From Swimming to Christmas Cards

that seems about right.  Missing of course was the start of school and and new blogging year (my third, who would have thought).  Fairly uneventful, Kyle doesn’t hate school, but he doesn’t necessarily like it either.  He teacher is young, but good and his life still revolves around sports.  His “uniform” consists of track pants and a hand me down Cardinals or baseball shirt from the kids up the street.  They are doing more math this year, which he likes, at times filling up an entire sheet of paper with different math facts and problems.  Grant is in his third year at ABC preschool and was so ready for kindergarten, but with an August birthday will have to wait one more year.  It is fun that he is attending with Lilly this year, although she had a rough start and I don’t think her older cousin was much help.  He does enjoy his extended day on Wednesday which is all boys.  I would just hate to see the bathroom after that class.  Speaking of bathroom, Ryan made an early effort towards potty training, amazing, given that his brothers were past the three year mark before we could convince them to even try, but in the end, he just wasn’t ready.  Other then that, he continues talking up a storm and following his brothers.  He has taken to calling Kyle “Bubby” and Grant “my best frien”.  He is so easy going in most respects, but for some reason the thought of standing still for a second to take a picture for our Christmas cards was completely out of the question as evidenced by attached pictures.  I tried once by myself in the park and lighting was perfect, but he was having none of it.  The second attempt was completely last minute, on our way to church, funky light and the boys in bright white socks, but with Jason’s help, I was able to get a few that I could photoshop together and our cards actually ended up being beautiful.  I was trying to find a way to link to the end product on Shutterfly, but couldn’t figure it how.  I guess I always love the end product, since I don’t really have professional pics done anymore, it is the one formal pic I have of them from year to year and always the cover of my photobooks (not that I am at all caught up on photobooks, but I will be at some point).

One more thing

No pictures (apparently forgot my camera all 8 times) but Grant joined Kyle in swim lessons this summer (the attached picture is just a favorite pre-swimming pic from later in the summer).  He went from complete refusal to even attempt entering the pool without his swim vest on Day 1 to a confident little swimmer by the end of the session.  He just seems to will himself across the pool.  A little heart wrenching for me, but the kid doesn’t panic and always seems to get from point a to b one way or another.  He even jumped off the big diving boards and the “fancy” pool.  Kyle had a great set of lessons as well and I’m sure could swim circles around me if I gave him the chance. 

Slumber Party Pics

 

Summer Time Wrap Up

Since fall is in full swing, I thought a summer time wrap up was in order so I can close out the blogging year and get into book form. July was less eventful, but did include basketball camp for Kyle and a big lake trip with my dad and step-mom.  It was really so much fun to spend time with them and the trip brought back lots of memories of going to the lake as a kid.  I am glad the boys got that experience.  The events of the day usually consisted of swimming, tubing, more swimming, eating, then tubing, tubing and more tubing, the swimming.  There are no pictures of the accommodations and we can just that there was good reason for that.  The boys of course didn’t care and liked having sleepovers with pipa and grandma deb and going without a shower for two days didn’t kill me. I really hope the lake will be an annual or at least semi-annual thing, just maybe a different venue next year.   Upon our return, we immediately started to prepare for what I guess must be a rite of passage for all parents, Kyle’s first sleepover party.  I will post the pictures in a separate post because there are some memorable ones.  It was complete chaos, but the boys had fun, I think.  Mom brought over Lilly and had planned to take Grant and Ryan home with her which ended up being a good plan.  I think she just ended up grabbing all of the kids and running like a refuge, I don’t even remember saying goodbye.  The make your own Sundae bar was a big hit, especially the sour skittles and I was surprised how much fun they had with the craft (pictured).  I grossly underestimated the ease with which they would fall asleep, but after some encouragement from me, the last set of eyes were closed at 2 am.  Sounds so cliché, but I can not believe my baby is 8.  He is turning into such a great kid, I can barely contain my pride sometimes.

This is a really smart cat...

I call his name,,,,Grant.  Grant’s imagination has literally exploded, he does this several times a day, gets paper, grabs the nearest writing utensil and draws the most amazing stories.  Ryan typically follows suit and Kyle has always been a prolific artist.  I love this phase where they can draw anything.  Ryan also likes to copy favorite phrases from his brothers, one of the most memorable being “IIIII seeeeee Kyyyyylee’s unnnnnnnderrrrrweaaaarrrr!

more pics from June...

City Museum, train ride home and baseball bliss as described in the previous post.

what we did in June...

Ryan turned 2, Kyle played ball and we all rode a train to St. Louis. Oh, and there was soccer camp and lego camp for Kyle, summer preschool for Grant, Vacation Bible School for both and lots of trips to the pool. The railing in the hall way has been permanently covered with towels and swimsuits since Memorial Day and even when I wash them, I just put them right back in the same place. So more details on the events of June, starting with a big birthday for the big guy. We celebrated on the actual day with just us as we usually do. We went to lunch at McDonalds and Jason met us at Summit Waves at 5. There was also a trip to Aunt Ashile’s mixed in there and I had at one point planned on making a cake in the afternoon. That plan quickly turned into picking up an ice cream cake at Here’s Your Scoop, which was great and Ryan loved the baseball cake and blowing out his candles which happened about 5 times (“I do it again”). There were of course presents with wrapping paper decorated by his brothers, including a monkey like last year. His “family” party followed by a good 2 weeks. I think I claimed to be celebrating his “rebirthday” on the 23^rd, but I probably just didn’t have my stuff together until then. It was a fun party, we took him to the party store and Kyle picked out all of the toddler themed plates and let him choose. Dinosaurs it was and it turned out to be really easy to decorate the cake with our existing vast collection of small plastic dinosaurs. Love it when things work out for the best like that. I had been thinking about trying to replicate this cookie monster cookie cake that my friend Julie did one year and I think we all know how that would have turned out.

The birthday celebrations were interspersed with many ball games for Kyle. I loved watching him play, but have to admit I hated lugging Grant and Ryan to the park. Soccer was fine because the games were shorter and there wasn’t much trouble to be found in the open field, but baseball games drag on and on and there are bleachers and concrete. I was lucky to have Andy when it got hot, but then I felt bad that he missed the games. What worked the best was dropping Kyle off early to warm up, then going to the park and not coming until there was about 45 minutes left in the game. It was a good compromise, but I did miss Kyle’s best hit of the season. I love how determined he looks in the running pic. He plays that way all of the time, he is never “off”. I have another pic that I must have taken in July that I love as well. It shows him running in after he made 2 force outs in the field and it is the closest thing to pure joy I have ever captured on film (or memory card I guess).

We did miss one game for a great St. Louis adventure, but it was well worth it. It started early on a Tuesday, catching the train out of LS. I was pretty nervous leading up to the trip, but we had a really good time. Ryan got pretty antsy, especially once he realized people were getting off when the train stopped (“I go outside!”). Kyle and I went to a Cardinals game that night while the rest of the crew enjoyed the hotel pool and Union Station. I think he had a good time, he never said he wanted to leave, but he really didn’t say much at all. We went super early for batting practice and I couldn’t get him to stand by the field (the picture is as close as he would get), such a rule follower, he wanted to set in our seats, 2 hours before the game. I was able to get him up to eat and we did one lap around the stadium. The next day we rode the metro link (and experience in itself with 4 kids and 2 strollers) to Forest Park and did the zoo and Science Center. The zoo was less then we expected, but we didn’t lose any kids and we successfully caught the bus to the Science Center where Kyle got to build a robot while the younger kids visited the Discovery Room. It was another hard sale to get Kyle to do the robot, because I said it was a contest, which it was and he was immediately afraid of not doing well, even saying “I wish Dad was here to do it because he would do good”. After I reminded him that I to was an engineer, he reluctantly agreed. I will post pics of that as well and of the City Museum, which we did on the last day and oh what a last day it was. It is hard to describe the City Museum except to say it is the complete opposite of a museum, there were tons of things to play and crawl on, including a big area on the roof. I am not particularly afraid of heights, but I have to admit I mad a conscious effort to look strait ahead while I was following the boys up the giant cage on top of the slide that was on top of the roof. K and G had absolutely no fear of anything and really had the time of their lives. It was worth the severely bruised tailbone I obtained sliding down a slide after them and the bruised elbow I took while helping Ryan out of a tunnel. Really, it has been a month and a half and my tailbone is still tender. Again, the pics I will post will probably do it more justice then my words. All for now, will try to post our July event summary before winter sets in (actually I need to do it soon, since my blogging fiscal year ends with the start of school, oh my, not that I have printed the book from last fiscal year).