The week before Mother's Day we packed a picnic lunch and headed out to the cemetery to dress up mom's site with a new flag. It says something about 'Mom's Grow Beautiful Things' and has some flowers and gardening paraphernalia on it. This time the cemetery caretakers were there and had left their big John Deere tractors out just in the eye sight of the kids. Funny that there happened to be two lined right up together. They both pretended they were racing each other. Too cute!! We then headed into Orion ( our usual post cemetery visit) to Central Park for some fun and a quick picnic. Kennon's seasonal allergies were terrible this day, as it was super windy stirring up all the pollen, so it was sort of a quick visit but the kids had a good time.
You'll recognize these head shots of Kennon from his birthday evite. I just had to upload them all. He is a funny little kid and is a smart little whipper snapper! Yesterday after swimming lessons he looked down at his fingers and said 'Mom, my fingers are PASTA'. I said 'you mean PRUNES…' and he said 'YES prunes!' Funny. He loves pasta and has requested it for his birthday meal. He is extremely generous with his manners and especially his 'I love yous' It is not uncommon for him to just very nicely and quietly say ' I love you mom' completely on his own. Music to my ears. He has his wild side and we are definitely still in the terrible two's. He is very aggressive and when his sister is bugging him it generally turns into a wrestling match with him biting her!! YIKES. He is strong dude and well coordinated on the soccer field…just can't understand why the ref won't let him pick the ball up. He says he wants to be a 'wurker' when he grows up, stemmed from all the activity in the backyard. He quite often will tell me that the van is a train. "mom let's get in the train"…he is quite imaginative. And lately he is walking in his mamma's garden footsteps. He LOVEs to garden with me, especially watering the trees and flowers. It is quite the pissin' match when I want to shut the water off. Generally his response is 'but mom, the grass needs water' as he stands there watering one small section of grass with the hose with the flower attachment on it. I"m quite certain he believes ALL the grass should be watered that way. I of course win that battle in the end…but come inside wet!!
Both kids came home the Wednesday before Mother's Day happy to show me their gifts they had made at church school. Honestly…Maddox was so excited for me to open hers as there were dum dum suckers and skittles as part of the gift! She had made me a flower pot with her thumbprints on it and Kennon had made me a place mat. Kennon was content with his post school snack of fruit snacks and Maddox was happy to help herself to some skittles i.e. dirt to hold the flowers i.e. suckers!! I love Maddox's pig tails and she seems to like them too. It has finally been warm enough that just pulling her hair up in a pony is fun!!….. Just as long as she can get her bike helmet on. She is a SPEED QUEEN on that thing and in the last 2 weeks has figured out how to operate the brakes. She totally skidded out right in front of me, on purpose, last week on the driveway!! So we can finally so good bye to all the shoes she has worn a hole in the end of trying to slow herself down. She is NOT my gardener and gets quite angry at KTK because he won't ride his bike with her when he is too busy gardening. I honestly think she LOVES his company on the bike and feels like it's her role to take care of him when they are biking and when he isn't with her then she is just sad and lonely. She is very into her baby doll from Aunt Lora lately….Melody is her name this week…. Melody goes everywhere with us and is always hooked into the baby seat of her bike. She is quite the good mama and really takes good care of her. She also takes good care of Kennon, when he will have it. He has to be in just the right mood.
 |
This is my first official bouquet from my very own garden. The salmon colored flowers are from my new flowering bushes called quince…and they are blooming like crazy. The greenery is from my new gold splash bushes and then later I added some blossoms from our little flowering crab apple tree!! FINALLY spring is here… |
The kids sit like this quite often for about…… 3 minutes and I'd say 39 seconds before someone doesn't like something and they end of arguing and fighting. They are so cute when they do this!!
Find Maddox…..!! I took Maddox to my favorite garden store last week to get flowers for my pots and she found herself happy as a lark in the kid area of the store. She worked tirelessly gathering all these stuffed animals and lining them up for her 'party' as she called it!! I agree, as some of you thought, it looks more like she's teaching them. And that she is good at. She loves to be the teacher and does a lot of 'Ok Kennon….this is how you do it' type phrases.
Last Friday was Book Buddy night at the ballpark which means the kiddos from Our Savior who read a certain number of books over the last several months received a free ticket to the ball game AND a free hot dog, chips, and drink!! It was a beautiful night so we threw on the kids' ball caps and headed down to the field. They got to walk the entire way around the outfield cheered on by the fans and the baseball players. Pretty fun!! But the best part were the hot dogs and real Lay's chips. We really only made it through like the first inning before they were ready to hit the park that is just outside the ball field and get some ice cream. But, in comparison, that was one inning longer than we made it last year!! In case anyone is wondering…Melody did not receive a free ticket and spent the evening in the car :)
When I see this picture enlarged I cannot believe how old Maddox looks!! She is growing up so fast. Her thoughts are so much more complex, she is becoming very imaginative, and when she puts her mind to it is just the sweetest girl on the street! Some mornings she wakes up and is a terror and others she is so sweet it is seriously like 'what…who is this girl…?' So we praise praise praise the good behavior ( as we do with Kennon) and we know soon enough we will hopefully only see the sweet side of Maddox. She is doing well in her solo swimming lessons..and even goes down the big waterside all by herself. She is learning to float and is starting the basics of some of the strokes. I just asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up…conversation below…
Me- What do you want to be when you grow up Maddox?
Maddox - I don't know, I haven't thunked about it yet ( and yes..she said thunked)
Me - Well think about it and let me know
2 seconds go by
Maddox - I want to be a Mommy
Me - oh Maddox I think you will be a great Mommy
Maddox - I want to be a mommy so I can give rewards
Me - Oh yes, it is fun to give rewards for good behavior ( we have occasionally enlisted my little pony's for Maddox for good behavior)
Maddox - And I want to give Kennon choices!! ( we have recently started trying to curb Kennon's behavior by giving him choices when he is having a tantrum or is upset about something..thanks to my good buddy Jody Stegemann who gave us the book Parenting with Love and Logic)
This is evidence that Maddox (and Kennon too) are picking up on Eric and I's 'ways' to get them to do what we need them to do. I think they are way smarter than I really give them credit for!
I have to mention the ferris wheel in the background of the above picture. The owner of the field is really trying to entice people to come to the game. Tickets are super cheap, the food is relatively cheap, and they just put up this HUGE ferris wheel and zip line! The gondolas will hold 8 to 9 people. It wasn't in operation yet last Friday, due to delays from the weather, but I"m excited to ride it hopefully this season.
I even got a couple of selfies at the ball field.
It was a great day earlier today ( before the rain and hail) so the kids had their first official picnic on our deck. There was lots of entertainment from the construction workers in the field. You can just see a tractor moving behind Maddox.
The picnic was preceded by a trip to the Museum. We played a little inside and then hit the playground outside.
On Mother's Day Eric painted the kids' bathroom. It turned out beautifully..I love the color. Rainwashed from Sherwin Williams. Anyhow, when Eric paints that means I keep the kids busy with activities so he can get his project done efficiently. We walked down to the construction sight and kept ourselves busy for a long time. The kids 'cleaned' the diggers by brushing off all the loose dirt clods. Kennon was as happy as a kid in the candy store when he found a left over surveyor stick and realized he could stir up dust just by dragging or running it in the ground. He is my dirt ball kid!! Maddox was sort of upset she had gotten dirt in her shoes so she took off for home on her bike not too long into the activity.
The kids have one more soccer game this Saturday. Maddox has done SOOOO well this year. She is happy to be on the field and does run after the ball. She does become disinterested about half way through the game and I heard her ask the ref on Saturday how many minutes were left!! :) The teams are kinda small so she knows she at least has to stay out on the field until the game is over….especially since Kennon generally isn't a viable player. He gets in there and is aggressive chasing after the ball but anytime he gets within arms reach of the thing he picks it up!!! I think he is super coordinated and will get better and better with each season as he matures and starts to understand the concept of playing on a team. I love to watch Maddox mother Kennon and hold his hand on the field and come to his rescue when the ref calls him for hand ball. So cute. They make a good pair. If I could just give Maddox some of Kennon's coordination and aggression and Kennon some of Maddox's maturity…we'd have a player :) Thanks for joining us for the game last weekend Grandpa Jim and Grandma Jean…!!
I"ve gotten on a role lately of decorating our house…. Thanks to Eric for following through on all my paint and wall hanging projects. I did this one myself yesterday. This is a decal and just sticks to the wall. Pretty easy to put up and makes my laundry room happy!
Today was a particularly busy day right behind our house. You can count 5 moving machines in this picture but there are 2 scrapers that aren't pictured. They lost a little ground a couple of weeks ago with the rain and didn't work much earlier this week, so they took advantage of the nice sunny weather. Kennon stood at the field/grass line most of the morning just waving and waving to them…. He loves to get them to wave and quite often the honk their horn. They are just like 50 feet east of our property so they are super close and fun to watch. Never mind the two children wrestling in the foreground…!!
These pictures are for you Charlie and Carter :)
……man down…or I guess woman down…!! Don't worry she is fine!! They did a fair amount of wrestling outside before nap today as I knew the rain was coming. The grass is just perfectly soft right now so great to just lay down and feel the breeze…!! When they came in I found a big smear of bird poop on Kennon's pants…ICK!! Wasn't expecting that…but I guess that's what you get when you are rolling around in nature.
I thought today might be the day to walk down at quittin' time and try to get the kids a ride or at the least to be able to sit in the machines but with the rain and hail they jetted out. Maybe tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment