Memorial Day weekend

We did a lot of just hanging around this weekend. By the end of the week we finished putting our garden in! We have peppers, cucumbers, roma and grape tomatos, zuchini and red onions in the raised planter in the front. We will be putting beans and peas in pots on the back patio. We have watermelons along our back fenceline. Alex has a little bucket he painted with some sunflower seeds on the front step and they are growing well enough that we will have to transplant them soon! So we played outside a lot, planted a few last flowers and watered everything. I also have a clothesline now!

Alex is developing quite the slapshot, he isn't happy with his toy hockey stick anymore either. He wanted Ben's full size one.

Saturday afternoon we went next door for a graduation party for a little while.

Sunday we had our normal bakery run and grocery shopping in the morning and church in the evening.

Alex drew a picture during church and told Evie (one of the wonderful ladies who works the "nursery" at church) a whole story about it and she was nice enough to write the story on the back of the picture for us. He drew Noah's Ark (a line and some dots), a bug ( a squiggly circle) and a tiger ( a letter "H" with a green scribble next to it).

Here is the story:

"A tiger and a bug came. The tiger made Noah sad and then the tiger changed into a bug and it runned away and then Noah was happy and then Noah was sad again because he didn't have any friends. The other animals are Noah's friends and then he was happy again."

I am so thankful that she wrote that down for us!

Monday was really nice so we decided to do some geocaching in the afternoon. We had terrible luck finding the caches but ended up in two little nature preserves right near our house that we didn't know about. Alex is getting really good at his "left" and "right" and is interested in "north", "south", etc. He loves to hold the GPS and follow the arrow!

Backyard fun

Since we'd been at the beach the previous two days we decided that thursday afternoon we would beat the heat in our own backyard. I filled up the little inflatable pool and got out a bunch of toys and plopped my lounge chair in the shade. This was the best idea ever. That water was freezing, it was out of our well and Alex wanted to get in right away rather than let it warm in the sun. But it didn't seem to bother him, he was jumping and sliding/falling all the way in. He drove a little boat around in that pool for the longest time and let things float on top of his rake which he was pretending was an alligator. When that got old he decided to mow the lawn and look for ants. All while I sat in the shade and read a book!

Then he became a monster and was scaring me.....................

Let's go for a walk....maybe

Thursday our group activity was a walk along Boardman Lake. The kids were having a ball running all over, yelling at geese (that's what they are doing all lined up on that bench) and just being goofy. However the actual walk itself wasn't nearly as attractive to them and we ended up cutting it short and heading to the wooden train and children's garden behind the library which is right next door.

While they were playing on the train a REAL train went by on the tracks right next to the wooden one. Pretty exciting stuff!





But then the train blew it's whistle........

More beach

Hey, you think you all will be sick of beach pictures by the end of the summer?


Our nonstop action and fresh air day yesterday bought us 12 hours of uninterupted sleep. For those who don't know, Alex still rarely sleep thru the whole night and then wakes up around 6-6:30am and sleeps fitfully until 7:30 or 8am. Last night he went to bed around 8:45pm and slept w/out a sound until 8:45am.


So we thought we'd try it again today.


We started out the morning at a park with some other families that are interested in Waldorf education.


Everyone started leaving close to noon and we had packed another lunch so we headed over the beach again.

As you can see, Alex was having some issues with his swim suit falling down. I finally gave up trying to pull it back up and just decided to put some sunscreen on his bum.

It was a hot and hazy day, but the wind picked up and was very gusty too. Alex asked to leave the beach around 2pm. We had a chiropracter appt at 3:45 and music class at 4:15 right across the street from eachother so we just headed down that direction and I found a shady place to park. Alex had the rest of his lunch, I made a phone call I had to made and Alex dozed off. So I let Alex catch a little nap while I read a book until it was time for our appt.

Busy, busy

Yesterday the MOMs club went to a special kids event at the Dennos Museum. We started out exploring the gallery they have especially for kids. There are lots of cool things to touch and see and things that made noise. Then we headed into an gallery with lots of local photographs and had a scavenger hunt, trying to find all different things in the pictures. Alex really seemed to enjoy that part. Next we went outside and were led on a little walk around the grounds where we found some of the same things from the photographs and also got to check out the sculptures that are around the building. Some of them you can walk thru and climb on.

Back inside there was a little story time and then we made windsocks. On the body of the windsock the kids were suppose to draw something they saw that day. It was the first time Alex ever really tried to draw something specific and could tell me what it was. He drew a circle and that was one of the tunnels in the sculpture he walked thru, he told me. Then he drew some dots that were gravel and some lines that he said was the path that we walked on.

By the time we were done at the museum it was almost noon and getting pretty hot outside already. We had packed a picnic lunch so we headed over to the beach. Some friends came to the beach too and then they all made some more friends there. It's funny to watch how kids have to check out everyone else's sand toys!

We finally headed home around 3pm. Alex slept for about half an hour in the car. It was still so nice outside that we ate our dinner outside that night and then worked on our garden for a little while. Tuesday night Ben had dug up the whole area to turn the soil over well. Then last night he went back and dug thru our compost pile and found some good stuff on the bottom and brought buckets of it up front. Alex was "helping"

Peck...peck

This morning Alex wanted to "peck" his cereal "like a chicken". Um, ok.

Friday fun!

Friday morning was the end of year party for the Way to Grow program. Way to Grow is a toddler/preschooler program thru the local school district that has various activities throughout the school year.

The party was at a really nice new park and included bubbles, water painting, a little sandbox area, a firetruck, playdough table, snacks, pinwheel making and ......a bike parade!

I couldn't get very good "parade" pictures because I was practically jogging to keep up and also a bit preoccupied by policing traffic jams and near collisions! All of the kids were still in the easily distractable stage and also can't really ride in a straight line so a whole group of them was a bit dangerous!