This weeks play

Now that Summer is in full force I have decided to get my act together and plan more activities to do during the summer with the kids. Lucy is out of school and she needs more structure at home. I spent some time gathering supplies and planning a few things out and this week we put it into action. Sunday will be my "planning " day where I will make sure I have things planned out for the week, make sure copies have been made and materials are there for the activities throughout the week. After Garrett goes down we usually have about 45 minutes together before the 2 shows she likes to watch come on. She gets to pick 3- 30 minute shows to watch a day, 1 is in the morning and then 2 are in the afternoon. Which then gives me 1 hour a day to get things done by myself and then 30 minutes in the morning to exercises. I will also have her help me do a small amount of cleaning each day with me. This week went really well and I could tell she enjoyed each activity I planned to do with her.

(Picture above is of Lucy's children taking a nap in my bedroom)

Monday JJ had off and Lucy and I grocery shopped together in the afternoon

Tuesday we assembled this foam castle together (from the $1 section at target)

Wednesday we wrote letters to family members and put them in the mail, Garrett was up in time to color out of our fun new big coloring books. They both enjoyed that a lot. Love those coloring books from the $1 store.

Thursday was Garrett's birthday and we made his cake together.

Friday we made necklaces with straw pieces that we cut up. I didn't have anything going on Friday (which was nice!) and so we did something fun with Garrett in the morning. We also hate to leave him out of everything so it will be nice to do somethings with his as well.

Friday afternoon Lucy and I played computer games together. She loves to play on the computer and I think there are some really great sites out there. I love this http://www.starfall.com/ new one my friend just introduced me to.

This picture got left out of the birthday post--so here you have it!

Tricycle

Garrett and Lucy love to ride the tricycle! Garrett is getting good at riding it all by himself--forward and back. He also loves to ride on the back and hold onto Lucy as she peddles. I love his cute smile in these pictures. He is such a sweet boy!

Happy Birthday Garrett!

Yesterday was Garrett's 2nd birthday! I think this year has flown by and it is crazy. Yesterday we did a few of his favorite things to help him have a fun day. When both the kids were up we went and got donuts, I have passed along my love of donuts to the kids. There is a new donut place right by our house and I am hoping we will not be tempted to many times. Luckily I still don't think they are my favorites so it shouldn't be to hard to pass them by. Garrett inhaled his donuts and was in heaven to have them for breakfast.

We headed to the Zoo that morning, off to see the animals. Garrett loves animals and so we thought that he would enjoy going to the zoo for his birthday.

We had the perfect day to go, nice and cool weather and there weren't to many school groups.

The bears were being really play full and running around chasing each other. The kids thought that was fun and they laughed pretty hard at them. They bears swam in the water and wrestled around.

After the zoo we stopped by to see JJ at work. We literally stopped by to say hi and so he could see the kids. JJ was sad that he wasn't going to get to spend much time with Garrett on his birthday, luckily he is small and doesn't know any different. We came home and had lunch and we watched the video of when Garrett was born. It was so fun to watch and look back and remember all that happened and how things were. Lucy was so small and it was cute to hear her little voice. Garrett enjoyed seeing himself as a baby , he loves babies. Garrett took a nice nap and then when he got up we went over to the apartment complex by our neighborhood to feed the ducks. Garrett and Lucy both love this and they were excited to feed them some bread.

After feeding the ducks we came home home and had dinner together as a family. After dinner we cleaned up and had cake and ice cream. I kept his cake simple this year. He loves ball's and so I did a basketball. He loved it and kept saying "basketball!" He could really care less what kind of cake he has, as long as he gets some.

He loved watching JJ light the candles. He also enjoyed us singing to him, he just kinda looked around at us and took it all in.

He was excited to blow out the candles and knew exactly when to do it and what to do! How fun!

Best part of all was eating it, he was so excited to eat the cake and ice cream.

We then opened some gift and the kids enjoyed playing with them all together. I think Lucy is having a hard time with Garrett's birthday. She didn't get any presents, but we had to explain to her that it isn't her birthday and when her birthday comes she will get presents and Garrett wont. I have been reminding her all day that they are his toys but he is doing a good job sharing.

We had a fun day celebrating his birthday. Happy Birthday Garrett!

"The Shell"

Saturday evening we headed to the Leavitt Shell for a free outdoor concert, it was opening weekend for their summer session. We had heard about it before but just never made it up there, so Saturday we went up and enjoyed the music and the nice weather. We picked up some candy at the store that day so we had fun sitting together and eating our candy.

Garrett loved dancing to the music and clapping his hands after each song. He also enjoyed running around in the grass and made a little lap that he would run each time. He ran several laps and slapped high 5's with the cute older couple at the top of his route each time. He even tried to climb up on stage at one point but the nice security lady said no.

The Watt family joined us and our kids all had fun dancing in front together. We had a nice time and look forward to going to a few more concerts this summer season.

Friday night JJ was able to go with the kids to the park and visit with the Pratt's. They were here together for Murray's graduation. I made some cookies for him to take with him to share with everyone. The kids had a fun time playing with everyone and JJ said it was fun to visit with everyone. I had to help out with a church activity that same night so I wasn't able to join them at the park. Murray and Margaret stopped by after our activity and we were able to visit with them there and hear all about graduation and life during their extern ships. It was so great to see them and I am so glad they made room to visit with us all during their short trip here.

Woodland Discovery Park

JJ had the day off yesterday due to things going on with Graduation. It was so nice to have him off, especially this week where we are getting back to real life after break. I can tell this summer is going to have some long days, but hopefully we can keep busy and enjoy JJ when we get to see him. We have heard good things about the new playground in Shelby Farms and so we packed our lunches and headed up for the mornings. It was a really neat playground and Lucy loved it. Garrett was a little young for a lot of the things but still had fun doing what he could and mostly just running around. Lucy is getting really good at climbing and was proud of herself and the way she was able to climb the rope web in one area. We had a fun day with JJ home and especially enjoyed having him home for dinner-something that I think is becoming a rare occurrence.

A package also came in the mail yesterday from JJ's parents. It had this cute little outfit in it for Lucy. They recently went to San Fransisco and picked this up in China Town. Lucy was very excited about it and immediately filled her little purse with match box cars.

Redbirds

Saturday night we went to the ball game as a family. It was a chilly evening, unlike most evenings we have been at the ball game. It was also fun to just go with our family. We had a really nice time sitting together on the grass and enjoying the game. We taught Lucy some of the baseball rules and she had fun watching to see if the players would hit the ball and how many bases they would run.

Garrett had a fun time walking around and playing with the other kids. At one point we thought he was just behind us playing with some other kids but we looked back to find him in the grass eating some spilt popcorn and cheese balls from someone else. It isn't like we didn't bring any snacks for him, he just is always hungry and willing to eat. We did bring some twizzlers to share and we enjoyed eating our little treat while watching the game.

The Redbirds played a good game and ended up winning. We stayed for the firework show which they do from the outfield. It was a good firework show which Garrett hated, he hid under the blanket with his eyes shut. Lucy enjoyed it! It was to our favor this time with the wind blowing away from us. We had a fun time at the ball game and are looking forward to going to more games this summer.