I hate it when I'm behind in my blogging, or worse, when my posts are out of chronological order. However, the next couple of posts will be that way, so bear with me, these photos are "old".
We've had a very unusually rainy June this year. We've spent a whole lot more time indoors than we've wanted, but it did help while I'm finishing out the school year. I think it may have even kept my students slightly more focused these past weeks, so I can't complain too much. Now that the heat is here, my energy and water bills will be higher so there's another plus to all of that rain we got.
E-man with his juice and blanket watching the rain and lightening, listening to the thunder. An awesome rainbow I captured in our back yard a few days ago. Ryan watching the rain. He's not too sure about the thunder and lightening but he's getting more used to it I guess.
Weekend weather was finally nice enough to hit up our brand-new local water park. Colin and I love going to the water parks in the summer. Our past experiences have been really great. I grew up loving 7 peaks. Colin and I love that water park and usually spend a day there each summer. I was especially excited that our city was going to be getting a water park of its own. I've been counting down the days until it opened. June was strangely Seattle-like weather and we were unable to check it out until this weekend. We were quite disappointed that our children weren't the worlds biggest Cowabunga Bay fans. Oh well. I guess we can maybe try it again once more. Colin and I were totally ready to pull the trigger on season passes, but just couldn't do it with the way the boys behaved. They basically hated it. BUMMER!
Colin's Review:
Took the wife and two boys to Cowabunga Bay this afternoon. It's a pretty fun water park. The angle on this place is it a "water play structure" or something to that effect. It's not a full-blown water park.
The structure is pretty large and has probably 10-12 different slides on it. You've got your smaller kiddie slides and the longer extreme slides for the older kids. The cool thing about this structure is there are all kinds of water gadgets on it, so as you climb up to get to your slides, you can drench people on other platforms below you as they climb up. This feature adds an entirely different element of fun to the place.
There are two large buckets on the top of the structure that hold hundreds of gallons of water, and they tip over every five minutes or so dropping a huge splash on the crowd below. A bell starts to go off when they are about to tip over so the kiddies can rush under it and get drenched. The kids there were all screaming with delight when this happened.
There is also a pretty lame beach entry type pool area that feeds into a small lazy river. Good place to chill out. Lots of chairs and umbrellas to chill on/under. Standard snack bar with jacked up prices. The soft-serve cones were very good.
This place is a lot of fun, but my two boys (1 and 3) were terrified of the structure. The water on all the squirt gadgets and slides was noticeably colder than the beach pool, and they were trembling and whimpering as we forced them to climb up with us and ride down the slides. We might try it one more time this summer, but they need to be a bit older to appreciate this place.
Overall though, I would say check it out this summer if you have kids in the 6-16 range. They'll love it.
My little E-man is now 15 months old! He's growing so fast and is getting so big. He really thinks he's bigger than he actually is... maybe about three and a half. Shhhh.... don't tell Evan.
Evan has been a lot of fun lately. He went through a super fussy stage where I think he suffered from a combination of alternating teeth and earaches. It was rough on all of us. He threw plenty of tantrums (I know this stage is far from over) and cried a lot.
He's back to his happy-go-lucky self again, and I'm glad for that!
Lately he's been really jabbering a lot. He'll carry on a nonsense conversation with whoever will listen to him. He just jabbers on and on. I love it and think it is the cutest thing. He's really quiet in the car and I attribute that to being Ryan's MOST talkative time of the day. I think he mostly is just listening to Ryan and I converse.
He's a climber just like Ryan was too. He gets onto things that are too high to be up on and has fallen more times than I'd like to admit.
He's also quite the daredevil. I told you he thinks he's big. He tries to do things that he's too little for and ends up getting hurt usually. At least he's having fun for a while before he falls down, trips, or skins his knee or nose!
Evan is building up his own little vocabulary. He can say quite a few words now. He says: ma- milk ma- more bye hi ball dog duck no stop don't mama ey- Ry
He doesn't sign very much but he has learned a few.
eat more please
Anyway, we just love the little guy and life with Evan is more complete than ever.
Most of these photos were from Colin's camera. He uploaded them to his facebook but I haven't really done a whole lot of pictures on facebook. I guess I just like to post my pictures here as we do things and add the journal along with it.
Evan with a sunburn.
Evan enjoying a snack at the pool. Where he got the above pictured sunburn.
Evan enjoying an otter pop after dinner.
Evan helping me wrap a gift.
Evan being a total stinker and making a mess of his food. I LOVE this picture!
Evan climbing around in our front yard. I think this was the day he got the scrape on his nose.
Me and Evan hanging out on Easter Sunday.
If you're savvy you'll have noticed the video bar on the side was updated a few days ago with this video of Evan jabbering. We have our own YouTube channel and you can subscribe to it somehow I think. Anyway, I added the video bar to the site and it automatically updates with the 4 most recent videos from our YouTube channel. Back in April I uploaded (to YouTube) just about every video I have taken on my camera- if you'd like to see some oldies but goodies. Enjoy!
Our evenings are pretty busy. I get home from work, straighten up the house, let the boys play a little. Fix dinner, clean up dinner. Do baths, stories and bedtime. With Colin gone pretty late most nights, I usually get a few minutes of peace and quiet before Colin gets home. The sad thing is that if Colin comes home after they're asleep he doesn't get to see them much. The boys are so cute when they sleep. We check on them before we go to bed and it is such a peaceful sight. I was hoping to get a picture of Evan in his stink-bug pose that he falls asleep in most nights but he'd fallen into a deeper sleep when I went in with my camera. I got the picture anyway. How cute is Evans reddish hair? And Ry with his penguin!
I like to think I'm really organized. Sometimes, however, in this hectic life that I lead, things aren't quite as organized as I'd like them to be. Take Evan's bottles for example. I've bought a few new bottles since he was born and have upgraded them all to the 8 ounce size now that he can down one pretty quickly. We've lost a few tops, exchanged a nipple or two, and bought a few more replacements. I knew that I had 6 bottles with all matching lids and nipples.
However, I never could quite seem to have them all at the same time. It sort of bothered me to be always missing something. Sometimes I'll have all of the lids and not enough bottles. Other times I'd have all of the bottles and be missing a few lids somewhere. Where do those things disappear to?
Sunday night a miracle happened. I found all of the bottles, lids, and nipples. They all match and they're all inside my cupboard. And, what do you know, there are actually seven! I was so excited I took a picture. Honestly though, the first word that popped into my head was bliss. I found them all! And they're all in one place, and they all match. So excited.
What has happened to my life that I get excited over something like this?
I think you can officially diagnose me with obsessive compulsive disorder though.
So my little brother, Justin has created a blog about his photography. He's gotten really into photography after he took a class from a wonderful teacher in High School (he's now a graduate!). He bought a new camera (pictured above) for Graduation and dropped it off the railing of this deck (pictured above). It is still with the people at Cannon being fixed so he's currently a little low on photos, but here is the address to his new blog. http://photosbyjustin.blogspot.com/ I also tried to make the picture a link so it should take you there too.
Hey Justin, what happened to the pictures you had of Emry and Evan?
Ryan has had a really awesome Preschool experience this year. He has loved going, learning new letters, numbers, nursery rhymes, and songs! He loves his friends and he loves his teacher, Miss Sandy. I was really quite bummed that I was going to miss his last day of Preschool celebration that Miss Sandy was allowing the parents to attend. But, I did, and I cried about it too. However, I did put my camera in Ryan's backpack though and asked her to take some pictures for me. She did, and for that I was really grateful. At least I have some photos of the day to remember by. Miss Sandy sent home some really wonderful things to remember his first year by and I'll be putting those in his scrapbook as soon as I can! Thank you, Miss Sandy for a wonderful school year. He quite enjoyed it!
I'm not sure what Ryan is doing in this picture, possibly choosing a story or rhyme to read. Ryan with his classmates. In order from left to right: Ryan, Max, Maycee, Aiden, and Curen. Not sure where Korbin is. Ryan with his best buds Curen and Maycee.
Evan at IHOP. He was really pretty good! We didn't have Ryan because he slept the night at Grandma and Grandpa's house.
Our Memorial Day this year was certainly a marathon of days. I'm not sure what got into us, but we decided to jam-pack the day with all sorts of activities. It was really fun though, and I'd take another Monday off again in a heart beat. 4 more weeks... 4 more weeks... 4 more weeks!
Anyway, here was our schedule.
8:00am breakfast at IHOP 9:00am harvest bees 9:45am Memorial Day services 11:00am Shooting with Colin 1:00pm Shopping for Summer clothes 2:00 pm pick up boys 2:30 pm Home Depot 3:00 pm Yard Work 5:00 pm Burgers on the Grill- oops grill out of propane, use George Foreman instead :) 7:00 pm bath time for boys 8:00 pm bedtime for boys 9:00 pm C-R-A-S-H
One of the last things we did on Memorial Day was work in the yard. Well Colin mostly worked in the yard, I just sort of watched I guess. We had a few things we needed to buy for our new yard at Home Depot and we spent more money than we would have liked to, but our yard is starting to look pretty good. I still need to work on the sprinklers some more because the park strip is pretty dry... in due time I guess.
Here's Ryan helping Colin mow the lawn. Super cute!
Camera update: I finally broke down and bought a new charger for my camera so that I could upload some photos. Those were some rough 10 days without being able to upload my pictures. It's amazing how much I have forgotten of the details from Memorial Day though, now that I sit down to blog about it. I'll do my best. Expect a blogging blitz now that I have access to pictures almost two weeks old.
Bringing in the colors to post. Wish I could remember who these guys were... but apparently they do it for all sorts of occasions.
The crowd at the cemetery in my parent's town.
Here is my dad, Grandpa, trying to explain to Ryan and Evan what a cemetery is. I didn't really set Ryan up for this excursion very well. I sort of tried to explain last minute and he wasn't really getting it. I guess he doesn't remember from the last couple of funerals that we attended. I guess I'll have to really explain better now that he gets it.
How cute is that? Ryan was holding his hand over his heart while they were bringing in the flags and during the National Anthem.
Me and a Camera shy Ryan. Checking out another headstone. Grandma and Evan.
It was a nice little ceremony/ program that this city put on for the citizens. I quite enjoyed it and felt we'd done our actual "Memorial Day" observance.
One of our Memorial Day activities was going out to the shooting range at Get Some, Guns and Amo. Colin has really been into his firearms lately and I've been less than happy about it. I was COMPLETELY against it at first. I guess I'm alright with it now-a-days as long he doesn't spend too much (more) money on it and doesn't bother me with it all day long. Well, I don't know why but I finally decided that I'd go to the shooting range with him. I was REALLY nervous about it. I mean, you all thought I was afraid of the bees SHEESH that was NOTHING in comparison to the damn guns! When we walked into the store, I was really freaked out by all of the firearms and ammunition all over the whole place. We signed our waivers and entered the shooting range and that's when I was REALLY freaking out inside. I couldn't believe how L-O-U-D the guns were! I was really freaked and ready to leave. Colin got everything set up and shot a magazine through the gun and then asked me to do it. I guess he figured I was really paying attention when he showed me how to use the gun a few days before. I didn't even pick the gun up hardly before we got there, and now I was supposed to fire it???!!! So I finally did and it was kind of funny. I would fire the gun and then scream in between each shot. I really got warmed up though and Colin figured I shot a total of like 100 rounds between the two guns.
Here's me at the end of our shooting experience. It wasn't too bad after all and Colin was quite happy that I actually went with him, and fired the gun. My first time shooting the gun. Sig Sauer P229. (whateverthehell that means) Kinda freaked out by the loud noise and all. Colin showing me how to do it for real.
Colin thinks it's really funny that my left eye is dominant and I'm right handed. You can tell in this picture how I have to move my head all the way to the right so that my left eye is lined up with the sight.
Shooting the Smith and Wesson 637.
Colin shooting up an Osama Bin Laden poster. He only had one stray shot. He got him on the nose and between the eyes too!
Yeah, that's right. He has three boo-boos and a sunburn. I seriously need to be fired from this Mom job. I suck at it! I don't know why but Evan seems to be getting hurt every day. I know he's fair-skinned and I thought I learned my lesson when he was 2 weeks old, but apparently not! I swear to you that we caked him in sunscreen but to no avail, three hours at the swimming pool and he came home as red as Daddy did (who also lathered up well). I'll take your sunscreen suggestions please!
Today took the cake though. You should have seen his head. He has a MAJOR lump! I was so sad about it but tried really hard not to freak too bad. The good thing is, I was so freaked out that I hardly knew what to say or do so I was actually pretty quiet. I have a really good picture of it on my phone but that doesn't have a SIM card so I can't upload it. I can send it to your phone though, if you're curious!
I've been absolutely DIEING to blog lately. We had this marathon of a Memorial day and I've got tons of cute pictures. We went to the cemetery, shooting, yard work, played around with bees (I did get those pictures because my dad took them), and the list goes on. It was a really fun day! Unfortunately, my camera battery is dead, I cannot find the charger ANYWHERE, and I don't have a card reader on my computer. Colin's computer won't read my card either. I think my battery charger is somewhere at my grandma's house in San Diego so- a lot of good that does me.
Hopefully I'll be able to pray my charger into existence or I'll figure out another way to solve my problem but until then, I've got Colin's camera worth of pictures to blog. If only I could find some time that I wasn't grading papers!
E-man with his juice and blanket watching the rain and lightening, listening to the thunder. 
An awesome rainbow I captured in our back yard a few days ago. 
Ryan watching the rain. He's not too sure about the thunder and lightening but he's getting more used to it I guess.
