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.)

***

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:

***

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. )

GIVE SASHA A TREAT

Just a fun little thing I found. I wanted to put it in the sidebar but it wouldn't fit, damnit. :( So give virtual Sasha a treat and maybe the real Sasha won't chew up my shoes.

adopt your own virtual pet!

BEAUTIFUL

C made my day today. He was "reading" the words on the shirt I was wearing, which actually said "Don't give me your attitude, I already have one". But according to C, it said "You are beautiful." And he emphasized it: "beee-yoooo-tiful". He of course got lots of hugs and kisses right after that. :)

IS IJ CUTE?

Right before I took this video, IJ was sitting on the arm chair next to me. He turned to me and asked "Mama?"

"What, IJ?"

"I'm cute!" he exclaims with a huge dimply smile.

So I get the camera and try to capture it. But, not only does he shake his head "no" to being cute, he's more interested in hitting the camera with his toothbrush (he seemed to enjoy the noise it made). The little snot. :) But at least I get that smile when he shakes his head...

POOP

C was sitting on the potty pooping this morning, and he came up with a little story:

"Once upon a time there were three poops. One little poop made a poop out of poop. One little poop made a poop that was orange and black... The end."

:D

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. :)

WANT TO SEE MORE NASCAR?

Oh, don't lie. You know you do (especially you, Maria...hehehe). I've uploaded two videos to YouTube that we took at the Michigan Race. Just remember when you watch them to "crank it up"! ;)

Here's the video clips: number 1 and number 2. Enjoy!

(Alright. For those of you who I guess are sick of nascar, I promise my next post will have lots of little boy pictures in it. I'll have it up soon. :)

VACATION! PART 2: NASCAR

Sorry everyone, I know I said I would write this "tomorrow", but I didn't get around to it, then there was some other things I wanted to do. But, hey, here I am now. :)

First off, here's what we learned for the next time we go to a nascar race at Michigan International Speedway:

• We will leave to head to the track at the crack of dawn.
• We will bring rain gear.
• We will bring food and a grill and barbeque dinner in the parking lot.
• We will get a hotel closer to the track (remember, we were staying in Grand Rapids because we were supposed to visit family, but Grand Rapids is a two hour drive away from Brooklyn, where the track is located).

Now, don't get me wrong, the race was awesome. But we did have some disappointments. We decided to leave for the track at about 8:30; the track gates opened at 8:00 a.m. but we didn't think we needed to get there that early (especially with having the kids with us, and strollers are not allowed). We figured, two hour drive, get there about 10:30, and that would give us plenty of time to visit vendor row and do all the other pre-race stuff (driver introductions began at 1:15). But what we didn't realize were that the roads to the track were regular little 2-lane roads. R, auntie, the kids, and I got to the 2-lane road close to 10:30, and saw a sign that said "8 miles to MIS". And then it took us two hours to drive the 8 miles. Two. Hours. It was not a fun drive either. IJ was having trouble falling asleep for his nap because we were moving so slowly, so he screamed at the top of his lungs for part of it. Everyone had to pee, including C who was wearing underwear, but there was no way we were going to lose our spot in line. By the time we got parked at the track and visited the porta-potties (where C started peeing before he was positioned correctly, resulting in pee being shot all over the porta-potty), we had only enough time to get to our seats.

We had pretty freaking great seats, too. Right in between turns three and four, and high enough up to see the whole track. The only thing we couldn't see were the pits, since Michigan has a row of stands behind the pits which were blocking our view. Driver introductions began, and we cheered for Dale Jarrett as he came around the track in the back of a black pickup, waving to the fans. Well, C cheered for "Wiffle", aka Greg Biffle. Nana likes Biffle (because he drives the National Guard car) and has corrupted C with him. Oh well, I can still teach IJ the right person to root for. :) As much fun as it was to root for Jarrett, I think it was probably even more fun to boo Jeff Gordon. It felt just so good. :D I even yelled out a "Jeff Gordon sucks!" even though there were a bunch of Gordon fans around us. Hehehe :). The national anthem was sung (including the Canadian anthem), and the jets roared overhead. At first I thought they weren't going to have the flyover since I couldn't see or hear the planes, and then all of a sudden they appeared out of thin air directly behind us. It scared me a little which R found amusing.

And then of course it started to rain. Now, we knew about the high chances of rain for that Sunday, yet we neglected to bring any rain gear. I think it was because we were in denial that it was actually going to rain (who wants their first nascar race rained out?). A really wonderful couple sitting next to us (who had a one year old at home) had a big red tarp and let the boys scoot over next to them to sit under it. Thankfully the rain didn't last for too long and the freaking loud ass jet driers came out and had the track dried in no time (I swear I think the jet driers are even louder than the race cars!).

Finally the announcement came for the drivers to return to their cars, and the grandstands erupted in cheers. Adam Sandler was the grand marshal, and probably did the best "Gentlemen, start your engines!" that I have heard in a long time. And then came the rumble of forty three race engines; two lines of cars pulling out on the track behind the pace car. Everyone stood for the green flag, and the grandstands erupted as the cars came up to speed. Watching nascar on tv is nothing compared to seeing it in person. The deafening roar, the whoosh of the cars flying by, the vibration of your seat and your internal organs. Plus, you get to follow whatever car you want at all times, not just the leaders that they show on tv. The 8mile/2hour drive, the sitting in the rain, it was all worth it just to see this sport in person.

The Tony Stewart wreck happened right in front of us, which was awesome. Well, not for Tony, but seeing a wreck that close? Awesome. I saw it start happening; I was waiting for Jarrett to come around turn three and saw Tony go sideways and the smoke come up. Everybody stood up to watch the spin, so I didn't see a lot more after that (I had IJ in my lap so I couldn't just jump up like everyone else). Still: awesome. :)

The race went on and there were cautions here and there for rain sprinkles, but nothing too bad. The boys started getting tired, and C fell asleep first in R's lap. We layed him down under auntie's feet in the little aisle between the bleacher seats and there he slept the rest of the race. IJ drifted off in my lap soon after. We got lots of comments from the fans around us on the cuteness of it all. Both boys were wearing ear protection, but still, I think only my boys could sleep through the noise and excitement of a nascar race. :)

Eventually the race got past 100 laps, the halfway point were a race could be called complete if it started to rain heavily. It started to sprinkle again, and the race was put under caution. I decided I wanted to get up and walk around then, since I was the only one who hadn't yet. I handed sleeping IJ off to auntie, and R and I went down to see if we could find some souveniers. We got to a booth that mostly just had shirts and hats that said "Michigan International Speedway", when the rain started getting heavier. And heavier. Until it was pouring. We figured we had better get back up to the stands and save auntie, who was alone with both sleeping boys. R bought two rain ponchos, and we fought our way back up to our seats, like two fish swimming upstream. We made it back to auntie and the nice couple from earlier had their red tarp covering them all. Auntie put on one poncho and tucked the still sleeping IJ underneath, while I put on the other and we both covered the still spleeping C. The red tarp couple took off, and we sat in the pouring rain for a bit. Until we realized, that is, that the race had been called; Kasey Khane was the winner. We turned to auntie and asked her why the hell we were still sitting there. Her response? "I thought you guys knew!" No, otherwise we wouldn't be sitting in the grandstands in the pouring down rain! Sheesh. :) C got a rude awakening when R whisked him up to carry him and he started getting soaked. We splashed through the rain on the looong walk back to the Explorer. It was raining so hard, not even the ponchos were helping us. By the time we got to the car, the only person who wasn't soaked all the way through was IJ. My pants were drenched all the way up to my thighs, and I said screw it and took them off and sat in the car in my shirt and underwear. :) We were soaked and disappointed; after months and months of waiting for the race, we weren't going to get to see a green flag finish, the winner's burn-outs, or the victory celebration. But what can you do? You can't control the weather, unfortunately. :( The suckiest part was that after that downpour, it didn't rain again for the rest of the day. It makes you wonder if maybe they shouldn't have been so quick to call the race...

Then began the waiting game to leave the parking lot. R pulled out of our spot and we got up to the line of cars heading out, and then we sat. We have a dvd player in the Explorer, and the boys watched the entire movie "Robots" and the beginning of another movie before the line even started to move. Yeah. It was even worse trying to get out than it was trying to get in. We moved soooooooo slowly, even though both lanes of those little 2-lane roads were being utilized for outbound traffic. As we sat waiting for the line of cars to move, we saw all these other people staying put in the parking lots, breaking out their portable grills and grilling up some dinner. These people had the right idea. Wait until half the people leave, fill up your belly, and then make your exit. We were all starving even before we got close to the interstate or highway or whatever, and we still had a 2 hour drive after that back to Grand Rapids! (And remember, it wasn't like we could stop for dinner--we were all missing various articles of wet clothing, except auntie who just wore her wet clothes, and we didn't have extras with us. I was in my underwear, for cryin' out loud! :D)

But, you know, it was all so totally worth it. Just to see Dale Jarrett's #88 UPS Ford up close, and to boo the hell out of Jeff Gordon. So worth it. :)

And thus ends another really long ass post. :)

VACATION! PART 1: GRAND RAPIDS

We're back from our vacation! Well, actually, we've been back since Tuesday, but I had things to catch up on, nice weather outside...I know, excuses excuses. :) R, auntie, the boys, and I were in Grand Rapids Friday and Saturday, and then on Sunday we drove down to Brooklyn to the Michigan International Speedway for the nascar race (I have a lot to say about the race so I'll write about that tomorrow). This trip marks the furthest I've ever been downstate, otherwise I've only been across the bridge a couple of times to Mackinaw City. For some reason I expected it to look a lot more different than the U.P. (trees trees and even more trees), but really until we got to the city it didn't. Well except we were driving on interstates and all that and the U.P. doesn't have that (thank god-I make R do all the driving when we visit cities), but it was still lots of trees and farmland. I'm not sure what I was expecting, maybe for all of it to be more city-like I guess? I dunno. :)

Our main reason for going on this vacation was to go to the race in Brooklyn, but we decided to stay in Grand Rapids because R has family living there (one of them his 98 year old great grandma!). We had planned on visiting with them, but plans change and they were all going to be attending a funeral--not a good time to visit. :(

Friday night after we arrived in Grand Rapids we went to a mini golf/family fun place. Mini golf is fun, but I wouldn't say I'm that great at it. Hehehe, but at least auntie was worse than me; it was very amusing watching her. ;D We started off trying to get C and IJ to take turns and follow the rules, but of course that didn't last long. Eventually we just let them do their thing at a hole, and then we would try to hit our balls around little boy feet. :) C was actually really good at hitting the ball with the club; he'd start at the beginning and keep hitting the ball until he got it in the hole. IJ gave up on using the club, and would just take his ball, walk it over to the hole, drop it in, and then celebrate. He thinks he's pretty awesome at golf. ;)

After golf, R and I took the boys to ride on the go-cart track. I told R to take IJ since I figured he would be the better driver and wouldn't hit anything, and would be more able to take it easy with him. I took C and actually drove a lot better than I thought I would and pretty fast, too. And yet R was driving even faster! So much for that idea. :) Both boys enjoyed it though; they like to go fast.

That night R and I left the boys in the hotel with auntie and had dinner at an awesome mexican restaurant which if I remember right was called The Cantina. I looooove mexican food, especially refried beens. I don't care what the hell they look like, they taste so good. :) This place also had probably the best strawberry margueritas I've ever had. That was an awesome dinner.

On Saturday we visited the John Ball Zoo, where IJ got to go on a camel ride with daddy. We had asked C first if he wanted to go and he said no, and as we were going to walk away IJ piped up with "Camel? Ride? Me?" So R took IJ and of course as soon as C saw that he wanted to go, too. Auntie and I reminded him that he had his chance, and he said no (he was being a little crabby because he wanted a snow cone and something out of every vending machine we passed, so I think that's why he said no to the ride). He threw a tantrum of course, but oh well.

I think the best part of the zoo were these two bears that I think understood they were "on display", because they were throwing poses left and right. It was crazy! They were like two big hairy supermodels. :) I took about ten pictures of these bears, but of course they did the best poses after I turned the camera off. Figures. :) I think the boys liked the indoor aquarium the best ("Mama! Fish! Mama! Fish!") and the zoo's wooden play train. I thought they would like the petting zoo a lot more, but IJ was kind of scared of the animals and wouldn't pet them, and C only petted a couple (although he asked me if he could pet one of the turkeys that roam around the zoo that was near the gate...um, I guess a sharp looking bird beak isn't scary to a preschooler...).

We finished off Saturday with a trip to everyone's favorite headache-inducing place, Chuck E. Cheese. Thankfully we don't have one anywhere near our house, so C only gets to go on special occasions. Once or twice a year of Mr. Cheese isn't too bad. :)

Here is the flickr set with all the Grand Rapids photos (I'll add the race photos tomorrow). I'll be back tomorrow with a recap of the Michigan race. :) (Holy hell this turned into a long ass post...)

FIRST HAIRCUT

IJ got his first haircut today. He looks like such a big boy now (and a lot more like his brother)!! He's not a little baby anymore...

before

after

FATHER'S DAY A LITTLE EARLY

Tuesday at playgroup C and IJ made daddy and papa Father's Day presents. They made can insulaters with puffy sports stickers, letters and numbers. C put just about every number he could find on daddy's. He threw a huge tantrum though (yippee, a tantrum at playgroup:( ) because he wanted to put the letters for daddy's name on his way, while mommy was trying to show him how to make the word. After he calmed down, we got those letters on there. :)

presents for daddy: IJ's is the blue one, C's the red one

the back of daddy's; see all the numbers on C's?

presents for papa: C's on the left, IJ's on the right

the back of papa's

R and papa got their presents on tuesday instead of waiting until Sunday because Sunday we'll be on vacation! Woo hoo! :) Father's Day Sunday we'll be downstate in Brooklyn, MI at the nascar race! This is the first race that R and I have ever been to, and the first for the boys, too. Auntie's going too. That's going to be R's big Father's Day present. :) We leave early Friday morning, so if you don't hear from me, you'll know where I'll be. :)

CIRCLES

IJ's got drawing circles down! He's 21 months old. (The little octopus looking thing was drawn by me because he asked for an octopus. I know-I'm not an artist. ;D )

Here's a larger size of his circles here.