Camping

These two were SO EXCITED to be camping. Henry's last words the first night camping before "quiet hours" were, "this is so awesome".

Then the storms came, and we (the parents, the cleaners, feeders, and packers) were not thinking it was "so awesome" anymore.

But believe it or not, both boys slept through ALL that thunder and lightening. I guess the secret to sleeping through the night is to swim, hike, bike, play on the playground and fill up on hot dogs and marshmallows!

t-ball buddies

Zachary, Dario, and Henry

Henry and Meme

Henry and Gma

Springing

Spring is in the air and we have started to explore the wild places in our area once again!

I love watching the boys run along wooded paths, searching for bugs, or worms, or other creeping things.

Even more amazingly, Grant has become quite the little birder. While other nearly two year olds are just "watching the birdies", Grant is shouting CARD-NAL, and O-WUL (the great horned owl was actually his first bird of interest -- which caused him to scream and cry like his toes were being snipped off), and "PECKER" (for woodpecker) and CHIC-DEE. He studies the bird identification book like he's gotta be ready for some quiz on the day of his kindergarten screening. My favorite is when he shouts out "PEACOCK" when he hears a new bird. I'm trying to get him to guess more along the lines of the most likely suspect (sparrow).

Happy spring!

We visited the farm to see the spring arrivals!

I have a feeling if we lived on a farm we'd already have stitches as Grant was fearless. Climbing fences and reaching his hand in to touch any animal (including chickens who had a sign about how they peck!).

Grant

chocolate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S48NnNHakxY

Newton

 Dog days.
We've been spending 2012 getting to know our new pooch.  He came from a shelter organization and we knew that he would need some extra attention.  He is a great dog with the kids, he's about 5 years old, so we haven't had to do any house training, and he's very sweet.  However, once the leash is on him, he is like Jekyl and Hyde and has some very unruly doggy manners. Newton pulls a lot on the leash, barks like crazy at other dogs, people, bikers, or flags blowing in the breeze. Which, as you can imagine, makes him difficult to take on walks with the kids. This additional time requirement has really squeezed our schedule. And if we don't walk him?  We start seeing antics like helping himself to food on the table. The good news is he's very smart and catches on quickly. The bad news is he's very smart, and catching on quickly (like how to take advantage of children leaving food at his height, or knowing that the time to strike is when we are helping kids with coats or the bathroom).

I've been taking Newton to dog training classes on Thursday nights and he's making progress (slowly but surely). Given his behavior at the first classes, I think we're in line for most improved dog, just based on how awful he behaved at his first class!

We did get him groomed and he is looking less like a stray and more like he belongs to our family. 

Snow Days!

The snow is here, and we have been diving in, hauling it, sledding on it, and loving it. Busy, busy, busy boys. They would stay out for hours and hours if their poor little fingers and toes could stand that much icy action (though they do try to convince me otherwise!).