St Jude Trike-A-Thon

Max's preschool participated in the St. Jude Trike-A-Thon two weeks ago. The kids were asked to find sponsors to donate to St. Jude's Caner Center and then bring their bikes, trikes, blades, scooters, etc to school to ride them. They also had a little workshop on bicycle safety. Max was really excited to go and participate. He wouldn't bring his new bike from Santa, but that was ok. He was also very cute asking family and friends to donate money to his fundraiser. We tried explaining to him what it was for and I think he understood most of it (sort of). He knows that he collected money to buy sick kids some medicine so they could ride bikes like him. Close enough for a 3 yr old! This is Max gearing up for the big day. He insisted on bringing his helmet too but would not take a picture with it.

This is the medal that he got for participating and, as he puts it, for being the "most fastest rider in the whole world"! No self esteem issues here!!

Thanks to everyone who sponsored Max and the other kids for such a worthy cause. The school was able to raise $2000 for the hospital!! Not too shabby for a bunch of three year olds!!

Crafty Crafty Me!

I finally got around to recovering my kitchen chairs last week. It's amazingly disgusting what two little boys can do with cream colored seat cushions. This BEFORE picture is the cleanest of my dirty chairs. Much too embarrassing to post pics of the dirtest one! BEFORE

AFTER

What do you think? I like them!

Fun Times at Home

The weather is starting to warm up so I can hardly keep the boys indoors anymore. We take advantage of every warm afternoon (when the wind is calm) to head outside and be loud and noisy. If we aren't at the park, we are being rowdy in the neighborhood. I would much prefer to hang out indoors but as the mother of two boys I lose that battle quit a bit. So if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! Zach is sure that he is as big as Max so here is a picture of when Jeff tied him to the trike and had Max pushing him up and down the street, scooter-style. My poor baby! He loved it.

Zach is turning out to be just as artistic as Max. He prefers skin to paper though. I hope this doesn't mean he'll come home with a tatoo or something one day!!

Max takes his artwork very seriously. Today he drew a snowman that really looked like a snowman! I should probably scan it and post it but I probably won't. It's on the fridge right now and might get sent to Grandma Mouse one day. Who knows!

As I've said before, Zach has no fear of anything and is actually pretty coordinated. He has conquered the slide in our backyard in record time.

Max is still the swinging champion. He has just about worn out the brackets to our glider swing. He could swing for hours I bet. He's such a fun little guy! Hopefully we'll keep having sunny weather until the windy season really hits b/c outside play really does make the day go by faster.

Travels with Nana

While Nana was here, we took her to some of our favorite spots in town. Keep in mind that we don't live in the most exciting of places and with a 3 yr old and 1 yr old we are limited in what we can do. We need cheap places that they can be loud! Here are some pictures of our play. This is Max hanging out at the play place in the mall. They love to run around and play and then get a treat from the cookie store convieniently placed within sight of the playground.

Our mall also has a little train the kids can ride. For $2 a kid (or less is you buy packs like I do) Max gets to ride the train for about 4 minutes while ringing the bell and get a stamp and a sticker when he leaves. Zach has ridden it a few times but recently has decided he is terrified of it. Fine by me, I save the $$ and he'll eventually get over it.

Another spot we frequent is the McDonald's playland that is about a mile from our house. The only downfall is that you have to buy something from McD or your kids can't play. And it's SOOOO hard to get my kids to eat chicken nuggets!! (Sense the Sarcasm)

Zach has mastered the ins and outs of the playground much faster than Max did. The child has absolutely no fear and it seems that no one has told him that he is only 1. He climbs and slides like a pro! Not a baby anymore :( He's still a cutie though!

Incredible Pizza

Jeff was home for a couple of days a few weeks back and promised to take Max to play golf. We decided to go to Incredible Pizza to play mini golf, arcade games, and eat pizza. Zach wasn't feeling too well but still managed to have a little fun. Max had a blast playing golf-his favorite pastime-and winning tickets to get "great prizes". Zach liked to push whatever buttons he could reach. He didn't win too many tickets but he sure tried.

Max would have made his Grandma Mouse proud with how well he did at skeeball. That's where we got the bulk of our winnings.

Zach finally found something he could do without help, very important to him right now. Ride'em Cowboy!!

Max and Zach couldn't decide who should be in the driver's seat on this one so they kept switching. I think that will be an issue for the next 20 yrs!

Zoo with Nana

Nana was in town for a few weeks and we were able to do a lot of fun stuff. Here are some pictures from our trip to the zoo. It was a beautiful day and the kids wore themselves out showing Nana around. It's even better now that Zach is more into it. He finally figured out that there were animals at the zoo! he ran around all day growling and pointing at everything. Max tried as hard as he could to get into the pachyderm inclosure. Most of us call these big gray animals elephants, but not my Max. Nothing average abou this kid!

He didn't get in the real elephant cage but did manage to ride the elephant statue. Close enough I suppose.

My two boys couldn't be more different! Zach wanted to sit on way and look at the bears and Max was busy watching the monkeys in the other directions.

Zach was so fun to watch while he tried to figure out what was going on behind all the ropes and fences. He's growing up way too fast thanks to his idol/big brother.