Preschool's Tag-A-Long

Every now and again, Jack gets invited to visit the preschool to experience one of their "Fun" days. This time, The Aquarium Of The Pacific's mobile touch tank came to the school and they invited Jack to come! First the kids got to watch a slideshow presentation about fish and shapes and had some fun audience participation.

At one point in the presentation, a slide would come up with a shape and the name of the shape underneath it. The kids were supposed to point with their finger and draw an imaginary shape in front of them. All of the kids were great at following directions... except my genius Jack. When each of the shapes came on the screen and all of the rest of the kids were "drawing" the shapes, Jack was spelling them. "C-I-R-C-L-E spells Circle!"

And after the presentation, they got to go on the truck to touch the animals! There was a baby leopard shark and a bunch of sea anemones as well as many starfish and sea cucumbers (there were probably some other things as well but that's all I remember as I was too busy taking pictures).

Jack was very interested in looking at the "sea creatures", but really had absolutely no interest in touching anything until it was time to go. When I told him it was time to go and if he wanted to touch something he needed to do it before we left because we couldn't come back... so he stuck his finger into the tank on the nearest animal and said "Okay, I touched the anemone. Let's go."

I was really surprised that he wasn't very "into" the touch tank because he has always gotten really excited to touch stuff whenever we've gone to the aquarium in the past, but oh well! At least he touched something!

Mommy Of Two

This year was my first Mothers' Day as a mommy of two! Dave had to work so we didn't get to celebrate and I was on full mommy-duty. Luckily, though, I was able to take the boys to my parents house and celebrate Mothers' Day with my mommy! And as I was leaving the house I found a beautiful basket of flowers on the porch. I'm pretty sure that it was the prettiest arrangement I've ever been given, and I thought it was very sweet that Dave had them delivered since he couldn't be there to help the boys give them to me himself.

Jack was very excited to go celebrate Mothers' Day with grandma. In fact, he was so excited that I don't think it even occurred to him that it was MY Mothers' Day, too, as evidenced by the conversation we had when I went to get him up that morning...

Me: Good morning, Jack Jack! Did you sleep well?
Jack: Yes, I sleep so good last night! Good morning, momma!
Me: Oh that makes me so happy! Did you remember that today is Mothers' Day?
Jack: Yes, but I don't see grandma to tell her [Happy Mothers' Day].
Me: Well, we'll see grandma later. You can tell ME Happy Mothers' Day!
Jack: Happy Mothers' Day, momma. When do we see grandma?
Me: We'll see her later. Did you get me a present for Mothers' Day?
Jack: No, only grandma gets a present.

Thanks, Jack. Don't worry, I know you love me ;)

As you can see, Jack was very excited about grandma's Mothers' Day gift: a Tinkerbell snowglobe (grandma loves Tinkerbell)


I got an adorable picture of Sam's smile...


...and a bunch of other faces he makes, too


And the first photo (that is in focus) of me with both of my boys (yes, I know I look awful... this was following a rough night with Sam- I guess he wanted to make sure that I earned my Mothers' Day)!


And of course we had to get a picture of my sister with Luke on her first Mothers' Day!

Todd And Linda

On May 7th, my cousin Todd got married! I was so excited for him, and I am thrilled to have a new cousin in his new wife, Linda! Unfortunately, Dave had to work (so what else is new, right?), and I had to go without him. Also unfortunately, because of the boys I wasn't able to stay very late at the wedding.

We drove out to the hotel that my parents were staying at, and I dropped Jack off with my Aunt Teresa and Uncle Larry. We are so lucky that they were willing to help us out, again! This is the third time that they have come to a hotel to watch Jack while I attended a wedding, and I am so grateful and blessed to have them! Jack had a blast, too!

Since we were all fancy and were at a beautiful location, I took advantage of that and made my sister and brother-in-law pose for a nice photo. My sister is taller than her husband, and so she bent her knees slightly... something that doesn't work in a full-length shot and, as she pointed out, she looked like an amputee! So I cropped the photo closer ;)


I also had my parents pose for a photo


And my mom wouldn't let me get away with not having a shot of myself, and since Dave was working she took one of me and my baby brother!


Linda was an absolutely beautiful bride, and the ceremony was beautiful, as well!



The happy couple!


Danielle (Todd's sister) and Chris, also newlyweds


Sarah, Todd's youngest sister


My aunt Linnette, mother of the groom


My cousin Emmaleigh and her Nana, my auntie Sandra


First Dance


Kenny, Todd's younger brother and best man


This is aunt Linnette's reaction to hearing that she was supposed to give a speech at that moment!


She did a great job, though!


Receiving their toasts

In Loving Memory

We were very pleased to have such a beautiful day for our service in honor of grandma Reeves. How appropriate to have such wonderful weather on the day that we said goodbye to such a wonderful woman! We had a very intimate graveside gathering, and Dave did a wonderful job giving the eulogy. Jack was on his best behavior and was very quiet and still throughout the service. He whispered a little too loudly one time, but the words he had said were "I love you" and so I couldn't admonish him for it- grandma would have loved the sweetness of that.

Some photos from the day


My mom held Samuel during the service

Dave chose a yellow flower spray because yellow was grandma's favorite color (mine, too!). He really wanted to give her yellow flowers- it meant a lot to him and we were very happy with how beautiful they turned out.

My dad kept Jack entertained after the service

Auntie Fran, Grandma's older sister


Dave, his dad, and his sister, Sarah

CDO And OCD

Jack is so OCD, it's kinda scary. I'm not sure if I should be concerned, or if it's just further proof that kids tend to do really well with schedules and routines so that they aren't caught off-guard by what happens next. When we do something new (like, going to a park we hadn't been to before), then the next time we do it we have to do it the same way we did it before ("First we go down the slide, and then we do the teeter-totter!"). If something out-of-the-norm happens while we are doing our bedtime routine (like, if I sneeze), then the next night he expects that this will also be a part of our bedtime routine this night ("You have to sneeze and I say 'God bless you, momma!'"). If we ate lunch at Target the last time, he tells me that we need to eat lunch there the next time we go. He's so OCD, that it's actually made me rethink a few of my OCD tendencies, just to prove that it's not a big deal. And since my OCD is more like CDO (it's actually the same thing but the letters are in alphabetical order like they should be!), I might be posting out of chronological order sometime soon. Don't get your hopes up, I haven't convinced myself yet, but I thought I should give you fair warning just in case you're as OCD as us- I don't want to shock your system!

Whenever there is a big gap in between my posts you can be sure that my OCD is what is holding me back from posting. Usually the next thing on the calendar is either something that I'm not quite sure how to blog, or photos that I hadn't quite decided how to edit. Generally I have a whole bunch of photos and posts waiting in the wings for me to get my act together and just get the post up, dangit! Sometimes the fact that I have 2 kids and can't resist giving in when I hear "Momma, come play with me!" is why I haven't posted in a while. Sometimes, but not usually- that's what bedtime is for, right? Anyway, OCD is the reason for this break, and in interest of just getting me over the hump of the next post, here are some photos that I am still not quite sure about, but just want to get out of the way so that I can post some that I am sure about.

I use italics way too much.

Anyway, in this post I mentioned that we were ridiculously sick. Yes, we're all better now... Dave and Jack took 10 days to get over it, I took 5, and the baby never ended up getting it (yay breastmilk!). These photos were taking the morning of the Monday that Jack went to bed with a fever- the first sign of that illness. Jack, Sam and I had met Ang, Austin and McKenna at the park for a playdate... our first park day with 4 kids between us! We did a great job tag-teaming the kids between the two of us, which was helped out by the fact that McKenna slept the whole time and Auntie Susan also stopped by, and the boys had a great time!

Jack was thrilled to get to play with his Sam's new sand toys. (He's lucky that Sam is a good sharer!)

Austin showed off his technique for going down the slides

A technique that also seemed to work great on the bridge!

Jack showed off his newly-acquired skills of coordination (or at least, enough coordination to climb this ladder without totally freaking us both out! Poor kid is such a klutz!)


And displayed a more traditional sliding technique


And on the way home he decided to go play in the dry creek-bed


Oh yeah, and thanks to Ang I have a picture of Sam, too!

(this is an optical illusion, by the way... he does have a big head, but it's not as big as it looks here!)