Memorial Day and River Festival

This year, we celebrated Memorial Day at Lake Kanopolis with the Hensley and Guy families.  The water level was still too low to get a boat into the water, so we spent our time playing at the beach and in the kiddie pool as a family.  Ledger enjoyed spending time with his cousins Jonas and Faith.  The kids tried to fish a few times but never caught anything.  On Monday, we had a family fish fry followed by a Memorial Day family walk.

Ledger got tired of riding his bike, so his brother pushed!

The beginning of June is always River Festival fun.  We spent two weeks searching for the Festival medallion, but once again, we weren't successful.  It's always a fun search though.  We really enjoyed spending the Festival with the Perkins, Guy, and Hensley families.  In sticking with tradition, we participated in the Festival Five Races. Uncle Josh ran the 5 mile but the rest of us walked the 2 mile route.  Then the kids ran their races.  Again, we were very proud of Ledger who ran the whole race and had a great time.  He finished 5th in his age group.  Ronan also ran in the 4 year old race and we were proud that he ran the whole race too!  Kinley did great in her age group.  She was ahead of the pack by 20+ feet but then the cheering crowd made her nervous and she turned around and ran in the wrong direction!  LOL. The crowd thought it was hilarious.  She ended up in third.

Locke Walks!

Today, Locke is 14 months old and he is finally starting to take some steps on his own!  He loves to push around everything in the house: chairs, toys, tables, whatever.  He's strong and walks very well as long as he has one hand on something.  But with a little cajoling, we are forcing him to take a few steps on his own.  Here's a good video of Daddy bribing him with oyster crackers. (Funny fact: Ledger was bribed with oyster crackers to walk too.  Our babies love oyster crackers. ?)

He's also doing lots of other fun things.  He has picked up the baby sign for "more" and we're working on "please", "water", and "milk".  He's a pretty sweet baby, but he gets frustrated by his lack of communication. When he wants something or someone, he points at it and if he hears NO, he screams.  He sure has a little temper.  But he can also be sweet as pie!  The whole room lights up when he smiles or laughs.  And he loves to give big, sloppy, open mouth kisses...

Ledger's 4th birthday

Today was Ledger's 4th birthday.  I can't believe how fast time has flown.  Everyday this kid makes me smile, laugh, and thank God for blessing us with such an amazing kid.

We had a very big weekend of celebrations.  Boom Ma and Boom Pa, Emmy and Josh, Oma and Doodah all came over on Saturday morning to help us build Ledger's present... A big swing set!  (Actually, this is a combo gift for both kids from all three sets of grandparents plus us.)  Everyone worked all day on Saturday in the unusually cold weather and got it mostly complete before the party that night.

We meet Grammie and Papa for dinner at Carlos O'Kellys where Chris and Josh took the cinco de mayo "El Guapo" challenge.  They stuffed 5 spicy enchiladas and 1 taco into their mouths in 10 minutes!  They were miserable.  For his birthday, Ledger got to wear a sombrero and eat fried ice cream, of course!

After dinner, we all came back to the house for a special party. We had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party!  ledger got lots of great present including a full set of skates and a knight armor set!  He loved his turtle cake and decorations. :)

On Sunday, we woke up early and got back to work on the swing set.  By 2 o'clock it was finally finished. The boys loved playing on it!  We are so thankful that our family could help us build it... We would have never gotten it done without them.

Ledger had another birthday dinner with the Michels on Sunday evening.  By the time we got home, he was exhausted and fell asleep while I was running his bath!!  He was partied out!!

Texas Vacation - The Big Bang

I guess our vacation series wouldn't be complete if I didn't tell the whole story.  We woke up early on Saturday to try to get going and I got us into a pretty severe car wreck.  I was concentrating on finding road signs and didn't see the traffic signal.  We were hit on the driver's side rear wheel and spun around.  It scared the kids, but no one was seriously hurt.  The other car was totaled, but the driver was OK.  We had our flat changed by the tow truck driver (Do you know where the spare tire is in a minivan with stow-and-go seating?  It's up under the center console and has to be lowered with a special tool.  Seriously.  I had to google it.) and were able to drive our car to a rental car facility.  It just happened to be right next door to a Collision repair shop.  Thank God.  So we rented a car to drive home and left our car there to get fixed.  The remainder of our travels were (thankfully) uneventful.

Texas Vacation - San Antonio, Day 6

I had been especially looking forward to our Friday activity -- sharing Sea World with my family.  We had done a fair bit of preparation, so we had a game plan to hit the park.  We got there early in the morning about 30 minutes before the gates opened.  Enough time to take pictures and be SECOND in line for Sea World.

Our first stop was the morning dolphin feeding!  The dolphins were anxious to get their breakfast and were showing off for all of the guests.  Ledger was still a little too nervous to touch the dolphins, but he helped feed them and Mommy and Daddy got to pet the dolphins.  Afterwards, we stopped by the shark tank so Ledger and Daddy could check out the SHARKS!

Check out this show-off dolphin!

On our way to the first show of the day, the Clyde and Seymore sealion show, we found Shamu and took a family picture!

The walrus is always the star of this show...

Next up... SHAMU!  I could not have been more excited for Ledger to see a killer whale.  In the interest of total honesty, as the show started, I started crying.  Not a pretty cry either -- an ugly, can't-make-it-stop kind of cry.  That's how much I loved the show.  We donned our ponchos and sat right in the middle of the arena about 20 rows up -- just inside the splash zone.  Ledger loved the whales.  Even Locke pointed at them in the front and center.  They also brought out baby Shamu, which was pretty cool.  We didn't get much of a splash -- but we really enjoyed the show.

The next show was the dolphin and beluga whale show.  It is a combination of a cirque du soleil type acrobatics/diving/synchronized swimming with the animals performing as well.  It's a good show, but after Shamu, it didn't shine. After dragging the kids to all of the shows, we finally stopped in the kids area.  We took pictures with some of our favorite Sesame Street characters and then Daddy got Ledger on the Shamu kids roller coaster.  We had to carry him onto the coaster because he didn't want to go, but after his first ride, he RAN back to the entrance and was ready to ride again.  So sweet!

So we finally slowed down enough to stop for lunch.  But then we were off again!  We visited the penguins, the crocodiles, and the education animals.  Chris got to ride one of the big-kid roller coasters.  Locke passed out in the incredibly uncomfortable plastic rented stroller.  We bought a souvenir magnet.  And then, by unanimous family vote, we hit the last Shamu show of the day!  This time, we sat in the FRONT ROW splash zone.  Yes, it took a little convincing to get the husband to stay knowing he was going to get soaked, but we had our ponchos and were prepared.  We got a few great pictures before the camera had to be put back into the "dry" bag to avoid ruining our electronics!  BOY DID WE GET WET.  Seriously soaked.