FIRETRUCKS!

One of the members of our MOMs club arranged a tour of a local fire station for us this afteroon. Her husband is a volunteer fireman there.

Alex has been SO excited about this and all he kept asking all morning was if they would let him "drive" the truck!

Everyone at the station was super nice and awesome with the kids! A big thank you to Jim and all the other fireman at the Blair Township fire station!

Fish are cool anywhere, especially in the firehouse!

Ryan's dad Jim put on his full gear so the kids could see what a fireman looks like and they wouldn't be scared if they ever had to be rescued.
And yes, they let Alex "drive" the truck. He didn't want to give up the seat right away but would share it with Tessa!

Then they got to try out the water hose!Now on to the ambulance:

Ahhh, the joys of group photos with small children!At the end everyone got really cool plastic fireman hats and the chief offered to safety check our car seat installation!

Sunday Ride

Sunday afternoon we headed over to Alex's friend Carter's house. Ben and Ty (Carter's dad) hopped on their mountain bikes and rode the TART trail east and picked up another dad, Jeff, on the way and continued on to the VASA mountain bike trails.
While the dads hit the trails Carter and Alex took to the streets on their bikes and played the afternoon away in the yard. The moms got to relax in the sun for a while and only had to break up a few fights. One particularily heated arguement centered around what color their mom's toenails were painted. Carter was personally offended that Alex would dare say that his mom's nails were red when they were clearly pink. Turned out to be quite a misunderstanding, Alex was talking about MY red toenails, not Johanna's which he could agree were in fact pink.
When the dads got back from their ride the other mom, Rabecca, and their kids joined us as well and Johanna made some awesome homemade pizza that all the little boys were too excited to eat.
Alex, Carter and Willy ran themselved ragged until 7:30!

After the kites and bubbles....

We headed down the street to a local bank that had police officers and a police car and balloons, temporory tattoos and face painting!

Alex didn't want his face painted but decided a hand would be fun.

Mom and Dad - you will notice the helium balloon tied firmly to his wrist w/out any fuss. The lost balloon lesson from last weekend aparently stuck. Unfortunately this balloon ended up having a hole in it and went flat before lunch was even over :( We ended up stopping at Walgreen's on the way home for a balloon.

We continued down main street and decided to stop and get some pizza for lunch. Ben had two of his wisdom teeth pulled on thursday and hadn't really eaten real food since then so he was really excited about something solid! While we were eating it clouded up and started to rain so we decided to skip the event at the bookstore and head back to the car while we were close to it. What a fun day! Alex fell asleep almost instantly in the car.

Then off to downtown!

There was an event throughout downtown Traverse City yesterday from 11-3 called the Celebration of the Young Mind. There were all sorts of different kid's activities around town. We headed to the "open space" (Traverse City has an area on the water downtown that is referred to as the open space. It is just that, a large grassy open area that is used for Cherry Festival, the big screen showings at the film festival and various other events) first for kite making!

The kites were a very simple design the kids could make quickly but they flew really well!

They also had bubble blowing, which is one of Alex's favorite pass times. We met lots of Alex's friends there too!

Beach again

We had another beach cleanup yesterday at the beach we adopted for those who couldn't make it last weekend. We picked up another 5 pounds of trash! Yuck! It was a beautiful morning.

Music Class

Later on yesterday Alex started music classes! We have him enrolled in a Music Together program. It's a parent/child class we do together and lots of fun, we got a late afternoon timeslot too so hopefully Ben can leave work a little early a few times and be able to come too. He's taking it through Sterling Studios. It's really pretty cool to see the simple ways they introduce concepts of rhythm and tempo and pitch in fun ways for the kids to learn w/out even realizing they are learning.

20 Week Ultrasound

Well..........yesterday we got to see the baby for the first time! Alex came along, he was nervous about being shut in a dark room but was very interested when he could see the baby moving. There were a few times when you could see the "a-ha!" look in his eyes when he could really see how it could be a baby. Then he got bored when they took all the measurements and pictures of the heart and kidneys and all the "business" stuff.
Last week at storytime at the library Alex had announced to the whole room that he had a baby brother in mommy's tummy. However it would appear that he actually has a baby SISTER in mommy's tummy! He's taken the news pretty well and thinks that will be exciting too.
The best part of the ultrasound was when she reached up and rubbed her eyes and then turned her face right towards us.
As far as the business stuff goes, the measurements were right on for my estimated due date range....I wouldn't believe them anyway if they said it was different because my test was positive very early and I was charting. We'll get the official report from the midwife next friday but the ultrasound tech said everything looked good!

Busy weekend!

My mom and dad came to visit this last weekend. We had gorgeous weather! Friday we spent time playing outside and Alex got to show off his bike riding skills. Saturday was the start of a busy weekend! My dad and Ben built the play ground that we got for Alex, mom painted our bedroom and the door between the kitchen and the garage and I watched Alex and tried to rest my foot which I managed to hurt somehow.

Alex had a birthday party for his friend Katlyn saturday afternoon at a local dairy farm/ice cream parlor. They went on a hayride, a tour of the farm and got to feed and pet some calves. And have delicious ice cream cake of course!

Everyone was TIRED by saturday night.

Sunday morning the MOMs club was going to do our first cleanup at the beach we adopted. We adopted a local beach through the Great Lakes Alliance. Some teenagers from another local volunteer environmental awareness and education group called Listening to the River came and participated as well. It was a gorgeous, hot day. All the kids "helped" for a few minutes, I think they just wanted to wear the gloves more than they wanted to pick up trash! But in total our group picked up 5 pounds of garbage! Most of it was cigarette butts.....that is a lot of butts. Yuck.

By the time we got home, Ben and my dad had the play structure finished!

Thank you , thank you , thank you...to my parents for all the help this weekend. We never would have gotten this stuff done on our own!