The rest of the summer...

Here are some highlights from July:

Last week there was a snake in our driveway. Ben nearly stepped on it (none of us saw it initially). I pulled Ben back and yelled for him to STOP! Alex just looked at me and said in his most sweet and soothing little voice "Mommy, it's OK, the snake just wants to say hi." We then had the fun of watching the snake slither off and climb up a bush. The snake was actually quite long, a good 4 feet at least. The best part of the whole snake story is that later that afternoon Alex was rifling through his animal encyclopedia books. I thought he was just playing. As it turns out he told me he was looking for the book about snakes so that he could look and see what kind of snake it was. Awww, doesn't that just melt your heart??!

Today it rained, beautiful glorious, wet, cool, rain! And it was a nice, hard shower, actually it poured, for a really long time. It was so beautiful that we couldn't resist playing in it. The boys and I got soaked to the bone and played out in the downpour for a good half hour or so (as long as it lasted actually). We only had one little oops - Alex fell and got the tiniest of scrapes on his knee. Since there was actually a single drop of blood we determined that it was a band-aid worthy injury. As I was getting Ben dressed Alex went running off. I found him in our bathroom with the biggest band-aid he could find sort of half stuck on his scrape. He proudly told me that he got the band-aid all by himself. He had dug it out of the drawer, got it out of it's sterile wrapper (which was strewn ALL over the bathroom) and the one sticky part was stuck right on the scrape and the other sticky part was sort of half folded over. He was so proud of himself for fixing his own boo-boo though. I did help get it on the right way and he wore the badge of honor most of the day.

For my birthday we all went down to the Children's Museum and then had lunch with Aunt Stephanie. Alex told me that it would be really nice of me to share my birthday cake with everyone. On Saturday, Aunt Stephanie & Uncle Michael came up for dinner and playtime. Alex apparently was getting very tired and he announced to Aunt Stephanie & Uncle Michael that he didn't want to play with them anymore and it was time for them to go home.

I guess I haven't mentioned much about Ben. He is Alex in miniature - not in looks, but behaviour. Everything that Alex does, Ben must copy. He even copies some of Alex's silly little phrases. Ben adores talking on the phone, in fact it is very difficult to have a conversation with anyone without letting Ben get on and say something. Today when Alex fell outside, Ben sort of threw himself on the ground too, just so he could get a hug and a kiss for his knee. The two of them are constantly romping and chasing each other, crazy kids!

We had our first full length movie theater outing this week. Regal Cinemas offers free family movies during the summer. It's a pretty nice little program, especially as it gets so darn hot here. Last year when Ben was about 6 months old, I took the boys and we lasted for about 30 minutes of a movie. This week, the feature film was Curious George. We had not seen it before and both the boys just loved it. Best of all, we made it all the way through the movie with no tears or fussing or anything. Just plain fun, and Alex in particular thought it was so special to get to see a movie in the theater. Next week is actually the last of the free movies until next year so I think we'll try it again.

As for the rest of our life, the parts that are non kid related are few and far between and surely not nearly as interesting! We painted a couple of small walls downstairs a really dark chocolaty brown. I really like it, I think it's starting to grow on Mike, hopefully he will find himself liking it soon. My gardens are sort of surviving, the native bed and the container gardens out front are doing just fine, the pizza garden is OK - still nothing on the tomato or pepper plants. My hope is to get them through the heat and maybe they will bloom/fruit in the fall. We have picked an area in the back yard that has never grown anything but dirt and in the fall or spring we plan on building it out into a garden. That will be where we plant the herbs and vegetables next year.

Alex still isn't interested in riding his new bike much, but it has been really hot and we haven't spent much time outside. He has hit a growth spurt so I think the next time we go out it will be a bit easier for him. Ben can reach the pedals on the tricycle now and I've not doubt that he will be cruising around on that soon.

Surely I have missed dozens of little anecdotes that I had every intention of sharing. Who knows when I'll get around to updating this again. But, for a certain nagging follower (and you know who you are!!!!!) I'll try :-) Until next time, thanks for reading!

Happy Independence Day!

The boys are in the bathtub, which means we are NOT going to see fireworks tonight, well not up close anyway. The day started off well enough, everybody even slept a little later - it was almost 7 before everyone was finally up. Mike told Alex that today was a special day and that we were going to see a parade and watch fireworks, all very exciting stuff. After breakfast we headed up to the park to see the parade and that's when the day started to fall apart. Alex was a little grumpy that we weren't DRIVING to the parade, we had to walk. We let him take his tricycle because the kids get to ride in the parade if they want. So, long story even longer, we parked on a corner and waited for the parade to come by. Alex decided he wanted to go see what was going on up at the park so I took him up there and he ended up riding his little tricycle in the "parade". Parade in this since is a grand stretch of the word, really it was just everyone in the neighborhood walking while their kids rode bikes. We did a loop that was about a mile and ended up back at the park where there was water and watermelon for all. Alex was quite upset that we had to eat the watermelon the old fashioned way, right off the rind. He really wanted it cut up into nice little pieces in a bowl. Oh well, he got over it.

To really drag out this months long post, the rest of the afternoon just wasn't a great one for Alex. He fussed and grumped about every little thing. He was in a right awful mood and we opted to skip out on the fireworks, none of us could take anymore excitement!

Mike and I did get to catch a few fireworks right up close and personal. Our next door neighbor for some reason or other thought it was a good idea to set them off right in the street, we're talking about the big ones that make everyone go "OOOOHHHH", and "AAAAAAHHHHH". Yeah, too much beer for them that night I think!

Beach Pictures