Sean's Birthday

We celebrated Sean's birthday this week with a trip to Shogun - which equals a peaceful dinner because the boys love to see the fire & eat seafood too! They come home begging for shrimp and scallops. We ended with ice cream cake - yumm-0 even if it wasn't our beloved DQ. I'd say Happy Birthday to him here but we all know he's the least likely person to actually read our blog!

What we've been doing

Carter took another round of swim lessons last week - he did great, he's got a great teacher whom he adores and made all the difference for him, wish we'd been able to squeeze in another week of lessons but the summer has been just crazy enough that we haven't been able to!

The boys had a great few days on their Iowa Adventure last week and were delivered back from Iowa by Grandma and Grampie who where here last week. While in Iowa they spent a lot of time playing farm boys, Carter even learned to drive the 4-wheeler by himself, only on the driveway with his helmet and going super slow (so slow he says that Red Dog wouldn't even chase him!) I don't think Linc will be trusted to do the same at nearly 6 years as that kid has the need for speed! They also were able to attend the races in Corning which is something they have been wanting to do for a long time & they had a lot of fun! Thanks to Mimi and Papa for keeping them and letting us have some kid-free time (movies and eating out, house projects) and thanks for Grandma and Grampie for transporting them back - after 5 days, 4 nights we were ready for a noisy house again!

We've been so busy, I'm still catching up from June! That is sad, isn't it? Here are a few pictures from our Grapevine trip - had a great time - hated to cut it short but the tummy bug Linc had forced us home a night early but not before we had a trip to Home Goods & yes we were Home Goods happy! The top picture is of the boys with the "TJ" as they call him, not to be confused with his real name of DJ....they insist he was a TJ who gave them glasses! We all got temporary tattoos and spent a lot of time on the lazy river - this picture of Carter on the tube is the very last time he went around - he ran every other lap which had to have been 100's!

Happy 4th of July!

We had a little celebration at our house for the 4th - it is nice to not be in city limits on the 4th! We had a great firework display from our driveway - maybe not LibertyFest material but certainly enough to entertain our boys!

Happy Birthday Dizzy Don!

And the story goes that when I was 3-4 and having a horrible, very bad, terrible, no good kind of day, I sat down and read my book "How To Be a Grouch" - this story gives Grandma and Don a good case of the laughs, so when I saw the "How to Spot a Grouch" shirt I thought we must have it just in time for Don's birthday and Grandma and Don's anniversary. Incidentally Lincoln had a horrible, very bad, terrible, no good kind of night last night...

How to Spot a Grouch

~ Beady Eyes

~ Trash Can Lid

~ Green Fur

~ Grouchy Mouth

~ Bangs & Dents

~ Old Grey Trash Can

I took the training wheels of Linc's bike today - Carter said he didn't want to learn to ride without them but Linc did so off they went, he couldn't quite get it, although, with the size of his bike I think with some practice he could totally do it (he can put his feet down so easily!).

This afternoon Carter decided he'd try and after 20 minutes he had it! He looks a bit big for the bike and he is, but I'm afraid his bike will be really hard to manage & lead to a little more injury so we are going to practice on L's bike for a while. Lots of fun milestones this summer, swimming & biking - exciting and sad at the same time!

Mimi got to witness this milestone & forgot I had the camera when she was playing around with the boys -she looks pretty good on the bike too!

For Father's day the boys made Sean a bed for the living room floor - they were really proud of their creation - it wasn't so bad, I even took a little cat nap on the floor on Sunday. They spent the rest of the day fishing & playing hair salon (something I never thought would happen in my house!).