Happy Birthday Daddy!

Happy Birthday to our Daddy!  I know this is a little belated, but we love you so much.  We had a great afternoon with you eating cake, grilling out and spending time together at the pool.  We wish we could spend every afternoon with you!  

The Best Day of my Life

Recently the kids ran up to me and told me they wanted to give me the best day of my life.  So they told me to go to my bedroom and shut the door.  GLADLY!!  I heard them running around the house and occasionally they would come into my room and ask me for cleaning supplies or the vacuum, but they would insist "We aren't cleaning Mom!!"  After about thirty minutes they came up to show me the surprise.  They had vacuumed, cleaned bathrooms and even unloaded the dishwasher.  What a great surprise!!

Then they made me a spa in the toy room.  Dawson sprayed water on my legs and wiped it off with a towel, Ava rubbed lotion on my legs and Carter gave me a hand massage.  Then all three of them did my hair (as you can see in this picture.)  Any day with the three of them is the best day of my life, but it was a very sweet surprise!  

COSI Fun!

On Sunday we drove thru Columbus and stopped at COSI to break up the trip.  We have museum reciprocity, so it was a cheap fun day for us all.

Dawson is being electrocuted in this picture.  And he adored it, no really.  When Mike tried it he lifted his hands off immediately, as did Ava and Carter.  But Dawson looked at us with a big grin on his face and said "keep doing it."

Mike is using a giant lever to lift a car!

They checked out a submarine

Stuck their faces in the water

We checked out the Game Masters exhibit which has a huge selection of video games to try ranging from the earliest to the very newest.  Carter loved it and was very disappointed that we couldn't stay there forever, but Dawson was bored and hated it.  Ava was really interested in the dancing and singing video games.

Eight year old Carter is so delightfully goofy.  I love him!

One of the main reasons we stopped was for the Big Machines exhibit.  Here is Mike being lifted up by a crane.  The kids also got to scoop some dirt with a mini excavator.  Of course this was a big hit!

A visit to Dayton

This past weekend we visited family in Dayton.  We needed to go to the Air Force museum because Carter needed a new satchel and he really liked the one we got there.  So in the morning we ran over to the museum to pick up a new satchel and check out the newly opened fourth hangar.

It's a pretty long walk to get all the way to the fourth hangar, but these kids were little troopers.

The fourth hangar contains space, research and development and the presidential wing.

Mike and I really enjoyed the Presidential hangar.  This is the plane that brought President Kennedy back from Dallas.

Then in the afternoon it was on to the Lion King!  The kids have been talking about it non-stop since we came back.  They loved it!  It's such an amazing show and this time we had birds flying over our head and a momma and baby elephant walk right by!

Ava was so excited to bring her stuffed Nala to the show.  Thank you Meme and Bob Bob for taking us to the show.  It was so amazing to share this experience with everyone!

We are the Champions!!!

This year Ava's team won first place in the tournament for her age group.  I was very proud of all the hard work that she put into softball and she learned a lot.

Ava is the girl on the far left

During the tournament they had a tough loss on Saturday.  Ava took it pretty hard, many of the girls on her team were upset.  This team that they lost to were in first place in the tournament and they had to play Tuesday, and then defeat the same team twice on Wednesday and Thursday.  They fought hard and won!

Way to go girls!!

Ava was one of the youngest girls on her team because they were first and second grade girls.

She is so proud of her trophy!

I just had to add in this little tidbit:  during one of the games that week Dawson was talking to my belly, which isn't unusual.  I told him that his brother could hear him.  But this time he was explaining to his little brother step by step how to make an arm fart.  Silly kid.

Summer Stories

We went to the summer reading kick off at the library, and waited in line waaaaaay too long for face painting.  They turned out really cute though!  Dawson liked the idea but he was asking to wipe it off by the time we got to the car.  He is so funny, because he hates anything touching his skin:  tattoos, face painting, stickers, band aids and even tags on his clothing.  But Carter and Ava enjoyed the experience and left them on for the rest of the day.

Yay!!  Dawson finished his reading book!!

The kids asked for blue hair!  It's summer time so why not?  It was just temporary, the regular blue hair required bleaching and I'm not ready to go there yet.  We let them keep it in for about two days, and they thought it looked so cool!

Ava got on a really good softball team this year.  She got some great hits, I think she was showing off for Grandma and Bo!  They have their next tournament game tomorrow night.  Unfortunately they lost one of their games, and she felt so bad because she got out at first base.  I thought we were over tears for getting out, but I guess not.  She has improved SO MUCH over the course of this season.  Her coaches have added a lot of nice touches likes water balloons and squirt guns after the game, not to mention trips to DQ!

This poor kid has really been missing the lack of baking in our home since the gestational diabetes diagnosis.  He has been begging to help me make pancakes for dinner, and he loved it.  He's getting really good at cracking eggs too!  Nary a shell to be found! 

Camp Tippecanoe

Our local YMCA teams up with our school district for the character champion program.  Both Carter and Ava were nominated as student of the month by the teacher, so we were invited to go visit the YMCA camp for a day.  There were so many fun activities for the kids to try out.  Dawson was a little upset because he wasn't allowed to do the zip line (you have to be ten years old or 65 pounds.)  Carter was big enough to give it a try, but he didn't want to.

Roping a steer is harder than it looks!  But somehow Dawson was able to do it on the first try, believe it or not.

Carter was able to try archery using a compound bow.

All the kids really enjoyed using the BB guns.

The cicadas at the camp were very thick.  Ava adored these little creatures, and Mike was running around catching them for her.  At one point in the day she was carrying around three of them as her little pets!

We also took out two canoes and took a ride on a pontoon boat.

It was such a fun day, and I'm so happy that Mike could take the day and spend it with us.  It also helped me out a lot, because there were some HILLS!!!! at this camp.

Carter Stories

• Recently Carter had a sleepwalking experience.  I heard something in the middle of the night and I propped myself up on my elbow and asked what is the matter.  Carter was beside my bed and he crawled into my bed, right over my pillow and sat cross legged directly between Mike and I.  We both asked him what was the matter, but he continued to mumble incoherently.  Mike led him back to bed and he laid down and went directly to sleep.  It was a funny moment, we've never had a child sleep walk before!
• Carter's baseball season just wrapped up this weekend.  Unfortunately I had to take Dawson to soccer so I missed his last game.  But he has had some great baseball moments lately:  he hit a double and caught a couple of fly balls.

Latest and Greatest with lots of Pictures!!

On the last day of school Dawson greeting his brother and sister at the bus stop with squirt bottles for a little water celebration.

Summer reading has begun!  Mike told me today that our couch always looks like a library.  That's great to hear!

We just finished the book The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.  It based on the true story of a gorilla named Ivan who was taken from the jungle in Africa and lived in a shopping mall in Washington for twenty years.  The kids really enjoyed this story.  We had Ivan's favorite foods:  fried chicken with banana pie for desert.  I haven't served fried chicken in pretty much forever, but the kids LOVED it.  I got it from the grocery store deli and they ate tons!  The banana pie however was not a hit.  Carter hates pudding, Ava and Dawson like bananas but not fake banana flavor.  I guess that isn't such a bad thing.  Oh and Ivan loved to finger paint, so we decorated our table using finger paint!

Ivan liked to finger paint with his nose, so Ava and Dawson had to try this method.

Kind of surprising, Dawson was more messy than Ava! 

I love catching my kiddos reading, so I must apologize for all these pictures.  Carter brought a chapter book to Ava's softball game and finished it!

For Memorial Day we visited the field of heroes.

The twins walking around holding hands, so sweet.

Five and a half!

Five and a half wonderful years old!  What a loving, intelligent, funny little boy you have become.  Now that I am pregnant, I have noticed how attentive you are to me.  For example, I laid down on the floor because my back was hurting and he came up to me and asked if he could turn the fan on me (I'm running a little hot these days.)  I've also been checking my blood sugar and he will run over to me and ask "Is your blood sugar good?"  I couldn't ask for a more attentive little boy to take care of me.

Dawson, you make your family laugh every single day!  You have a great sense of humor, although you have been laying it on pretty thick with the potty jokes.  One day the words poop and fart won't be so hilarious.  Oh wait, who am I kidding, potty humor is still pretty hilarious to your Dad!

Although you pester your big brother, you really do adore him.  Ava and you are very close, in fact some days we call you two the twins.  Most of the time you two play together so well, of course there is the occasional squabble.  

This spring you decided to play soccer.  In the first couple of games you stayed far away from the soccer ball.  As the season has progressed you have become more aggressive and have participated more and more.

A story written by Dawson:

The dog went into brown paint.  Then he laid on a bed.  The dog had to take a bath.  The end

One of Ava's summer assignments was to write a story.  Dawson wanted to do it too, so I sat down to help.  He made up this whole story by himself and wrote all the letters by himself!  I helped with spelling words and making sure he was using spaces between the words.  We are two lessons away from completing your reading book, you are reading so well.  Although I know the transition to kindergarten is bound to have challenges, I like the feeling that academically you are well prepared.  You also LOVE doing addition and it's not unusual for you to come and ask me to give you some math problems.

We love you big guy!    I'm so proud of you little guy and I'm so blessed to be your mama!