Now, We Have a 1st Grader!

In just 9 short months we went from our oldest child beginning Kindergarten to now we have a 1st Grader.  Just looking back at pictures of the first day to the picture of his last day of Kindergarten you see we had a little boy, now we have boy.

He wears his backpack differently, has his ball cap on, he can read very well, hell yesterday in the back seat he was telling me how much hair he had growing on his legs!

Last Friday I stopped by Dairy Queen because his class walked there for an end of year treat.  Carey and Boy 2 were able to walk over with him, all I got was a wave and a "Hi Dad" as he ran off with his ice cream.  The rest of the time he was off with friends and never came over to see us......Yep growing very fast.

Which One of These Kids is Doing His Own Thing

Yep, we got the kid who decides at his end of year pre-school Art and Music Show that he ain't gonna participate.  During the performance his teachers come up and say "he's never like this during music time"  So we asked how come you didn't sing like the other kids?  "I just didn't wanna sing today"!  That simple.

He Thinks We're Just Fishing

Over the past week we have been able to go fishing 3 times, each time learning a little bit more and yesterday it paid off.  Boy 1 caught his first fish!  He was so excited, it was awesome.  I got lucky yesterday and remembered to bring the video camera so everyone can see his excitement.

Angry Again

Not really sure what caused this one, but Boy 2 is angry again.  This time he refused to come in out of the rain after coming home from day care.  He gets so stubborn and mad very easily, you know its on when the veins start sticking out of his neck!

Quick Getaway

We went to Providence for a couple of days during April Vacation, we didn't have any specific plans other than to visit the Roger Williams Zoo.  We just figured we could explore once we were there.  It turned out to be a very good couple of days.  

 On Sunday, we visited Battleship Cove in Fall River, Mass.  We saw a flyer for this place and decided to check it out.  I was very cool.  If I didn't have kids tugging to keep moving to the next set of cannons I could have spent a lot of time there looking and reading.  They have a Battleship, Destroyer, Submarine and a Russian Missile ship on display for tour.  It is all self-guided and all of the boats are tied together at port and you have free range on where to go.

Monday was spent at the zoo and the large park area surrounding the zoo.  All of this area is named after Roger Williams (Founder of Rhode Island).  The zoo was great, there were giraffes, elephants, zebras, camels, buffalo, eagles, penguins.  It was very busy but amazingly wasn't so small it couldn't handle the crowd.

Following the zoo we paddled around in some swan boats in the park and walked different areas of the park.

This is outside the Hasbro World Headquarters in Pawtucket.  There is nothing to do here except take you picture with possibly the worlds largest Mr. Potato Head

Naboo.....Over and Out!

A celebration of life was held in the downstairs bathroom of the Douglass residence for Naboo the fish. Although we only knew Naboo for 9 days, they were a joyous 9 days. Naboo now moves on to be with its previous bowl mates, Darthy and Grevous. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made the Douglass family vacation fund. There are hopes the vacation money could be used to go snorkeling in the Caribbean and see other fish in their natural environment.

I thought the daffodils really made it a special moment!

R.I.P. Darthy and Grevous

Well we are on death watch. Yesterday morning Darthy died and this morning one of the new fish, Grevous, was found dead. We are now down to just Naboo and she ain't looking so healthy. We have moved her into the small tank......not sure if the new big tank has something wrong with it or not.

The boys took it well, we explained everything to them rather than running out and buying replacements. We have agreed once we figure out whats going on we will get some more fish.

Darthy Has Friends

We have had a Goldfish for the past several months living alone in a 2 gallon tank. Boy2 had gotten a tank and gift certificate for his birthday last May, but we never bought the fish until October.........such bad parents. The fish really looked so lonesome over the past few weeks we decided to get some friends and a bigger tank so they could have more space.

Boy1 and Boy2 are very happy to have more fish, but its Carey and I who just sit in front of tank watching them.......we are probably just reminiscing of all the times we got to go snorkeling during our cruises before Boy1 and Boy2 came along.

Truly Hard Headed

There is no question about it, Boy 2 is hard headed. It is his way or no way. He is independent and will not allow anyone to help him (well unless he is just being lazy). But last night it was taken to a whole new level........a different kind of hardheadedness.

The boys always like to bring their bean bags down from their rooms when we watch movies. Boy 2 threw his to the bottom of the stairs and decided to jump onto it from the 3rd from last step. We of course he went head first. This picture shows the drywall following a collision with Boy 2's head. He was perfectly fine and only ran away because he knew he had been told numerous times to not "play-around" on the stairs.

So Damn Cute

Boy 2 wanted to wear his Sea Dogs hat to bed the other night. We thought nothing of it, expecting to come up when we went to bed and find it on the bed or floor somewhere. Nope, it was right on his mellon and he was fast asleep. I called for Carey to come check this out!

He's so damn cute!

Christmas 2011

On top of putting out cookies and milk for Santa, we also went outside to sprinkle "Reindeer" food we got from our visit to Santa's barn at Beans. The second picture would be much funnier as a video. Boy 2 was yelling into the sky to the Reindeer their "food was ready!"

They had to wait at the top of the stairs until everyone was ready to go down stairs. I keep telling myself these are fake smiles, but they could be taken as rabid dogs ready to attack.

I am the champion.........Santa put bubble bath in my stocking!

Umm.......nobody saw me shove a Christmas Tree Peep in my mouth at 7:20 a.m.

Boy 1 and Boy 2 got a bath kit. Yep.........the man grooming has begun during bath time

Boy 2, Santa must have seen how much you really wanted Lotso-Huggin-Bear when you were at Mickey's House. (It really smells like strawberries like they say in Toy Story 3)

And the big gift was a Wii for the whole family. Boy 1 got Super Mario which has turned into a big hit. Everyone is kinda addicted to the game. Carey and I have been playing just about every night when the boys go to bed.

Lead-Up to Christmas

A couple of things we did this year leading up to Christmas was visit Santa's Barn Yard at LL Beans. Carey's mom works there and Beans does something like this every year. It is only open to employees and their families. They have employees who dress-up as different rolls at different stations and the kids walk through doing different activities. They run it for about 8 hours, in half-hour blocks. I think, she said they had around 4,000 people go through!

Making an ornament and being spun for pin the nose on Rudolph!



Giving the list to Santa

And of course we went and got our Christmas Tree. We found this tree farm in Dresden and decided to give it a try. Well as you will see in the pictures the pickings were very slim. This year was his last year in business so finding a great tree was tough......I mean impossible. Once you have the kids there you really can't pack them up and say we are going somewhere else without a melt down. They don't really care if the tree has a bald spot or not, they love it once its decorated no matter what.

They had a good time being pulled and pulling each other through the field. The toughest part was we had to go to the furthest part of the field for any trees and that means they had to walk the whole way back because the tree was on the cart.

Disney

I will get some stories up later, but here are a few pictures from our Disney Vacation last week.

First E.R. Visit

Well Boy 2 had his first visit to the emergency room on Monday. Carey was surprised he didn't have a file at Parkview yet. I guess all the things Boy 1 did to himself (Croup, broken collarbone, fall on his face etc. we became pretty skilled at addressing things.

Though we never learned how to do stitches. Within 90 minutes of being at daycare on Monday after our week at Disney, he proceeded to go head first into a window sill. The funniest part of it all is that Audrey was on vacation so there was a substitute daycare provider there. She felt horrible, but there was nothing she could have done to prevent it.....but it was fun making her feel worse over the past few days!

When Carey finally got a hold of me at work they were all ready at the E.R. She said they were about to start stitches. While driving to the E.R. all I could think of was I remember putting him in a white shirt that morning, I figured it would be covered in blood, but there was nothing on him at all.

When I got there the staff was singing the praises of how well Boy 2 was doing. The nurse said he was easily the best kid they have had in the past 3 or 4 years. Wow, this is the kid who whines at everything. I got there in time to see the final 3 of the 7 stitches go in, not one whimper out of him! The Dr. said kids that young sometimes have to be sedated in order to take stitches. Not Boy 2, some numbing gel and a little shot for good measure.

Halloween and Snow

So the boys wanted to be pirates for Halloween, well actually Boy 1 did and Boy 2 just wants to do what big brother wants lately. I do think Boy 1 will use this power for evil eventually. There is a cartoon on Disney called Jake and the Neverland Pirates, essentially it's Peter Pan.....with no Peter. So Carey again has an idea on how to "make" these costumes for the boys, whips out the sewing machine and presto you now have Jake and Captain Hook.

Though the picture doesn't really show it, the day before Halloween we got 5" of snow. I recall many years of having to wear hats and mittens while trick-or-treating or having to try to put some sort of coat under your costume but never trudging through snow. It only lasted for about 2 days, but it really sours your attitude when you get snow this early. It makes it worse when these two monkeys can't stop talk about how great snow is.

Just Some Catch-Up

This is the first year of playing soccer for Boy 1. I knew soccer was big for the Rec Department, but I didn't realize it was this big. Boy 1 plays on 1 of 14 teams of 5 and 6 year olds, each team has 8-9 players. It's a very tough team to watch.....well because Boy 1's team isn't very good. I'm sure thats why the slogan came along "winning isn't everything." It came from parents who were subjected to watching this. But he likes it!

Carey calls these the varying degrees of cool! Friday was a little on the chilly side and they were each told to put something warm on if they wanted to go outside...........this is what they came up with.

2nd Round of SweetPeaz

Boy 2 started pre-school a couple of weeks ago. We were a little nervous of how hard it would be to leave him there. Once he would be there he would be fine, but the continious hugs not wanting us to go was our worry. First day, smooth as pie. He just went to the window after 1 long hug and waved to me. There were no issues until yesterday, Carey said she picked him up and the teacher talked about the wonderful day he had and everything was fine.

Oh they don't hear his little voice once he leaves. He says to Carey, I hate this school! Walks to the stairs a little more, I hate those flowers! He always has some great under his breath comments that nobody sees coming. There's probably no reason for the comments and he will be fine, but he is pretty funny.