Happy Birthday Dillon!

We love you and miss you!

"B" says "Buh"

Max was playing with some blocks the other day and we discovered that he knows quite a few of his letters! We thought it was just a fluke, because he still isn't a very clear communicator but after some 'testing' we realized he really does know them! We credit these cool v-tech magnets. When you plug them into the base, it tells you the letter, what sound it makes and sings a little song.

Rug Rats Times Two

What could be better than a boy clinging to your leg for dear life? TWO boys clinging to your legs for dear life, while you make robot noises!

This solves the problem of overdeveloping the muscles of only one leg, when this happens. (Because I was really worried about that.)


Man, I wish I'd gotten the camera sooner, they walked clear down the hallway like this!

Rug Rat

This is Max's latest thing. Not cool when you don't feel good. But still cute.

Mud

The boys went down to the end of the block where our street ends to play in a patch of woods. They didn't ask me. They didn't put on their play shoes. They were wearing their brand new clean shoes, (which will never be the same again.) They were making a fort, and scooping up heaping handfuls of mud and carrying it to their spot to make a mud floor that once dry, will evidently be just the thing. They came home with mud in their underwear. Mud, pretty much....everywhere.They were instructed to clean up their shoes themselves, so they thought it would be a good idea to spray them with the hose, which of course made an even bigger mess. Somebody was a little worried and embarrassed about getting his picture taken because of the possibility that others might see those pictures. It's a good thing that no one reads this blog anymore since I've hardly posted lately. Or that's what I keep telling myself. I don't mind living in my little world of denial.
Now here we've moved past the "worried" phase into the "I'm so bored" phase. It's one of those 5 stages of grief. It's a healthy and normal part of the process.
You'll all be happy to know that we've moved on to 'acceptance'. He accepted the fact that he was going straight into the tub - and I have come to terms with the fact that there will never NOT be laundry to do.

Day 3!

Laura took a lot of these photos with my camera because it did better in the lower light, with no flash.

Ya gotta love the looks of supreme effort on their faces:



Back to the wave pool for more action:



Max has about had it, it's a good thing it's almost time to go:

The boys love wearing their goggles. I should have gotten a picture of the raccoon rings around their eyes that their goggles left! We headed for home around 3 ish and no one fell asleep (butcept me,) until Max finally crashed around Mt Vernon. He did not want to go to sleep that night. But we're back on track now!

Wisconsin Dells Day 2

Forgot to mention that at the end of the night on day 1 we were all getting ready to leave the dry play area and we briefly lost Max. I went back in the climbing structure, Damon looked around the outside of it. There's a huge arcade next to it, and Damon found him on the other side of it, getting ready to head out the exit! He's SO Mr. Independent these days. He won't hold your hand, wants to walk and not be carried, throws a fit when he has to sit in a cart, and thinks he needs to get in and out of the car by himself. If you do it for him, he'll get out (or in) and do it all over again. Whew. Don't know what I'm going to do with him. Giant wave pool. Noah, Will and Sam could have done this and nothing else and been totally happy!
In the following video you can hear Laura saying, "You guys all need to agree that you will not put any pictures of me in a swimsuit on a blog or on facebook. " and then my mom says something about "fat, white legs." I tried my best to honor that request.


Bathing Beauty:




Max really didn't enjoy the water much. He spent quite a bit of time sitting and watching or being held because he was intimidated by all the noise and well... water. He hated getting splashed and said "NO!" constantly. Here's one of the rare times that he was having fun, mostly because he was "splashing" Damon and getting a big reaction out of him:

Also, he's not much of a sharer.

New this year were these squirting bumper boats. (Which you had to pay extra for, of course.) This used to be a smaller wave pool.







Boredom quickly sets in for a teenager:

Max thinks this is one of the best videos ever:

In Max's eyes, Noah is the funniest boy ever!! He knows exactly how to get Max to laugh and usually it involves slapping himself, or falling down.

Time at the arcade:


Max LOVED the ski ball game, but thought the object was to roll the ball down the ramp and catch it when it comes back to you. When I'd help him roll it hard enough to 'lose' it, he'd cry. So this toddler version of the game was perfect! Lily loved it too! She's no dummy - go for the high scores!

This was the day that we had the SECOND lost child incident. We were regrouping at our table, getting shoes on, getting ready to leave the wave pool area to head back to the room. A big group of people were all exiting at the same time, and Sam assumed that he was with our group. Instead of stopping at our table like the rest of us did, (which was right by the exit), Sam just kept on going! At some point he discovered he was not with his group! He thought he'd been left behind, and that we were all somewhere up ahead. So he hurried to catch up with us. All in all, he traveled up a flight of stairs, over a walkway, down a flight of stairs, clear through another 65,000 square foot waterpark, and back into the hotel. While Damon searched the wave pool area, I walked ahead to see if Sam had gone on ahead without us. The whole time I kept thinking surely he hasn't come this far. I knew that once I reached the hotel hallway, I'd be turning around and going back. I looked down the hallway and spotted Sam waiting to get onto the elevator with a hotel maintenance worker. He'd told the man that he was lost, that his family had left him behind, and that he thought we were all back in our room, somewhere on the 2nd floor. SO glad he didn't get on that elevator! He was in tears and in a panic. From that time on we made sure we had a meeting place - (although we'd done that before too.) I told him to always go BACK to the place we were all last together - we'd never go forward without him. Whew!

Wisconsin Dells Day 1

We arrived at the Dells mid afternoon Tuesday and did a bit of the waterpark until dinner. Guess I didn't take any pictures until evening! (We ordered Famous Dave's to go, and brought it back to our condo. Yum!) After dinner we headed to the dry play area. Lots of air cannons to shoot foam balls. Noah is a bit of a tough guy here with his full bag o' balls.



Mom and Laura were brave and climbed around with Max and Lily. Laura said she kind of went into "survival mode" - throwing the kid up to the next level. There came a point where she had to leave a man behind. :-)

These next three are some of my favorite pictures from the trip. The thought bubble above Sam is, "I'm in heaven!"

The looks on my two boys' faces as Noah reads to them, pretty much sums up their personalities:
These were some sweet moments! Will and Noah started out sleeping together on the bottom, full-sized bunk while Sam slept in the bunk above. Of course Sam was instantly asleep, while Noah ended up going back over to sleep with his own family. Will, always the light sleeper, was evidently up several times during the night unbeknown-st to us. Even though their bedroom was on the other side of the condo, Laura said that she woke up three different times to see Will standing over the top of Noah, looking down on him as he slept. Uh, just a little disturbing?! He wanted so badly to have Noah stay with him and Sam! Needless to say, everyone slept better the second night, as we were all more worn out, and Will had a long talk with Damon about staying in his own bed.

Fine Arts Night 2010

Here are the kindergartners: Sam's in the back row (of course.)Max wore his sunglasses:
Whew! All done singing!
Will's group - 3rd and 4th graders. He's in the 2nd to last row:
Sam's artwork took him THREE Wednesdays to make!

Will made dimensional emotion masks - one side was "peaceful":
The other side was...."not...peaceful."
He also made a cast of his shoe out of PACKING TAPE! Super cool!
His group also contributed foil tooled pieces for a big monster - really neat!