"WATER PART!"

Last weekend we drove down to Green Bay to stay at the Tundra Lodge. And, of course, go to the water park. We went last year over C's birthday and he had a great time, but IJ didn't get to enjoy it as much as that was the day that he hurt his arm. So I was just as excited for him to be able to have fun this time. The whole drive down all C talked about (when he wasn't paying attention to the movie on the dvd player) was going to the water park, where's the water park, are we at the water park yet? And IJ would enthusiastically shout "water part!". So when we finally got to the "water part", they were pretty thrilled. We went up to our room and the boys climbed all over everything, with C shouting how the water park had this, and the water park had that. He found the bathroom and exclaimed "Wow! The water park even has a potty!", and then promptly dropped his pants and peed in it. :)

C making himself comfy on the couch

IJ flopped out on the bed

We eventually made it down to the actual water park area (we mean old parents made them eat dinner first, and of course mommy had to shave her legs to wear her bathing suit with her belly sticking out... :) and the boys had a great time. IJ definitely enjoyed it much better this time. He even rode down the big slide with R more times than C did (so glad I'm pregnant and didn't have to go on that slide :). C ran all crazy from this area to that area, from up the jungle gym thing with the big water bucket, to the kiddie pool with the little slide and water fountains (which he kept sitting on to stop them from spraying, and karate chopping...), to the hot tub with R (at which point I wasn't glad that I was pregnant since the hot tub would have been nice...). IJ followed everywhere with his little lip chattering; it doesn't take him long before he gets cold. I really didn't want to get that wet, so when C decided that he wanted to go float on the river, I thought that was a great idea, something I could do with them without getting soaked (cause I definitely wasn't getting dumped on by that big bucket). I took C on a tube with me, and R took IJ. But of course on the river was a little area that had rapids and some water falling down from a pipe. I bypassed it the first time around with C, but he got mad because of course that's the exact part he wanted to go through. I was going to go through it so the water from the pipe fell on C, but of course the ass R pushed his tube right up behind me and pushed my tube so that I went directly under the water. I got soaked, and C, IJ, and R were all very amused. So much for the idea that I wasn't going to get that wet. :)

Ready for the "water part"!

After we finished at the water park, R and I took the boys down to get ice cream cones at the little place next to the gift shop. We took them back up to the room and I sat them right in the middle of the floor away from the beds. Because I knew it was going to be a mess, but I didn't care about the floor. I didn't have to clean it, but I still had to sleep in my bed. :) Needless to say, the boys required a bath after they were done.

The next day (Saturday) we took the boys to Toys R Us (we don't have one where we live, and I also had a $5 off coupon :). C saw the sign as we were approaching in the car and said, "Is that Toys R Us?". Yeah, he's only been to that store a handful of times in his life, yet he knows one when he sees one. As we pulled into the parking lot, C said (as if trying to convince us that yes, we do want to stop at this store) "I sure do love toys!".

Next up was our required trip to Chuck E. Cheese. Thankfully we also don't have one of these anywhere near our house, so whenever C sees the commercial on tv and asks to go, I just remind him that "it's very far away." Chuck E. Cheese is a special occasion only thing.

C plays some air hockey with daddy

C stops mid-dance to see himself on the Chuck E. Cheese tv screen

C on tv!

C dancing for Chuck E. Cheese tv

IJ driving with Bob

C having a good time

Saturday night in our new hotel R and the boys splashed around in the pool and hot tub.

IJ goes flying

And daddy throws C!

We finished off our weekend Sunday morning with a stop to Once Upon a Child, a children's resale clothing store. I always make sure we stop there every time we go to Green Bay. This time I bought a bunch of little pink girlie things, because I can now. :) I even found a little pink dress with a frog on it! (I collect frog things.) Now she'll have something to wear with the little pink frog socks I found at Target! :)

HALLOWEEN 2006

(The pumpkins R and the boys carved)

Just wanted to share some of the pictures R took of the boys trick-or-treating. We recycled C's Spiderman costume from last year since it still fit and he's still way into Spiderman. I was going to make IJ this really neat airplane costume out of a box, but the whole hospital business messed that up. He would have been a cute little airplane, though. :) Thankfully we had backup: C's old doggie costume was exactly IJ's size. IJ was excited to be a doggie, though, and ran around the house barking. When C wore that costume, he wouldn't keep the dog face hood on his head, he didn't like it. IJ liked it on his head, but R said he had to pull it down because IJ couldn't see where he was going. :D

A teeny tiny Spiderman with matching Spiderman bucket

Trick-or-treat!

Doggie IJ and Spiderman C (that's even a Spiderman snowhat on his head)

This has to be my favorite shot-can you tell it was just a little chilly here?

A pumpkin IJ made in playgroup

Here's a blurry shot C took of the decorations in our house (our pumpkins, spider webs, and pumpkin window clings), but I think that just makes it a little more creepy :)

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. :)

PUPPIES AND POOLS

I've had just a lovely day today. Sasha (our black lab puppy) has been really driving me insane lately. Today was really bad though. She not only chewed one of my new sandals in half, but she totally mutilated one of the kids' library books. Then she stuck her face in the diaper bag that was on the floor and got out IJ's old binkie, and then chewed the nipple part off and chewed in half the pacifier attatcher (that clips it to the baby's clothes). She had to dig down all the way to the bottom of the bag to get it. Now, IJ doesn't use a binkie anymore of course, but we do plan to have one more child. I would have liked to use the attatcher again. :( And I get to visit the library on Monday with checkbook in hand. Lovely. What happened to my cute little puppy that was so calm and I had to carry up and down the stairs because she was scared to do it? Who would sleep in a little warm lump in my lap? Now it's "NO!" every two minutes. Yesterday she was running around full force outside and slammed right into IJ, sending him flying onto the ground where he scraped up his leg. Aaaaarrrrrrgh!! :( All is good now though, since I'm watching the nascar race at Daytona. Superspeedways are awesome. :)

Anyways, Sasha's not really what I was gonna write about today. A couple of days ago, R brought home a ten foot pool for the boys. He got it at Menards where he works, and because of his discount and that it was on sale, he got it for $40 when it was normally $60. Pretty nifty. :) C and IJ were pretty excited about it, and were ready to play in the pool before it was even filled up all the way.

A couple of days later when the pool water had warmed up some, we finally let the boys get in and play. It was still pretty cold, so they didn't last very long, but they didn't want to wait any longer.

Yesterday, the pool was nice and warm (it was sunny and 80 outside), so nana and papa got in with the boys. I was not planning on getting in, and was standing fully clothed next to the pool watching. Somehow I ended up getting soaked, because someone had to throw water at me (I do believe I have nana to thank for that). Of course, I had to retaliate, so I jumped right in and me and nana went at it. We both ended up pretty soaked. :) Then I tried to jump on the snow tube we were using as a boat for the boys. I landed on the tube, but the force sent me right over the edge and onto the ground! Nana and papa just stood there and watched it happen, laughing. They will pay. :) It was funny, at one point when all of us adults were having a ball in the pool, the boys had gotten out and were sitting in the van eating some cookies they had found. Hmm, I wonder who we bought this pool for? ;)

Here's a little clip of the boys splashing in the icy pool water on the first day:

Also, here's the flickr set with all our new pool pics. :)

CARS!

Friday night R and I took the boys to see the movie Cars. It was actually a last minute thing; R had wanted to camp out in the yard with the boys (as a practice for a camping trip we want to take) but that night it was going to be too cold (we had freeze warnings). R still wanted to do something with C and IJ, so we decided on the movie, since we both kind of wanted to see it too (hey, we're nascar fans, remember? ;) .

The movie was cute and pretty funny (not as hilariously funny as you might expect with Larry the Cable Guy as part of it, but still pretty funny). There were a some jokes only adults would get, but lots of funny stuff for the kids. And some nascar things that you have to be a nascar fan to understand (which I enjoyed--I love catching those little hidden things that not everyone will get). The best parts of the movie? This line: "He's won three Piston Cups!" "He did what in his cup?" And the tractor tipping. Oh my god, the tractor tipping. I don't want to give too much away, but that had to be one of the most hilarious things I've seen in a while.

C and IJ were pretty good during the movie. C sat in his seat the majority of the time (he had popcorn. He looooves popcorn.) and made a trip to the potty (woo hoo! No peein' the pants!). He had a good time yelling for "the red car" during the race scenes. IJ was a little more of a handful, but not too bad. When we went to see Curious George, he fell asleep, but for this one he stayed awake the whole time. He stayed in my lap for a while until he got full on popcorn, and then he wanted to wander. IJ stayed near us, though; the only really bad things that he did was trying to bug a little girl that was sitting near us, and taking the top off of my pop, sticking both hands in it, and then spilling some of it on my pants (hey, I was distracted by the movie :). Not too bad at all, they could've been far, far worse. :)

I'd recommend Cars to everyone; it's a kids movie that's fun for adults, too. :)

YARD SALE EXTRAVAGANZA

Hoo boy, do I love a good yard sale. Sure, you have to pick through a lot of junk to find the good stuff, but when you do it's always cheap. I love finding good stuff for not a lot of money. Which is why I had been looking forward to Saturday for a while. Saturday was our area's annual yard sale day, where there are tons of sales at the same time. And they make a whole huge deal of it, with lots of places selling refreshments and food, and a sale headquarters with maps and the addresses of all the sales including what they were selling. Saturday morning nana and I packed up the boys and headed off to find some bargains.

And boy did we ever. We spent hardly any money and brought home a crapload of stuff. The deal of the day went to the roller skates for IJ that we found--for 5 cents. Yes, you read that right. 5 cents. I had been hoping to find a pair of skates for IJ because he has been showing interest when C is skating. They are the exact same kind as C's, the Fisher-Price adjustable ones. I got C's last year at the yard sales for $5(which I thought was a great deal), so I figured that the people meant dollars and accidentally wrote cents. I checked the skates out before I bought them and everything worked fine. I bring them up to the lady--5 cents. I just couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it! 5 cents!! :D

We also met some really nice people along the way. At one sale I found these cute Dr. Pepper baby bottles (R pretty much only drinks Dr. Pepper). I was just going to buy one since IJ is getting close to being off bottles (but we do want to have another child). I went up to pay for the bottle and was telling the lady about R's Dr. Pepper obsession, when she told me just to go ahead and take them all (there were four). I thought that was pretty nice. Then at another sale, IJ found this Buzz Lightyear action figure that he really liked. The only problem was that there was only one, and IJ didn't want to share with C. C started getting mad, and we tried to get him to pick out another toy but he wouldn't have it; he wanted Buzz Lightyear too. All of a sudden the lady running this sale asked, "Are you going to buy that Buzz Lightyear?" I answered yes, and then out of thin air this lady produced a HUGE talking Buzz Lightyear action figure and said we could have them both for the price of one. This lady saved the day! :) Nana and I also met a 7 months pregnant woman having her first child, and I think we scared her with IJ's 11 lb 2 oz birth story. :) She exclaimed to her husband: "Can you believe this woman birthed that baby?!"

The only dissapointment of the day was missing out on buying two little boys bikes complete with training wheels because they had already been sold. This was at the pregnant woman's place (I think they were selling their nephew's old stuff). What made it even worse, though, was that this lady actually just lives a street over from me, but I didn't recognize the street name until I looked at where it was on the map. As a result, that was one of the last sales we went to, when we could have gone there first and probably would have gotten those bikes. Oh well, you can't win them all I guess. :)

Some of our yard sale finds (including the 5 cent roller skates!)

Doctor scrubs! :)

A DAY AT THE BEACH

Yesterday it got up to about 90 degrees up here in the U.P., so I figured the boys and I would spend our Memorial Day at the beach. After meeting up with R for lunch (he had to work yesterday), we headed on down to Lake Superior.

C and IJ both ran for the water, but at this time of the year, Lake Superior is still pretty cold (actually, the water doesn't get that much warmer even later in summer-it's cooooold). C didn't seem to mind, but as soon as the water touched IJ's feet, he burst into tears and ran away crying. He stayed away from the water after that. C kept running in and out of the water, splashing around, but never went in higher than thigh level. He did sit on the beach and let the waves splash up underneath him, though. Both boys had a good time digging in the sand, building little castles, and then destroying them by stomping! ("Here comes IJ the Destroyer!") C even played with an 8 year old boy; the boy would build a castle complete with a flag, and then he would let C stomp on it. He was a pretty nice little boy. :)

After we finished at the beach and I got C and IJ dressed, I let them play at the playground up the hill from the beach for a few minutes before leaving for home. There is a bathroom there, and I asked C at least three times if he had to go potty. "No," he kept telling me. I shouldn't have believed him. I went to the water fountain to fill up their cups for the drive home. As I was filling a cup I turned my head to see C with his pants around his ankles, shooting a stream into the grass! And the best part? He did it right in front of a picnic table full of people eating. Lovely. I was expecting this to happen one day, though. At least it wasn't as bad as what his daddy did when he was C's age. His parents love to tell the story of how he dropped his pants in the middle of a hiking trail and pooped. :) Yeah. Pee I can handle. I'm not quite so sure about poop...

GETTING CRAFTY

The other day I decided to get crafty with the boys. We used just about every single art supply we have: scissors, construction paper, glitter glue pens, stickers, glue, paint with paint brushes and the Squeeze n' Brushes (try those out!). It was messy, but fun! (Although not as messy as when I told R to help C and IJ paint and he let them paint their own bodies. That was messy. I made him give them a bath though. :)

C's picture (their names were on there so I blurred them out)

IJ's picture

C's paintings (he likes mixing it all to make brown, and making holes in the picture :)

IJ's paintings