been awhile since I last posted. I'm sure I've completely lost my readership of 3 by now!

Anyway, I hope all the fathers had a nice day yesterday! We tried to make it a good one for Dan (and our dads). Normally, we visit Dan's dad for Father's Day, but I was scheduled to work in the toddler class at church (and I didn't think anyone would want to switch with me on Father's Day), so we stayed in town. However, Andrew came down with Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease on Thurs, so Dan was unable to go to church on Sunday. He stayed home with both the boys (we didn't want Adam to potentially pass the virus on too) while I went to Sunday School and worked during the service. We gave him his presents (the second season of "I Love Lucy" on DVD) before church and apparently they were very busy while I was gone. On the way home from church, I surprised Dan and picked him up a pizza. After lunch, it was nap time for daddy (and the boys) and then the boys jumped (I mean, played) on daddy. It was cute, because I'm always talking about how all the boys do is fight, and Adam came running into the kitchen yesterday and said, "Look mommy, we're playing together!". Of course, it was a dad's expense!! :-). Then we topped off the day with some ice cream and the boys went to bed while daddy watched golf and basketball.

Thank you Dan for being the best daddy our boys could ever hope for!

Adam's Last Day of School

I'll get to Andrew's birthday later, but I wanted to post pictures of Adam's last day of school first.

Last Thursday was Adam's last day of school. We dropped him off at 9 and then Dan, Andrew, and I came back about 10:30. His teachers handed out a "scrapbook" from the year to each of the students and gave them a stuffed graduation dog. The scrapbook is really neat. They had him sign his name in Sept, Jan, and May, so you can see the progression in his writing. He drew a self-portrait the first day of school and then again later in the year. They even had his weight and height from Sept. and May (he gained 2 pounds and grew 2 inches).

After each child had their book, the students got to throw the dogs in the air instead of a graduation cap. Of course, the boys really got into that. They threw them multiple times. Then, we gave the teachers their gifts informally and slowly filed down to another room where they had finger foods (that parents brought in) for all the kids and their families from all three of the 4 year old classes. I was really quite sad that we weren't going to see his teachers anymore (I really like them), so I tried to get Adam to go over and say, "bye" again before we left. He ran over and yelled, "Bye", and then ran off. Each of them grabbed him and made him hug them, though. Anyway, here are some pictures...

Oh, and the first 2 pictures are of his Friday teachers and one of his best friends at

school.

Birthday Cakes...

Here's a preview of Andrew and Tammy's birthday cakes. For Adam's 2nd birthday, I made him an Elmo cake...but it didn't seem appropriate for Andrew, since he doesn't really watch Sesame Street. However, he LOVES Boz. So, about a month ago, I looked online for some ideas to make a Boz cake. I found a person who had made a cake by free-handing the frosting on the top of the cake. I am by no means artistic, so I knew I couldn't do that, but I remembered that my mom showed my mom's club how to do a buttercream transfer last fall. So, I printed off a coloring book picture of Boz and created it. I thought it turned out really cute...and Andrew loved it. He kept saying, "Boz!". Don't look too close at the picture, though, since I didn't do a great job of keeping the chocolate crumbs out of the frosting :-).

Now, we kind of decided last minute to celebrate Tammy's birthday also, so Julie hadn't really thought about what she was going to do. She asked Tammy on Saturday what kind of cake she wanted, and she said she wanted a turtle cake (since she's going to get a turtle sandbox on her birthday). So, I looked online and found an idea to use a Pyrex bowl for the body and cupcakes for the head and feet. It turned out really cute...I couldn't believe we pulled it off! I freehanded the outline for the turtle's shell using the example on the internet, and two of Julie's daughters did the rest of the decorating...it makes it a lot easier to do cakes when you have daughters to help!

I'm also going to include a picure of Andrew "blowing" out his candles. More pictures later!

Happy Memorial Day!

I wish everyone a happy Memorial Day today. Most importantly, we thanks those who have served our country!

We had a wonderful day today...we had one of Dan's sisters and her kids and Dan's parents over today for the usual Memorial Day fare...hamburgers, hot dogs, and chips! We had a lot of fun and celebrated Andrew and Tammy's birthdays. I have lots of pictures to share...but I probably won't have them edited today...maybe tomorrow. Also, Adam had his last day of school on Thursday, so I have some pictures from that also.

Our Anniversary Trip, Part II

Here are some pictures from the Little Pioneer Village. Like I said in an earlier post, they had an area where the little kids could play where they didn't have to worry about breaking anything. They had a pioneer house with dishes and food, as well as a barn. You could "milk" the cow and collect the eggs in a basket. They also had a wagon that you could drive or ride in. Adam enjoyed playing in the house. There was a big black pot that he kept putting vegetables in and "cooking" in the fireplace. They had some girls in the house dressed up in costumes who were playing with him. As we were leaving, he was calling one girl his friend and said he wanted to invite her over to his house so they could play house. Luckily, she wasn't within earshot (and she wasn't a little girl). He has a habit of doing this when we are at random places playing...like McDonalds. He'll come up to me and loudly ask if his new "friend" (the one he just met a half hour ago) can come over to his house. Of course, this friend and his mom can usually hear this :-). Or he'll ask if he can go over to their house :-).

Anyway, Andrew was obsessed with the baskets and the eggs. He carried his basket everywhere, including into the house. He set it down for one minute and was very upset with a little girl started playing with it. He also loved to put it in the wheelbarrow and on the wagon. He had a hard time pushing the wheelbarrow at the beginning (it kept tipping over and his eggs would spill everywhere...to his consternation...because he felt that any kids who were helping him pick up eggs were "stealing" them), but he got the hang of it quickly.

Dan and I had fun...because we were able to sit down for a few minutes and watch.

Our Anniversary Trip, Part I

As I alluded to in my Mother's Day post, we had a great weekend. We left on Friday night and came home on Sunday. A couple of years ago (before Adam), I went on a weekend scrapbook retreat to this hotel. As I sat and enjoyed myself, I thought that Dan would really like it here. It is in a rural area with farm fields all around, and the hotel had a wonderful fireplace in the middle of the lobby (it was the winter). So, I convinced him to visit for our anniversary 4 years ago, and this was our 4th trip there. They now have an addition to the hotel with a pool and a wonderful gameroom with air hockey, ping pong, foosball, and a basketball shooting game. They also have a Village next door with historic houses from the area and a wonderful restaurant that is housed in a big barn that was moved from a nearby farm.

We had wonderful weather on Saturday for our visit to the Village, and the boys had a lot of fun. It was a "Day on the Farm" so they had lots of people in costume and lots of activities going on. They also have a Little Pioneer Village where the boys could play and not worry about ruining anything (I'm going to include pictures from there on a separate post, since there are so many). However, of these things to do, the boys favorite things to do were: for Adam - ride the train, play with the gravel in some of the roads, play in the Jail building (hopefully not a sign of things to come), play in the Little Pioneer Village, eat ice cream, and run ahead to the next activity. Andrew's favorite activities were to play with the gravel in the road, pull the wagon (but NEVER sit in it!), run after his brother, ride the train, play with the eggs in a basket in the wheelbarrow in the Little Pioneer Village, break (I mean play with) my sunglasses, and eat ice cream.

After the Village, since he missed his nap, Andrew had a bit of a meltdown during dinner. But, we did get to eat (me quickly before I took Andrew back to the hotel). Mmmm, the broasted chicken was good. Dan and I also got to watch plenty of old shows like Leave it to Beaver and I Love Lucy on TVLand (since we don't have cable). Adam took a couple of dips in the pool (Andrew wasn't interested), and we hit the game room a couple of times. All in all, a good trip. OK, here's the million pictures! It looks like Adam wasn't there in most of the pictures...and that's because he wasn't...he was usually running ahead!