Boo!

It seems like Halloween was so long ago already, but it was only a little over a week ago, so I don't feel too bad about just getting these posted.  :)

I'm a witch, Porter is Boba Fett from Star Wars, and Colin is a Caveman.  See?  He's already in character!

Here is our little Caveman, keeping the costume on!

It's so awesome how our neighborhood really gets into Halloween.  We set up some chairs in the driveway to hand out candy, and Porter took off with some friends to trick-or-treat.  This is the pre-game picture-taking session.

Colin started the candy-eating a little early.  But at least he stayed put!

We went to a local pumpkin patch and played around for a couple hours. I tried to get Colin to look at me, but he was overwhelmed by all the pumpkins...

Porter swung the mallet and hit the bell!  Such a strong boy!

Colin "milked" a fake cow.  When he saw the water coming out, he tried to stick his face down there and get a drink!

Sittin' in a tire.  It's what you do on a farm.  :)

Way too long...

It appears that we have some things to catch up on, hmmm...?  Well let's jump in!

This is one of the reasons I've been neglecting the blog.  You can see it in his face, can't you?  The "what-can-I get-into-next?" look in his eyes?  Yes, the two-year-old has not slowed down one bit, and seems to be adding to his repertoire of mischievous things to do.
Lately he's been getting climbing on top of the bathroom vanity and turning on the sink...for an extended period of time.  He splashes in the water, "cleans" our toothbrushes, squirts the soap, and generally gets everything soaking wet.  You might wonder how he manages to have enough time to do all this.  Well, he usually goes for it when I'm in the shower and all I can do is repeat, "Colin, turn the water off.  Colin, turn the water off."  He just smiles and says "Off?  Off?"

Here's another reason for the lateness of the blog update.  This is Porter's first day of school (way back in August).  He's started 2nd grade and is full-steam ahead.  He had a rough start of it with some friend issues, but he's excelling in school, regardless.  In fact, we just had a parent/teacher conference last week and his teacher wants to test him for the Gifted Program in the Spring.  He was tested before and was just a couple points shy of making it, but at this stage of the game, we're happy to keep him at the head of the class no matter what.  He will always be brilliant around here.  :)  He has fun playing with Legos, drawing, reading, making up games, and playing the Wii.

I had my 20-year high school reunion last month (sheesh, when did I get that old?) and it was a lot of fun.  I got to see people I hadn't seen in forever, stayed out WAY past my bedtime, and generally had a great time talking and catching up.  Britt got to stay home--I thought he would be bored if he came with me, but I actually had several people ask me where he was!  At MY high school reunion!  He's really networked himself around this town.  :)

Britt keeps threatening to move us up to Idaho...but it's funny how those threats are only expressed between May and October.  Ha!  We've been talking about it and it might be a good time to make a move, but we don't have anything concrete to get us out of town.  Honestly, it's hard to leave a good neighborhood where you have friends, a good school for your kids, and an area where I rarely have to drive more than 5 miles to get to anything I need.  But since we've been married he's been talking about it, and now that my dad is moving up there he seems to think there's more incentive for me.  We'll see... :)

Up next... HALLOWEENIES!

La Jolla--The Final Chapter

OK, since I don't get any comments on the blog I'm not sure if anyone is even reading this, but I decided to finish our vacation pics anyway, if only to prove that we DID do something fun this summer!
Here's the final part of our trip--the La Jolla Cove.  I think this was my favorite part.  It was so fun to see the boys getting interested in the little crabs and fishes that we found, and the waves just made for awesome pictures.
Porter liked climbing around on the rocks, and Colin just tried to get wet at every chance he got. :)

Daddy pointing out some crabs in the tide pools.

My boys living on the edge!  It may have been at this point that Britt's new phone got wet and quit working...

"Hey!  I know you!"

Colin makes his way around the tide pools.  Ironically, the wind wasn't blowing his hair like that.  That's natural beauty.

Well, at least 3/4 of us are paying attention.

Here we are again, this time Porter wanted to be shy.

Porter climbs around on the rocks.

After our picnic on the beach...what a nice day!

La Jolla--Part Deux

I know you've been on the edge of your seat, waiting for this second installment of our vacation to San Diego!  Well, wait no longer!  Here is all the excitement from LegoLand!

Porter was the driver on the "speed boat".  Britt just screamed like a little girl.  Ha!

Even without swimsuits, the boys got soaking wet!  It took a little while, but Colin warmed up to the splashpad and was soon running around like a wet monkey! 

Taking a lunch break.  You'll notice how "helpful" Porter is in assisting Colin with his head shot.  :)

"Hooray for Lego Land!"

The helpfulness continues, this time with the giant frog Porter won at the fishing game.

No trip to Lego Land would be complete without a visit to Lego Vader! 

Porter wanted to climb this wall SO badly, so we hooked him up and watched him go.  That's about as high as he got, until he got scared and started crying to get down.  The workers there climbed up and "talked him down".  It was so sweet how he was trying to be brave, but it was just too much.  After this we went to the water park to chill out.

Up next:  La Jolla--The Finale

La Jolla--Part One

Last month was the (now) annual Summer pilgrimage to San Diego, as we try to escape the awful Arizona heat for a few days, and enjoy entertaining our kids in expensive and under-appreciated ways.  It's fun, but it's not much of a "vacation" in the sense of relaxation, although we did have a few moments in the evening on our balcony once the kids were asleep.  Something about the sound of waves crashing against the beach will just lull you to a state of quiet bliss.  But it was great to be together, enjoy these little boys and be a part of how fun and new everything is for them.

We visited family, went to Lego Land, had a wonderful hotel right on the beach (and I mean right on the beach), ate at Britt's new favorite breakfast place "The Original Pancake House" (twice), did some playing in the waves, tended to a wicked sunburn (me), and explored the amazing La Jolla Cove for hermit crabs and great pictures.

Anyway, for Part I of our documentation, we'll just go chronologically in pictures...

The view from our balcony at La Jolla Shores Hotel.  If the beach wasn't interesting enough, the boys played on the playground, or swam in the pool at the hotel.  It was sooooo nice...

But first, a stop at Uncle Mike and Aunt Pam's place.  We visited with my Grandma (next to me), and my cousins Brian and Kevin.  Brian's fiancee, Libby, was nice enough to watch Colin in the pool...and in the house...and by the slide...

Porter said they were the "Statue of Liberty".  I think the base was crumbling quickly...

The boys playing basketball.  We were especially proud of Kevin's ability to dunk on a 7-year-old.  Look at that form, Britt!

It took him awhile, but Colin finally felt like getting in the water.  Then he "tickled" the water, wiggling his fingers and saying, "Teek-o, teek-o, teek-o". 

Colin:  A Portrait of Contemplation.  :)

Watching the waves, and running away from the seaweed

The beginning of his campaign for "Diaper Removal 2011".  Luckily he wasn't doing anything off the balcony but looking around.  Those little cheeks were just too cute to pass up...Someday this picture will come in handy.  :)

My big guys heading down to the beach.  Porter loved his new swim shirt.

 Next time:  Part II, Return to Lego Land.

 

And now it's Porter's Birthday!

Our big boy turned the Big 7 last month and, after going back and forth about what he wanted to do to celebrate, we decided on taking a few of his friends to AirWorx trampoline jumping place for a couple hours.
I have a spring birthday, so doing things for my big day was never a difficult decision (the weather is nice, kids are still in school, and girls just want to dance around with their friends and lip-sync to music, anyway).  Now I can say that, with two boys having summer birthdays, it kinda stinks.  It's too hot to do anything outside so everything you try to plan has to happen indoors.  That makes it challenging when all boys want to do is run wild and yell and try to shoot at things and tackle each other.   Thank heavens for places like AirWorx that let little boys do all those things (for a price, I might add) and still fall flat into bed at the end of the day.

Porter is a goof ball on his way to jump himself silly with his friends

The Lego set he's been asking for since last Christmas.  He put it all together by the next morning...

He wanted a Harry Potter cake, and decided that he wanted to decorate it himself.  So, he carefully positioned as many Legos on the cake as he could.  You might notice a "blending of genres" here...

...as you see we have an alien, a tank-top wearing Jango Fett from Star Wars, a Clone Trooper on a jet speeder, Voldemort from Harry Potter in the background, and even a pig in the back there.  I don't ask anymore.  :)

We ended the day with cake at the neighborhood park, where his neighbor friends came out to help him celebrate.  It is so wonderful to have good people around who care about our kids.  And he had fun!

And just for fun, little Colin getting interested in what's going on.  Sitting on the dining table.

"Hmmm...?  What's that, you say?  I can't be up here?  But this bowl of wonderful wicker items would be so delightful to throw upon the floor!  Watch as I make short work of this!"

We survived the wicked dust storm that blew through Phoenix the other day.  I've lived here my whole life and I've never seen anything that crazy.  It looked like something out of those "Mummy" movies.  The airport was shut down because (funny thing) the baggage handling doors were opened and all the dust started blowing into the airport.  Which then made the smoke alarms go off because the sensors thought the "cloudiness" was smoke.  Which then triggered all the doors in the airport to automatically open, letting in even more blowing dust.

We watched the blowing wind from our house and were concerned about a couple of small trees we had just planted a couple months ago.  They were really getting blown around and we thought they might get snapped in half.  Porter woke me up this morning and said, in a relieved tone, "Mommy, I have good news.  Our little trees made it through the storm.  They are OK."  Whew!  :)

 Gotta love the desert!  Now if only it would rain and wash off all this dirt...

Colin Turns 2!

How can that be?  How is it that this crazy little child has been making life around here so entertaining for 2 years already?  Well, it's true, and our Sweet Little Nugget just turned 2 years old.  We kept it low-key and had a little splash party in the backyard for our family.  He loves getting wet and dirty and so that was our theme; along with some dinosaur paraphernalia thrown-in.  Rawr!

Swinging on the "Thunder Dome".  He actually lifts himself up on there!

The dragon watched over him.  The green tube was...uh...a tube for water stuff...

Is this pitiful or what?  "Man, where have the years gone?  What have I done with my life?" He was actually just really tired at this point.

Blowing it out with a little help from Porter.

"Is there something on my face?"

He had a lot of fun for his birthday,  and was pooped by the end of the day. (Yes!)  All it takes is a 6-year-old and four grown adults to keep him busy, and we can finally tire him out!  :)  He is a fun little guy and we are SO happy he is a part of our family. 


We had a really busy couple of weeks!  THIS is the reason that Daddy has been so busy lately:

Britt was (mostly) in charge of organizing the Young Men's Super Activity for church this year--and he went all-out.  He came up with the thought that these boys (who are aged 15-18) needed to really USE the skills they learned as Boy Scouts.  So he came up with a survivalist camp-out; only the boys didn't know it.  They asked each of the boys to pack a bag for 4 days in the wilderness; the day of the camp-out they had the boys drop their bags in the truck of another leader, who then drove to his house and left the packs there.  On purpose.  And they all kept driving.

Meanwhile, Britt had spent the good part of the previous two months assembling backpacks to give to each of the boys--hydration systems, blankets, water purifiers, firestarters, anything they would need for minimalist survival in the wilderness.  He worked SO hard to order all the items the boys would need, doing so much research and calling around to get awesome deals on these things.  In fact, when they saw the amazing job that Britt had done assembling these packs, many of the parents of these kids also wanted one for themselves!  If there's one thing about Britt, he is thorough.  :)

So everyone went to the camp-out grumbling and complaining, and they came back 4 days later sweaty, tired, and really wanting a burrito.  And smiling.  After all the time and effort they put into it, the trip was a success!  No Giardia!  YAY!  :)