Wednesday Play Date Fun

My sister and I have been getting together at my Mom's house once a week the past little while to have a play date with the kids. Yesterday, my other sister was able to join us now that she's done teaching for the school year. We had a blast playing outside. It was a bit hot, so after a bit, Nana decided to make the kids a tent with blankets over the clothesline. After she got that built and gave them all towels to lay on, they had a blast in their own little tent. Here they all are laying on their towels and peeking out from under the walls of their tent.



We tried to get them all to lay down, hoping that maybe they'd all take a small nap. But that didn't work, instead they decided to use their towels as capes and fly around the yard as "Super Bunny." Don't ask me where that came from, but it was cute none-the-less. After a while, the towels moved to the tops of their heads and we were able to snap another quick picture.



It was such a fun day and I'm glad at least someone remembered to bring their camera, since I didn't remember to bring mine, and email me the pictures so that I could post them.

We're so glad that Kylie's now going to be able to get together with us each week and Michelle, we missed you and hope you are feeling better!

Crazy Kids!

There are a few pictures I have that I haven't blogged about, so I thought I'd put them in one post.

This is from a few weeks ago when Zach decided to take on the playground - needless to say the playground won. We had taken the kids to the park to let them play and have fun. I wasn't watching at that exact second, but from what I can piece together, Zach tried to go across some part of the playground when he slipped and fell, hitting his face on the metal. He cried pretty hard and it even bled for a few minutes, but after he settled down, he was off playing and running around.



This picture was even taken a few days after when all the bruising finally hit. We're pretty lucky that it wasn't directly on the eye or I think we would have really been in trouble. He hit hard enough to have a goose egg right there and even now (2 weeks later), it's still a bit tender.

As if that wasn't enough, the next day, Hailey decided that he needed a few scratches on his face to balance out the black eye. So while they were fighting, she got mad and reached up to scratch him.



The most noticeable scratch just happened to be right on his nose, but there were quite a few little scrapes on his other cheek.

And as if that wasn't enough, the day after the scratches, Zach was running around the playground at school, fell, and twisted his ankle. I don't have any pictures of that, but he walked around with a limp for about 4 or 5 days.

As you can tell, it was a pretty crazy couple of days and everywhere we went, I could tell people were giving me the evil eye as if I was somehow beating up my child. A few people at church even teased me about it. Ah kids, sometimes they are just so fun!

Since I've posted so much about Zach lately, I figured I'd better do a little bit about Hailey (at least something that doesn't make her sound like she's an extremely mean sister). The other day she was up pretty early, so she was pretty tired come late afternoon. She was sitting with me on the couch, drinking her milk, and the next thing I know, she'd fallen asleep. Now that doesn't sound too funny or strange, but when you understand that she actually fell asleep with the sippy cup in her mouth, then you might understand how funny it was.




At the rate that she drinks those sippy cups, she must have been really tired to fall asleep mid-slurp. Of course we had to wake her right up, but not until after I'd taken a few pictures.

We sure have some crazy kids, but no matter how crazy they are, we sure do love them!

Kindergarten Graduation

Well, my little boy has grown up and is now a Kindergarten Graduate! (I know I keep posting about how time has flown by and how I can't believe how big he's gotten, but I have to say it again - WHERE IN THE WORLD DID THE LAST 6 YEARS GO?) Yesterday was his kindergarten graduation and it was so darn cute! We loved going and seeing him sing his songs and get his little kindergarten diploma. Here are a ton of pictures (mostly because I'm having a hard time deciding which ones to put on here!):



What a good looking bunch of kids


Here's our cute boy

Here he is singing

Getting his diploma


Here he is with his diploma


Look at all the people that came to see him!


We were so proud of our big boy!


So were his Nana and Papa


And here he is with his wonderful teacher Mrs. Paxman


I couldn't help putting a little video clip on here of him singing a song:

(Sorry for the blurriness, I was a couple rows back and had to take the video in between the people sitting in front of me and their movement kept throwing the focus off.)

What a great graduation! They were all so cute and we loved the whole program.

Congratulations Zach, Dad and I are so proud of you! You are such a special boy and we love you very much!

We Love Uncle Taylor!

One of the most exciting times for the kids is when Taylor stays with us. He stayed with us this weekend and the kids loved every minute of it. They just love playing with him, jumping all over him, and even trying on his shoes! Hailey was funny trying to walk around in those, I think it took her about 5 minutes to walk 20 feet because she was so unbalanced - it was so cute!





This is all 3 of them on Sunday morning right before church - don't they all look nice?

They have such a great time whenever he's able to stay a night or two with us and cry when he leaves. He's so great with the kids and always takes the time to do whatever they want him too and he never complains. Whether it's being a Taylor-gym (otherwise known as a jungle-gym) or playing endless hours of XBOX, the kids just can't seem to get enough.

WE LOVE YOU UNCLE TAY!

P.S. Your Jimmy Baboo!

Distinguished Dragon

On Friday Zach came home with a big smile and showed us his Distinguished Dragon Pin that he had received that day. Every year his elementary school gives these pins away to the kids who fulfill a list of grade specific requirements. These requirements are basically the skills they need to pass that grade and move on to the next plus some. We were lucky that Zach had pretty much all of them done by they time they sent the paper home mid year. We worked on the last few and had them passed off in plenty of time. He was so proud of his accomplishments! We're proud of him and had to get a few pictures of him wearing his pin!




We're also extremely happy about the teacher he had this year. Mrs. Paxman has really been a great teacher. In fact, all of her students earned Distinguished Dragon Awards this year.

I can't believe my little boy is growing up so fast. First riding his bike without training wheels, then loosing his first tooth, and now almost being done with kindergarten. He continually reminds me that he's going into 1st grade next year and will be in school all day. That's something that I'm not quite ready to talk about yet, I'd rather wait the 3 or so more months before I have to accept that fact. But regardless of how much he's growing (even though it's way too fast) his Dad and I are extremely proud of him and we love him very much!

Toothless!

Wow, two posts in a row about how big my little boy is getting. As you can tell from the title, we now have a child that has lost a tooth!

Zach has been complaining for months now about how everyone else in his kindergarten class has had a loose tooth and he's the only one that hasn't. We kept telling him to be patient and not to worry, but it seemed he would mention it at least 10 times a day. Finally, a week or two ago, one of his front lower teeth started to loosen up. After playing with it and realizing that it hurt when you tried to eat with it, he decided he didn't want a loose tooth after all. Of course you don't get to choose on this one, so we've been waiting patiently for it to fall out.

As he and Hailey were outside playing today, I heard one of them mention something about blood. I jumped up from the computer where I was working and ran outside to see what was going on - talk about blood is never a good thing. When I got outside, I found him outside with the tooth in his hand and an extremely bloody grin.

Once we got both him and his tooth washed up and the blood stopped, we took some pictures. "We have to take pictures to put on the blog!" Zach said enthusiastically! So here are the pictures:





As you can see, the other tooth has already popped through the gums and has started to move up. We were wondering when this little baby tooth was going to make room so that the big tooth could come in!

Needless to say, he can't wait until he goes to bed tonight so that he can leave his tooth for the tooth fairy! Congratulations Zach on your first lost tooth - you're getting to be such a big boy!

Look Mom ... No Training Wheels!

That's right. My little boy is just growing up so fast! Every time I turn around, he's learning to do things that just make me realize he's not so little anymore.

Today we decided it was time for Zach to learn to ride his bike without his training wheels. He's very coordinated and does very well with any type of physical activity, like sports and such, so we figured it would go fairly fast.

Little did we know how fast he would get a handle on how to do it. After about 5 minutes (really, it was 5 minutes!) of Jeremiah running behind him up and down the sidewalk, he had it.



Hailey of course wouldn't be left out of this whole bike riding thing. She followed Jeremiah and Zach up and down the sidewalk on her "bike" and would be so excited whenever he did something good.

(She was of course quick to point out that she was already riding her bike without training wheels - silly girl!)

And here's our big boy riding completed without training wheels, without any help, and on the road.




Can you believe how big he is? I don't know about you, but just seeing him on that bike riding all by himself makes him look so much older.