Cousins at the beach

We celebrated Jude's 4th birthday on Memorial day weekend.  Shelly and family were able to come out a day early to spend some time with us and let the kiddos all play together.   It was a beautiful early evening, so we decided to walk on down to the beach.  We love the beach, and take just about any excuse to go down to the water.  Baby Elizabeth hadn't seen sand and waves yet, and we wanted to give her a great first experience.  When we told the littles that we were going to the beach, we had to interrupt their dress-up play.  This didn't bother them!  Doesn't everyone go as superheros to the beach?

The capes are all made by Aunt-Shelly...with Jude's was whipped up in the past 24 hours as a quick birthday gift.  I like this shot, because they all have the same head tilt as they walk :-)  The kids insisted on bringing shovels and buckets for making sandcastles.  Baby Elizabeth got a free ride in the stroller...which also double as portable storage for the random things the kids wanted to bring back home.

Our beach is small, but nice and our local neighbors enjoy using it for recreation.  Jude immediately fell to digging in the sand with his digger-truck.  Tamlin started hauling water to make castle molds.  Ciearra checking out the water and helped Tam.  I had to remind them all that we did NOT have spare clothes so there should NOT be any swimming.  I knew as soon as the words left my mouth, that Tam would get wet...accidentally...and he did slip into the water within 10 minutes.

 The water was pretty calm with only small waves lapping the sand.  The temperature of the water is still pretty chilly, not quite foot-cramping cold, but still toe-curling cold.  I was good just wading in far enough to cover my sandals.  The kids all went in to about knee-high. 

And Elizabeth?

She's the serious baby...just watching everyone playing and watching the waves and watching the birds and touching the sand and grabbing the rocks and watching the kids and watching and watching and watching :-)  It was great to watch her pick up a rock and then drop in quickly when she saw another rock that she thought she wanted.

 The fresh air and walking tired all the littles out.  The walk homeward was a bit slower and meandering, but we made it back for some dinner, play, and bed.  Happy times for all.

Reading Books

We're readers...a whole family of readers. 
Both Brian and I still find small spots of time to read for ourselves, but we totally read with our little ones everyday.  I hope that we have instilled in them a love of a good book...and I see glimmers that this is true.  We visit the library about once a week...though Jude picks about 2 books and then wants to play with the puzzles.  Tamlin picks out 5 books or so, and then wants to look at movies, but he is learning to ask the librarian for help with finding books.

Tam is reading, truely reading on his own now.  They are simple books, but he recognizes words and sounds out the ones he doesn't know.  I'm such a proud momma.  Even though he can read by himself, he still likes to curl up and have the bigger/longer books read to him.  We've started reading short chapter books too at night.  I've tried "choose your own adventure books" which are a hit and "Encyclopedia Brown, boy detective", which are sometimes chosen. (I think he likes the mystery, but doesn't like that there aren't many pictures).  Transformer stories are also popular with him, and he loves the toys / cartoons too.

And Jude...Jude recognizes letters and his name, but still really just enjoys having a book read to him.  His very favorite books of late are "Elephant & Piggie", of which the library has a complete set.  These are great simple books, slightly repetative, but fun.  Jude likes to hear the stories again and again so that he can then repeat them to himself.  He also likes "Pete the Cat", which Tamlin also liked at that age.  But, hey, it's all groovey.




And a last note...I love this book.  I really consider it the first "real" book that Tamlin read all on his own (with the exception of the word "metropolis").

Shots and Pool Noodles

 Jude had shots... 2 shots...one in each thigh. 
Even though the nurse was prepared for him to flail, scream, lurch, fight, whatever...my little JuJu didn't even flinch.

Brave little man.

But he knew he was getting really cool band-aids and

Lots of Stickers!



We also stopped at target for a few pool noodles for sword play.

Getting the gardens ready

So last Thursday, my boss asks me how I plan to spend my three-day weekend.  I enthusiastically tell her "with poop"!    What?!  Yep, we planned to work in the gardens.  They had been rota-tilled, but no plants in yet.   Our land-lord, wonderful man, volunteered to bring us a truck full of manure and hay for our gardens.  Yes, please.
Here are our little men helping to spread out our new "soil."  They were very excited to be involved :-)  We then topped the hay-mixture with the dirt from our compost bins and covered all with fabric for a bit of "settling-time".  Brian hopes to hit the bins with the rototiller once more before we add the plants.

And boy are the plants ready!
We have something like 80 tomato plants started and another 50-odd pepper plants.  A good amount of leeks, a handful of pumpkins, and a mess of herbs all growing in little cups in our front-porch.
Soon...soon...all of them will be in their new garden box homes.

My Jude is Four!

 Jude...
Our little JuJu is four years old!
Happy Birthday, Jude!

We celebrated a little on Sunday, his true birthday, but we'll have a party with the family next Sunday.  We had a few presents for him to open, much to his delight.

I made him a little bag out of jeans and fun fabric.  It's just the right size to hold monster and some cars.  There was also a "birthday" Thomas the Tank engine, complete with a cake that plays the theme song from the show.  This was a big hit, and Jude immediately wanted to carry the little engine around in his bag.  

We also gave him a set of roller skates, along with pads, so that he could practice skating outdoors this summer.  (Tamlin will be getting as set too as a "graduation" gift for finishing Kindergarten.)  Jude thought these were pretty cool, and I can't wait to see him skating around the paved parks and safety towns.  I also had picked up a kiddy folding camp chair for him, since he is too big for his current toddler Tweety-bird chair.  He loved this too, especially because this new one has a drink holder.

The rest of the day had its ups and downs for Jude.  He is still very dramatic and passionate about life.  He got upset that Sunday School was done for the summer at church, but then he was happy to pick out his own flower to plant in the garden.  He was upset that we only had small treats and has to wait for cake at the party, but was happy with his cool new number 4 shirt.  He was also pretty happy to help Dad around the yard and to play at our friends' house for dinner.

Oh, Jude...
I love you so, my little man.
I love your sweet little smile and all of your amazing snuggles.
I love when you climb into my arms when you come running for a hug.
I love your dramatics over every bump and scrap that requires a band-aid, whether it needs it or not.
I love it when you tell us all that you love us too.

Being Crafty

 .
 We all were in a crafty mood this Saturday.  Jude's birthday was coming up, so I made him a "Number 4" shirt.  He wanted it decorated with dinosaurs, hungry dinosaurs.  I decided to go with a bit of freezer paper stenciling and bleach. Here's the shirt in progress.  Tamlin didn't want to be left out, so he asked for a shirt to that was especially made by Momma.  We decided together to make him a shirt with the phrase "future 1st grader".  I also did this one with stencils, but used bleach for the background and white paint for the lettering, to keep it crisp.  He loved it and plans to where it frequently through the summer.  He is so excited to be graduating from Kindergarten. 

The boys decided to do a bit of painting to.  They started with painting some Thomas the Tank engine papers.  Here's Tam's artwork; he had started with painting neatly in the lines, but this quickly degraded to telling a story about black raindrops and red clouds.  Jude's art consisted of green, lots of green, mostly for Percy, who is green, but branching out to just about everything on the paper being some shade of green. 

Brian also wanted in on the painting action.  He got out some of his little figurines to paint.  Now that he has his glasses, he can see the details again and is able to paint the fine things.

 When the boys tired of painting pictures, they moved on to their wooden model kits.  Jude worked on his jet airplane and Tamlin worked on his race car.  Tamlin very carefully painted his car with stripes.  Jude worked on painting spots all over his plane.  These kits were Christmas gifts and were great hits as creative outlets.  Each boy really enjoyed making their "own" toys.

 I finished the craftiness splurge with a bit of sewing.  I whipped up a little jean bag for Jude for his birthday.  It's a mirror to the one I made Tamlin when he was about 3.  Now each boy has their own little bag for treasures and cars.  I then dug through my stash of fabric trying to get inspired for some project, particularly some type of dresses for my nieces.  Ah, a bit of vintage purple paisley fabric and a wonderfully simple little pinafore pattern yields a cute reversible jumper for little Elizabeth.  If it fits well, I have may whip up another one or two for the summer.  I think it will look adorable with a cute little cloth diaper bum peeking out from underneath.