Lately, Navy has been doing the same thing each morning.
She first sets up shop by folding her blanket.
Then she gets her stroller and fills it with snacks.
And then strolls from room to room.
And just when you think things are as cute as can be….
Look who pops out!
And even though he gets pretty manhandled by his “morning mama”, he is a really good sport during chubby cheeks.
During her adding every blanket in the house to his stroller.
And especially during his lotion-to-hair application.
(Or maybe he isn’t such a sport in this one — but maybe he realized that she REALLY overdid it!)
Just look at the happiness in this family portrait!
And look what Scout transforms the stroller into, when he has his chance.
The Bat Mobile.
Look who I found making our bed this morning??!!
And she ended it with a Tah Dah!
But when I exclaimed, “I don’t believe you did this whole thing yourself. You are WAY too little!”, she said, “Yes I did. See…”
And then proceeded to completely take the bed apart and do it all over again!
When we were making our Summer jar of Ideas, Scout made sure to include sneaking into the community pool we drive by each day. He has always wanted to go, and I told him one day we would try to sneak in. So we finally pulled it, and can finally check it off our list.
It was a cooler summer evening, and the kids were pretty cold because they don’t heat it.
But that didn’t put a frown on this happy boy’s face.
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They swam for about 45 minutes, and then we hopped the fence to go home. I told the kids that if we were heading down, the one rule was that I wasn’t bringing a zillion things — so there were no towels or toys.
Except of course — for the cutest baby on earth.
The run home was adventure filled. Micah was carrying a scooter and bike. The kids were freezing. Navy picked about five flowers along the way. Scout made it into a competition, but nobody raced him.
But all was well when Micah put Navy in his warm sweatshirt, and Scout got to a warm bath first.
“Sneak into that Pool” — check.
Almost daily I get what Scout calls, “[my] favorite picture”. This time he beefed it up with two hearts, gave himself a bit crazier hair, and stayed true with my ponytail that looks like it is some sort of Indian war paint.
See how happy both of us are.
These pictures never get old.
Ever.
Today marked Dashy’s first official daddy/son run.
I got him warm and tucked in as Micah pumped the tires up.
And they were off for over an hour.
When they came back, I was anxious to hear all about it, and apparently Dash didn’t make a peep — except for the few times he said, “Dadadadada”.
And when this little boy cruised around for the next hour, he was as happy as a little clam.
Or little blue dog.
For Family Night, we swam.
And this is when I realized that we have our own family lingo when it comes to swimming.
Here are a few vocab words:
LAPS
Before my kids get in the pool, I sunblock them up. And rather than have them wait around and ask me a million times if they can get in yet, I tell them to take five laps. That way, it dries while they climb around the perimeter of the pool, and then they jump in.
I also pull them from swimming if they are teasing or whining, and they can get x amount of laps until they can go back in.
It works like a charm.
SUPER LAUNCHER DAUNCHER
This is where Micah stands on the edge of the deep end, and sends our kids flying. Scout dies over this. Navy died over it until Micah got a little over zealous. I guess the fact that she was light and small was too tempting.
SURFING
This is when the Shmickity Dickity Dock takes one of the kids for a ride around the pool. This was Dashy’s first time, and besides a few mouth fulls of water, he was pretty on board.
FORGIVENESS
I guess this isn’t our own family lingo. But this dad was looking for forgiveness from his launch, and finally got it when Navy swam up and hung on his neck.
CUTEST BABY ON EARTH
This isn’t only exclusive to the pool. But when you look up “Cutest Baby on Earth” in any dictionary — you see this handsome boy. And he is referred to this at most times — at least by his mom!
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My kids were in the pool for almost five straight hours this day. And before Family Night, Navy kept talking about a bear she saw. Now keep in mind that Navy has been getting really scared lately — but usually of wolves and bats. I hadn’t heard of a bear in the mix, and poo poo’d it quickly — as I didn’t want it in her nightly repertoire. I know both she and Scout have excellent imaginations, and thought they were just making stuff up when they spoke about this bear for an hour. Then when Micah came home and mentioned the bear, I finally had to see what the fuss was about.
And it really was a bear!
Kind of amazing!
The shadow from the BBQ cover had created the perfect bear silhouette!
I was glad I didn’t hear about the bear later that night — but felt a little bad about telling my kids over and over that there were no bears.
After coming home from Jakey’s run, we were all wiped. So instead of going to church at 9:00am, we all slept in and then I held “Plurch”. (Plastic church.) The Brockbank kids were over, so I told everyone to be in the Family Night Room at 12:30.
Cade opened with a prayer.
Navy led the music.
All of the kids spoke of a time when they felt the spirit/got an answer to prayer/chose the right/were kind to others.
I had everyone memorize Trey’s favorite scripture (Mosiah 2:17).
Bella sang a musical number.
And Scout put together an activity.
He did completely on his own, and it was darling.
He set up two bowls.
One was filled with water and the other was empty. We each got spoons and when we said a good blessing in our lives, we took a spoon full of water and put it into the empty bowl. If it was a bad blessing, we had to skip a turn, and not do the water. “When the water exploded, we were done.” Huh???
So we all said a few blessings in order, and did our spoons of water.
Micah had to skip a turn because he did two spoons of water because he thought “both legs” equaled two.
Unfortunately, Scout disagreed.
And then I went out of turn, and got reprimanded!
Scout was hilarious.
After a few rounds, Scout said a blessing, and instead of using his spoon, he sucked a mouth full of water from the straw.
When he went to put it in the other bowl, he used quite a bit of force, and it “exploded” all over me.
Everyone was cracking up, and the game was officially over.
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Plurch was great.
Scout’s activity was better.
Jake is home, and he brought a lady friend with him — whom we LOVE!
So in honor of his arrival, Nonnie made a huge batch of ribs.
There were 18 of us eating away.
Megan told us about a game they play in their family to induce good behavior.
Whomever has rude manners gets the “pig”, and it is passed around as many times as people break manner rules.
Whomever has it at the end of dinner, does the dishes.
How awesome is that!
So in place of a pig, I found a pumpkin hat — and it looks like Cade was the current offender at the time of this photo.
I loved the game — and have never had anyone ever call me ma’am as many times in one night!
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After dinner - we all pitched in (because there were 18- you know).
Then I created an impromptu “Battle of the Sexes”.
We all wrote questions that were supposed to stump the opposite sex.
Here is Micah demonstrating “1st - 5th positions in ballet”.
He clearly got it wrong!
but no big deal — because the boys creamed the girls!
I blame the lame questions my team wrote up.
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Jake — we love having you home, and can’t believe that you will be gone for two years come August 29th.
I already feel like crying!
You know what’s awesome?
When you break your back all day long to feed, diaper, entertain, soothe, and humor an almost 9 month old baby.
And then he cruises around and says “Da Da Da Da”.
Are you kidding me?
It was officially his first word.
Fine.
But it is a little salty in the wounds when he still hasn’t picked up “Mama” as a regular in his vocabulary.
Maybe I should teach him a lesson, and let “Dada” be in charge of him.
Most days, that might be fine.
But during this never-ending teething process, he might pick up “Mama” really quickly.
My kids headed to a three day camp this week. Each day had a new theme. So on “Movie Day”, instead of wearing a shirt and shorts, they dressed up like characters from a movie. Navy is clearly a princess, and Scout is Luke Skywalker. And when he told her in the car that she could be “Princess Leia”, she adamantly put her foot down because Princess Leia doesn’t have a microphone.
(Sidenote: the next day, as we drove in the car for a few hours, Scout and I played a game. It consisted of him asking me if I wanted to be Chewbacca or Obi Wan Kenobi in a fight. Then he would either tell me that I was actually the other person — or if I picked wrong, he would tell me that he was the other person and he could beat me up. And then he would tell me every detail of Star Wars that surrounded those characters. There were a few other twists to the game, but in the end….it was at least two hours of Star Wars. The funniest part is that I don’t think he has even seen the whole series. It was that stinking video game he played while he was in his cast. He remembers every single detail of it. He has the world’s best memory. So when he told me a week ago that, “Mom, I remember things from when I was a baby” — I completely know that is true.)
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