Rockets

When Peter and Josh went to the fathers/sons campout a couple months ago, someone brought a rocket launcher. Everyone got to make rockets and launch them. Apparently, it was a ton of fun. So much so, that Peter decided to make one of his own. His excuse was to make it for a Young Men's activity, but when the bishop told him he could submit the receipt and the ward could keep it, Peter said no. He was planning to keep it for himself. :) I think he'll be making one for the ward sometime too, so it's all good.

Anyhow, a little while after he made it, we took it out to the park and launched some rockets of our own. It WAS a ton of fun. All it is is some pipe, a valve, and an air pump. You pump it up to the pressure you want, then turn the valve. It's shocking how high these little paper rockets can get.


Peter with his creation, getting ready to send that rocket flying.

Josh loved helping with pumping up the air.

Emily enjoyed launching the rockets.

Josh was so good at running to get the rockets. I think if I'd been chasing them, we may not have stayed nearly so long. :)

Baby Chain

The other day, Josh woke up and went to the front room looking for something. When he came back, he was a bit upset and asked where the babies were. (He always speaks of the baby in plural because he doesn't want to have to share "his" baby with Emily.) I told him they were in the toy box, thinking he was talking about the dolls. When he came back, he was still upset and let me know he was looking for the "real" baby. At which point, I had to inform him that the baby was still in my belly. His response?

"Why did you put the babies back?"

It took a while (several days) for him to understand that the baby had never come out and that it will be awhile before it does.


I came up with a solution. I thought maybe something visual might help him understand how very long it will be until the baby is supposed to "come out." So we made a paper chain with dates and a count down written on them so we'd be able to see how long of a wait we had. Kind of depressing when I look at it... it's sooooo long! :)

The day we made it and put it up, we still had 172 days to go. Wow, that was a lot of links to make. But it was definitely worth it. Josh and Emily both love to have their turn to tear a link off the chain at the end of the day. Now when Josh asks about the "babies" I can remind him of this chain and he realizes it will be some time.

Thanks

Lately, Josh hasn't been taking naps as much. Today, he just happened to. But I woke him up early so he'll go to bed at a decent time, plus he really wanted to help with some cleaning. How sweet of him!

At one point, we cleaned off a dresser in my room. On top, there was a piece of fabric I bought for him a couple years ago. My intention had been to sew up the edges and make a square for him to become attached to. It never happened, but today, Josh saw it and wanted to make something with it. So I pulled out the sewing machine and matched up the edges and started sewing. Halfway through, I realized it would be a nice bag, instead of just a square, and asked if that's what he wanted. He did. So, I made a bag.

Here is the bag we made.

The purpose of this story? After I handed it to him, he looked at me and said, "That was really nice of you to make this for me."

That blew me away. He's so good at saying "Thanks" but this was really thought out and sincere. I'm so proud of him.

Clubhouse

A while back, Peter got a huge piece of equipment at work. It came in this enormous box. It was actually taller, but we cut it down so it would let more light in, and take up less wall space. Anyhow, this is one sturdy box. It has 3 layers of cardboard, so it's strong enough for the kids to play on. Peter brought it home, and made this. It has been a hit ever since.


There is a tunnel sticking out the side behind that black thing. Peter also built a great platform so the kids can use the slide. We had to reinforce the top with some wood so it wouldn't fall apart when the kids grabbed it to go down the slide. After we added all the wood, we realized that this will be somewhat of a permanent fixture in our home now. The kids will get plenty of fun using this over the next year or so.

Socks

Josh has this thing about wearing socks on his hands. I guess he thinks it's cold here... with highs in the 90's some days and all. Go figure.

Strawberry Picking

A couple weeks ago, we headed over to the strawberry farm with some friends and had a bunch of fun picking strawberries. Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures there. Oops!

The kids had a great time. Josh picked a few. Emily ate a ton. And we came home with 14 lbs of strawberries. As you can imagine, Emily eating strawberries is not the cleanest of endeavors, so we made sure to get some pictures after we got home.


These aren't the best of pictures, but if you look closely, you can see the strawberry all over her face and clothes. Ahhh the memories.... Thank goodness for Oxyclean!

Answer

I know everyone is on pins and needles here, so I apologize for the delay. ;) The correct answer was given by KC and Heather. Good job you two!

Search, Ponder and Pray.

Josh is such a creative kid. I am so blessed to have him. I can't wait to see what else he comes up with in the coming years.

Here's a hint...

It took me a couple days to figure out which song this was. I didn't catch on until Josh said "the spirit star grows in my heart." Any guesses now?

I'll post the answer tomorrow! I know you guys are dying to know, but I wanted to make sure this ended up in our blog book when I print it some day.

Song Title Trivia

Every night at bedtime, we sing primary songs to the kids. Josh has gotten to where he asks for certain of his favorites each night. Typically, his version of the titles are fairly straight forward. Such as

"In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen" = "I pray in faith"
or
"The Baptist" = "Baptism"

But a couple weeks ago, we had to decipher this one

"The Spirit Star"

Wow! What in the world could that be? (Josh is such a creative boy) Well, I figured it out. But I was wondering if any of you had any idea. Leave a comment with your guess, and I'll let you in on the answer in a couple of days. :)

(Hint - this phrase does appear in the first verse when going completely off the way it may sound to a 3 year old.)

Jekyll Island

Note: This is a super long post. Sorry about that. Feel free to just glance at the pictures if the story is too long. :)

The weekend of April 16-18 (that was a Thursday through Saturday) we went camping at Jekyll Island, GA with some friends we knew in Clemson. We had such a great time. It was so pretty there, and there was so much to do.

Thursday evening we got there and set up the tent. We got there late enough that we had had to stop at McDonald's for a small dinner on the way in. After setting up the tent, we were still determined to have hot dogs for our "real" dinner, so we cooked some up for the kids. Neither of them took a bite. Oh well. So we went ahead and put them to bed. While they were going to sleep, I realized we'd left all that food out, but didn't think we were in any trouble yet. Oops! A raccoon had already made off with the kids dogs. So, Peter put up all the food that was still there. After the kids were asleep, we made some hot dogs for ourselves... over the camping stove thistime, since we couldn't get the fire going... oh well. I was soooo looking forward to a hot dog in a hot dog bun (a rare treat in my house, since we always use tortillas or bread). Come to find out, a raccoon had made off with all the buns, bag and all. So much for fire roasted hot dogs on buns. Oh well. I show you some pictures of our campsite, but I have a knack for deleting pictures, so we managed to lose a few, including the pictures of the campsite. :)

Trip to the Sea Turtle Exhibit

On Friday, we took a trip to see some Sea Turtles. That was pretty neat. The kids had a great time. They had a neat little room to learn about the turtles, and then they had a sea turtle hospital where we could look at the sea turtles they were treating. That was pretty neat. Full grown sea turtles can be HUGE!


Josh admiring a young Loggerhead turtle. He also got to see them feed it a little later. They call this one #11. So personal. :) That white square in the bottom is where they put the food. That way, the turtle has to work to get at the food so that when they release him to the wild, he'll already be used to not getting the food handed to him too easily. I can't remember what was wrong with this one, but they said they would be sending him back to the wild soon.

Did you know that sea turtles always return to the area they were born in order to lay their eggs?

Emily feeling the different textures of the different types of sea turtle eggs. They really are quite surprisingly different from each other and different from what you'd expect from looking at them.

Here is the head of a full grown sea turtle. I don't know about you, but if I saw a turtle with a head this big, I'd turn and run. I don't know if they still grow this big, but they found this fossil, so who knows?

Like I said, we went camping with some of our friends from Clemson. This is Tyler and Ainsley with our kids. They were all so happy to be there and had such a great time. By the way, Ainsley is the little girl Josh kissed when he was about a year old. I heard about it from someone at church who told me that Josh had just walked right up to her and planted a kiss right on her. Too bad I missed it.


Beach Time!

After we went to the Sea Turtles, we went over to a beach to see the ocean. It was too cold to swim or anything, but it sure was beautiful. It's so much fun to watch the kids explore something new.

Emily LOVED the water. It took all I had to keep her from jumping in to go swimming on her own.


This is an odd picture. We have no idea what it is. Peter and Thomas saw it as they were playing with the kids a little further down the beach. If you have any clue as to what this is, let us know.


One of the best parts of the beach is digging holes in the sand and making "sand castles." It's really neat how the holes automatically fill with water, too. That doesn't happen in our sand at the apartment complex.


After I got Emily away from the water, she decided this looked fun and came to join them.

Play Time!

Following the excursion to the beach, we decided to drive over to a mini golf course that happened to have a neat playground right next to it. Jekyll Island is such a fun place. I would love to go back some time. The kids had a blast, and we had so much fun watching them with their new adventures.

Josh is not a shy boy. He loves to hold hands with other kids. I'm glad he likes to make sure people know he likes to be with them. Such a sweet kid.


Is this the face of a kid who LOVES to swing? You bet!


Too bad for Emily, she's just a little too small to play mini golf, but you're never to small to play with the obstacles it seems. Of course, if there's something to climb in the near vicinity, you can be sure she has found it and is starting to ascend it by the time I notice it.


Josh getting ready to putt. How Josh plays mini golf... He hits the ball off the tee pad. When it stops, he takes it over to the hole, sets it down next to it, and hits it in. A score of 36 on 18 holes is not bad for a 3 year old.


Daddy was the lucky one who got to play golf with Josh. He just adores his Daddy. It is so neat to see them together and watch Josh as he tries to emulate him.

So, there were other photos, but I lost them. Oh well. We had a great time, and we look forward to our next chance to get out camping together.