Happy Birthday and Other Fun Summer Activities

Well 365 days is a long time to wait, but my birthday finally arrived today.  More about that in a minute. 

First up - a few fun summer activities keeping us busy and mostly out of trouble.  Yard work - yes, there's always yard work to do.  Here we are helping daddy mow the lawn.

We also spent a few afternoons playing out in the water this week.  Sam and I mastered the "jump up in the air and try really hard to land on your bum without your feet slipping out from underneath you" move.

Balls and water together - some inventor is a really smart person!

 We love staying home with dad in the summers.  Besides keeping up on some school work, we are sure getting out and doing a lot of fun things!  But, daddy keeps forgetting to take the camera, so just imagine mini golfing, the bounce house, bowling, ice cream, and more. 

I guess you don't have to imagine the bowling part - we did go bowling again yesterday as part of my birthday celebration.  Uncle Noley and Aunt Christy joined us.  I won - yep, I even beat daddy (barely - he fouled on his last frame). 

Sam came in third place.  He's a great bowler too.

 Here we are showing Uncle Noley how it's done.  Aunt Christy even beat him.  (We've been sworn to secrecy about mom's bowling score however!)

Then, finally my big day arrived.  I was so excited and I wanted everything to be just perfect.  I think overall it was a fabulous birthday!

I received some wonderful presents - thank you to everyone!!!

Here's a picture of me and Sam after church today.  Mom says that neither of us can have anymore birthdays - we're growing up too fast.  Ha - our plan is to grow up as quick as we can.  I just want to be older and Sam wants to be old enough to drive a car.  Watch out world!

A few more presents later and then we had a nice dinner with Uncle Noley and Aunt Christy.  My menu choices consisted of steak, tomatoes, fruit, and birthday cake.  Mom threw in some tasty grilled asparagus. Yum!

 And now let's spend a moment talking about my birthday cake.  I saw this cake in the "cake book" at Coldstone Creamery a few months back.  I never thought it was possible.  But a few late nights and some tired parents later, and this amazing ice cream cake all decorated with a Thomas the Train scene magically appeared for my birthday.  I LOVED it!  Check out those 6 candles - it looks like my cake is on fire.

 Ok, 364 more days to go . . . I love birthdays! 

Thanks again everyone for helping me celebrate!

Sam Alert:  Howdy everyone - We say it all the time, and I'll say it again here:  When mom's away the cats will play.  Mom headed out of town this last week to Washington DC for a work conference.  She took some fun pictures and I thought I would include a few of them here for her.  I really wanted to go with her, but she promised us that another time she will take us. 

 

And true to our form, while she was away, we played hard.  Dad had to work one afternoon while she was gone, so Uncle Noley and Aunt Christy took the afternoon off to play with us.  You tell us - - - is this the sort of picture our dad wants to see after he picks us up? :-)

We sure had fun playing!  We built towers, played cars and fishing, and came home with faces drawn on our bellys (Thanks dad and Uncle Noley!!!)

And for just a couple of super cute pictures of me from the week - here I am doing my infamous "happy dance" after I bowled a great frame!

And here I am watering some of mom's flowers with my squirt gun.  I'd stay outside all day and night if my parents would let me!  

Have a great week everybody!

Happy Father's Day to Our Dad!

We have the BEST dad ever!  Here are some things we love about him:

1. He takes his job of tickling us very seriously . . . and we love it!

2. He teaches us really cool things!

3. He knows what boys need/want!

4. He's not afraid to get dirty with us!

5. He takes really good care of us, especially during the summers and while mom is traveling!

One of the things we love to do with daddy is go fishing.  We spent Tuesday morning up at the fishing pond at Wasatch State Park.  It was fabulous fishing and a fantastic day!

I caught 7 fish . . . 

And Sam caught 10.  Seventeen fish total - that's a great day fishing!

After fishing we headed up to the cabin, but that trip got cut short due to some unexpected road work.  It was still a nice few minutes in some beautiful weather!

On Wednesday daddy took us mini golfing.  

An excellent time was had by all of us!

The last hole is always a tough one for us - it eats our balls.  And we'd rather keep playing.  But we're getting used to it!

After our golf game, daddy treated us to an ice cream cone - yum, yum, yum!

We celebrated Father's Day on Friday with a yummy dinner out and a trip to the hardware store. We also found ourselves up in town with some time to kill so mom and dad took us to this really cool building turned into a church near where daddy grew up.  In fact, it is the place that dad and mom got married.  

In fact, sometime we'll have mom scan in a photo of them on this very porch on their wedding day (in the rain).  Here is a picture of us on that porch - who would have thought it!

Ah - a cute brother picture.

One of the things daddy said that he used to love doing when he was a little boy was come to this stream at the church and race sticks.  That really is a fun thing to do!

Sam ended up winning most of the stick races - tricky guy!

And here we are with our dad - happy Father's Day daddy!

Sam Alert:  Howdy!  I present two cute pictures of me from this week.  

First up - me next to a pot of flowers.  I told you it was cute . . . ok, the flowers are "pretty" but I am sure "cute"!

And a picture of me winning the stick races down the stream.  Oh how I loved stick races!  And a bonus in this picture - take a look at me in this picture.  I look A LOT like my dad in this picture - A LOT!!!  Maybe it's the blond hair - - maybe it's the profile - - maybe it's the DNA.  Love you dad!

Have a great week everyone - Sam out.

Endings and Beginnings

A whole year of school is officially over already!  How did that go by so quickly?  Here is a side-by-side comparison of us from August to this last week - look how we've grown.

And it's not just that we've grown in size - we've grown in "smarts" a lot too!  I got a special award this year - an Academic Achievement and Good Comportment (like good citizenship) award AND a $500 scholarship.  That's me - fourth from the right. 

Mom and dad keep saying "Let's hope this is the first of many scholarships to come". I think it was super cool and I was really proud of myself.

Our first big trip after school was out was to the Library.  We are joining some local reading programs for the summer.  And we checked out a big bag full of books to get us started.  We were so excited the we both wanted to read on the way home.

 It's going to be a great summer!  We have lots of fun things planned and lots of things to do to keep our brains going.  Here I am working on an art project.  Oh how I love art!  Oh how we love summer - even though I was pretty sad for school to be over!

 Sam Alert:  Hey everyone - Sam here.  I was both sad and excited for school to end.  I will definitely miss my friends and my teachers, but I'm loving the endless play times that summer allows as well.  I ended up being the top student in my whole class this year - if preschool had a valedictorian that would be me. 

 Have a great week everybody!

Gnomes, Cabin, and Water

It's really starting to feel like summer now!  School is almost out . . . the weather has turned hot . . . the days are long . . .

The gnomes are back!!!  We have a little gnome problem in our yard and they've been in hibernation until this week.  They came out to meet our newest giant gnomes (Flip Flop and Blunkin').  And we were sooooo excited to see them.

We got to spend Saturday up at Uncle Noley's cabin.  Ahhh - now that's how you spend a great day!  We had our marshmallow shooters out - our lungs are definitely getting stronger!

And our rock shops opened up.  We even had some good customers on opening day and we earned over 50 cents each.

 The little mommy robin was back - she builds her nest in the same spot up in the porch roof every year.  This year she has 4 beautiful blue eggs waiting to hatch.

We saw this boy moose right up above the cabin.  He was snoozing when we got there and snorted and pushed some trees around when we woke him up - he wasn't happy to be disturbed.  But then he pretended not to care we were there and got up and lazily ate his way off.  Can you see his horns just started to bud out (right in front of his ears)? 

 We took a great little hike just above the cabin to see if we could track him down, but he wasn't anywhere to be found.

So we filled up the moose pond with fresh water.  He'll be back!

We played a little football with dad and Uncle Noley.

 And we played with our rocket - see it flying through the air above Sam?

 Here we are with our serious faces on - holding our deadly (marshmallow) shooters.

I'm either very serious or constipated?  Don't know which.  Oh wait - it's my double shooter stance (they're digging right in to my hips).

 We played a little hide and seek.  Boo!

 We saw lots of deer on our way down the mountain - this big boy was so close to the road.  He'll be a beaut this fall!

 And check out this beautiful picture - a nice red barn with an almost-full moon in the sky.

It was so warm this afternoon that we decided to keep cool by playing in the sprinklers.  It was a little cold at first, but then we really got going.

And we ran and ran and ran.

And we goofed around and played and played.  Ah - summer!

 Sam Alert:  Hey everybody!  Sam here - yes, we played and ran and played.  And this is how I ended the afternoon.  A great weekend!

And I think you could use the word "Obsessed" when talking about me and my marshmallow shooter!  I really have improved in my shooting this year.  And I only eat about half the marshmallows!  Yum Yum!

 Sam out - see you next time.