Just posted photos from our blueberry picking trip last week...

Check them all out here.

Yep, I'm behind. So what else is new??

I know I owe the blog a real entry, but I am still in recovery from the whirlwind that was June and the beginning of July.  I get tired all over again just thinking about it!

First there was the trip to San Antonio, followed by two full weeks of swim lessons for all the kiddos.  Next was Logan's birthday party, a pool party on July 3rd, our neighborhood July 4th celebration, and Logan's actual birthday on the fifth.  (We went to a water park.)  Then there was another pool day with friends and blueberry picking on a mountain.

Oh!  And somewhere in there, I royally messed up my right knee.

So instead of a detailed entry, you get a little collage of photos from July 4th, which I just realized I never shared.
Yes, snow cones played a huge role in our Independence Day this year.  And pony rides, although I didn't get any really good photos of that. 

Anyhow, all the photos can be seen here.  I'll catch up someday.  Actually, I'm pretty sure Emma is up next for an update.  I'll let her know as soon as she wakes up in the morning after she has her morning coffee.

To Logan on his 4th Birthday!!

My dear little Logan,


I’m not sure how many more years I’m going to get away with calling you that. At this very moment, you insist that you will always be my little Logan, but I know that will change someday soon. So, for right now, I’ll do it whenever I can along with stealing all the hugs and kisses I can get.

I know I say it every year, but little man, you are growing up way too fast. We’ve traded your jungle-themed nursery for a big boy room full of cars and trucks and trains and tools. You got your first big boy bicycle at your party last weekend and haven’t really wanted to stop riding it. And let’s not forget Buzz Lightyear and Woody! While you will still sit down for an episode of Curious George, you have also discovered a love of all things Toy Story. You were Buzz for Halloween and you didn’t hesitate for a second when I asked you what you wanted your birthday party theme to be this year. Even your first movie in a real theater, as opposed to our weekly movie night at home on the couch, was Toy Story 3.

While you are definitely the typical big brother when it comes to teasing and torturing your sisters, I am amazed every day by how much you love them as well. You take care of them. The best example I can give you actually happened a couple of days ago at an early fourth of July pool party. It was late and we were waiting while Daddy packed up the car. You spotted a tray of cookies on one of the tables and asked if you could have one. When I told you yes, you grabbed three, promptly handed one to Emma, and started looking for Chloe before you had even taken a bite of your own. Nobody told you to do this. You just knew it was the right thing to do.

Your heart makes me so proud.

When you are not teasing, torturing, or taking care of your sisters, you are busy inventing. In the last month alone you have created a hopscotch obstacle course, a working recliner (this was your Daddy’s favorite and he tells everybody about it), and a myriad of other things both big and small. Your brain never stops working and you are full of ideas. For example, one day you informed me: "I know Momma, I could ride on my bean bag down the stairs! That would be a good idea!!" (I had to tell you it probably wasn’t.) Another day we were sitting outside and you were piling leaves, grass, and dirt into your wheelbarrow. When Gramma asked you what you were doing, you informed her that you were making compost.

Now that your afternoon nap is a distant memory, you love to exercise with your momma. You’ll sometimes watch me run on the treadmill, telling me to go faster while you lift weights or do squats with my big purple balance ball. When I’m done, you’ll insist on walking for a bit and always want to see how far you’ve walked on the little screen when you’re done. Gramma bought you a small trampoline with a handle for your birthday and you’ve already spent a not insignificant amount of time jumping and running on it while your daddy or I are on the treadmill. My favorite part of exercising with you, however, is when you insist that we stretch. You are like a pint-sized personal trainer who won’t let me get away without stretching at the end of my work-out.

You started t-ball this spring too! You and Daddy picked out a glove and a bat long before the season started and you practiced outside in the front yard for weeks. You seemed to be a natural when it came to hitting the ball off the tee, but when it came time to actually play, you got a bit sidetracked by the chance to dig in the dirt. (Don’t worry. You weren’t the only one.) So we took you to your first real baseball game to try to impress upon you, among other things, that baseball players don’t really push their bats through the dirt when it’s their turn to hit the ball, but you were sidetracked again as soon as you spotted the hot dogs, Cracker Jacks, and bubble balls (known to the rest of us as Dippin’ Dots).

You recognize all of your capital letters now and we are working on the lowercase. You are starting to remember which letters make which sounds too! The other night, you sounded out the word “off” in the bathtub and I just sat there with my mouth hanging open even though I used to teach kindergarten and knew that we’d been working on this.

You are also pretty good with numbers and you are my official button presser in any and all elevators.

You prefer to take the escalator with your daddy, though.

Speaking of elevators, you were totally impressed with “superfast elevator in the big tower” in San Antonio. That’s right! Momma and Daddy took you and your sisters on our first plane trip as a family to San Antonio, Texas this year. It wasn’t your first plane trip, but it was probably the first one you will remember and you were both pretty impressed and nonchalant about the whole experience. What you were excited about was staying at the “show and tell” and sleeping on the couch that turned into a bed.

And the pool!

You still love the water and have had two rounds of swimming lessons the past couple of months. While you still use a float because the three-to-one ratio of kids-to-momma isn’t the safest one in the pool, I don’t think it’s going to be much longer before you can swim without it. A few weeks ago we could hardly convince you to jump off the side of the pool at the hotel without holding onto our hands. Saturday you were running at full speed and jumping off the diving board into the deep end! You even came to me after your twentieth or so jump and told me you were ready to take your float off, jump off the diving board, and swim to the side. I, sadly, had to tell you I wasn’t sure you were quite ready for that yet. But, like I said, I know it won’t be long.

With every day that goes by, I am amazed and overwhelmed by the person you are becoming, even at the tender age of four. I hope you heart and your creativity continues to grow as fast, or faster, as the rest of you! I love you my sweet boy.

My little Logan.

Love,

Momma

Happy Independence Day!!!

I know the holiday weekend is barely half over, but if I had to sum up everything in one photo, this would probably be it:

And no worries, you know I could never post just one photo of the holiday.  It will just take me a bit longer to get to the rest of them.  I hope everybody is having a wonderful 4th of July!!!

Project 365: June 2010

Bike Riding (video clip)

Logan nearly chose riding his new bike over going to see Toy Story 3!  Now that's love!

P.S.  Will somebody please let me know if you can even see this clip?  I can't, but I think something is up with my computer.

Par-tay!!!

Here's a photo from Logan's birthday party yesterday!  He had a blast.  I will be in recovery until about November when it will be time to start planning Emma and Chloe's birthday party.  :)

Birthday Party on the Brain

See this jumping bean of a boy?

He has a fourth birthday coming up and, since he happened to be born the day after a national holiday, he will be having his birthday party a bit early this year: tomorrow, in fact.

Some of his t-ball friends are supposed to be coming and he's, shall we say, excited.

And like his momma, he's been making plans for weeks now.

He's been making gift bags for his friends with his miniature grocery bags and various toys he's found around the house.

He's been "cooking" popcorn.

He's been brainstorming what to do during his party.

Last night as I was mixing up the cake batter for what will, with any luck, become this little boy's Buzz Lightyear cake, he called down the stairs to me.  (He was supposed to be in bed.)  When Andy asked him what he needed, he told us that he thought that we should play Toy Story on the TV for his birthday party and bring his Buzz and Woody animals.

"That would be a good idea Momma!"

About thirty minutes later, when the smell of chocolate cake began wafting through the house, he called down again.

"What's that smell Momma??"

I told him it was the birthday cake for his party and that he needed to go back to bed.

Which he did for about thirty more minutes before calling down the stairs a third time. . . I believe it was close to nine-thirty at this point and I just know he was thinking about his cake the entire time.

By this time the cake was sitting on the cooling rack, so I let him come down to see it.  I know he was expecting to see the completed decorated version that was pictured on the cake pan we bought a couple of weeks ago and not the big brown blob that I'm sure he actually saw.  I showed him the frosting that I had already made that was all the colors of Buzz and told him that I was going to decorated the cake tomorrow after it had cooled.

He was deciding that this was okay when he noticed all the mini-cupcakes sitting on the counter cooling and wanted to know what those were, so I told him that those were for his birthday party too.

"Wow.  I didn't know I was going to have all those cakes for my birthday party."

I can't wait for tomorrow.  I hope he enjoys the party as much as he has enjoyed dreaming about it. :)

So I spoke to soon...

Chloe would have nothing whatsoever with going in the pool during her swimming lesson this morning.

Instead she spent forty minutes of the forty-five minute lesson like this:

So tomorrow Momma will be participating in swimming lessons too.

Swim Lessons!

Logan started his second round of swim lessons yesterday. 

The kid has always been a waterbug, although he still can't quite get the concept of holding his breath underwater.  And after being dunked into the hotel pool a few times by his daddy in San Antonio, he had been quite adamant over the weekend that he was not going to swim under the water at swim lessons this time.  That is, until Gramma and I started talking up the whole swimming-underwater-thing Sunday by mentioning how, when you swim underwater, your swim coach throws toys down to the bottom of the pool for you to go get.

So, of course, when we walked into the YMCA pool yesterday the first words out of his mouth were:  "Where are the toys?"

Emma, Chloe, and I spent his thirty-minute lesson on the far side of the pool, just as we did during last month's trips to the pool.  We'd developed quite the routine that involved an oversized beach towel and the girls' backpacks that we fell back into easily on Monday.  Before we set up camp this time, though, I talked with the swimming coordinator about lessons for the girls.  Since they are still two, the only classes they qualify for at our Y are the parent/child classes which require that I round up three (including myself) able and willing adults several times a week. 

They are, however, allowed to take private lessons.

Anyhow, I told the coordinator that I had just turned in the private lesson form at the front desk and, if it was anyway possible to coordinate everybody's lessons, I'd appreciate it.  Well, within ten minutes of talking to her, she brought me one of the swim instructors who would be able to take the girls for buddy lessons at the same time as Logan's group lesson. 

So Emma and Chloe started their first swimming lessons today!!

I have to admit that, as I marched my three bathing suit and trunked children to the pool this morning, I was a bit worried about them and how Emma and Chloe would react to being in the pool without me.  Both girls aren't quite as attached to me as they used to be, we can actually go somewhere now and they don't glue themselves to my legs, but they both took forever warming up to the hotel pool a few weeks ago. 

During their buddy lesson, they took turns being scared, but there were no major breakdowns until Chloe needed to use the potty near the end.  But for a majority of the lesson, she looked like this:

I realized that their bathing suits were matching last night, so I put Chloe's hair into a pony tail and Emma's into piggy tails so the poor instructor would have a fighting chance of knowing who was who:

And here is the whole crew before everybody got in the pool and I was left on the side to twiddle my thumbs:

Maybe I'll have three waterbugs in a couple of weeks.  Then we'll just need a pool!