Welcome to Softland

The boys have had a fort in the workout room, sewing room, craft room front bedroom for a good week and a half. We decided yesterday that it was time for the fort to come down. I'd like all of my chairs back in the kitchen so I can stop sitting on the stool from Ikea.

I started chucking blankets out in the hallway to make sure the make it to the laundry room.

Well Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (what you don't give your kids loving nicknames?!) thought it would be a great idea to pull all of their covers, pillows, stuffed animals out too.

And I now introduce you to Softland.

A place where you can tackle your brother on the tile without getting hurt.

A place where you can run from the opposite end and jump on the pile o' blankets and pray that none slip out and expose tile.

Softland was only open for 3 hours.

Management decided to reclaim the hallway and actually have clean blankets.

A rite of passage: riding with NO training wheels!

Well it's finally time for Hunter to ditch the training wheels. I've appointed Ryan to this task because 1. I apparently don't have the strength (yet!) to do this for more than a minute and 2. My patience has vanished, have NO clue where it went but it's gone.

For their first lesson Hunter did really well. He's totally ready just needs to work on his confidence level and remembering to pedal, a very minor but important task.

I love this picture, Hunter totally has an "oh sh*t" look on his face. He never fell, just had a few lose your balance moments that he caught with his foot.

He was able to ride a good distance on the grass by himself until he realized what he was doing. I think a couple of more lessons and he'll be good to go! We did bribe entice him with a new bike with a handbrake! if he learned to ride a 2-wheeler.

First day of kindergarten!!!!

I cannot believe that we have a kindergartner! It's crazy! We have 2 weeks behind us and it has gone better than I could have ever imagined. He was definitely ready for this milestone and I'm so glad his transition was so smooth.

Hunter seems to really like school and his new friends there. It's hard to get things out of him half the time but when I do, it's all good things.

Some of the things he does at school that I've drug out of him:
*count to 100 everyday
*eats lunch in the cafeteria
*works on the "volcano" with boys (who so far are nameless) so they can live underground

I've figured out that one of his friends at school is named Brian but other than that I have no clue who he plays with and I'm not sure he does either!

Hunter had homework for the first time this past week and there were some struggles, but not as bad as I thought. His first assignments were to write his name 5x, practice tying his shoes, read for 15 minutes, and then draw a picture of your favorite part. Quite a bit everyday but the tv wasn't allowed on until it was all done. That was a great motivator!

We walk to school every morning and we have been bringing Indy with us. Sometimes Jacob goes but right now it's pretty warm and by the walk home he's dripping in sweat and pretty darn slow. I made the mistake on the first day to walk and pick up Hunter--never again! Or at least while it's over 90 degrees. Once winter the cool part of summer comes then we'll walk to get him.



Week 3 starts tomorrow and I hope this great momentum sticks with us for the rest of the year!

A budding photographer

Hunter loves to use his camera (when it has batteries!) and mine to take pictures of anything and everything he can find. He borrowed mine today to take pictures of the Lincoln Log stuff he built, but then he moved on to more interesting subjects: Indy and Jacob.

Here's a little snippet of what I heard as they were going down the hall--
H: Jacob make a funny face!

J: (doing something I'm sure that I'd be proud of)

H: Jacob show everyone your butt!

Me: Clothes stay on!!!

And then I hear their bedroom door shut....oh dear! Thankfully they came out a few minutes later and showed me what pictures they took.

I was fearing little naked butts but I was pleasantly surprised. They had one of Hunter petting our cat and Jacob with his shirt up showing his boobies chest. Let's hope they can keep up the clean pictures. Thank the Lord they don't' know how to delete images!!

Just in case...

You never know when a bad guy is going to sneak up on you when you're taking a nap after a fun playdate.

*"Holy crap she's actually updating the blog!" you say. I know, I know I've been super lax on this lately. I have so many posts to share...trips to the cabin, birthday parties, etc. Slowly but surely I'll start catching you up on our daily lives.