Fun at the Waterpark

We met up with Aunt Lori and Kelsey at a waterpark that's about half way between our houses. All of the cousins had a great time playing in the water.

Aunt Lori and Kelsey.

You always have to have a picture of a cute tooshie in the air!

Kelsey chasing the big cousins - she really wanted to be in on the action.

"I almost got you, Sean!"

Brian and Sean had fun "crawling" around in the water.

Colin - such a big boy!

The brothers.

Daddy eating Colin's head - he's so silly!

There was a big "play house" in the middle of the pool. There were water fountains spraying all over the place.

Up on the platform waiting to go down the water slide.

Sean coming down the water slide.

Brian coming down the slide.

We all had a lot of fun. After a lot of hard playing in the water, we had a picnic lunch with Aunt Lori and Kelsey. Then we packed everyone up and headed home - for naps!

Overheard this morning

Sean: "Daddy, why do you have hair in your nose?"

Daddy: "Um, because I'm a grown-uper. One day you'll have hair in your nose, too."

Sean: "Hair? No, Daddy, I only have boogies in my nose!"

This was amusing to me!

I found this over at Angie's little corner and found it so funny I thought I'd bring it over here to "The Korner".


So...what's your sentence? Or any sentence from any member of your family? Here are mine:

Cindy - I smelled my dog because I'm AWESOME!
Chris - I kicked my sister because I'm sexy and I do what I want.
Brian - I did the Macarena with your mom because Big Bird said to and he's my leader.
Sean - I sang to a stuffed animal because I'm cool like that!
Colin - I ran over a monster because my family thinks I'm stupid anyway -oh, I don't like that one, can I go with the shirt color he was wearing earlier today? - because Big Bird said to and he's my leader. Yes, I like that one better.

Let me know about your funnies!

Pick the month you were born:

January-------I kicked
February------I loved
March--------I karate chopped
April----------I licked
May----------I jumped on
June----------I smelled
July-----------I did the Macarena with
August--------I had lunch with
September----I danced with
October-------I sang to
November-----I yelled at
December-----I ran over

Pick the date (number) you were born on:

1-------a birdbath
2-------a monster
3-------a phone
4-------a fork
5-------a snowman
6-------a gangster
7-------my mobile phone
8-------my dog
9-------my best friends' boyfriend
10-------my neighbor
11-------my science teacher
12-------a banana
13-------a fireman
14-------a stuffed animal
15-------a goat
16-------a pickle
17-------your mom
18-------a spoon
19------ - a smurf
20-------a baseball bat
21-------a ninja
22-------Chuck Norris
23-------a noodle
24-------a squirrel
25-------a football player
26-------my sister
27-------my brother
28-------an ipod
29-------a surfer
30-------a llama
31-------A homeless guy


Pick the color of shirt you are wearing:
White---------because I'm cool like that.
Black---------because that's how I roll.
Pink-----------because I'm crazy.
Red-----------because the voices told me to.
Blue-----------because I'm sexy and I do what I want.
Green---------because I think I need some serious help.
Purple---------because I'm AWESOME!
Gray----------because Big Bird said to and he's my leader.
Yellow--------because someone offered me 1,000,000 dollars.
Orange--------because my family thinks I'm stupid anyway.
Brown---------because I can.
Other----------because I'm a Ninja!
None----------because I can't control myself!

What do you say to this?

Yesterday as I was getting Sean out of his car seat, he put both hands on my chest and asked me (in all seriousness) "Mommy, what are these 2 big things you have?"

Well, I guess he's a guys' guy after all! Yikes!

He's Out!

Chris made it out of the neighborhood!! In my car, because of course his car still won't start. Now, the question is, will he come back? ;-)

Oh goodie

'Cause we haven't had enough rain already - guess what's pouring out of the sky right now?

Yesterday we were watching some of our neighbors get in their SUVs and slowly drive through the river that is our neighborhood streets. We could see them manage to get out of the neighborhood. Chris went into the middle of the street and thought it looked like we would be able to get out of the driveway to go to the store. I asked if I could go since I was going a little stir crazy, and I figured if Chris was going to leave for work on Friday I'd like to get out of the house by myself. Chris was pretty worried about me going by myself, but I assured him that if it looked bad that I would just turn around and come home.

Datapoint: A Saturn VUE is not high enough to get out of our neighborhood in its current water state. How do I know this, you ask? I tried. And the car died. Right in the middle of the street. Fortunately there are only about 15 homes occupied in our neighborhood, so I wasn't in danger of getting run over as I sat in the middle of the road in our dead car. I opened the window to see if I would be able to open the door and not get the car flooded. While looking at the water, I saw fish swimming by - yes, in the street!

At this moment, an angel driving a monster truck came by. She lives right outside of our neighborhood and wanted to "sight see" in the flooded area. She told me she didn't have any towing cables on her, but if I was okay with waiting, she could head back home and get the cable to tow me. Um, I'm not going anywhere, so yeah, I'm okay with waiting for your generosity! She came back shortly with not only the chain, but her husband. He hooked the car up and I was pulled back to our house. At this point they are asking if we need anything since I had mentioned that I was going to the store. They were insistent on going to get us some milk. When they returned I made sure to exchange phone numbers and said lots of prayers in thanksgiving for the gift of kind strangers. I have a feeling we're going to become good friends with these people.

My Visual DNA

HT to my sister-in-law Jennifer. This is an easy "quiz" to take.

Compare and Contrast

Not exactly the same angle, but just to give you an idea of where the lake is now in comparison to our back yard.

May 2008August 20, 2008

Not out of the woods

Or rather, not out of the water yet. The rain seems to be coming down even harder today. Chris has been draining the pool all day long, and is just barely keeping up with keeping the pool from flooding over.
As you can see, one of our trees has fallen over. And no, typically it is not located in the lake in our backyard!
Chris has now moved that tree further up into our backyard. If you can see that stick in the right side of the picture, that is our property marker...and from there (typically) the yard slopes down to the lake.
Here is our front yard. Once again, in normal circumstances, we don't have a river running in front of our house - it's the street. You can also see the sidewalk at the top of the picture underneath the water.
And the last view of the front yard. I moved the both cars up so that they are almost touching the garage as the water was already creeping up past the back tires. From the street to the top of the water line was 20 of my feet (size 8)

Really, he can read

I told you that Sean can read. Now I have video to prove it! In the second video you can see Sean helping Brian read - that is before Sean ends up having a meltdown from being so totally exhausted!

We're Still Here So Far

Fay has been fun so far. Lots of wind, and even more rain.


You can see how all of the plants and trees around our house are living at an angle right now. And this is during a relatively calm period!

We've emptied out the closet underneath the stairs and utilized the 'fraidy closet once already today. We're under a tornado watch until 1 am. A tornado warning just sprang up to the east of us.

Chris was draining the pool for 3 hours, and it's already totally full again. Here's a little video I took at around 4 this afternoon. My weather guy just told me that my county is the bulls-eye for Fay - happy day! Hope your day is not anywhere near as rainy or windy!

First Library Visit

As an adult I have never had a library card. Which is rather surprising considering how much I love to read. You would really have thought that checking books out from the library would have been much easier on my budget over the years. But I digress.

Today I took the boys to the library for the first time. I figured with Tropical Storm Fay bearing down on us it might be helpful to have some "new" books to read - especially if we lose power at any point over the next couple of days. I strapped Colin into his stroller and we trekked into our local library. Brian and Sean did really well. I prepped them on the way in that we don't use loud voices in the library - of course they wanted to know "why?"!

We walked right over to the children's section - which was very empty since today was the first day of public school. I was totally not prepared for the library. I didn't have a list of books; I was going in cold and was totally lost. But Brian and Sean weren't. They immediately found the Bob Books and took some over to the little table to read while I was perusing the selections to bring home. It was awfully cute watching Sean help Brian when he got stuck on a word. I managed to find a couple of books that go along with our study of China and the Olympics - The Mud Flat Olympics and Dumpling Soup.

When we were ready to go, Sean had to be convinced to put back 12 of the 15 Bob Books he was holding. I told you he likes books! While we were at the check out desk, the librarian said, "Oh, that's who was making that noise -he sounded like a siren." She was referring to Colin making his new "uuh-ooh-uuh-ooh" noise.

In addition to the books I found, Sean checked out 3 Bob Books, and Brian checked out 2 Bob Books. They were so excited that they "bought" new books at the library. I'm looking forward to using this wonderful resource as we live and learn together this year.

Gift Giving 101

Tonight I was out of the house during the final moments of the bedtime routine. After I got home, Chris relayed this story to me. I do so love it when my boys "get it".

Daddy Time

For some reason, today was tough. All of the boys were cranky and whiny. It was a trying day for both Chris and I. Despite this, tonight all of the boys had some special snuggle time with their daddy.

Big shout out

to The Cutest Blog on the Block for the awesome changes to my blog. So many beautiful designs it was hard to just pick one! I feel so pretty now!

Preparations

So we are preparing just in case Ms. Fay decides to pay us a visit. Chris is out in the pouring rain right now getting together our Disaster Supply Kit. Tonight we will be watching the DVD tutorial on how to put up the hurricane shutters instead of the Olympics. Alright, I may have to commandeer the big t.v. to root Superman and his teammates on to victory.

If you want to follow along

I've created a seperate blog for our schooling adventure. You can see what we are doing at St. Anne's Academy.

Kelsey's 1st Birthday

This past weekend we went down to my sister's house for an "intimate" gathering of 60 of Kelsey's closest friends to celebrate her 1st birthday. Now, I must pause and admit that we probably had about 40 people at Brian's first birthday party - but most of them were adults since we all know that your first child's first birthday party is all about you, right?

Lou's mom made Kelsey's cake. It was absolutely darling - and tasted even better to boot! There was a ton of yummy food (with only 1/2 a ton left over), and the boys had a great time running around with the 22 other kids at the party. Brian certainly wasn't shy. He made fast friends with an 8 year old boy. They were out leading the "pirate crew" on the "pirate ship".

Now that Kelsey is starting to walk, she and Colin are going to have much more fun together. Their 8 month age difference is becoming less dramatic. It's going to be so much fun watching them grow together.

Happy birthday, Kelsey. We love you!

It's Here!

So, the super secret project that Chris and I have been working on for my friend Elizabeth is finally here.

I know she is totally embarassed to have her name in lights, but I'm proud to introduce...

Elizabeth Foss.com

Chris and I have been working really hard to organize all of Elizabeth's great ideas to make them much more easily accesible in one place. Blogs can tend to get a little overwhelming with all of the "stuff" on the sidebar, and not really knowing where to look for something, and then having to scroll and scroll and scroll through posts to find the one item you are looking for. Now, with this new site, everything is categorized, organized, and just plain pretty!

This is also going to make it much easier for people who have been trying to follow along with the Serendipity lesson plans to find what it is they are looking for. Check out the tutorial on Elizabeth's site for instructions on how to navigate the Alphabet Path.

Books, Dinosaurs & Sleep - what more can a boy ask for?

Have I mentioned before that Sean can read? Not just "cat" and "dog" either - we are talking, full fledged, all out reading. And he's been doing it since shortly after he turned 3. Chris and I are still amazed daily by his reading prowess.

Every night you can find Sean sleeping on top of his books - he spends a lot of time reading by the light of the bathroom {I have no idea where he got that trait from ;-) } before falling asleep.

A couple of weeks ago, this is what we found when we went in to kiss the boys goodnight. And no, we didn't doctor this photo, or set up the shot!

You see why he's going to be learning right alongside Brian?

Boxes are Arriving!

I bit the bullet last week and ordered my "curriculum". The boxes have begun to arrive! (Insert picture of grown woman smiling with glee and doing a little happy dance!)

As I discussed, we are mostly going to be following along the Serendipity trail this year. I've added Handwriting Without Tears for learning to write, Explode the Code for learning to read (not that Sean really needs this since he's been reading for awhile now), Cuisinaire Rods for extra math practice, and for just plain reading fun, Catholic Children's Treasure Box of Books. I've been eyeing these books for a couple of years, and am so glad that I bought them - they are just beautiful!

Looking forward to seeing the UPS guy tomorrow!

Once in a Lifetime

There are those events that happen once in a lifetime. For me, some of those days include:

My wedding day

Brian's birth

Sean's birth

Colin's birth

and now, meeting Bishop John Magee.

While up in Northern VA to help my friend/cousin Daniella & David with their new baby girl, I got to attend Mass at Holy Trinity. Daniella & David had never been to this church, but thought it would be nice to check it out with me up there. We arrived a couple minutes late (new baby syndrome!) and figured out there was a special guest celebrant, but had no idea who he was. When it came time for the homily, this guest celebrant gave the homily. It was a good homily, talking about how the Lord always wants us to come to him, come back to him. I am the Lord and you are my people. I thought this was particularly appropriate since my friends/cousins are trying to come back to the Church. Then after this appropriate homily, the bishop kept talking. He began speaking on the 3 previous popes - Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II. The bishop is the only man to have served under 3 popes. He gave us a history lesson on these three extraordinary men whom he served under. It was long, but it was fascinating to get an inside and personal look at 3 of the men who have sat on the Chair of Peter.

After Mass, we made sure to exit through the center doors so that we could meet "Bishop John". The bishop gave my little cousin Rachel a special blessing on her 1 month birthday. Then I got to shake his hand, and kiss his ring - a ring that Pope John Paul II gave to him.

After getting home last night, I Googled "Irish bishop who served 3 popes" and learned the name of the man who had presided over our Mass - Bishop John Magee. He began his vocation as a missionary priest in Africa. He ended up being sent to Rome and became the personal secretary to Pope Paul VI. After the pope's death, he was cleaning out the study of Pope Paul VI's personal effects when Pope John Paul I entered the room looking for coffee. A friendship was struck up and Bishop Magee stayed on to serve Pope John Paul I. After his death, Pope John Paul II came up to Bishop Magee (who was still a monsignor at the time), hugged him, and told him - You will stay with me!

While not quite as monumental as getting married or giving birth, meeting Bishop John Magee was still an amazing moment in my life as a Catholic.