Wordless Wednesday - Tattoos

I tattooed my first-born...

It must have smarted a bit ;-)

Then, I demanded he mow the lawn

...and the sidewalk


Good boy!

wading pool

Our city is big enough that there are several public water-play areas for kids to utilize in the summer to stay cool. However, every year it is a fiasco of raising the money to open these parks, but luckily this year, the goals were met. We have wading pools, water playgrounds, and large water pools with slides. Since Tam is still pretty small, we avoid the large, crowded pools and often opt for the wading pool instead.

Our current hang-out is at a park/playground area that we frequent because it is right next door to my school. We head over at least once a week to let Tam splash around and stay cool in the 12inches of water. It is really nice that the same lifeguard/caretaker is there everyday too so she gets to know us and the kids. Plus, we really haven't encountered to many people there at any one time, usually on the order of 10 kids max.

Anyways, Tam loves splashing around in the water, chasing his trucks around the edge, filling buckets and dumping them, sticking his hands in the fountain, squealing in delight, practicing blowing bubbles, and generally having a fabulous time :-)

Doh!

Since it is the summertime, I've had a bit more free time to get my "Craft-game" on. Since a bit of a basement-leak fiasco, my sewing room has moved back upstairs to the dining room. This isn't too bad of a work space since the table is high enough that kiddo's questing hands still can't reach stuff (read sewing notions, scissors, pins, etc).

As of late, I've been sewing a mad storm of gifts for friends and relatives. The thought was to wait for Christmas to send things out...but I just never have the patience and tend to gift early :-)

However...I forgot to take photos of this cool-stuff-I-made before mailing! Sheesh. Anyways, I did have fun trying a couple new patterns for aprons out of fun fabric and recycled cloths. And I loved having a go at making ruffle-butt onesies for a friend's little girl. These were a great way to utilize some of the floral print fabrics in my stash and it made me really want a little girl to dress up in uber-cute things. And I loved experimenting with some new freezer-paper stenciling on onesies for friends....but you all will just have to trust me that I did these things and they were cool.

Next time I will have photo-evidence.
I'm currently constructing a car caddy for Tam's November birthday and a set of alphabet bean-bags....and then maybe this cool super-hero cape (but I don't think I'll make it in hot pink).

Wordless Wednesday on Thursday :-)

The Cat is no longer safe...

New words

Tamlin still babbles nearly ALL the time...it is just that he is speaking Martian instead of English.
According to all the books, he is still a bit behind in the verbal communication skills, but we are still not worried yet.
However, we have heard a few new words to add to his increasing vocabulary list:
Hot - though the 'H' is usually dropped. I think he picked this up because we have all been complaining about how hot it is outside.
Hat - Because Tam and Brian both nearly always wear their hats outside.
Car - Finally!
No - Thankfully, he's just starting using this one and it isn't annoyingly negative yet

Hi - complete with wave

Bye - Though he often says "hi" instead...kind of like Aloha.

Down - With the downward pointing finger, used when wanting out of the highchair

4th of july

So I'm a little behind with the posts....but I'm sure the cyber-world will forgive me.

I just wanted to take a moment to jot down our fun-filled 4th of July holiday with the family.
My sister came up on Friday night for the weekend and my mom & step-dad came up on Saturday as well. Good thing we've got a house and beds for everyone (and central air).

We were all up bright and early Saturday morning to go to a local parade at 8:30AM. This is supposedly Grand Rapids' longest running Independance day parade at 76 years. Brian and I got drafted into the neighborhood volunteer marching band. Woeee...It was fun to carry a marching bass drum again, but I sure was glad it was the tiny baby bass, and not the jumbo 40-pounder big bass drum. Brian did pretty good on the trombone, but had to admit his lips were fairly shot after so many years without much practice. Lucky for him, there were only 2 pieces and we marched a good deal between the songs. As usual, the drum section (myself and the snare drum player) tried our chops for the entire length of the route. On the upside, with no other drummers, we could play whatever we damn well felt like it as the cadance... as long as the beat was steady. Cool.

This was Tam's first parade :-) Shelly was a trooper by getting up so early and watching Tam, even though she complained that most "normal" parades start at 10am! (I was glad it was early and not so hot yet.) She said Tam loved watching the antique cars and politician cars go by. He also like getting the free candy hand-outs.

Later on Saturday, we got out the kiddie wadding pool and my folks brought a new sand-box to play in. Oh, boy, Tam's such a lucky boy! And the wadding pool was good for grown-up feet too :-) It was really nice to just sit outside, relax, and talk with the family.

The highlight of Sunday morning was church service with our new pastor. He's British, with a pretty thick accent still, even though he's been in the states 10 years. He joked that it was a great sense of irony that we hired the British guy to preach on Independence day. He followed this thought with a story about the idiots in our home town. He said at the hair salon, his hair cutter person asked if he celebrated the 4th of July in England. . Luckily he countered saying that no, they don't...but they celebrate Thanksgiving Day as the day they finally got rid of all those pesky pilgrams! I know that throughout the sermon, I just kept waiting for him to say "And now for something completely different..." (Monty Python's Flying Circus). Sheesh.

We didn't get to down-town to see any official fireworks on Sunday night (July 4th). It would have been way past Tam's bedtime and I think it would have freaked him out quite a bit. However, our hick neighbors on the next street oer provided a show until 3:00AM. Sheesh. On our street, our immediate neighbors came out for an impromptu street party between 10-11, complete with adult beverages and bug spray. We all stood around chatting, drinking, and saying "oooh & ahhh" at the appropriate moments. Luckily, Tam did sleep through EVERYTHING. I'll take it as a sign that next year we'll try to get out and see a real show.