Fun in the yard.

Cousins enjoying a sunny spring evening!

Michael Jackson

Tonight, Anne was watching a Michael Jackson video and Mary Grace walked over to see what it was. After watching for a few seconds, she asks "Mommy, is that a boy or a girl?"

Mommy answered "It's a boy"

"Are you sure?"

:)

Conversation before school

Mary Grace opens latch to bathroom door and finding it stuffed with toilet paper asks:

Mary Grace: Hey, what is this?
William: Toilet paper...

Mary Grace: How did it get in there?
William: I did it...

Mary Grace: What is it doing in there?
William: I have no idea...

Daddy thinks "I have no idea either".

Seton Open House night

We had a nice time visiting Seton School for their open house tonight. We got to see a lot of the kids friends and their parents, and the kids showed us their desks and all the artwork they've been working on.

One particular item was a William's picture outside his classroom. All of the other kids made snowmen using the crafts supplied (and most likely following directions). William, on the other hand decided to make a "snow-tarantula".

I like his creativity, and I think he pulled it off!

Scooter riding on New Years Day

Santa brought the kids each a new Razor scooter and today we went to a nearby parking lot to practice riding them. It was 50 degrees and partly sunny when we arrived and the wind and rain had started up when we left.

Tis the season...

There were a lot of great gifts, visiting with family and friends, working on the house, crafts, activities, but the biggest change for our family happened on Christmas night.

Right when we were getting ready to eat ice cream cake, courtesy of Grandma, William started wiggling his loose front tooth and it finally came out! Finally, William's smile is evened out!



Now we're all looking forward to seeing how those beautiful new teeth look, hopefully in time for his birthday!

Elf On The Shelf

William, thinking he's figured out the mysterious nightly change in where the Elf On The Shelf sits...

"Mommy, are you sure you aren't moving the Elf around after we go to bed with a shovel?"

(He knows that people are not allowed to touch the Elf...)

A little holiday hike

This morning the Regans joined us for a hike in the woods at Washington Grove, followed by lunch at a greasy spoon, then apple and popcorn buying at Schutts apple mill. It was an awesome way for the kids to get out of the house for several hours.

Here's a few photos from the hike.

William's memory surprises us!

This morning we were driving home from the public market and listening to FM 91.5, WXXI. An old song came on, sung by a woman and after about 1 minutes into the song, William says from the back seat "Daddy,this song is from the Wizard of Oz".

Now, he's only seen that movie once or twice and the last time was at least a year ago. So I listened to it a little longer and told him that it wasn't from that movie. He disagreed at first, then relented and agreed with me.

At the end of the song, the DJ announced it was by Judy Garland! So although he got the fact that the song was in the movie wrong, he recognized Ms. Garland's voice and associated it with the movie.

Pretty impressive!

Here's the song. It's cute, especially for those parents raising 'tweens.

William's shark

We got up this morning to find that *someone* had ripped the head off of William's coloring book shark cutout.

So William asks Anne and I if we ripped his shark. We both respond no.

Then he asks Mary Grace:

William: Mary Grace, did you rip my shaak?
Mary Grace: No, I did not rip your shark
William: Well, I'm going to blame you anyway.

Thankfully there was no swift retribution.

Can you guess where the heat comes out?

Halloween!

This year, like the last, we group trick or treated for maximum enjoyment. Here are the kids walking down to the meeting house in costume.



Although we were a little late, we got a pseudo-group photo anyway, this one in front of our house.



After 1.5 hours of candy collecting, the kids rushed home to sort their candy, they even think this is the best part.




William proclaimed before falling asleep that THIS WAS THE BEST HALLOWEEN EVER!

More words that William has misunderstood

I think I've blogged it before, but he still pronounces his last name "Schriver". You wish, W.

Also he still says "eye bulb" instead of "eye ball"

And a new one is "apple cidern" instead of "apple cider".

As I lay in bed with him at night listening to him talk about the days events, I remark how amazing it is that at 5 year old (and even earlier), kids have so much ability to communicate. He's constantly adding new words to his vocabulary and can express his thoughts very clearly.

Little Mr. and Mrs. Wake Daddy Up

Even when the little munchkins in the house sleep well, they still have this habit of coming into our bedroom when they first wake up in the morning. Up until recently, they (one, the other, or both) would just climb into bed and snuggle with me. (Just me; they know better than to interrupt Mommy's sleep. :)

Lately, they started this new thing. They stand in front of me while I'm sleeping. Then they start tapping my shoulder or head. Three times. Followed by a pause. Then three more times. This goes on until I wake up.

Maybe it's just me, but I find this particularly annoying. I imagine they somehow learned this from watching Sponge Bob, which as you may know is the most annoying show known to mankind.

I think it's a great idea for an alarm clock. Rather than waking to audio, wake to TAP TAP TAP... TAP TAP TAP.

So lately, my response is to tell one to wake up the other and go downstairs to watch TV. I believe I learned this statement from my parents.

I know someday they'll be getting themselves up, will be self-sufficient, and I'll yearn for the days when they depended on me for something as simple as walking down the stairs in the morning, so I'm trying to grin and go with the flow.

Hi Uncle Ricky

This post is for you. The following happened at bedtime tonight

William: Daddy, did you have any brothers or sisters when you were a little boy?
Daddy: Yes, I had two brothers. Mommy had three brothers.
William: Uncle Ricky is bald.
Daddy: Yes, he is.
William: Was Uncle Ricky bald when he was a little boy?
Daddy: No, he got bald when he got older. There's a picture of Uncle Ricky with a full head of hair at Mamma's house.
William: I think Uncle Ricky would look scary with hair.
William: Maybe he could wear a wig for Halloween!

Mary Grace FINALLY loses her first tooth!

It's been a very upsetting year and a half for Mary Grace. It all started when William lost his first tooth (naturally). My little girl cried and cried because she is the older sibling and she should lose her tooth first!

Then as all the kids in her classes have lost teeth, poor Mary Grace was the only little girl that still had all her baby teeth. Imdeed, at school today, she was the only one in her class to not have lost a tooth yet!

Very upsetting indeed.

Well, all that is behind her now. Her very wiggly tooth got looser today, then it started to bleed a little, then she decided to just pull it out. Of course, Mommy had to consult our dentist, but by the time she typed out a message, Mary Grace had already pulled it out!

So here's a picture my my angel showing off her new missing tooth at the garage we walked to tonight.



She's so relieved!

Tooth fairy, you've been waiting a LONG time to visit this little girl!

I'm trying to save up $100!

Mary Grace just told me that she wants to save up to $100. I asked how she plans on getting money.

Her response? "Every time I go to Aunty Rose's house, she gives me $5."

So I told her she has to go 20 times, and she's good with that. Aunty Rose better get to the bank!

Naples Grape Festival and Soccer

The weekend summary:

On Saturday morning we went to Seton soccer practice. I've been hanging with Mary Grace and letting William venture on his own. Every week during the scrimmage, Mary Grace can be found in the middle of the field, all alone either looking up at the sky, down at the ground, or admiring her finger nails. She does great during the warmups and drills, she just does not like the scrimmage part.

This week she started crying. Alone. In the middle of the field. I went and got her and talked her into trying again, which she did, until one of the kids kicked a ball that glanced off the top of her head (she wasn't looking, thankfully). That was enough for her. As Mommy says, maybe Mary Grace is not an athlete.

I think next week I'll switch it up.

Today we went to the Naples Grape Festival. It was a long ride there, but I told the kids to watch out for the bear at the side of the road where I have always stopped for grape pies in the past. Here are the kids at said bear.



William decided to frisk the bear and found a bunch of tools in his apron. Thankfully he didn't ask if he could keep them. And here's the deliciousness that we bought this year.



The grapes were sooo sweet and tasty that we upgraded to the large basket so that Anne could try making a homemade grape pie or two.


We proceeded to the festival and scored a decent parking spot on the main road then walked to the festival. It wasn't very far, but the crowds made it take forever.

We immediately went for food and decided to keep it simple with hot dogs all around (Zweiglers, as my mother-in-law calls them)

As I stood up from our shady picnic spot behind the vendors, I saw a look of horror on Annes face, then she says "THERE'S A GIANT BUG ON YOU". Now I don't dig bugs. When there's a bug on me I usually swat it away, and run away screaming, but this message was confusing. What kind of bug? Where exactly is this bug? So I stood there. Looking at my wife looking at me with a look of fear and disgust on her face. Then she swatted it off my shirtsleeve, screaming the whole time. What was this horrible pest that was about to consume me you might be wondering? Here it is:



Yes, a cute caterpillar. Lets just say the people working the booth that we were picnicking behind definitely knew we were city-folk. :)

After all the commotion, William entered into a single-minded goal to get some cotton candy and Mary Grace scored some new doll clothes. We walked the festival for a little over an hour, then made our way back to the car.

On the way back, we stopped at our favorite scenic overlook in Naples, looking down almost the entire length of Canandaigua lake. Here's my favorite girl enjoying the view with me



After we got home, the Regan kids came over and everyone got to play while Daddy worked on the basement. Continue on to http://rickdidit.blogspot.com for more on that.

Best dream

Mary Grace has unfortunately acquired her back-to-school virus and is home sick today. I'm working from home while mommy is working. So far she's slept, then watched "Night At The Museum". She just told me "Daddy, I had the best dream ever last night!" I asked what the dream was about and she replied "Mommy was hiding all my birthday presents in my closet and I saw all of them! There were two American Girl dolls and a bunch of pretty outfits!" Now she's watching American Girl doll stop-motion videos on YouTube using Darrick's Android tablet.

End of summer, 2011

It was a whirlwind end of summer for us. It started in July with our wonderful family from Arizona visiting. The kids had a great time with their cousins. They looked forward to the visit all spring and early summer and when the day arrived, they were uber-excited.

The "kids"

Crazy swinging on the kids new swingset!

The girls enjoying time at the big summer family reuinion

After our visitors returned to Arizona, we had another cousin come stay with us for almost a week. Sarah was a great guest and the kids had an awesome time playing with her. She even babysat the kids one day so that Anne and I could (independently) go to work. Here are some photos of a little summer marshmallow roasting we had one evening:

Not sure who's expression is better in this shot!

Cousins!

Next, we took a trip to Boston and Deerfield to both visit the American Girl store and to visit the Thiels. The American Girl store was a huge hit with Mary Grace and Anne and William and I lasted about 15 minutes there, then we went off in search of miniature golf. We met back at the store a few hours later and had a nice dinner at the restaurant right in the store!
Then we headed to Deerfield, fully aware that hurricane Irene was approaching. We spent a night and a day both enjoying our hosts company, their beautiful house and their wonderful kids. We saw the Eric Carle museum, a cool dinosaur museum, then attended a tomato festival! After a great dinner, we checked the weather. We had hoped for the best, that the storm would dissipate or veer off to the ocean, but that was not meant to be. So we sadly packed up and left that night at 9:00pm, returning to Rochester a little after 2:00am. In retrospect, it was the right decision as there was a LOT of rain and flooding and our return trip would probably have been 10x worse the next day.
And that brings us to the final week of summer and the first day of school.
The kids had plenty of time to consider the end of summer and the coming school year. Mary Grace was excited to start a new year and William was a little anxious to have a new teacher and new friends. All-in-all, it was a painless first day. The kids were up early because of the excitement. Mommy had everything in order and ready to go, and off we sent the kids on the bus. Mary Grace was a great big sister, showing William the ropes and even sitting with him on his first day.
Mommy followed the bus to school and took some more photos when the bus arrived. Here's our memories of that day.

All ready to go out and wait for the bus! Looking so beautiful and handsome!

William looking slightly nervous	The expressions tell it all!
Mama came to help out!	And off they go. Let the tears flow!