Are We There Yet?? Part I

Tomorrow morning we leave for NJ. We expect to hear the above question many times over the next couple of days....stay tuned for a full report.

Swimming Update

Esther made such huge gains in her swimming class during the 5 week session that we decided to sign her up for another 5 weeks. She went from being completely terrified the first week to jumping in without holding the teacher's hand at week 5. Tonight (week 7) she was floating on her back almost completely on her own and bobbing under the water while letting go of the side wall of the pool. It has been so fun to see how proud she is of her accomplishments and how much fun she's actually having in the water!

Sideways Sleeper

We didn't think Peter needed a railing on his big boy bed since the mattress is on the floor, but maybe he does. Casey went to check on him before going to bed and found him like this...

He must have been tired because he didn't even flinch when I took this picture with the flash!

Grandpa's Helper

Usually it's all fun and games when the kids visit Grandpa and Grandma, but not this day! They got put to work (and had fun doing it)!

Meijer Gardens

Today Grandma K. came with us to Meijer Gardens. She hadn't been to the children's area before, so the kids had a lot of fun showing her all the fun stuff there is to do there. We enjoyed spending the morning with her!

Irony

This morning Peter woke up on the wrong side of the bed. He's just been irritable and unable to tell me what's really wrong. He's spent a good amount of time crying, whining and pouting. A little while ago we went to get dressed and out of all the options in his drawer, he chose this shirt:

Even Esther found the irony in this. She saw what he was wearing and said, "He picked his Mr. Happy shirt and he's not even happy!"

Fortunately this shirt usually fits his personality to a tee. I guess he's just having a bad day!

Cherry Picking

This weekend Karen took Esther on a special aunt/niece outing to go cherry picking with some friends. Here is her blog post about it:

"Yesterday I went cherry picking with Aunt Karen and Megan (and some other people too). It was a lot of fun and I had a great time!"

Dress Up

Apparently I need to dress up a little more often. This morning Esther asked me why I never wear dresses or skirts, so I thought I'd actually wear a skirt to church. When I came downstairs after getting dressed, Esther said, "Why are you wearing that?" (Um, because you just told me I never wear skirts!) Then Peter came running over and said in the sweetest little voice, "Whoa, you SO cute!" I guess it was quite a big deal for them to see me in a skirt!

Big Boy Bed!

Casey is currently working on building Peter a fire truck bed. He has had the plans for a while and just started working on it, in hopes of getting it done this summer. We had originally planned to just keep Peter is his crib until the bed was done.

Then we thought about the fact that in a few weeks we will be going to New Jersey and Peter will sleep on an air mattress since he's really getting too big for a pack and play. We decided that maybe his first experience of sleeping without bars should not be when we're on vacation and all 5 of us are sleeping in one room.

We decided that we'd just get his twin mattress and let him sleep on it on the floor so he can get used to the freedom of no crib rails. He was pretty excited when we got it all ready today and he had to try it out and pretend that he was going to bed with his doggy. Then Esther had to check it out as well. For some reason, they found this to be quite hilarious.

Currently he is sleeping soundly. We're hoping he stays in there all night and that we don't have a visitor in the middle of the night!

Grandma K. is also working on a quilt to go with the fire truck bed. It will be fun to see how it all turns out once the bed and quilt are finished. We'll keep you posted!

Happy 4th of July!

We continued the tradition that we started several years ago of going to the Kentwood 4th of July Parade. The kids and my mom and I met our friends the Haverdinks and Casey's parents and Nick at Jeff and Renee's house and we all walked from there. This is the 2nd year that Casey has been IN the parade instead of watching it with us. Last year Esther was scared of the sirens, but she informed me yesterday that she wouldn't be scared of the sirens this year because she's 4 now. She and Peter had a great time seeing Daddy and a couple other firefighters they know in the trucks, and they really weren't scared at all. Esther proudly wore her pink fire helmet and got lots of smiles, waves and thumbs up from the firefighters. They also had a great time collecting tons of candy that was thrown and handed to them!

After the parade we came back to our house for brunch with the Haverdinks and the kids played outside. Unfortunately Peter did not want to cooperate so I couldn't continue the tradition of getting a picture of Peter and Anna kissing. We played outside most of the afternoon and then had supper at my parents' house along with my sister, Casey's parents and Nick. After the kids went to bed Casey headed back out to work at the fireworks.

We're looking forward to relaxing and getting a few things done during the rest of this holiday weekend!