Category: Family

Sorry I've been neglecting the blog - I've been super-busy at home and work, and we were getting ready for our vacation. So now that we're back, there should be a whole bunch of posts showing up here over the next few days.

We went to the kids' preschool graduation yesterday. I especially love that last shot - with Carter smiling in the foreground, and Sean laughing uproariously in the background. That was taken while the clown was telling jokes. Both kids found her hilarious.

Last week, Lori and the kids went up north with her mom and her mom's friend John. They stayed in a beautiful little place on a lake, and from the pictures I'd say that they had an awesome time. Seeing that one photo of the lake with the mountains in the background makes me really anxious to get up to the mountains myself. Can't wait!

Here are some pics from the weekend before last. We had Tracy's kids stay overnight, and it went really well. Beforehand, Olivia was our biggest worry. What if she was just inconsolable, and wouldn't settle for anyone other than her mom? It turned out to be no problem at all - she didn't give us one peep of trouble the whole weekend. All the kids did great.

Lori took the kids out to play at the playground a couple of weeks ago, and took this picture while there. I think they had the whole place to themselves. She got a bunch of the usual pictures - smiling kids swinging and climbing - but we've got lots of those already, and something about this particular shot really appealed to me. It's just nice to see the kids "sharing a moment".

Just some pics from out most recent trip to Maudslay State Park. The weather has been gorgeous lately, and I find it impossible to stay inside for any appreciable length of time.

Sean has a toy lightsaber, and a couple of weekends ago while I was doing yardwork, he was swinging it around and pretending to sword fight. So I picked up a cardboard tube that had had landscape fabric rolled up on it, and we had a battle. He was hilarious. He would try to fight with me, then he would step back and spin his sword around in a circle, like he was doing tricks. Once he broke my sword into two pieces, I started using it to take him down - swinging one piece at his knees, and the other piece coming the other way at his shoulders. He dropped like a sack of potatoes every time, and laughed uproariously in the process.

One afternoon last weekend, Sean and Carter were sitting at the kitchen table having a snack. Lori and I were in the living room, sitting on the couch. Sean was trying to tell us something, and then suddenly started coughing and choking. It was the sort of choking where you can tell something just went down the wrong pipe, and he wasn't in any danger. So we call out to him, "Sean, are you ok?". And Sean responds, "Don't worry Mommy - I didn't die." Something about that tickled my funny bone.

I love how this set of photos tells a story. In the first one, you can see how Sean is enjoying terrorizing his little sister as she runs away. In the second shot, you can tell that's he's been reprimanded, and is carefully watching to see if he is going to get caught this time. And in the final photo, you can see how Carter has finally had enough and has decided to enact her revenge.

Sean has been asking a lot lately why certain things have the names that they do. In some cases, it's a decent question - he'll ask about some compound word, live driveway, and we'll talk about how it's called a driveway because you drive on it, and it's a 'way'. Or how a 'swingset' is a set of swings. But sometimes he asks some that are harder to answer - like why milk is called 'milk'. Well the other night, he said, "Why I am named Sean? What if I was called... Johnny Kiki?". It tickled my funny bone that that would be the name he would choose for himself. So for the last few days, I've been calling him Johnny Kiki just for fun.