Applesauce, airplanes, and black eyes

I'm in a rush so I'm lumping the events of the past week into one blog post- how efficient, huh?

On Monday we made applesauce. No apple picking involved (does that exist in Texas???), but that would have been fun. Oh well, instead I let Tyler select ANY and ALL types of apples from the many overflowing bins in the Wal-mart produce section and called that apple picking. He ran around placing red ones, green ones, yellow ones, and pink ones in plastic bags- done. He had a blast peeling all of the apples and then sat down and ate who knows how many feet of peels for lunch. I had no objections to that.

Last weekend, we attended an air show that featured the Blue Angels. If you've never seen the Blue Angels perform, you're really missing out. Funny thing is, the airport that they use for the air show is a smaller airport that is only about 10 miles from our home, so we get more than just the show. We know the minute they arrive in town(because they are so loud), and we get to watch as they practice and warm up the day before the show. Plus, they do shows on Saturday and Sunday so after church we got to watch an encore presentation from our backyard. It is pretty spectacular watching an F-18 fly only a few hundred feet above your house---SO LOUD!!! Needless to say, we still braved the traffic and crowds so that we could watch the show on Saturday and see some of the planes up close. Tyler and John even toured the inside of many fighter jets and other various planes. It was fun, but I think from now on, we'll just watch from one of the hillsides just outside of the airport. The crowds are horrendous.

Then that brings us to the black eye episode. On Tuesday I got a call from Tyler's preschool letting me know that he had tripped and hit his cheek on the corner of the carpet stage in the gym. They told me he was okay, but just wanted me to know. The pictures don't show how swollen that bump was and, as you can imagine, by the next morning it was quite the shiner. When he'd smile or laugh his swollen little eye would almost shut. I guess we'll have to hold off on taking our Christmas pictures until that little injury has healed up.

Well, that sums up our week. Thank heavens.

Robby Report

One week...my baby turns one in one week!!! Time sure does fly. Didn't I just have this kid? Oh well. We sure do like who he is becoming and it sure is fun to have more glimpses as to who that really is as he gets older. It is the most fun thing watching him discover and learn new things.

Robby is pretty much Tyler's sidekick. He adores his big brother and enjoys following him around and attempting to do the things that Tyler does. Robby by far knows more sound effects than words at this point. It cracks me up when the boys are up in the toy room and I can hear Tyler playing and Robby trying to mimic the sounds Tyler makes. Tyler often plays transformers and I can hear Robby trying to make the same Transformers sounds that Tyler does. Other sound effects he has mastered and will perform on command, but not in front of a camera or strangers are: a horse noise, a dinosaur growl, and a truck sound.

He has developed a deep interest in trucks. I'm constantly amazed at how boys just come hard- wired to love boy stuff. Strange. Just the other day at church, I was pacing the halls with Robby in my arms. As we walked down the hall, Robby got very excited about something. He started squealing and flapping his arms and making his truck sound. I looked down and saw a push-along/ride on truck parked outside the nursery room. He pretty much jumped out of my arms to play with the truck. He spent the rest of the third hour pushing the truck up and down the halls. It was very cute!

His love for trucks has kind of spilled over and includes all things with a motor. He also LOVES the lawn mower (Tyler did too at this age). When he sees it in the garage, he squeals, growls, and makes his motor noise. He could stand at the window all day watching John mow the lawn. He squeals with delight every time John goes past the window.

(Here he is with another one of his favorite items that has a motor)

We also recently attended an air show so of course, Robby has added pointing in the sky and making plane noises to his repertoire of cute things. And I have to admit, I think that "plane" might be one of his first words- sadly, "mommy" hasn't made the list yet. Oh well, it sure is cute when he's pointing at the sky and he repeats, "pway, pway, pway" over and over again.

Also topping the list of first words is "Ty Ty." Frequently he'll get excited when he hears Tyler in the other room and he'll start repeating "Ty Ty! Ty Ty!" He also says "Daddy," which sounds a lot like "Ty Ty", but none of them sound even remotely close to "Mommy." Oh well.

(Here is Robby playing with one of his few favorite toys that doesn't have a motor...busy, busy, busy)

(And this is my favorite new view in the backseat now that Robby is old enough and big enough to be forward facing. I love looking in my rear view mirror and seeing both of their cute little faces.)

And the boy is a climber. Oh is he a climber. And sometimes when he climbs in places he shouldn't be, he gets stuck (what this picture doesn't capture is the panic on his face as he realizes he can't get out.)

I am so grateful for this sweet boy. He is such a joy and has brought our family so much happiness. I can't wait to celebrate his first year next week. Happy day!

Fudge

Carvel should really reconsider having a giant Fudge as their mascot

Fall Festival

So for a little over a year, I have been serving as the Social Committee Chairman for our HOA. It has been fun meeting new people, organizing events, and planning activities. This past weekend was our fall festival. It was our biggest event we've taken on, and it was AMAZING! I spent countless hours coordinating this event (it was beginning to feel like my part time job), and I was very pleased with how it all came together. We had pony rides, a petting zoo, bounce houses, carnival games, apple cider, popcorn, cotton candy, and even a cake walk. We also invited several vendors in the community to come and promote their home businesses. I was so grateful to so many volunteers who made the day possible. The only problem was that I was so busy that I barely had a chance to enjoy the afternoon with my boys. I did slip away for just a few minutes to watch them enjoy a few of the activities.

Tyler liked the pony rides. I loved the smile on his face as he came around each time.


Robby thought the petting zoo was pretty great. He was so cute and loved to pat the goat. It was really funny. The goat just stood there and let Robby pat it on the back- more like smack it repeatedly. Tyler also enjoyed the carnival games, but was SO disappointed that he didn't win any cakes at the "cake winning game." I felt bad because he was so excited the day before when I came home from the bakery with a trunk FULL of goodies (it really was quite the sight, if I do say so myself).

I'm glad it's over, and I'm glad it was a success...and now let's hope the upcoming Halloween Hayride and Christmas event are every bit as successful!

Birthday Week

So it's been a few weeks, but I figured I'd better at least document these things! John and I had our birthdays a few weeks ago- his on the 5th and mine on the 9th. For John's birthday we surprised him with a pinata. Tyler thought this was GREAT- I mean who doesn't love whacking something as hard as you can with a baseball bat?

Then on Friday, for my birthday John brought home pink balloons (my favorite color, although he hoped no one in the ward saw him. He was afraid they would think he was trying to make some sort of announcement), then we celebrated with another cake (yes, we do two cakes...no one wants leftover cake for their birthday), went out to eat, played games, and John surprised me with my very own laptop. It's one of those small notebook laptops, and I loooove it. I was completely surprised. I can now get stuff done while I watch the kiddos play up in the toy room. I love not being tied to the office. It's great!

And hopefully we won't have to enforce the following rule :)

Way to go PBS

Have you seen Dinosaur Train, the newest cartoon on PBS? It's great. Ty loves it because it's about dinosaurs. I love it because they actually do a good job of teaching about the different dinosaurs, the characters are cute, the story lines are simple, and best of all, they share a positive message about adoption.

Check out the opening theme song above. Unfortunately, they leave out the best part of the song in this clip. Right after the eggs hatch, and the baby T-Rex emerges from his egg and says, "What am I doing here?" the song continues:

Dear old Mrs. Pteranodon said, This is your family and I'm your mom!

You may be different, but we're all creatures

all dinosaurs have different features!"

I love that the message is a sweet reminder that you don't have to look the same, act the same, or even arrive the same way in order to be a family. It just doesn't matter. I also love that they don't make a huge deal about it in every episode. The differences in this little dinosaur family occasionally come up, but they don't overkill it. It's fun to watch and I love that in some small way, they shed a positive light on adoption. And so to that I say, "Good job PBS."

...And now if we could just get rid of that whiny, annoying little Caillou.

Biking Shorts

No we didn't buy him his first pair of biking shorts. He found Robby's pants in his drawer and figured they were meant for him.

When he came down the stairs, I couldn't figure out where he had found a new pair of shorts and why they were so darn tight. When I finally figured it out, I about fell on the floor laughing. It doesn't help that Tyler was all too happy to "model" the outfit for me.

More Sunday Lessons

(this picture doesn't have anything to do with the story, but he is so darn cute that I had to put a picuture on here)

Oh dear. So Tyler's preschool is like most preschools in the area in that it is a church preschool. This particular church (of course not of my faith) is kind of a non-denominational church that draws crowds with it's strong youth programs, it's dynamic preacher, and it probably has a cool band or something to entertain during Sunday sermons- pretty typical for this area. I really have no problem with my child being exposed to religious diversity. I like it, and it's one of the things I like about living outside of Utah. I wasn't worried about Tyler being taught questionable doctrine because most of what they teach is about love, God, and Bible stories- no problem there.

However, recently we have had a little issue come up in our daily prayers. At the preschool, they start each day with prayer- the same prayer every day from what I can gather. Tyler has since started reciting his favorite parts of this prayer each time he prays at home. I struggled with this because I don't particularly have any problems with what he's saying and I don't want him to think it's wrong, but I also don't want him to get used to repeating the same prayer over and over again.

Well, as luck would have it (although of course it has nothing to do with luck), we had very recently read about the Zoramites in the Book of Mormon, so I reminded Tyler that we don't want to pray like the Zoramites. We want our prayers to be different each time and we want to think about actually talking with Heavenly Father. We discussed how it would be fine if he said some of the things he recently learned in preschool as long as he didn't include them in EVERY prayer. So that night, his prayer went something like this:

"Heavenly Father, Please help us not to pray like the Zoramites. Amen."

Okay, fair enough. Well, here we are a few weeks later and we are still struggling with Tyler's repetitive prayer, which I might say is very sweet, but I still want him to understand the sacredness of communicating with Deity. So we talked again about trying to pray about things that are really important to us. I tried to help him think of some specific things he could ask for and blessings he could thank Heavenly Father for. Well, that night before bed we read a Halloween bedtime story, read scriptures, and then had prayers. His prayer then went something like this:

"Heavenly Father, please bless me to get a lot of candy on Halloween. Amen."

I think we might be getting somewhere. How about you?