HE'S GOING TO PRESCHOOL

Yep, after all the Head Start drama, we finally have found a preschool for C to go to that we can afford (well, there was some procrastination involved...). It's $75 a month, plus the gas needed to drive him there (it's about a half hour from our house to the preschool), so it's just barely affordable. But yay! He's going to school! Oh, and C's pretty excited, too. :)

The school that he will be going to is in a church, a really big church. It has a gym in it. It's that big. And the school room? Huge. With a ton of toys. There are toys bursting out of every corner of that room. They even have a sandbox in the room. How cool is that?

When we took C to the preschool's open house last week, I thought that he might be confused. Back in May when we went to the Head Start screenings, we had shown him the building twice and made a big deal about that being where he would go to school. So of course I was worried when we pulled up to the church and he announced, "This is not my preschool." I worried about how I would get him to like this new place, and how to explain the whole situation with Head Start. We led him in explaining that yes, this was going to be his school, but as soon as he saw that room with the gazillion and four toys, I think he forgot all about that old place.

After we dropped off R back at work for a meeting, I turned to C in the car and asked him if he remembered what his teacher's name was (Mrs. Pond, who's been teaching there for 15 years). He thought a moment, and then said "Pond". I asked him if he knew her whole name. He smiled. "Fishie Pond" he said. I couldn't help but laugh, although I quickly corrected him. I just hope he doesn't call her that in school...

C is so excited to start school. He picked out a Spiderman backpack and wore it the whole time we were in the store, and when we got home he asked me to "hang it in the closet so Sasha won't get it". (Just a little bit ago I was hanging clothes in his closet and he came in and asked what I was doing, and when I told him he exclaimed "But my backpack is in there!" I said, "Yes, but your backpack is still hanging right here and it's fine." "Oh," he said and then turned and left.) Then, C asked me to draw a picture of him wearing his backpack. Inside his backpack he wanted me to draw an apple, fruit snacks, a blanket and pillow, his Blue from "Blue's Clues", pencils, and a lunch of peanut butter and jelly. I haven't told him yet that he's not going to need all this stuff for two hours at preschool. He's barely even going to need his backpack. C also had me draw IJ standing next to him, the school building, and me driving him to school. I do believe he's ready to go to preschool. :)

He starts school a week from Thursday. And I will probably cry. C and IJ seriously need to stop growing up...

A DAY AT THE FAIR

A little over a week ago, R and I took C and IJ to the Marquette County Fair. I kept telling C that we were going to the carnival, since he saw an episode of Dora where they went to the carnival and had to "collect tickets to win prizes" (or maybe it was a Dora game, I'm not sure). Because of that, he has talked a lot about going to a carnival. As soon as he saw the Ferris wheel looming above the pine trees, he started shouting "Mommy! Daddy! The carnival! It's the carnival!" He was so excited, and kept talking about the "collecting tickets to win prizes" thing. I didn't really want to tell him that that wasn't how this fair worked; I just told him that we would play games and he would get a prize.

We found a kiddie fishing game that both boys could play where they were guaranteed to get a prize. C grabbed a pink "fishing line", and I showed him how to drag it to "catch" a fish. It didn't take him very long to snag a fish, and he held it up proudly, "I caught a fish!". I led him over to his prize box while R helped IJ with his fishing pole. He picked a set of spinning tops that could be made into a tower, and IJ picked a plastic ball and bat. Then C tried to grab the fishing pole so he could fish again. I told him that he already had his turn and we were going to go do other fun stuff. He couldn't really understand that we had to pay money every time he wanted to play (and we had already spent $4 just for the boys to play once); he just wanted to catch the fish. If I could, I would have kept dishing out the $2 and let him play however many times he wanted, but that's just life I guess. He forgot about it pretty quick as we moved on to other things. I'm hoping R will take him fishing for real here one of these days.

One of my favorite parts of the day, though, was when we went to see the horse barn. As we passed by all the horses with their heads sticking out of their stalls, C started singing "Old McDonald", just the first part till the "e-i-e-i-o". Still, it was pretty perfect. :)

Here are some of my favorite shots from the fair:


This was a really friendly goat at the petting zoo. Either the goat just likes kids a lot, or it wanted to nibble on their clothes. :) The boys thought it was great, though. Every time IJ touched an animal, he would yell excitedly "Mama! I touch! I touch!"

Cute little piglets!

This was the "Dragon" roller coaster. Last year I went on it with C and he loved it; this year he was big enough to go by himself. It was weird watching him from the sidelines, he's growing up! He's going to be going on all the big coasters with daddy when he gets older-he loved the Dragon and went on it twice. He sure doesn't get it from his mommy.

In the giant time-unlimited bounce house!

Wave to daddy! They thought this was great the first couple of times around, then they got bored and wanted to get off while it was still going around. Yep, they definately take after R.

The boys and I on the carousel. I kept telling C to look at daddy for a pic, but he would always look in the wrong direction. :)

HUNTER COON STRIKES AGAIN

First off, you've probably noticed that my blog looks a little different. I've made the switch over to Blogger beta, and I wanted to try out the new customizable layout stuff. Well I picked out a new template and started playing around before I realized that they don't have the "edit HTML" option quite ready yet. So until Blogger gets that up and running, I won't have my blog banner or all my nifty things I had in the sidebar. Hopefully they get it out soon so I can have all my stuff back on that took me forever and a day to learn how to do! :)

Now, on to our regularly scheduled broadcast...

My little hunter Coon has stuck again. Last night he killed a bat. This morning when I got up I found a blood trail on the kitchen floor, then I found a piece of bloody bat carcass on IJ's bottom bunk (yep, IJ's in a big boy bed now-R built the boys a bunk bed).

Coon is my Maine Coon cat (I know, his name is so original, but it was my dad's idea...). I never considered him to be much of a hunter. He's this big stocky male cat with tons of fur, but his meow is teeny tiny. And usually he's a big chicken: all R has to do is say "Psst psst" and he takes off running. I've always thought that Coon was a dog reincarnated as a cat; he likes to have his belly rubbed, he'll follow me around the house like a little puppy, and he'll run up to the door meowing when I walk in. There's no "cat independence" there.

But my opinion of Coon as "not a hunter" changed around the beginning of my pregnancy with IJ. I had had a pet mouse that died, and to make me feel better, R brought me two new mice from the pet store. Except, you guessed it, he brought me a male and a female instead of two of the same sex. It wasn't long before they multiplied. And multiplied again. I had a freaking mouse colony. So eventually I had the male mice in one cage and the female ones in another, and I was either going to take them to the pet store to be sold, or find someone with a pet snake. (They all ended up going to one of auntie's friends that has a bunch of snakes, so they all became food. I was sooo done with mice. I haven't had a pet mouse since then. And I probably won't for a while.)

It came time for R, C and I to go on a trip to St. Louis, so I left my colony in care of nana and papa. We were stopped in a restaurant on our way home when we got a phone call. Nana and papa had come in to feed the animals, and had discovered the scene of a homicide. Many homicides. And these mice weren't just killed: they were ripped apart. Blood and mouse parts were strewn all across the living room. My other cat, Prissy, was still alive then and would occasionally catch a mouse, but she would just kill it and play with it for a while and then leave it somewhere where I would step on it. Coon was the mouse murderer.

After we came home I witnessed his hunting skills first hand. When Coon got into one of the mouse cages, he didn't kill all the mice before some had a chance to hide. Coon came walking out of the kitchen one day with a mouse in his mouth, but we must have scared him because he dropped it. And it wasn't dead yet. So R killed it with a broom. Lovely. And a few mornings I awoke to bloody mouse carcass on the floor. (Prissy got into the action, too; she killed a mouse one night and left the body outside our bedroom door, then meowed at us until we got up to receive our "gift".)

Sweet chicken cat Coon has a murderous side. And this morning's bloody bat chunk just proved it some more. After I removed the body from IJ's bed, Coon jumped up there and started smelling around for it. When he couldn't find it, he gave me a look that seemed to say "Um, I wasn't done tearing that apart yet."

I'm just hoping he's up to date on all his rabies shots. And that we don't have "bats in our belfry". This is the 4th bat we've had in our house in the past few weeks. I'm really scared to go and open up the attic...

SASHA, SASHA, SASHA

Well, I was just a little annoyed with Sasha today since I found chew marks on another one of my shoes, so I thought I'd share a video of Sasha being funny. Because she was not very funny today.

Anyways, nana was brushing her fur, but when she tried to brush her belly Sasha would kick her back legs like crazy. I got a kick out of it. (hehehe ;)

FIVE THINGS MEME

I read City Mama's meme the other day, and she "tagged" everyone who read it. So I figured, what the hell, I'll give it a go.

So, here goes...

Five Things in My Freezer
Well, since we just recently moved back upstairs full time (I've finally got a working kitchen!), there's not much in my freezer except for a frozen pizza and a burrito. Thrilling, I know. :) So, I'll list what's in the fridge:

1. Mountain Dew (mine)
2. Dr. Pepper (R's)
3. The ingredients for taco salad (what we had for dinner tonight)
4. A jar of Dole mandarin oranges
5. A gallon of 2% milk and a gallon of whole milk

Five Things in My Closet

1. My wedding dress and veil
2. My black high heeled shoes I wore to my prom
3. Christmas wrap
4. A ton of clothes that I should probably get rid of because I don't wear them anymore
5. A folder with a stack of short stories that I wrote for my college english class

Five Things in My Car

1. DVD player
2. Dr. Pepper cans
3. An umbrella stroller
4. IJ's black carseat
5. C's blue booster seat (I don't really keep much in the car)

Five Things in My Purse

1. Dale Jarrett checkbook cover with nascar checks of course :)
2. Check card
3. Cell phone
4. Really old lip gloss
5. My college id card even though I haven't been in college since a couple of months before C was born

Five Books on My Nightstand

Right now there aren't any books on my nightstand; I need to visit the library again! I was on a parenting kick with the last couple of books I read, which were Raising Cain and Raising Boys. I found Raising Boys to be an interesting read and I did learn a lot that I could put to use with my sons. Raising Cain had a lot of the same points that Raising Boys did, but I ended up getting bored with it and returned it to the library before I finished it. So does anyone out there got a good book recommendation for me? I love Stephen King and Jodi Picoult; I love a good romance, but definately NOT romance novels (sorry nana). And a little mystery is always good. :)

Now guess what? You're tagged! :D

PEE PEES AND WOOD AND OTHER FUN STUFF

First off, as you can probably tell from my lack of posting lately, I am really behind on my blogging. I blame all those fun summer activities: fireworks and parades and nice warm weather (although lately its been pretty hot, even up here-yesterday it was in the 90's). And today I've been cleaning the upstairs, because my kitchen is finally progressing again!! Yippee! :) And I have even heard the glorious hum of my dishwasher today. Oh, how I've missed my dishwasher! I'll have a kitchen update soon with pics.

Today I wanted to share a few of the things that have been going on here lately. Or, more like some of the weird things you could have heard us saying the past few days. Like this one, said by me: "Get mommy's phone off your pee pee!"

That's probably one of the strangest things I've ever said as a parent. :) But wait, I've got more for you.

The other day, R came home from work with some cedar planks. He came walking in the door with one of the planks in his hands. C looked up and exclaimed, "Daddy, that's a big wood!" :D

And, lastly, C actually asked for a wedgie. He walked up to R and said "Pull the underwear up the butt crack." (Both boys like to say butt crack. They think it's just hilarious.)

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In other news, C has started trying to write the alphabet. The first time he tried it, R wrote all the letters on a piece of paper, then held C's hand as they wrote the first line of letters together. Then R let C try to write the rest of the letters himself. Some he did fairly well, others he had a lot of trouble with, but for a first try, he did pretty well. So now I've been showing him how to spell his name, and we've been printing out letter writing pages off the internet. He made an alphabet train where he traced out all the letters and then cut out and glued the train together (I will try and remember to take a pic of it). And today I found nifty Leap Frog Alphabet Cards that come with dry erase markers. C's been enjoying tracing out the letters and then erasing them.

Here's the photo of his first try at the alphabet:

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Finally, here's a video I've been wanting to share for a while and haven't gotten to posting it. The week after the 4th of July, we went to Negaunee's Pioneer Day fireworks. It was the first fireworks show for both of the boys. The video is just of the fireworks, but in the background you can hear C yelling "Wow! Woah!" He was pretty excited. :) (The flickr set with our 4th of July and fireworks pics is here. )