We found a lot of Dollar Store toys while cleaning out the apartment, so brought some of them over for the kids (some are being saved for the future). Owen was excited about these wrist-pull copters, which he had to wait to play with for a few days because the weather was rainy.
Yes, it’s a rock. Yes, Katie already has three real phones to play with. She LOVES it. Kids are funny.
She actually slept with it last night and found it under her pillow this morning!
We found LOTS of good pictures while cleaning out Marsha’s apartment. I posted a few of the best ones. The Facebook comments were all basically “WOW! That’s Owen!” 🙂
School pics from 1981-1983. Always in blue. Always matching. 🙂
Kind of blue and still matching. #unearthedtreasures #theboyshateme (Rob commented that they probably even had the same underwear.)
In a hand-me-down dress from the Beson cousins.
At least the ones in this house…which includes Gramma Jean, Grandpa David, and Maggie. 🙂
Wearing Gramma Jean’s lobster hat!
For about three weeks now, we’ve known that Tom’s mom’s cancer had spread to her liver…but she was dealing with it…and the prognosis, while not great, still gave us hope. Unfortunately, I just don’t think her heart was in it. She didn’t want to deal with chemo the last time around and was glad when she didn’t have to do it. So when she learned that was in her future this time…
Tom got a call from his brother last night that she had fallen and was taken to the ER. The doctors seemed to think that she would rebound once they re-hydrated her but Tom wanted to head up anyway so he left Saturday morning. Unfortunately, about four hours in to the drive he got the call that she had died. So he turned around to come get us and we will all leave for Michigan tomorrow morning.
Owen’s school Fall Festival was tonight and we wanted some one-on-one time with him so asked friends to watch Katie. They were going to a Trunk or Treat event so she was excited! She was Rapunzel—with Pascal on her shoulder!
And then we had Harry Potter—SO stinkin’ cute!
With his fresh scar:
Getting his new shoes tied. I bought these shoes on clearance about four years ago and they’re finally the right size…and worked well with his costume!
Couldn’t you just eat him up?
We kept bouncing back and forth between the games in the gym and the music in the cafeteria. He didn’t want to dance but loved playing with the hula hoops! He was very shy because he didn’t know many of the kids.
And you’ll notice he’s missing the glasses. Yeah. He decided about 15 minutes in that he didn’t want to wear them. Or carry his broom. Kids. :/
Back to games!
And then since it was crazy crowded and he was pretty much done, we suggested frozen yogurt—and he wanted to leave immediately. 🙂
Katie actually got home later than us! They said she qas very well-behaved and had a BLAST! And she came home with a TON of candy!
The vampire teeth were the favorite thing.
And, lastly, pics from Katie’s night. Her friend Ainsley is Tinkerbell.
She loves our friends’ baby and likes playing with him. We were at the park and Cheyenne had to take Cayenne to the potty so we watched Hami…and Katie kept him occupied so he would t cry. 🙂
As briefly mentioned in the last post about Owen’s homework, Tom and I were both somewhat baffled by the supposed answers for his pattern homework.
I actually had to ask Tom about the first incorrect one because I read it (and answered it!) the same way Owen did! 🙂 But, the teacher was right—there should have been one number on each line (he did the same thing with the third line—put too many numbers on the lines, even though he had the right numbers!). But Tom and I still weren’t sure about the wrong triangle and why it should be a square. So I took the question to Facebook. My question was answered, but you can see the types of discussion it brought about. Egads. All this over first grade math homework. Can you imagine what it will be like going forward?!?!?
Here was the worksheet.
And here’s the Facebook discussion!
Gramma Jean sent Katie some Frozen-themed underwear to hopefully get her interested in her upcoming potty training! Katie loves them, of course…so fingers crossed it helps!
We ran an errand, went to the playground, then ended up going right to a friend’s house for [what ended up to be] four hours! The girls did pretty well, and they were both in these for at least an hour. 🙂
So last night at our dinner, some new friends (that we’ve technically known all school year—their twin girls were in Owen’s class—but we just never actually got together since we were all busy) said we were welcome at their house any time and to just come over. I said we would never just show up unannounced, but if they invited us, we’d be there. So he said “Great! We’re having people over tomorrow. Come to dinner!!” So we agreed immediately!
The kids had a BLAST. They actually have two sets of twins—the girls (in first grade) and boys, who are one. One of the twin girls is in Owen’s class again this year. Katie loved everyone and kept an eye on the babies! We had an amazingly DELICIOUS authentic Indian meal and met some friends of theirs that were really great. They have a huge back yard (probably three times the size of our Jacksonville yard!) so Owen was running all over. They have a playset, too, which Katie loved.
After dinner, this was happening—the kids all having fun taking pictures with someone’s iPhone:
We hadn’t planned on staying longer than maybe two hours (sleep schedules, you know) but we were all having such a good time and the kids were busybusybusy that we ended up staying until ALMOST 11! Holy wah! (We had prepped Katie by making sure she napped beforehand, but she still did really, really well.)
We look forward to many more fun nights with them!!
Tonight was our fifth Saturday night dinner—and it happened to be Tom’s birthday as well! We had two new families (and one couple who’ve been to a couple dinners) join us—and it was fun (and crazy—with 8 kids!)!
Also as usual, I didn’t even think to take pictures because we were so busy visiting and doing food prep…so the first picture I took was a quick birthday shot of Tom with the dessert he picked (a caramel tres leches cake from Costco…with Owen’s birthday balloon!):
And then a panoramic of the table at dessert time…where it took me more than a few minutes to realize there’s a bunch of panoramic artifacts—like Tom’s hands reappearing on the other side of Katie and a friend’s squished face!
And Katie enjoying the blue frosting on the cupcakes a guest brought for the kids:
As a sidenote, I posted the invite for the next dinner in six weeks (Tom’s work schedule prevented a 4-week plan) and all RSVPs were filled within 24 hours! 🙂
We were headed into the city to have lunch with friends…and since it was semi close to a subway stop, we decided to make a fun trip out of it! We had to drive north about 15 minutes to catch the metro where it starts.
The kids were super excited about riding a train!
At the restaurant, Kabob Palace.
We wan into a bit of a snafu on the way home—long story short we weren’t paying attention and ended up on the wrong train (headed north instead of south) so we had a 20-minute wait for the next (correct) train.
And the car was a bit more crowded than our first trip so the boys had to stand for one stop.
They both loved it and wanted to do it again immediately. 🙂 I’m sure we’ll go somewhere again, but I’m also sure it won’t be a regular thing because this simple, short trip cost us about $22 in fares (it’s about $3.50pp each direction)!
I DID IT! I lost 30# in 10 weeks on Naturally Slim (my goal was 25!)…and 50# overall in just 14 weeks! Hopefully I can lose the next 50 in another 14 weeks!
I debated posting my official “before and after” pics because they’re actually not all that impressive—plus me in yoga pants/tank tops isn’t very flattering!—but decided to go ahead because I’m still damn proud of myself!
I owe all this to Tivo friends Brad and Bryan who brought NatSlim to my attention, Tom for being amazingly supportive (he lost about 25!), and all my TCF friends for the daily online support!
And my Fitbit app congratulated me as well!
We went to a friends’ new house for dinner and brought some of the delicious Not Your Father’s Root Beer that Timmy introduced us to. We also happened to being vanilla ice cream… The float was delicious…but a few sips was enough for me!
I read about this place right after we moved here but it took awhile to actually get there! We went today with friends.
Katie wasn’t AS excited as I thought she’d be, but she did have fun.
The wait was finally over—the day for Owen’s postponed birthday pool party! And the weather was perfect!! We had 19 kids and 14 adults!
The timing was perfect: at the end of every hour, the lifeguards take a 15-minute break and all kids must exit the pool. So we used this time to have our pizza lunch!
The second break was time for cake! Of course, I had completely forgot to put the balloon in the cake…
So it went in the leftovers so I could take a picture. 🙂
Two of the kids from his Kindergarten class (who are about his size so he looks normal!).
Everyone had a great time! The kids LOVED the water shooters and, while a few got broken, each kid was able to take one home. We guessed pretty good on the pizza—we ordered five and ate about four. There was enough cake to leave out a few pieces and freeze a nice chunk for a later date. The best part was after 10 minutes of cleaning up and packing the car, we were DONE. 🙂
>>> July pictures are now online at Shutterfly!
Grauntie Marge got Katie these cool mess-free glitter ballerinas for her birthday. I didn’t believe any glitter could be mess-free, but these really truly were! Katie was only interested for about 10 minutes, so we’ll try again once we get home!
We had high hopes of having the kids practice riding their bikes on vacation since Gramma Jean and Grandpa David have a great driveway and live on the corner of two (basically) flat roads…but we were so busy that we didn’t get to it until our very last night. Uncle Rob was tasked to help out!
Tom said they actually did pretty good…but they still need LOTS of practice. At the rate we’re going, they might be able to ride without training wheels by high school.
Katie wanted Elsa hair so Gramma did the best he could since Katie doesn’t really have enough hair for a French braid. Katie was thrilled!
We took the kids to Kalkaska today for open swim…and boy did they have a blast! Owen was excited to go down the slide again (mom fail: I may have forgotten to mention he did it for the very first time when he was there earlier this vacation). I LOVE the faces he makes. 🙂
My favorite:
You see his harem standing by watching him, right? 🙂
Katie really wanted to go down the slide but she was too little…or so we thought. The lifeguard came up and told Tom she could go down as long as he was at the bottom to catch her. So Owen took her up:
There were other kids going up and they were getting too close to them on the stairs so Owen put his hand out to stop/block them and protect Katie. And then he guided her into the slide while he made sure to keep everyone back. Awwww, I know. 🙂
Here she comes!
Caught her!
Her reaction? She LOVED it and wanted to go again! (But she was done after the second time!)
I still can’t believe it—Owen was 6.5 when he finally went down the slide…and Katie was 3! You can tell who the family daredevil is!
And then Papa and Grannie came over to say goodbye…and brought nutty donuts!
Grannie bought Owen a purple shirt to match Papa’s. They weren’t exact but they were close enough for them. 🙂
And with the purple birthday girl!
We celebrated Katie’s birthday at the Ramada again this year. She didn’t want to go in the pool, though—choosing the playground instead.
Of course Owen wanted to swim!
Caught mid-jump!
She finally decided she wanted to swim!
We FINALLY got her to jump in the pool again!
Owen also received a few gifts…Papa and Grannie gave him a roll of quarters to use in the hotel game room!
He shared his quarters with his sister!
A great time was had by all…