Feeling Oldie..

It is no secret that I am a compulsive radio-station flipper in the car.  My standard driving hand position since I started driving at age 16 has been (sorry, Driver's Ed teacher, it is not 10-and-2) one hand on the steering wheel and one hand on the radio.  Lucky for me, in our new car, I can change the radio station using buttons ON the steering wheel.  Brilliant!  One of my many radio pre-sets is the local "Oldies" station.  I have always liked "Oldies," you know, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, all that good stuff. 

Today, driving home from work, I flipped to the Oldies station and they were playing "Lucky Star" by Madonna. 

What the what? 

I have distinct memories of being on the school bus around first grade and watching a 6th grade girl who went to my church and her friend rocking out to this very song in the seat across the aisle from me and just thinking how amazingly cool they were.  One of them was even wearing sunglasses, to prove their total awesomeness.  ("Star-Light...Starbright!  First Star I see To-Night!  Star-Light!  Starbright!  Make everything all right!")  Yes, I remember when this song was played on the radio. 

The first time.

Does that mean I am officially an "Oldie?" 

Maybe I should delete that station from my presets....

Early Summer Adventures

I can't seem to keep up with my blogging, so I am just going to do a great big picture post to catch up and call it good.  Here are some of the stuff we have been up to so far this summer. 

First off, BASEBALL!  We went to our first Bees game a couple weeks ago.  We ate hot dogs, we ate cinnamon almonds, and we watched a little baseball in between.  The Bees were losing when we left, but that is okay.  We don't worry.  We just like to see the boys hit it deep.  

Daxton even brought his little tiger along to watch the game. 

The kids had their summer gymnastics "shows" too.  I took a lot of video, but video doesn't print in my blog book, so you will have to make do with these pictures.  Arden is getting really good!  Dax and Cora....have a good time :-)

After that we took a trip to Mars!  Here are Dax and Cora taking a walk on the Martian surface:

On the way back, we did some moonwalking.  Cora seemed to be having some issues with the gravity:

Had you fooled, huh!  Okay, so we were at the planetarium.  We watched a movie on the dome theater that made us feel like we were flying through space.  Dax and Arden liked it, but Cora was worried.  She thought we had really left planet Earth and kept saying, "I wanna fwy back now!" So cute.

Here is Arden, posing my her favorite planet, Saturn (she likes the rings).

We took the waverunners for the first time this year last weekend.  We went out to Willard and had a great time with family, eating food and playing in the sand and waiting for a turn on the water.  It was a really pretty day.  The kids still don't like to go too fast.  Arden and Dax were especially cautious, probably because it has been so long since last summer.  They didn't want to go very fast.  Cora was the speed demon among the three.  Here are me and Dax coming back from a short ride:

 Here is Arden on the beach, hamming it up wearing a hat she stole from her Grandma:

Sometimes I wonder why we live on the hill.  It is hard pulling all the weeds out of our rock walls, trying to teach the kids to ride bikes in our little driveway because it is the only flat place around, not being able to play ball in the front yard without the balls rolling away down the hill....but then I remember why I love it up here:

Ahhhhh.

We have been playing at the park a lot lately.  We have weekly park play dates with all the kids in the neighborhood, and the kids have also been taking arts and crafts classes at a park near our house.  After the classes are over, I usually let the kids play on the playground for a while before we head home. 

This year, Cora has decided that she might be getting too big for the baby swing, and wants to be graduated to a big girl swing:

 Arden is an expert swinger!  She can swing to the sky, all by herself.

Have I told you how much I love summer?  I love all these long, sunny, warm days, one after the other (although my lawn could use some rain).  I love lounging around in the mornings with the kids and not worrying about getting to kindergarten or preschool or anything.  We are enjoying our summer so far, and looking forward to lots more summertime fun. 

With that, I am calling myself caught up. 

Welcome To The Jungle...

A couple of friends and I took our kids to Jungle Jims for a little last-week-of-school party (yes, I am still behind on the blogging).  Plus, we had coupons that were expiring soon, so off we went.  If you are 3 years old, Jungle Jims is almost as good as Lagoon...and let's face it, MUCH muchmuchmuch cheaper. 

Here are the kids on one of the rides. This ride goes in lots really fast circles aaaand then it goes in really fast circles BACKWARDS.  This is one of the rides that "adults" can ride on.  However, I am good for about two rides on this ride before I start to feel like I am going to ralph.  Which would make the ride much less fun for everyone, especially whoever happens to be riding with me.  After my one or two turns, the kids were totally fine leaving me on the sidelines, and they rode it over and over (and over).  One of my friends was immune to the motion sickness went a few times herself :-)

Cora especially loved that ride.  She was usually the littlest one on the ride, so she would end up squished up against whoever was riding with her, giggling and laughing as hard as she could.  I bet they went on this one about 37 times.

The kids went on each and every ride at least once, but the other favorite of the day was the bumper cars.  Arden is a really good bumper-car driver.  She is a pro, and she had no mercy.  Dax liked to try to do it himself.  Cora wanted me to go with her the first few times.  Unfortunately (for you, not for me) I don't have any pictures of me trying to fold myself up into one of these minuscule little things.  It was quite a tight fit, with Corbie tucked behind one of my knees.  When Arden would lay one of her brutal hits on our little car, my knees and hips would bounce around, striking all the hardest parts of the car's interior.  Luckily, after a little while Cora decided that Arden's kindergarten friend, K, was her new best friend.  She talked him into driving her around, which my knees and hips were thankful for.

 Here is Arden and her friend L.  You will notice who has her hands on the wheel.  Don't let that innocent little smile fool you.  She. Is. An. Animal. 

It was hil-a-ri-ous watching all these guys go at it.  Arden was RUTHLESS, and put in serious hits on everyone in sight.  If bumper cars was an Olympic sport, I would sign her up today.  Cora and K just liked to kind of cruise around, and if they happened to run into someone, great.  Dax and his bestest buddy E were the funniest of all, because they didn't really understand how bumpercars work.  They were cool as long as they were going forward, but once they got stuck in a corner or anything, all heck broke loose.  They could figure out how to turn the wheel around until they were going backwards, but then they never could figure out how to get going forwards again.  They would just go around backwards in circles.  Around and around and around.  Eventually, Arden would eventually have mercy on them and slam them into a forward motion.  They loved every second.

The kids had such a great time, they could have been there all day.  All the kids got along pretty well, and I was so glad that K was such a good sport with Cora...isn't she cute?

It was great fun, and stuff like this is always so much more fun for me when I have friends to talk to!  Thanks guys for a fun afternoon!

Kinder-Arden Graduation

Can it really be over already?  Hard to believe, but true.  Kinder-Arden (as Cora called it when Arden first started going there, and which term has been adopted by the whole family) has come to an end.  Last week they even had a little graduation ceremony.  Here is Arden getting her "diploma" from the principal.

After all the kids got their diplomas, they sang a few songs for us and recited some poems.  Arden's favorite song was "A-too-dee-taa" where the kids get to do all sorts of silly actions like stick out their tongues and dance around with their knees together. 

After the program was over, Arden proudly showed off her graduation certificate (notice in the picture next to the certificate that she isn't wearing her little graduation hat.  Who's mom forgot it was graduation picture day and put up her hair in two little twirly buns that prevented said hat from being put on her head?  Ooops....)

Then we got one last picture of the Three Kindergarten Musketeers!  Arden has had so much fun with these two this year.

 And here is Arden with her teacher.

Arden has learned SO MUCH this year.  She is quite the little reader now!  She said her favorite part of school (except for playtime, of course) was art. (She has brought home so many little masterpieces that she is running out of places to squirrel them away.  I don't want to throw them away either!  I now understand why my mom kept a big old box of my kindergarten papers in the basement for 20 years.) 

Most of all, Arden had a great time in kindergarten and really loved going to school every day.  I know THAT won't last forever so I tried to enjoy it.  I am SOOOO proud of her and how well she has done in school this year! 

(is it too early for me to be dreading 1st grade?)

Happy Birthday To Dax!

Dax had his very first "friends" birthday party this year.  We have had some big family parties for him in the past, but this is the first time he got to have his little buddies over for his birthday.  Was he excited?  Um, yeah....

I made the mistake of taking him with me to hand out the invitations about 10 or 11 days before the actual party.  Every morning from that day on the first thing he would ask me was, "Mom, is today my birfday party?"  When I would tell him no, he would ask, "how many more days?"  If I said 8 or 6 or 4, he would pull a sad, sad face and say, "Dats too MEN-EEEE!!!"  Then he would ask me again at least 2 or 3 times during the day (each and every day), expecting days to have somehow past without the sun setting or rising or anything.  He just couldn't believe it when I told him that there were STILL 6 more days.  Sometimes he would tell me, "You're so MEAN!" like I was the one controlling how slowly the days went by.  Whatever, dude.  Next time I will have to remember to sneak up the party on him and not tell him about it until the morning it happens. 

After what seemed to Dax (and me) like many, many MEN-EEE days, the "big day" finally (finally!) arrived.  Dax was superduper excited.  Here he is, by some of his decorations.   He asked for a dinosaur party (shocking, I know.)

At the appointed time, Dax's buddies started showing up.  Every time the doorbell rang, Dax bellowed "I'LL GET IT!!!" jumped about 3 feet into the air and hit the ground running as fast as he could to the door.  Before long, we had quite a crowd of 3,4 and 5 year-old boys running and roaring around the living room.  I did a terrible job taking pictures.  We tried to wait for everyone to arrive before we started on the activities, but before long I saw that if we waited any longer, these kids were going to either 1) beat each other to death with the throw pillows from my couch, 2) break my eardrums with their little-man roars and shrieks, or 3) shake, knock, burn or otherwise take the house down to the ground.  So, we sat them all down to build dinosaur sack-puppets-slash-treat-bags. Once they had a purpose they calmed down pretty quick and the noise level decreased to a less damaging level.

After they got their bags made, we had lunch.  We had pizza and grapes, which everyone seemed to enjoy.  Once everyone had eaten their fill, we headed outside to break our pinata, which was shaped like a triceratops.  These boys were soooo excited to be able to smack something with a stick as hard as they could and not get in trouble for it.  We let them all have a whack at the pinata with the traditional blindfold, but the little triceratops pinata survived.  Then we let the kids have a try with no blindfold.  Still the triceratops would.  Not.  Die.  (Though he did lose a couple of limbs, which only got everyone more excited to see him meet his doom).  Finally, Dax's big 5-year-old cousin laid into the pinata, as our last hope before letting Preston have a turn.  He took that dinosaur DOWN!  Yay!  As soon as the candy hit the ground, there was quite a feeding frenzy.  I was proud of my little Cora, who waded right in there with the big boys and wrapped her hands around quite a bit of candy. 

After the pinata, we tried to convince the boys that they didn't need to eat ALL of their candy right away, and played a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-dinosaur.  Then it was FINALLY time for Dax to open his presents. 

He scored tons of great stuff, and it was all we could do to pry the kids away from the toys with promises of cake and ice cream (like they weren't already sugared up enough). 

 After everyone had eaten their fill (again), I begged and pleaded and got all the buddies to sit (relatively) still for a picture.  What a bunch of cute boys!

Dax had a great time at the party, and the house is still standing, so I call it a success.

Dax has completely mastered his tricycle, so we decided to take the next step and get him a bike for his birthday.  We decided to jump on the balance bike bandwagon.  We also got Dax a new helmet.  (I had to get it once I saw the little slogan on the back:  I LoVe My BrAiN.)  Looks sharp!

Dax jumped on the bike and started walking it around the driveway.  Before long, Arden pried him off of it and jumped on herself.  She has her own bike that has had the training wheels on and off and on and off a few times.  She just was a little afraid to ride her bike without the training wheels on.  It has been hard for to teach her since we live on such a steep hill.  Our driveway is pretty flat, but it isn't much space to learn to ride a bike.  HOWEVER, after one single day playing with Dax's balance bike, Arden jumped right on her bike and took OFF.  She is a total pro now.  I am a believer.  Dax is still wondering why he should give up his perfectly good shiny red trike to walk around the driveway with a bike with no pedals, but hopefully it won't take him long to warm up to it. 

Dax also had his 4-year-old doctor appointment this week.  He is a square.  He weighs 43 lbs and is 43 inches tall (which is above the 90% for both height and weight).  The doctor said that he is going to be a big guy, at LEAST 6'2," and probably quite a bit more.  He is filling out is 5T clothes nicely, and it won't be long before we have to switch him to 6.  (which will kind of be a bummer, because once you graduate from 5T clothes, you have to shop in the "big boy" section, and it is a little harder to find shirts with happy little dinosaurs flying kites on them.  Oh well....)

Here is my great big little man with his bear. 

He has really grown up a LOT this year.  I was looking at his 3-year pictures, and you could still see a little bit of baby in him, but now he is a big kid all the way through.  *sigh*

I asked Dax a few questions:

Me:  How old are you, Dax?
Dax:  Four.  Den I wiw be five, den six, den seven, den eight, den nine...
Me:  Yeah yeah, let's not think about that now.  How old is Cora?
Dax:  Free.
Me:  Right!  How old is Arden?
Dax:  Six.
Me:  Right!  How old am I?
Dax:  Ummmmmm....twenty-one?
Me:  Good answer!  How old is Daddy?
Dax:  Twenty seven?
Me:  Okay.  What about grandpa?
Dax:  Twenty eight?
Me:  And Grandma?
Dax:  Twenty nine?
Me:  What about Great-Grandma Wilson?
Dax:  Seven?

Hmmmmm...I was feeling pretty good about 21 until Dax decided my grandma was younger than me.  Actually, I think that Dax can only count to 29 without help, so 29 to him is as old as it gets.

Happy Birthday, my little man!   I can't believe how fast you are growing up!

Cut it out.