Father's Day 2007

I took these photos of the boys after church Sunday morning. It seems like when we get over to eat dinner with the family these days, all the "grandkids" go wild and we don't get the chance to take pics, so I wanted to make sure and get some of Andy and the boys before they changed out of their dress clothes.

I just had to include these two cute ones of Braden. :) The boys acting silly... and beginning to squirm.... and down they go! We went to my uncle Mike's house for dinner that afternoon and then swam in his pool out back. The kids enjoyed the water and it was a nice relaxing afternoon. Braden was bushed by the time we got in the car to go home. He went to bed on the way home that evening (6:30) and slept all night since he only had about a 30 minute nap in the car earlier that day.

Bar-be-que/Picnic on the Deck

Lately we have been greatly enjoying the grill that was given to us by our real estate lady (and friend from church.) I pull Braden's high chair out onto the deck, and we just have ourselves a little dinner on the deck. It's nice and shady on there in the evenings so it is nice. Ben's friend Zach from across the street was over playing this particular night and Ben asked him if he'd like to stay and eat with us. They like to sit at his picnic table on the deck whenever he eats at our house or they have a snack together. Braden enjoyed his dinner too. He loves chicken! That's my boy! No red meat--blaaaaah!!! While we were finishing up our dinner, Ben came over and started pestering Braden wanting to get his picture taken with him. I snapped several. Here are a couple of them. Brotherly love :) Tickle, tickle tickle!!!!

Ok, it's literally been so long since I've posted a blog that I almost forgot how. Sorry for the delay. I've been rather busy since Ben started Summer School. I have so much to post, that i'll probably just do one or two sets of pics a day for a few days to catch up on my journaling and posting.

The week Ben started Summer Adventure [school], I began preparing to have a garage sale. I cleaned out every nook and cranny of the house trying to find extra "stuff" that we don't need. That took up much of my first week at home w/o Ben all day. Paula was right too: Braden and I did get some bonding time while Ben was at school. I now remember what it was like when I just had Ben and he was little. It was fun to have that time with Braden alone, but he and I both couldn't quite get used to Ben being at school all day. Some mornings Braden would whine all morning acting like he was just upset that Ben wasn't around. But he'd wake up from his afternoon nap and there Ben would be and all was well with the world. :)

One thing I got to introduce Braden to while Ben was away was garage sales :) !!! He and I went out for the first time together (that I got him out of the car, that is) and he did so good. I shopped and so did he (out of a box of McDonald's toys and little stuff like that.) It was so cute. He found a little keychain that had a soccer ball attached to it and he kept saying "Baaaa" (for "ball") and he'd throw it on the ground to see if it would bounce. The lady running the sale was really getting a kick out of him. We went to several more sales that day and he really did pretty well. I was surprised and relieved!

WAITING FOR A [another] FRIEND

I say "another" because I did a post about 6 months ago with the same title. This particular day, we had invited a friend of mine, Kandice and her two boys over to cook out and let the boys play while we visited. Both our hubbies were working late, so I asked her to come over and hang out. The boys had fun swimming, playing on the slip-n-slide in the front yard (which I didn't get any pics of)............ ....and then found more interest in Braden's toys than in Ben's--go figure.

We had them over again 5 days later for the same scenerio, but this time we were getting ready for my garage sale. She brought over some stuff to put in the sale so we let the boys play while we set up for that and also got in some "girl talk" in the meantime. :)

Ben's 1st Day of "Summer Adventure" [School]-June 11th

All excited and ready to go!

Ben got up pretty easily at 6:30 to get ready for his first day of "Summer Adventure" that our school district offers free to all school-age residents. He has been very excited about going so it wasn't too hard to get him up Monday. Yesterday and today have been a different story. He has never been one to get up all that early so this should be a fun four weeks for both of us--Ha!

I was too depressed on Monday to post this blog, but wanted to get it on here today before it's completely old news. It is getting a little easier to send him off to school each morning, but I am not liking it anymore than I thought I would :(

Ben's friends across the street came over to get Ben to walk him to the bus stop. I took some pictures from our driveway, and tried to stay there so I wouldn't embarrass him, but then couldn't stand it any longer. One of the other Mom's went to the bus stop so I went up to stand with him too.

There are probably 11-12 kids that get on and off at Ben's bus stop but most of their parents drove them to school the first day. Ben really wanted to ride the bus with Zach, so I didn't argue. He has talked about riding a bus to school since he was 3 yrs old, so I knew I would be spoiling his fun if I insisted on taking him the first day.

I told Ben to stay with Zach when he got to school so he could show him how to get to the gymnasium where all the kids were supposed to meet. Well, he interpreted it as stay with Zach all day and when the teacher came over to him and told him that he was supposed to go with her, Ben told her that his Mommy told him to stay with Zach. After some argument and tears shed, he finally went with her. What a way to start off the day. :(

A friend of mine (Kandice) lives so close to the school, that she has to take her little guy to school (or he has to walk.) So she was there with them on the first day and took these photos and sent them to me:

I was so touched when I opened my e-mail and saw these photos from her, because I had wished all day that I would have been able to go to the school and be with him and see his classroom and meet his teacher. I still don't know why this is so stinking difficult for me, but I guess it's just part of being a Mom (and a little bit of a perfectionist i'm afraid)

After a long first day, Ben made it home. He seemed so much more grown up than he was when I put him on the bus that morning. I guess that's what a little independence will do to you. He did see a few people he met in preschool and actually has Joshua (Kandice's little boy) in his class which made me feel a lot better. He says he loves it, so I guess all is well. I'm happy for him and I hope he enjoys every day of it.

Summer Fun Continued--World's Of Fun

Since we have World's of Fun passes from our trip to Cedar Point, I decided to take Benjamin out to World's of Fun for the day on Thursday. He is at the age where it's tons more fun to have a friend along to share the fun with so we took one of his neighbor buddies Zach with us.

On the way out, we dropped Braden off at his Grandpa and Grandma D.'s so I could take the boys on some of the "big rides" in the park. We then stopped to get some lunch at McDonalds on Front St. to save some money in the park. Well, I didn't know they would check my backpack or that taking food into the park was forbidden so the lunch that we tried to save money on got thrown in the trash prior to entering the park. (We were all too excited to get inside the park and didn't think about sitting down outside the front gate and eating it~frustrating!) Nonetheless, we had eaten enough to get us through a few hours.

The first place we headed to was.......where else?...... Camp Snoopy where the boys first rode the airplanes then Zach rode the kiddie roller coaster. Benjamin will NOT ride World's of Fun's kiddie roller coaster because he says it makes a weird sound when you go through the apple and it scares him. Go figure--he'll ride rides 10 times bigger and faster, but will NOT ride that one. After that we headed to the Peanuts Playground that Ben and I call the "ball pit." We spent like an hour in there. I got in on all the fun and Ben acted like he was in hog heaven having Mommy all to himself without Braden around. Load 'em up, shoot 'em out The boys then went and did several other rides in Camp Snoopy. There was NOBODY in the park because the weather was supposed to get bad in the afternoon. So it was nice that they could just jump on any ride they wanted over and over. I just had to get a pic of the Mamba even though I didn't get to ride it Taking in the view

The giant tree slide-Ben has finally gotten over his fear of tunnels I hope! Wheeeeeeeeeeeee! This train is really S L O W Mommy! Yeah! Bumper Cars! And now for a REAL ride--the Spinning Dragons! The boys wanted to wait until later in the day to ride "Spinning Dragons" so I made sure we had fairly empty stomachs and we got on. This photo was as we just loaded.... ...this one is on the ride.....wheeeeeeeee! The boys wanted to ride it again and again! We ended up riding it 3 times and I actually took a video of them riding it, but am having trouble getting it to load on my blog. (I haven't figured that out yet) If I can, I'll put it on here later. The "weather" that was supposed to come in, began to show it's ugly head so I told the boys that we'd better ride anything they wanted to ride before going home because I knew they'd shut all the rides down when it started raining. So, we rode the Viking Voyager three times (which they absolutely LOVED) and then decided we were all famished so we went to get something to eat. Pizza and a funnel cake--what a nutritious lunch/dinner--ha! ~good while it lasted though! Usually I don't sink money into the arcades or games at World's of Fun, but our day got cut short by the weather, so I told the boys we could go in and have some fun. You'd have thought they'd died and gone to kid heaven! When we ran out of money, and Ben had to use the restroom, we left the Arcade only to find that it had indeed started pouring. We dashed for the bathroom and when we came out, I asked them if they wanted to take off their socks and shoes and play in the rain a little. What do you think they said?????? :)

SURE!!!! YEAH!!!!! YAHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! YIPEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!! WOO--HOO!!!!!! Then they saw some "big boys" with their shirts off and asked if they could take theirs off too.

They had soooo much fun playing in the rain. I think every kid needs to have a day like this one where it's warm and you just let loose. I videoed them playing in the rain and will share it if I can get it to load on here. It was cute! I took this photo before I asked them if they'd like to take off their shoes. I just wanted to get a shot of the weather behind them. So we'll call this the "BEFORE" photo........ .....and these are the "AFTER" photos. Fun day!

Summer Fun

Since Ben starts Summer [school] Adventure on Monday, so we tried to squeeze as much fun into this week as possible. Since we moved, we don't have a neighborhood pool, so we have to make our own fun. So, Monday I got out our pool and we filled up. Ben was so excited as you can tell by his face. :)

Yahoo!!!! It's SUMMER!!! The next day, a few of the neighborhood kids came over to play. (I didn't forget the sunscreen this time thankfully) And we picked up a cheap slip-n-slide for them to play on. I think Ben looks just like Bradon Smith in this pic because I've seen him do the same pose =) Wednesday, I cleaned out a little sandbox that the previous owners of our house left for us and turned it into a little pool for Braden (I hated the mess of the sand anyway.) I also have a blow up one that I may set up later, but this one was a little easier for this week at least. He loved it, and Becca had fun entertaining him while the boys went wild in the other pool. When the big kids went to eat lunch, Braden and I jumped into the "big pool." He seemed to like it because he could touch the ground and walk around in his little floatie.

Catching Up

I haven't posted any pictures for quite a while so here is a brief post about the highlights of last week (May 27-June 2): On Sunday, the 27th we held our Sunday morning church service on our new property. We haven't sold our building yet, or broke ground on the new property, but we are trying to hold more services on the property this summer to keep people mindful of where we are headed--the future of our church. Although the weather called for storms that day, the rain held off until we had everything cleaned up and were heading home. Some of the men cooked up hamburgers and hot-dogs for everyone and we had a pot luck lunch after the service. There were also inflatables for the kids after lunch, and many played sandvolleyball on the two courts that are now set up on one section of the property. It was a very nice day and we had a great turn-out especially in spite of the looming clouds and threat of storms. On Monday, Ben and I broke out a 500 piece puzzle that we got as a souvenir at Cedar Point. It may take us a month to put it together, but it is a fun "quality time" project. On Tuesday, Andy turned 41. I've told him he's 41 going on 80. If you know how his health has been the past year, you know what I mean. Hopefully 41 will be a better year than 40 was!!! Since he completely ruined his diet over the trip to Cedar Point, I didn't feel guilty making him his favorite cake for his birthday--"Cowboy Sheet Cake." Ben bought him a Top Thrill Dragster keychain from Cedar Point and I got him a "Millenium Force" T-shirt--hey, money's tight. As Ben's preschool teacher taught the kids, "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit!" =) The decorations on his cake were Ben's idea and he enjoyed putting them on for his Daddy. Also on Andy's birthday I pronounced Braden an "OFFICIAL WALKER" which [to me] means that he now walks more than he crawls. He is LOVING his newfound means of getting around and is SOOOOOOOOOO proud of himself. Most of the time he will giggle the whole time he is walking just thinking he is the coolest cat in town. Here he is clapping (another new thing for him) while walking. I'm not sure he's all male though if he can do two things at once. :) Braden's 1st time in a BIG pool this summer!

One of our friends invited us to come over and swim in her neighborhood pool with her and the kids on Thursday. Since Braden doesn't remember being in a pool last summer, he thought the big pool was super exciting! He loved watching his big brother run and jump into the pool and also loved watching the other kids play. He wanted to run around too, and would have probably jumped in himself if i'd have let him. Everytime we'd get out of the pool, he'd walk straight for the edge...nearly scared me to death. I may have to get a leash for this kid when I take him to the pool next time. He doesn't seem scared of anything.

Poor Ben though, I was so concerned about Braden, and keeping an eye on him every second that I completely forgot to put sunscreen on him the whole time we were there. That night he had such a bad sunburn that he woke up at least once an hour crying and we'd have to reapply Aloe Vera to sooth his shoulders and back. :(

Sad Mommy~Ben's growing up way too fast!

Well, I tried to go to bed early tonight because I only got 3 hrs of sleep last night and thought I was exhausted, but, of course, I got into a conversation with Andy about the boys....and we got on the subject of the Summer Adventure. Summer adventure is a summer school program that Ben's elementary school offers that is supposed to be tons of fun and he really wanted to go to it because all his friends who have gone to it were raving about it. All of a sudden I can't sleep now. I just start tearing up every time the thought of it comes back into my head. Thinking about sending him off to school all day every day during what is supposed to be his summer break. It just makes me very sad :( He is just growning up way too fast!!! He is very excited about it so I sure don't want to say anything negative about it, but he's just barely gotten out of preschool and now he's having to start this program just as his summer break starts....(I am just venting as you may have noticed)....I'm just feeling a little overprotective I guess....I don't want to send him off all day to someone I don't even know..... :( I don't even get to meet his teacher beforehand....maybe not even at all.... :( I don't think I'm ready for this. Is this why so many mother's home-school??? I know he's gonna have a GREAT time and he will be able to be in the school he will be going to this fall (well AUGUST 15th!!!--again--middle of the summer!!!) and he will probably meet some people that may be in his kindergarden class.....it still makes me sad though:( Signing off for tonight. I've gotta get my mind off this some other way so I can get some sleep tonight. Let me know how you girls who have been through this got through it.