Earth Day at Horseshoe Park

Last week, Hannah, Logan, and I celebrated Earth Day at Horseshoe Park. It was a little chilly, but clear and sunny.


Logan was so proud of himself, climbing to the very top!
I just love this little smiley guy! I feel blessed to have such a good, fun baby to babysit. He was such a good sport at the park while the kids played.
Horseshoe is such a beautiful park! There is a little lake, several trails and bridges that wander through the surrounding woods, a big stone fireplace for roasting marshmallows, and a cute little treehouse. Even the play structures seem to fit in so well with the natural surroundings. There is such a peaceful feeling there and I always find myself feeling a little more grateful for nature and the beauty of God's creations.

VICTORY!!!

I walked into the kitchen today and saw Andrew place a paper towel over his bowl of saucy ravioli before microwaving it! Wow, maybe they DO listen to what I say sometimes. ;)

Easter Pictures?

Last week we had the kids' pictures taken at JC Penney in their Easter clothes. Yes, I know it's July. We're a little slow.

You can see them all at the Thompson Family Tree.

Dr Seuss Would Be Proud...?

As you may know, I babysit part-time for two of the sweetest kids you'll ever meet, R & G. I mean, I am really lucky to have these two! When they come, I try to always have a craft to do with all the kids. This week to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday, we made Cat in the Hat hats. I was pretty excited about this one, so I took pictures.I started out by cutting out the center of a paper plate for the hat brim. I then cut small slits in the top of a paper lunch sack, put it through the paper plate, and taped it to the plate for the top of the hat. I stuffed it with newspaper to hold it's shape, and then let the kids go to town with the red paint (I gave the littlest guy red crayons instead).

As always, the kids were wearing big old paint shirts to protect their clothes, but sweet R reached down under the shirt and wiped her paint covered fingers all over her darling, brand new BabyGap khakis and white socks.

Okay, this is the part where I made a really stupid mistake. I picked up Hannah in one arm and sweet R in the other arm, made sure the other two were safely and contentedly playing, and then dashed down to the laundry room to try and save the pants! The bottle of red paint was up on the counter, out of reach of little G, but apparently not out of reach of Logan. When I returned from cleaning up the first disaster, I found the second one.

The story from Logan went something like this: After I rushed out of the room, Logan decided his hat needed more paint, so he reached up for the bottle of paint, squirted some on his palette, and then set it down on the table. Little G then grabbed the bottle and squirted it all over the kitchen floor. When I found him, he was sitting in the paint (also dressed head to toe in BabyGap, mind you), driving a Hotwheels car through it. Pretty ironic that gave him crayons instead of paint to color his hat to avoid the mess, huh?!

Now that I think of it, it's really quite appropriate: "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" making a crazy mess in the house while the mother is away. Hmmm...sound familiar?

I ordered the kids into the living room, and Hannah screamed in her high chair, while I wiped down little G and the kitchen. This time, I dragged all four kids with me to the basement to wash G's clothes. All I can say is, thank Heavens for washable paint! With a lot of Spray-n-Wash, scrubbing, and a trip through the washer, everything came out (I think. I still need to scrub my floor with bleach. Pink grout just doesn't look that great in my kitchen).

When the hats were dry, we glued strips of white paper around the hats to complete the Cat in the Hat look.

Logan insisted on making this face in every picture!

The hats turned out pretty cute and the kids seemed to get a kick out of them, but I'm not sure they were worth the aggravation. I think we are going to take a break from the paints for a while.

You Can Lead a Horse to the Potty...

...but you can't make him pee!!!

We are on DAY 3 of intense potty-training with Logan. We have been encouraging it for months, but have been pretty easy going about it because he has shown little or no interest. But now that he's graduated nursery at church, several of his fellow preschoolers (all boys) are potty-trained, AND he's coming up on four-years-old (for heaven's sake), we decided to really start pushing him. Plus, we don't have many plans outside the house right now, so what better time to run around bottomless, right? So we've been trying to get him to drink a lot and have basically followed his little bare bum around the house with his little potty, making him sit on it every 20-30 minutes.

Potty-training Logan has been a very different experience than training Andrew. Andrew took his sweet time too, but he was very easy to bribe. All it took was a sticker on a chart to get him to try. Logan however, is much more stubborn! We've tried every bribe we can think of, but if Logan doesn't want to sit on the potty, NO bribe will change that. It usually takes a threat of time-out just to get him to SIT on the potty. Here are just a few things I'm really tired of hearing:

"NO!"

"NO, I CAN'T!"

"NO! I already did!"

"NO! The air won't let me!" - not really sure what this one means, but he sure likes to use it!

Once in a while he does cooperate and has actually peed in the potty a total of 5 times! YAY, LOGAN! (I won't tell you how many times we've had to clean up puddles of pee on the floor and/or in Big Brother's Spongebob slippers...it's much more than 5!) When he does succeed, we make a big deal about it and let him put a sticker on his sticker chart. It warms my heart to see how proud he is of himself at those times. That helps me remember that he really is trying and wants to succeed, and that he's not peeing on the kitchen floor just to spite me...I think.

Sunday Best

Hannah looked so darn cute on Sunday! That is, until she had a major blow-out during the second hour, with poop up to her shoulder blades, and spent the remainder of church in just a onesie! ...Maybe I was a little too proud of how she looked!

Thanks for the darling hot pink dress, Cyndee, and the sweet bow and bracelet, Deb!

Don't you just love the cute pink jellies?!

The boys looked pretty handsome too!

Logan sported a new 'do too! I stole the idea from Meghan. Her kids' hair always looks so amazing! She needs to teach a class! Now Hannah just needs to get some more hair so that I can attempt to copy Meghan's girl hairdos.

Kiddie Quotes

So Summer and I were discussing our picks for who would be the front runners on American Idol. Carly put on a really impressive performance last week, while David Archuleta was only mediocre, and that's being generous. Regardless, we both agreed that the top four (based on performance rather than popularity, and in no particular order) would probably end up being David Archuleta, Carly Smithson, Chikezie, and David Cook. During this conversation, I said something to the effect of "my vote is for Carly, but David Archuletta could very well give her a challenge."

Andrew looked shocked and quickly threw his two cents in with "What about Obama!?"

And then there's Logan. On a totally separate occasion, Summer was working on helping him to get excited about potty training, so like a good mom, she made up a potty chart and told him that he could go to Chuck E. Cheese as soon as he filled up the potty chart. Logan never mentioned a word about it during the rest of the week (and showed no interest whatsoever), until one day we caught him staring at the potty chart posted on the fridge. He was quietly counting the spaces and Summer asked him what he was doing. He looked at her, pointed to the potty chart and said "where a kid can be a kid!" We both started laughing because neither of us had said anything about the Chuck E. Cheese motto. He had somehow picked that one up himself.
Lastly, (and on a similar note) we had parent-teacher conference today for Andrew and part of it consisted of reviewing the pictures and accompanying stories that our child had drawn and written about each week during the year. Well, the first drawings showed Andrew playing checkers, going on picnics, playing at friends' houses, going sledding, etc. After about 15 or so of these types of pictures, we came across a clear picture of a television with lines coming off the bottom, and a person holding a black blob. The caption read something to the effect of "me playing PS2 and trying to get 20,000 points on Kim Possible." The next page had another picture of a TV and read "me playing PS2 and trying to beat the high score on Kim Possible and get Club Banana tokens." The next few pictues also showed the TV, but this time had lines going to a flat mat with well-depicted arrows and said "Me playing Dance Dance Revolution on the PS2 and trying to open a new guy." Another two or three of these pictures followed.

Maybe it's time to join Fathers of Video Game Addicts Anonymous....

Me: "Hi, I'm Bryan"
Everyone: "HI BRYAN"
Me: "and um... I'm here because my son is a video game addict."

This somehow happened despite the fact that we rarely let him play more than 30 minutes a day. We're really not bad parents! His teacher even said that he was an exceptionally good student, and his report card shows near-perfect marks in every subject area. What to do, what to do!