last day of Kindergarten

Ted's last day of Kindergarten was today. They had "beach day" so they didn't do much school stuff. The weather was perfect so that was nice. It's been so hard to predict the weather lately. Mrs. Johnston won't be at Linton next year, unfortunately. :( She is so wonderful--it's going to be hard to compare other teachers to her. I think all of us moms got a little teary eyed when it was time to say goodbye. Hopefully we can get together with some of the other kids this summer.

Cuddling with big brother

Lately, when someone is lying on the floor, Nate will go and hug them. I love to see him doing that with his brothers now. He did that with Harry a couple days ago. We were upstairs and the camera wasn't available soon enough to get a picture. Nate stayed like this with Ted for a few minutes this morning. They were watching Harry play the Wii (SpongeBob).

"I'm not even scared!"

We took Ted's training wheels off his bike last summer because his friends were learning to ride without them and he thought he did too. He was able to do it a couple days but he was too worried about falling so then he didn't want to ride his bike at all. This spring, I put the training wheels back on hoping that it would build up his confidence enough that he'd be ready later this summer.

Today, he said he was ready to get them off. He had been practicing and getting both training wheels off the ground so we knew he was really ready this time. Ted didn't hesitate once I got the training wheels off the bike. He took off and was riding all around the cul-de-sac. He was saying "whoo hoo!" and "I'm not even scared!" We knew he could do it. Ted and I went for a bike ride this afternoon and he did a great job. We're so excited that he can do this now. I'll have to get used to the bike trailer and Bob's bike so we can do that this summer during the week.

Harry's new pets

Harry has wanted a pet for a really long time. He wanted to get rid of his brother last fall and get a pet instead. We asked him the other day which he'd rather have.

Cat or Nate? Nate.

Dog or Nate? Nate.

Pet monkey or Nate? Pet monkey.

Anyway, he got a little bug collection container from his preschool teachers. While we were outside this morning, the boys found a roly poly. They decided to name it Teddy and it was Harry's new pet...until he stepped on it. He was so sad that the roly poly died. Later this afternoon, we found another roly poly and we put it in his container. After I went inside, I noticed a ladybug on my shirt so we put that in there too. Harry is calling them his new pets. He said they needed food so he got them some pretzel sticks. I said that grass and leaves would probably be better but he insisted on the pretzels. Nate has gotten ahold of the container and shakes it like a rattle. The roly poly curls into a ball when that happens. I don't think it's going to survive very long.

What a day!

Harry's last day of preschool was on Tuesday and today was the end of year celebration at Fit For Fun. I forgot the camera (as usual) but all 3 boys were with me so it would have been hard to take lots of pictures anyway. The boys had a great time. It has a big climbing structure and a bounce house for the older 2 boys. There's also a section for the little ones. Nate loved the ball pit. He got upset a few times when I pulled him out as a bigger kid was about to jump in. Harry got cheese pizza for a snack which he wasn't thrilled about but he ate it. The siblings couldn't have any so poor Ted had to watch and wait. He handled it fairly well considering.

We left right after the snack and then stopped at McDonald's for lunch. We then left McD's and it had started raining fairly hard at that point. Ted was supposed to have field day today but it was looking like that would be postponed. There was even some hail as we headed over to drop Ted off. It was raining as I took Ted to the door and his teacher said that the kids were in the hallway because of the tornado warning. Yikes, that was the first I heard about tornadoes. I went home and went to the basement with Harry and Nate so we could check on the weather since that was the first we had heard about a tornado. Our neighbor soon called and said she was watching some clouds head our way that looked really weird. She decided to pick her son up from school soon after that and got Ted while she was there. We spent a good part of the afternoon in the basement. Luckily, the playroom is down there so the boys were entertained while we waited it out.

The tornado hit Windsor the hardest. It missed us by just a few miles. It's hard to believe that the closest I've been to a tornado was this time while living in Colorado. I hadn't expected to see any tornadoes here. Dallas is part of tornado alley and we didn't have too many tornado warnings while living there. There were a couple tornadoes that went through Fort Worth but that was still 30-40 miles away from us. I hope that is the closest I ever get to a tornado.

sports sports sports

So, Ted has been playing soccer this spring. His last game is this Saturday. We haven't gotten pictures all season so hopefully we can remember the camera. Lately, just one of us has been taking him to the games because of other things going on. Ted started t-ball practice tonight. I think that's going to be fun too. Harry met a brother of one of the players and they had a good time playing together during the practice. Ted is playing with a different school team since I didn't sign him up until the last minute. We met a few others who also go to a different school. The games will start in June and there'll be 2 each week. The practices will be before the games so I'm relieved that we won't have an extra night each week with practice.

Bob has been away on business this week. The boys miss him but overall it's going well so far. Bob will be home on Friday. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the silence after the boys get to bed. :)

Family time fun

We bought a bike trailer last weekend so we could start riding our bikes again. By the time Bob got it put together and got our bikes ready to go it was getting a little late. Nate was tired but we were determined to try it out. The poor little guy cried most of the time he was in the trailer. We only rode to the elementary school and back. Our neighbor, Lisa, was laughing a little with us because we weren't going to let Nate's crying stop us from "having fun". We decided to try it again tonight and hoped it would go a little better. It went slightly better but Nate still cried quite a bit. Harry loves the trailer and hopefully Nate will get more used to it. Ted would love to ride in the trailer but he's too big so he has to ride his bike. Ted's training wheels were put back on at the beginning of this summer and that's limiting us how far we can go at this point. He can't coast much with the training wheels on. The pictures are from tonight before we left.

Step by step

Nate is getting really comfortable at walking now. I tried to get a few pictures of him in action. There are a couple from April 23rd when we tried to get him to walk back and forth between us. The others were taken a week later on April 30th. He loves to walk while holding onto toys and you can see a few toys got dropped in the kitchen area by him. He even carried an empty box from the front door to the living room the other day. We laughed at him and he laughed back at us. The box had a handle but it was almost as big as him.