Pre School!!!

Here is Jordon on his first day of Pre-School this year.  He is headed for the Purple Zone and couldn't be more excited! 

 Here's little Gid's posing for his first day.  He also was quite excited.

As we approached the building, Gideon, all of a sudden got very independent and serious.  He just marched his little self right on in.  It was so  hilarious.  I didn't try, (because it was obvious it would be a failed attempt) but I'm guessing if I tried to hold his hand he would've said something to affect of not needing a mom anymore.  He is just a little man...and he really does still need his mom!



Well, this is what Jordon did when he was hungry for a snack and I couldn't get him something immediately.  You gotta give him some credit for figuring it out on his own...but seriously, how I am supposed to slice a piece of cheese now!?  I just love the teeth marks that you can see in there.

Meet the Teacher Night

After the first week or so of school we were invited to come to the classroom, hear about basic procedures, meet the teachers, ask questions, etc.  While I was there, I took it upon myself to go through Brandon's desk.  I just was curious about what all he had in there.  They keep a daily journal.  I loved looking through it and seeing the different things that he wrote about.  And I was also quite impressed with his drawing skills.  Despite the fact that I didn't want to be a weirdo-mom, I snapped a few pictures.

Again, don't know why this picture is sideways.  But I love how he's dribbling a basketball in both hands!!

A trip to the zoo

Pete's work occasionally sponsors family fun events.  This year it was a night out at the zoo.  We were told his work employees were going to get passes to stay late after the zoo closes.  We thought it would be so fun.  So we didn't show up until just a little before the zoo was going to close, so that we could enjoy fewer crowds, etc.  We got to do our exclusive dolphin show and then we went to see the animals.  Turns out, they put all the animals away when the zoo closes.  So our exclusive access was pretty much a joke-not a single animal was out as we walked through the zoo.

Well, it wasn't all a loss; we did get to ride the carousel and go on the zoo train which takes you behind buildings, near the roads and back by the dumpsters.  Quite an interesting ride!

These three wild creatures in front of us, were definitely the best thing on the train ride!

1st day of 1st grade for the rest of us...

While Brandon was at school, we met up with our friend Abby, ordered pizza and went to the park!  What a great day!

Nothing quite like climbing a dinosaur with friends.

And here we are at the bus stop waiting for him to get home.  It's a fun little adventure to all get in the wagon and go to the bus stop in August...but it won't be long until hauling everyone to this stop will be quite an ordeal with chilly temperatures!

1st Day of 1st Grade

Well, he's off. He is on the bus on his way to school and I won't see him until 3:30. It's a little hard to believe. The good news is that he is very excited about 1st grade and so that makes today a whole lot easier. What a big kid!!

My Supermen

Rob was able to snap this photo of the boys. It is so rare to get a picture of all three looking towards a camera and smiling. Look at little Gideon's smile! Jordon picked out a Superman shirt for Rob at Christmastime. I was just able to get a shirt for each of the boys to match. What fun!

I just saw a family of three girls on Sunday and they were all wearing these cute matching sundresses. I looked at Pete and said, "Aw, matching dresses; we'll never have anything like that!" But I guess I was wrong. These little guys look pretty good in their matching shirts.

I took a call...

I had just given the boys a bath...which is quite a feat to get them all bathed!! It is my favorite because they smell good when they come out of the tub and are still slightly damp. (Most of the time they smell like busy boys...not really stinky, but just hot. If that description makes any sense.) Anyway, I took a phone call. The older two got themselves dressed, no problem. I got Gids in his jammies and then they were off. I got engrossed in my phone call (it was only a 23 minute call, I went back to check my phone records. And it started before they were out of the tub-for the record.) Anyway, they had gone downstairs while I was on the phone and wiping up water off the floor from bath time. I heard lots of laughing and happy noises so I suspected that they were up to trouble, but this is what I saw when I rounded the corner on the stairs. Every couch cushion off and piled into a tower. They each took turns doing a various dive off the top. This is the best I've seen them do at taking turns in over a month!

Needless to say, the fresh bath smell was long gone in this 20 minutes period. I'm pretty sure Brandon had sweat dripping down his brow when I finally convinced the jumping to stop.

Looking sharp...literally!

Check out this dude! He knew he was going to a birthday party, so he asked for a mohawk with gel in it. Now this is a guy who knows his style! He didn't really wear this to the party, they had some play clothes there and this is what he chose. So funny!

Summer swimmers

Check out these swimmers! Swimming has been a big deal for us this summer. Brandon started out feeling fairly confident of his skills, but he's improved tremendously. The thing he's most proud of is being able to jump off the diving board and then swim to the edge.

Jordon started out the summer similar to how he starts most new things...very timid and not too interested.  Well the discovery of using a life jacket has provided the perfect amount of security that he needed. He is now quite a swimmer. He'll go to the deep end and try all sorts of things that I would've never guessed that he'd be doing this summer. It has been real fun watching his confidence grow this past month. Surprisingly enough, I've seen a lot of growth in his maturity in several other areas ever since he started swimming, so that's an unexpected bonus!

Gideon started out the summer demanding that he swims on his own. That was a bit scary for me. Do the discovery of the life jacket for him gave ME the security that I needed to be able to let him swim by himself! He's quite comfortable in the water; it's pretty fun to watch!

These pictutes turning up sideways drives me nuts and it's honestly the reason I dont blog as much as I used to. Grrr!

Cars 2

The boys were quite excited in anticipation for the new Cars movie. The original one has been a house favorite for about 3 years. They all got matching pajamas, which they are SO proud of. And Brandon and Jordon got to see it in 3D  at a theater.

May Highlights

I talked with a good friend from Seattle today and she reprimanded me on my lack of blogging here recently. So I decided to get back on track. (Thanks Rachel!) It's taken me awhile to figure out my new phone and how to take pictures, post pictures, get pictures off camera, etc. So that's my excuse, but anyway here are some April and May highlights.

Cinco de Mayo

Pete came home from work with these crazy hats and of course the boys were thrilled! They do make a pretty good 3 amigos!

Brandon and his friend Carter have each made a portfolio where they keep their best drawings. They try to sell them to people to get some money. I recently had a small garage sale (where I made 125 bucks and got to clean out the house a bit!!) and so they set up this table together for a little bit. They sure are cute in this picture, but it wasn't really a good idea for them to do this together. Feelings were hurt when comments were/weren't made or pictures were/weren't purchased.

Brandon and Jordon each got a kite at Easter and since we happen to live in the windiest pocket of the world, we have been flying our kites quite a bit. The wind is great to keep the kids occupied and have fun with our kites, it is not great when it continues to blow down our trees that we planted last fall!!! We've staked them with various types of stakes and with all these tornado-like winds coming through they just keep falling.

Brandon has been asking for a mohawk haircut for quite awhile now. I kept thinking to myself that I'd wait until after school was out. But his hair was getting pretty long and making him quite hot. And I figured, "Who really cares anyway!" of course he can have a mohawk during the school year. So here it is. It's kind of that trendy "fauxhawk" so when he doesn't spike it up with gel (like in the photo) you can't really tell too much. Anyway these are some super old Pacer's clothes that I got from two different garage sales. He loves them. That outfit coupled with these Chuck Taylor's just crack me up. He came up with this whole thing on his own...if only he knew how Hoosier he looked!!

It's not Memorial Day without a big watermelon!

Brandon and Jordon got the idea to try to catch their juice in a cup so they could drink it. It was hilarious to see how little actually ended up in the cup and how many drips were all over their laps. Oh well, gotta love their creative minds!

I just can't get over how much I love this picture. For whatever reason I think it looks old fashion. I guess I keep thinking in my mind that there must be a million similar photos that have been taken over the decades of little blond boys with blue shorts mealin' on some melon!

And here's the final picture of May. Today on May 31, 2011, Brandon got glasses. It's hard to believe really. His eyes are quite bad for his young age. We didn't even know, actually, he didn't even know that his eyes were bad until he failed the eye exam at school. Since he's so young and learning so much, his eyes and mind quickly normalized the blurriness that he was seeing. Anyway, I'm sure this will take some getting used to, but hopefully he'll enjoy seeing better. It's kinda too bad that he's getting them at the beginning of summer, where he'll do lots of sweating and playing (things that make wearing glasses kinda a pain) but I'm sure he'll really benefit from them next year when he's in 1st grade!

April Highlights

Jordon fell asleep on the couch WHILE eating an animal cracker. Yep, that's one hanging out of his mouth. This, unfortunately is "classic Jordon".

To redeem him a bit, here are some other pictures. The one above is usually how he "smiles" when I try to take his picture. I have to distract him a bit to get a true smile revealed. He calls guitars "rock stars" and likes to jam on this is one.

As usual Gideon is watching and can't wait for his turn to do the exact same thing as big brother Jordon.

The best part about this picture is that it was for no real reason. Just one evening they all decided to take their shirts off, sit out the counter and start waving their hands and yelling. This scenario is very common, not always with shirts off, not always sitting, but usually always laughing, waving arms, yelling, just being brothers I guess.

Butler goes to the Final Four!!

Here's Brandon and Jordon watching Andrew on the tv tonight. What a game! We are so excited to see the Bulldogs play in Houston on Saturday.

Jordon's growing up!

Jordon is the second boy and therefore a king of hand-me-downs. Really that works out pretty good for him because whenever he is ready for something new, we usually have it around the house somewhere. And that's true this spring as J is ready to ride a bike. He was so impressed with himself that he could now wear Brandon's old bike helmet. Such hilarious personality in these pictures. Thanks again for the helmet Aunt Elly!