Hot Air Balloons

The boys were soo excited to see the hot air balloons this year that we went twice.
First, on Michael's birthday, second on the 4th of July before the parade.
They liked Smokey the bear.
He kept saying 'Ba-oon Hi! Hi!' (meaning high in the air)

Next the the coke bottle. I think they said it was 188 feet tall.
Michael loved the pig!
Standing tall.
After the balloons launched, we had to stand on the edge of the field. The balloonists would drop a bean bag, trying to land it on the X in the middle of the field. We saw 3 tries before we left.
Star trooper!
Darth Vader
The blowing up of the balloons.
Star Wars guys
On the 4th it was too windy, so only 1 balloon went up (tethered, as shown). After that balloon was down, a huge gust of wind blew all the balloons that were inflated over, on to the crowd. We all left in a hurry. Rob had to hold his hand up to keep him and Michael from being crushed by the Darth Vader balloon.
This Darth Vader balloon made Christopher's day. He was soo excited when he found out it was going to be at the balloon festival.

You can tell the difference in the sky between days.

Sorry, we took lots of pictures of this because Christopher liked it so much.
Happy boys on the 4th of July.

Picture with the 'Star Wars guys.'
And lastly, a picture with Smoky the Bear himself.

Michael's birthday!

Michael is a big 2 year old now. He loves his basketball shirt and his bear.
It smells so nasty because he always chews/sucks on it. I wash it once a week, but wish I could pull it away to wash it more often. (he doesn't carry it around all day, it's usually in his bed, but sometimes he pulls it out. And sometimes it gets lost. That is not fun. )

Some cute things about Michael right now:

• He can always spot the moon- no matter if it's day or night/ how small or big it is.
• He calls Christopher 'Wah-ah'
• He tells 3 stories over and over again.

1. Story 1: Da-Do, Maceys, car (translation: Uncle Daniel took him to Maceys and drove him around in the car-carts (and bought him an ice cream cone. I think he's going for favorite uncle. ) )
2. Story 2: wing, Ow (pointing to arm), Da-da (translation: I was swinging and fell, so I was hanging on by 1 arm (and it hurt apparently), and Daddy saved me.)
3. Story 3: Gown, gar, May-ees (translation: A clown gave him a toy car at Maceys)

We went to the hot air balloons & he loved it! I will have a whole post on that in a couple days.
We stopped by Maceys for their free french toast breakfast. They have a yummy butter syrup! Michael LOVES Maceys (a local grocery store.)
Michael loves riding in the car-carts (but usually doesn't last very long because he hurts Christopher.) He also likes the free kids' cookies they give at the bakery, and the smarties at the registers. No wonder he asks to go there everyday.
Then we went home to open his presents.
We gave him a kiddie pool, swim diapers, and a box of fruit snacks (which he still talks about). My parents gave him this orange apron and a package that came in the mail later in the day. Rob's parents will give him their presents when we go to visit them soon.
He even shared his fruit snacks with us!
Christopher said "I have a present for him too!" and ran downstairs to get this train set that his friend Caleb handed down to him a month ago.
Michael liked playing w/the hose while the pool was filling up.
Michael wasn't as crazy as Christopher
Enjoying the sun. (on one of the hottest days of the year so far.)
It's fun to have a backyard!
I decorated Michael's birthday cake while he was sleeping. I stole this idea for my friend Heather (thanks!!) and everyone was very impressed. It was really simple and fun to make. (first time my frosting had a good consistency- cuz I actually followed a recipe!) I also learned I have to share the black licorish with Christopher. I didn't know he liked it until today.
Michael took such a long nap because we woke up so early, that I had to wake him up for his birthday dinner (pepperoni pizza, carrot sticks, watermelon, and strawberry lemonade), but I had to take a picture of him sleeping because he looked so peaceful. He really does love his bear.
Grandma and Grandpa Loftus' package came in the mail while Michael was sleeping, so after dinner he opened it and loves his toy story 3 lego set! (Christopher thinks its pretty cool too.)
Michael with his birthday cake.
I laughed so hard after taking this picture-with Michael scratching his armpit.
He blew one candle out, then sort of breathed in the other one. I was surprised that he didn't eat his cake, but just went for the ice cream. Michael enjoyed having Aunt Gabrielle and Uncle Isaac over for cake & the phone calls & skype w/other family members.

And stats from his drs' appointment today: 28.8 lbs, and 34.5" tall. He is heavy! One last bit of info: he chipped his front top tooth. I was hoping to get a picture of it, but couldn't. Sorry, no story about it, I don't know when it happened. Maybe one of the times he was running down a grass hill at the park, he hit it on his bottom tooth.

Making dinner fun

For dinner tonight I made a veggie pizza because we had tons of yummy produce. I was thinking about making 1/2 of it 'kid friendly' but then had the idea to make personal pizzas for the kids. I might have for my hubby too, but he wasn't home, so I just made a cookie sheet size for us. (and left mushrooms off his side.) Our pizza had ranch as the sauce, red bell pepper, mushrooms, olives, red onions, tomatoes, spinach, and cilantro. For cheese I used a mix of cheddar and pepper jack.

Here are the boys' pizzas. I told them they had to have at least 2 veggies on their pizza. Christopher's is on top. He didn't want sauce & he had twice as many olives, but I made him take some off. He also chose 2 mushrooms (he even at one of them!) and 1 piece of spinach (which he did eat!). I was surprised w/his choices. Michael grabbed a handful of everything and put it on in bunches. I spread it out a bit.
Michael was soo excited about his 'pee-ee me'
Christopher enjoying his pizza.
'Mom can I have some more water- this cheese is spicy!"

What we've been up to...

Christopher's cast. (And Kindergarten graduation shirt-all the kids in his class signed it. We're going to have to go to his teacher's house and get another picture of them together, since we don't have those pictures any more:( At least she only lives a block away (but she's in a different ward!) We've seen her a few times since the end of the school year.
Awww... my arm's broken
Michael loves playdough (lay-oo) right now. For some reason he likes Christopher's set (In the box) more than his set (in a ziplock bag).


Smiles

Sunday best (almost too small...Christopher wore this forever)
More smiles

I was going to save the potty chair for Michael's birthday, but I left the box out & one day he was sitting on it. I asked if he wanted to use the potty chair & he said yes, so we opened it, he sat on it, and went! I've been lucky 3 times- getting him to sit on the chair when he needs to go. He is staying in diapers until he tells me when he needs to go though. Less messy!
We had a gift card to a local theater, so Rob suggested that I take Christopher to see 'Suessical the Musical.' Christopher loved it and has been dancing around like a monkey singing some of the songs.
Christopher brought this home from a birthday party. It use to have a yellow stripe too. We thought it was really cool. We had never seen a balloon artist make anything like that before.

The Big 3-0

I wanted to make Rob's 30th birthday special. I spent many hours pondering the best way to do this and 10 hrs working on projects. This is huge for me because usually I say 'what do you want. well, why don't we buy it now since we're here.' I stole my friend Maren's idea and gave Rob 30 presents- 1 for each year of his life, and representing his favorite things. This picture was taken after the scavenger hunt for the presents (they were in 5 groups of 6). As we went along, we just shoved opened presents into one bag, so those 2 bags on the bed are crammed full of stuff. Because he got 3 movies and tons of candy/junk food (don't worry, there were nicer, sentimental presents too-remember the 10 hrs of work!) Rob made the comment that we (meaning everyone who gave him presents) must think he's a couch potato. Christopher loves to tell people 'my mom thinks my dad is a potato on a couch' or 'my mom thinks my dad is a hot potato.' Too funny! Rob was very appreciative of all my hard work and really enjoyed his presents, especially the photo album his mom and I put together, and the garmin (navigation system) from his parents.

Sigh, its been one of those weeks

I'm starting to feel like Job because everything is going wrong! (though most of it is my fault because I"m not making smart decisions.)

• I messed up 2 of Rob's bday presents that I"ve been making. On 2 different days. I can't go into detail yet, because there is an off chance he will look at our blog before Sunday. (but when you spend 15 mins looking for something and not finding it, then after you use something else and realize you didn't need to do that in the first place-taking up 45 more minutes, and now it doesn't look as good as it would of, or you need to hide mistakes in addition to presents, hoping they aren't found, life is frustrating.
• I clicked 'scan and fix' on the SD card instead of 'continue w/o scanning' when uploading pics of kindergarten graduation, and now there are no pics on our SD card. :'(
• While trying to pop the lid off the oxyclean gel, the whole top came off & it went everywhere
• We can't find Michael's bear, even though we saw it 3 hrs ago
• Christopher's glasses frames broke when he bent over to pick something up (luckily they were under warranty by 1 week)
• Christopher broke his arm

Which is actually a fun story for him to tell, and didn't damper my day/weekend too much, but I wanted to put a picture of that up, but now the SD card is busted. Grr!

Ok, here's the story. We walked to the park (Michael in stroller, Christopher riding his bike), 'discussing' what we were going to do for Memorial day weekend. I thought it was too cold to camp, but a picnic sounded nice. Rob and I were playing w/Michael & Christopher was playing tag w/random kids. 15 minutes later Christopher came running to us because he hurt his arm. He pulled his sleeve up and I almost started crying. (I vividly remember putting my hand to my mouth in shock.) Rob said, 'well it's time to go. you broke your arm Christopher! you get to have it x-rayed and get a cast!' Christopher thought that was cool and he sat in the stroller. Suddenly we were all in chipper moods talking to Christopher about his broken arm- Memorial day weekend plans don't matter now. They were out of the question. I pushed the stroller while holding Michael, as Rob was juggling the bike and helmet. We switched 1/2 way home. At the Instacare we talked about how it was just like Harry Potter's arm when it broke- and lost the bones. In less than an hour we were out w/a splint and a sling and a smiling Christopher. He didn't cry and when the nurse said it was going to hurt when they did the x-ray, he said, "ok, why?' 'just when we position it for the x-ray." (Everything was lined up well, both bones were definitely broken.) That was on Thursday. Yesterday, Tuesday, he was x-rayed again, then he got the cast put on. (there was a little bit of a run-around because the drs office wasn't clear about when they wanted us to come in, which was frustrating.) They didn't have any blue casting material, so he got a red cast. (they didn't have great boy colors- just red, pink, orange, yellow, and purple.) He loves the attention of having a broken arm & interjects it into conversations when ever he can. The way he tells the story: "So, I was on the playground up really high by the slide and a kid bumped me and when I was falling I did a full flip and landed on my arm."

I am soo glad I didn't see it!

The School Carnival

At the school carnival on Friday Christopher got his face painted.
Jumped down a big slide.

We had dinner.
Cotton candy. (so nice that it was only 50 cents!)
Michael didn't want to stand up in the bounce house, but Christopher had fun in it. Then on Saturday Christopher had 2 birthday parties in a row. What a fun weekend!