Our Independence Day

We headed out to Veteran's Memorial Park this evening at about 6:00 PM, after a wonderful supper of hot wings, cheddar bratwurst, and parmesan potatoes (we had ribs last night). Doesn't all that sound like wonderful holiday celebration food?! I think the scale will disagree... The kids ran around and played on the playground, and then we sat and enjoyed some apple praline pie and fireworks.

Enjoying a sno-coneMy monkey boy

Soccer with Daddy
Happy Birthday America!

We hope you all had a great day!

Happy 4th of July!

Just wanted to take a minute to wish all of you a Happy Independence Day! We are planning on spending some family time together today and going to the park to watch some fireworks tonight. We went last year and had a great time, and for being a small city, they put on one heck of a fireworks show!

We've been keeping busy lately, the kids finished up their gymnastics and ballet classes this week, so we should have a few weeks of downtime until I can find new classes for them. Here's some pictures of what we've been up to the last few weeks.

No diving in the shallow end!

The kids (with a little suggestion from Grandma) decided to "get Mommy!" Needless to say they thought it was great to get me soaked!
The birthday boy - cake for breakfast...

...and cotton candy ice cream with sprinkles for dessert!

All I can say is, turnabout is fair play!

Get Grandma!

We went to a birthday party at the local pool for one of Grace's preschool classmates. The kids (and adults too) had a great time. Tristan wasn't too fond of the slides, but Grace told me before we got there that she was going to go down by herself, and much to my surprise, she did!

She came down all smiles and said "I wanna do it again, Mommy!" So, she headed up the 2 flights of stairs all by herself and did it again.

My little fish

David got there after work, and took Grace down the "dark" slide. This slide is pitch black - you can't see a thing until you get close to the end, and the last time we were there Grace had no desire to go down this slide a second time... This time however, she said that she wanted to go again - you guessed it - by herself! And she did - twice!

Happy Birthday Tristan!

Unbelievably (to me at least), our baby turns 3 today.

We had a little party for him on Saturday. We have some friends from church that have kids the same age as ours and they love to play with each other. Being summer in Arizona, we had the pool and slip-n-slide out, and had a water balloon fight - the kids had a great time.

He got his very own fishing pole!

The cake that I made - not my best decorating job, but was proud that I was able to turn a plain train cake into Thomas (or at least sort of like Thomas).


Happy Birthday Peanut! We love you!!!

Swimming Lessons

Grace just finished up her third solo swimming lesson, and she is getting so much more comfortable in the water! This excites me tremendously as she was beginning to get rather timid in the water, and now she will let go of the wall and keep herself up, she will float on her back for a short period, and she even jumped off the diving board all by herself! And, she wanted to jump again - and LOVED it!!

I might have a little fish on my hands after all.

Mr. Money Pants

You all remember the shoe in the nose post, I'm sure (See: Caution - Small Parts http://danisamrn-graceandtristan.blogspot.com/2008/11/caution-small-parts.html). Well, last night Tristan decided he needed to top that and swallowed a coin of some sort - I'm guessing a penny or a dime as that is all that was in his bank. All I hear is "Mommy! Tristan swallowed a penny!" So, I go back to see what's up and I asked Tristan if he ate some money.

T: "Uh-huh"

Me: "Really?"

T: "Yep, all gone, see (opening his mouth with his hands, sticking out his tongue, and saying aaaaaa)?"

Me: "Did you swallow it like you do food?"

T: "Uh-huh"

Me: (Pointing to his throat) "Did it go down here and into your tummy."

T: "Yep, it all gone."

I continued to ask the questions in as many ways as I could possibly think of, desperately hoping he'd realize what I was saying and change his answer. Nope, he kept saying he swallowed it.

Grace is panicking at this point "Mommy, he told me he wasn't serious, he didn't really do it!" As I'm calling the doctor... "Mommy - don't call the doctor, Tristan said he didn't really do it!" As I'm on the phone Grace is trying to talk me out of telling the doc anything, and Tristan is in the background screaming and screwing around... obviously not in any distress over the matter.

I got off the phone and Grace is at my side in tears "Mommy, Tristan is breathing, he's okay, we don't need to take him to the doctor." I agreed with her statement and told her that we'll take him to the doctor in the morning just to be on the safe side. I also explained to her just what they would do to him when we got there because I could see the fear in her eyes as she asked "are they going to try to get it out with their hand?" I reassured her that they wouldn't hurt him, they would just take a picture of his belly-just like we take pictures at home, except with these pictures they'd be able to see his insides. She followed up with (in tears by now) "But Mommy, I don't want my brother to have swallowed a penny, I don't want him to die because I LOVE him!!" Is that not the sweetest thing you've ever heard?

Later in the evening, Tristan denied the whole incident, so I didn't know what to think. But, I got up this morning and took him in anyway, and sure enough, there's a glowing area in his large intestine... Now I get to dig through poop for the next few days - lucky me.

Child's Play

My children have been begging me for days to take them to the park that's just down the street from us - I don't know why it's such a big deal to take them, but I usually refuse and just send them out to the backyard to play on their swing set (bad mom, I know). But, I finally agreed the other night, and we all had a great time - even David and I joined in on the play time instead of just sitting on the bench watching the kids play.

David trying to escape death!

David providing a little swinging instruction "Point your toes to the sky..."

He just takes the best pictures sometimes!

Learning to ride his bike - did really good going to the park (downhill), but needed a hand getting back home. But hey, he is only 2!

Congratulations David!

I just wanted to take a moment to brag on our Soldier.

A week ago (on his birthday, in fact) David was recognized as the Instructor of the Month.

He will now be evaluated for Instructor of the Quarter. He loves teaching, and it shows - many of his former students (including other NCO's, some even higher ranking than he) talk about him and tell his current students that he's the best instructor around.

Yesterday he was also awarded his Senior Instructor badge, and should acquire his Master Instructor Badge by this time next year. All in all, good things for him!

David, we love you and we're proud of you!!