Escaping the heat

Redeeming our buy 1 get 1 free coupon at Bill Grey's before playing in the air conditioned museum.
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Team baby

We have 3 friends over right now. James and the 8 year old girl pointed out the 3 teams present: team big kid which is making marble pets, team younger kids which is playing on the playground, and team baby which is unloading the dishwasher. I'm glad they each have someone who shares their interest!
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10 Months and 1 day

I wish I were a Claire Elizabeth*.

That is what I'd really like to be.

For if I were a Claire Elizabeth.

Everyone would be in love with me!

Still loves Peek A Boo!

New love: swings.

More about Claire:

• She LOVES patty cake. If I say, "patty cake" she smiles and claps her hands.
• She is getting close to talking. She tries to mimic "Dada, Mama, and peek-a-boo (sounds like Da-doo, but with the right intonation)". She also says, "uh-oh" but she doesn't know what it means.
• She still screeches a lot.
• She is figuring out how to walk while we hold her hands. If she's not walking by 11 months, she'll be behind our other two, so it's time to get moving :)

*Yes, this song originally says, "I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weiner" and yes, it is one of her favorite songs now. 

Scared to death

Scared to death, but fortunately not BURNED to death!

Dan was trying to let James and Ruth help him start the grill. I'm not sure all the specifics, but I guess the ignite button was pushed enough times that a fireball blew out of the grill and singed Dan's arm hair and the hair and James' head. I am glad I was not there to see it and that James still has a face.

Little Random Significant Memories Worth Saving

Occasionally I take pictures with my camera phone as keepsakes and forget to upload them right away.  Here are a few in no particular order.

James' t-ball league got to parade around the Rochester Red Wings' minor league baseball stadium between a recent double-header.  I wasn't able to keep up with JJ, but here's a quick shot of Ruth playing around on the field

One of my best friends, Eric, getting ready to start the public portion of his Ph.D. thesis defense.  Hopefully in one year's time I'll be in his shoes!  He did great (which is totally no surprise).

Grammy Christensen saves up plastic bottles for JJ and Ruth.  We periodically pick up the bags of bottles and JJ and Ruth have fun putting them in the recycling machines.  The kids can then take the proceeds from the recycling to buy as much loose candy as they can afford.  The kids love it!

All growing up, in the summer my dad, sister, and I would shuck corn behind the house in preparation for dinner.  It was a fun little activity we'd do together oftentimes on Sunday afternoons.  This is me continuing on the tradition with JJ and Ruth.  James is pretty fast, and he's good at getting all the hair off!

James was SO tired after the Toronto trip.  This is him trying to get out of the car once we arrived home at midnight.  He unbuckled his belt, slid out, and fell back asleep in this position.

Just having fun with 'finger mustaches' right before going to bed.  They're so fun to just goof around with!

Last Day of Kindergarten

His last bus ride of Kindergarten. He thinks the bus is SO boring, but on the last day of school, the buses circle around the pick-up circle several times while honking and waving good bye to the school.

No more caution--this is old hat.

They celebrated all the Summer birthdays on the last day of school, hence the crown.

being silly for the camera

The bus driver gave them fruit snacks on the way off the bus. James was not interested in talking about his last day of school feelings. He just wanted to tell me each fruit snack's flavor as he ate it.

This is James' Kindergarten program. He was very excited to have a speaking part. I also included some of his self-guided tour of the classroom, although it's hard to hear him over the noise.
I really loved James' teacher, Mrs. Waud. She was so serious about education. Even though students in her class had a wide range of abilities, she did a great job addressing the specific needs of the strongest and weakest students. She is also just a wonderfully happy and generous person. I was so impressed that for Christmas she asked that families make donations to a local food cupboard in place of a gift for her. She organizes a weekly fundraiser at the school (casual Fridays if the teachers pay a dollar for a rotating charity) and will be spending time in Mexico this Summer performing service. I think we were very spoiled with our first public school experience! I am more emotional with James ending Kindergarten than when he started. He is getting so grown up and there's no going back! Next year he will be gone from 7am-2:30pm every day and I will miss having him around. I shared a quote here recently that "The days are long, but the years are short." When empty-nesters frequently look at my life and say to "enjoy every moment," I want to reverse that quote for them: "The years are short, but the days are LONG, so give me a break if I'm not thrilled about this tantrum or poopy diaper." Right now I am feeling the brevity of the years more than the length of the days.

Canadians, eh!

James' journal entry at school about our Toronto trip.

You'll notice his drawing features the retractable dome at Roger's Centre where the Blue Jays play, the fans, and Canadians saying, "hi, a". Maybe I voiced my excitement a little too much about hearing real Canadians say "ey" in context!

The text (with spelling corrected) says,
"I went to Toronto. Some things were different. Somethings were not different. The sliding roof was different. The trains were the same."


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More baby gates, please!

She made it all the way up independently!
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Claire's favorite books

I leave them in her crib sometimes to give her a reason to stay laying down and not stand up and wake herself up. It doesn't matter how upset she is, she'll always quiet down and give at least a smirk when I read her these books! If I were at the computer, I'd include links, but they are "Look at Me" and "Who Am I?" by "Begin Smart".
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Apple streudel hockey

Ruth and her friends are standing on the light post yelling "apple streudel" at james and his friends playing hockey. I inquired if that was a cheer or a taunt. They informed me that's what james named the ball. Fair enough.
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Field Day

A perfectly hot day for a Field Day--Ruth's got rained out.

He kept the little disc on his head all the way to the cone and dropped it about every other step (or more) on the way back. He cracks me up!

James rode home with us after school--I thought he'd choose to ride the bus with his friends, but apparently he really dislikes the bus. It's too long and boring of a ride. Poor kid. 

Later that afternoon we had a popsicle party in our housing community. The great thing about working for the community is I can come up with ideas and get reimbursed after I implement them! This was our third "surprise" popsicle party so far this Spring. When there is a hot day in the forecast, I email out at least 24 hours in advance. We rotate to different playgrounds in the complex. Each time we have gone through more than 100 ice pops in 30 minutes. Of course, they children are eating more than one each. I think this is going to be a fun tradition!

I let the kids "volunteer" by cutting open popsicles with kid safe scissors.

Trip to Toronto!

Happy 7th anniversary and Father's Day to Dan!

Ruth and Claire stayed with a babysitter (Thanks Jenna and MaryAnne!) and James came with us! We are always telling James how we expect better behavior and more responsibilities from him because he is older and he finally got a real reward/privilege to go along with the added responsibility. He is old enough to start forming memories and I hope he'll always remember this.

We left at 6am in the car, so there was no DVD player for James. He was good about coloring and rocking out to Elton John with us. His favorite song is "Crocodile Rock" because it's on an episode of Bob the Builder.

 

 First stop: Toronto temple. We were thrilled that there was a Distribution Center.

Pulling leaves out of the fountain.

7 years!

The grounds were beautiful! This would be a great temple for wedding photos :)

Stop #2: Tim Horton's. Yes, they have these in Rochester, but not on every corner like in Toronto. Plus, James really wanted to go. We bought a maple donut to make it more Canadian.

Driving into the city. I was struck with how many high rise condo buildings there were and with all of the glass on them.

Looking at (but not paying to go up) the CN tower.

Historic Union Station. It's fun that James likes to read the plaques now.

We tried to let James call a lot of the shots during the day, but this was the one thing we had to put our foot down about: not walking on these tracks for longer than 10 minutes. In the background of these pictures you can see the old trains and roundhouse.

Eating Canadian candy.

Boston Pizza: one of the biggest pizza chains in Canada, or so says Shark Tank.

Phillies vs Blue Jays. Phillies lost in the 10th inning. They should have had it. Poor Cliff Lee.

James looked really tired and a little bored, but he did not complain once and said he loved it. He is really getting to be quite the spectator. He loves watching and talking about sports!

Dan wanted a new FB profile picture of the two of us at a Phillies game to replace the one of the two of us at a 76ers game. I don't think any of these will be making the cut.

Fail #1:

Fail #2.

Me filling up the water bottle (again). It was a hot day!

After the game, all the kids 14 and under were able to run the bases! They even let the Phillies fans do it--not without a little good natured heckling, of course. It's probably easy to be good natured when more of your team's players got to run the bases during the game.

He's the ONE wearing red :)

Fail #3 My plan was for James to stand in front of us and then I could crop our faces out.

Fail #4. Hat shadow.

After a failed attempt to use the Subway (only takes Canadian cash), we drove over to the Greek district. We soon found out that Greece had just beat Russia in the Euro Cup so we got to witness quite the celebration in the streets! (By the way, notice the street lights--the green and yellow lights are tiny!)

Authentic gyros and sides covered in Feta...mmmm.

And gelato. I need to do some extra exercising this week!

James read a chapter of Boxcar Children and then fell asleep on the way home. We arrived around midnight. What a fun, and long, day!