Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Levi is 3!

Levi turned 3 years old on Monday. We did the cake and presents thing, even though Noah is not here. He is over at Grandma's for the week. I asked him if he minded missing out, and he said no; I guess he figures a 3 yo can't get anything too super-cool and not-to-be-missed LOL.

It was hot here again this week, so Levi chose to revisit the clothing he was born in, that is to say, none. He is potty training, so his tendency is to neglect putting pants back on once they are off. He did get into a diaper finally, so at least I could take pictures ;-)

Troyer baked the cake, a red velvet cake, and frosted it, and I did the words and sprinkles.

birthday cake

can't. quite. blow. hard. enough.

Woohoo  Thomas!

Woohoo More Thomas!
This present has been a big hit with all the boys. It is a plug-and-play tv video game. It is challenging enough that they all enjoy playing it. Unfortunately that means they all fight over getting a turn, LOL.

Friday, August 10, 2007

The Good News and the Bad News

The good news: I found grapes on sale yesterday, for $.99/lb and bought 5 lbs. Not a single rotten or moldy one in the bunch!

The bad news: the boys wiped out 5 lbs of grapes in one afternoon. Ack! It's like raising locusts!

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Swimming Lessons

The last two weeks of July were set aside for swimming lessons at the YMCA. This year I had 5 boys signed up. I was hoping Micah would be able to be in the Polliwog class with Caleb and Samuel, but since he is only 5 he had to be in the Preschool class. This made 3 different classes I had to schedule; Troyer and Noah are in Minnow this year. For the first day, I had to go in for two classes, because Minnow was only offered in one time slot, but Preschool for that slot was already full. I had Levi and Jacob with me as well, and it was not fun trying to keep them occupied through 2 classes. After all the boys were done that first day, I went to the instructor and asked if there was any way we could move all the boys into the same time slot. She was super nice and made up a new class for Micah and another girl whose grandmother had the same problem as we did, she had two girls swimming in two different time slots. It worked out really well for Micah, too, because he got better instruction since there were just the two swimmers for one instructor.

Micah

It was still hard keeping Levi happy for the 45 minutes while we sat at pool-side. For preschool classes, the parents are expected to sit on benches right on the pool deck. Last year I sat up in the bleachers, so it was a bit easier to keep the little ones out of the way. Levi was not exhibiting quite enough fear of the water as I might have liked, lol

I'm going to jump in as soon as you're not looking!

Jacob, on the other hand, was great. He sat in the stroller for half the class, then had a snack and fell asleep for the other half.

Samuel is the only one who passed up out of his class, he is now in Guppy all by himself. Caleb has another year of Polliwog to go. His review sheet says he needs more practice on his back.

Caleb

This was the only picture I could get of Samuel, he's taken to not wanting pictures taken lately:
Samuel

Noah and Troyer are at the point in their lessons where they are really just refining technique and learning new strokes. Noah tried hard to learn them well, but he still has some work to do on his sidestroke.

Noah

Troyer and Noah and a classmate

The whole group

Friday, August 03, 2007

Samuel's Birthday

Samuel's birthday was last month, but it was while Troyer was away at camp, so he decided to wait until the next week to celebrate so Troyer wouldn't miss it. Samuel doesn't like bakery cakes, so he chose a flavor of cake mix and he made his own. He really wanted orange cake, but I couldn't find it. He settled for a confetti cake with sprinkles on the icing. He made the cake, and I decorated it. He was very happy with how it came out.

Samuel made it himself!

blowing out the candles

He was very happy with all his presents, mostly TMNT and Legos. He also got a book on Dalmations, which he loves. It is a book on how to care for them, and as he is not a big reader, I thought he'd just like to look at the pictures; but he is actually reading it at night before bed!

I thought it was funny when he opened this gift from his dad and got so excited:

Mmmm  candy!

Woohoo! Candy! LOL