4 Miles

So, yesterday I was putting a train/alphebet puzzle together with Alex. It is a long puzzle with the letters of the alphabet and pictures that go along with the letters.

Alex was doing a great job with telling me what the pictures where: apple, banana, cat, dog, etc. Finally we get to the letter Y. The picture listed with Y are balls of yarn. I said “what is that picture Alex”

He looked at it and said “Grammalo”

“Yup, thats what it is, isn’t it!”

I was asked to do a big project for my husband’s office. It was a last minute request and I was scrambling to get it done (the wedding in the middle of it made it a bit harder). I JUST finished it up and feel SO GOOD! I looked at my time card and I worked over 41 hours this week. Yes–for my part time job!

So now I get to play with kids who’ve been spending LOTS of time with daddy the last two days, pick up the pieces of a house that’s been ignored, go deal with a huge laundry pile and catch up on the sleep I’ve been missing. I do have some pictures and things to share, I’ll be doing that in the next few days. But I just wanted to celebrate being done…and since the kids are on walk with James, I decided to let out my big “Who-hoo!” here.

For the weekend, we were blessed with being able to stay at the town house of my college roommate. She and her family are in the middle of fixing up their "new" house but haven't moved the fruniture from the "old" house to the new one.  She didn't mind that James' brother and Sister-in-law (Randy and Shari–since he now has three sister in laws, not just one) join us. The kids loved having a place to play. We loved not having to pay for hotels and having a working kitchen we could use, as well as a place we could hang out together during the down time.

I figured it’d be easiest to just link you to our Picasa web page to see pictures and comments–they tell the story of our weekend quite well. Just click on any of the pictures and you’ll be able to see the whole set.

Here are pictures of that down time:

Down time during Wedding Weekend

Here are pictures of the Rehearsal Dinner:

Rehearsal Dinner

Here are pictures of the wedding and reception. The wedding was beautiful (even if we were a little late) and the reception was beautiful as well as nice.

Wedding & Reception

This past weekend we celebrated the wedding of James' brother Karl and Cori. We had a fun time and I'm going to slowly work in the next few days to get updates posted. We have LOTS of pictures to sort through. James liked my new toy and I had to share it, so we have even MORE pictures! 

Thursday night the boys were ready to go on the trip. They were asking when we would leave. At one point, they found Will’s suitcase and brought it out into the dining room. Alex decided to help and started to put the suitcase in the car—but I hadn’t packed it yet!  At bedtime we were looking for Blankie Miles.  I asked Alex if he knew where it was, and Alex said “In da car”. I went to look, and there it was, in his car seat, ready to go!

Will had a bad reaction to his booster shots. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning he was up with a fever and just not feeling well (sore throat, sore legs, sore heels?!?).  So yesterday's and today's events were canceled and we stayed home and he got better. This morning he was still a bit fussy (enough that I was glad we didn't go to the MOPS Play date I'd planned on going to) but not enough to prevent me from dragging them both to the store for a few more quick things and then… the camera store. Because I was told I had enough money in my camera fund (started in Feb. when I was teaching at Taylor) to get the camera I wanted!!! And I was able to get it right before the big weekend of the family wedding, so I'll be taking TONS more pictures then I already do (which is saying alot because I already take tons of picures). 

So today was spent cleaning the house so we can come home to a clean house, doing laundry and playing with my new toy. (Will didn't think I should call it a toy.) (The pictures look odd because I shrank them, if you click on them they will be bigger and less pixal-ly.)

See, he's all better!

We also made blueberry smoothies and enjoyed them on the deck.

Alex enjoyed eating the whipped cream that was on top of his smoothie.

And then we welcomed Nana B! As you can see, she fits right in with the rest of the Miles family, with her lap top out 5 minutes after arriving! Just kidding, she waited at least a half hour.

Today Will and Alex got to go to the Doctor's office for their yearly check-ups. Yes, Alex is 2 1/2, but we were rather busy in the winter/spring and it's rather nice to have both go at the same time.  I told Will he'd have to get several shots because he was almost 5 and 5 year olds get shots. He wanted to know if he could wait until he was 5. Um, no.

The boys were quite chipper about going–even though I managed to schedule it at 1:30, right during nap time. Alex did not take an early nap, so I knew he'd need one once we got home.

The Doctor was impressed with Alex's verbal skills. Alex pointed out that her toes were purple, mine were pink and his were black. Um, yeah, we didn't really SCRUB them yesterday, just washed them off, so there was some black in the nails.  Later she asked him to walk across the room to Will. He ran. She asked him to walk the other way. He ran. I told her he doesn't really "do" walk. He wasn't able to walk on his tipy-toes, but once we explained to him tonight what that was, he was able to do it.

Will got a vision test and tested 20/40 in both eyes, so we are going to have to keep an eye on that (no pun intended). At first I thought there was no family history of bad vision, but then I remembered James had glasses as a child and has several family members who wear glasses.

Then it was time for the nurse to come back and give Will his shots. She asked if he wanted to sit on my lap and he said "Sure!" and got right on.  Then he got the first shot (of 3), and it was bad. He cried and cried. I felt bad when I realized that I never really told him what a shot was and he didn't remember them from when Alex was a baby (or didn't realize that was what was making him cry). 

Later, when we were at the check out desk Will said "Mommy, why did the Doctor's office have thorns?" 

Will kept letting out little sobs until we got in the hallway, and then he was ready to race his brother down the hall to the elevator.  When we got in the car I made the mistake of telling Alex he'd need a nap when he got home. He was the one who cried the whole way home (ok, that's only a minute or so, but it sounds impressive!).  

The above quote is a paraphrase of something I heard Jeff Foxworthy say–I just don't remember the exact quote. But I liked the idea behind it. So we've made it our own quote since it's an important thing to remember with two little boys. 

Today was a good day.

When we moved into the house, this area was a raised bed that had a plastic pond in it. There were several problems with it–one, it didn't have a pump in it, so it was just a mosquito breeding ground. Second, there was no liner between the bed and the brick of the house–that is not good. Third, we didn't like it.  So we took out the 4×4s that made it a raised bed. We've slowly used the potting soil they put around the pond in our flower beds. There are some remains of the dirt which the boys have been using to make roads. I've enjoyed seeing them playing outside on their own for extended periods of time. 

Grandma Lo, your washcloths were put to good use today!

Hope you had a wonderful July 4th! We've had a fun week and today was espically fun even though the day started out much wetter then we expected. We were joined by my parents and a friend from church. She was a last minute addition, we found out this morning her husband had to work and the people she was going to visit forgot she was coming and made plans to go out of town–I told her OF COURSE she should come (how horried would it be to do the 4th on your own with your two kids?), insisted she wouldn't be hogging in on family time and she came over. Her oldest son is Will's age and they had great fun running around together. Alex tried to tag after the bigger boys, but soon had to go take a nap.

Our grilling was done under the overhang from our roof and we all crowded around the tables inside (I had planned on using the extra table on the deck, but our last rain shower occured just as the food was ready so we stayed inside). After lunch it cleared up and the bigger boys were kicked outside while the younger boys napped and the grown-ups talked.  My friend left later to see the local festival our town has, while Alex was still asleep (he and Will were up at 6 this morning!). This gave Will some time to rest (we had hoped he would nap, but that didn't happen).  Once the kids were rested up, we went to visit the festival.  

We enjoyed festival food, music and the kids got to play some games. Will had fun shooting water balloons.

Alex discovered the putt-putt golf and both boys had a great time playing that. Alex had an interesting technique, at times it looked like he was playing pool more than golf! But he got a hole in one on the last hole!

We walked back to the house and then had a bonfire. I had bought Peeps after Easter and froze them for when James' parents came. We roasted those (YUM!) and had smores.

(James had a good time, even though he looks grumpy there.)

We opted to skip the fireworks this year. The boys were thrilled with the bonfire. Earlier in the week they had found a beetle (Will was calling it a click beetle) and I told them it was a fire fly. So tonight I told them they could stay up and watch for them. The kids had never seen them since they don't come out until around 9:30 here. The boys are usually in bed and asleep by then. It was a Very Special Treat. It was so much fun to watch them chase the fire flies around and to show them how to catch them. I am going to try to remember all that the next three days when one of them dissolves in a fit of tears because they're overtired, as we slowly catch up on sleep.

Once the kids were in bed, the grown-ups stayed up WAY too late watching TV and I finally updated our blog–sorry posting so many things at one time! We hope you all have a great holiday weekend.

Grandpa & Grandma Miles came to visit us for the week.  Grandma Lo came bearing gifts!

We've had fun playing games.

And there was time for 'nuggling and 'nitting:

Last weekend was our first free weekend in over a month (I honestly started this Monday, but it took me this long to get pictures in). It became a Working Weekend as we did various things that needed to be done. Some things were finally able to be done because of the addition of the bunk beds. The playroom is now an office/guest room again:  

(Guest room side)                                                      (Office side)

This is where the plastic for the desk chair (so it could roll around) had covered our carpet for two years…maybe we should cover all our carpet in plastic. (This was after I vacuumed!) We'll be getting a carpet cleaner for our next free weekend!

The closet in the guest room is much emptier and is actually usable for our guests.

The living room no longer has our computer in it:

Remember how two years ago last spring our well went out and our front landscaping was torn up to fix it? Um, yeah, we finally put some plants in. Last year we didn't want to put the money into it because there was a change our land would be bought by some developers–so why put in plants that are going to be bulldozed? That deal fell through and we put aside some economic stimulus money to put in some plants. But we've had lots of rain (usually on the weekends) so that pushed back putting things in. Plus, someone couldn't make up her mind. So we bought round one of the plants (some larger shrubs). Next week we're going to get some smaller flowers and mulch it, and then I'll show you pictures of that.

James was giving me a hard time for doing all this just before his parents came, like we were doing it just because they were coming. Which isn't totally true. Many of these are things we've talked about doing and are just getting around to it. But it is nice to know it'll be nicer for them when they're here.