A good day for golf

This week, the driving range where Nathan spends many a lunch hours, hosted a Mommy/Daddy and Me golf clinic. Nathan's mom was actually the first one to hear about it and when she told me and Nathan, we knew it would be a hit with Drew. Nathan was able to take a little time out of his work morning to meet up with us, which made for one very happy little boy. I'm not sure if Drew was more excited about golf or the fact that we pulled up and Daddy was there. In any case, he had a ton of fun and has talked about it all week. Meghan, the instructor, was great! Drew loved her! She was very easy going and made the class flexible to fit whatever style of instruction each kid needed. I loved that about the whole thing. There was no pressure whatsoever. The entire point was to have fun. Perfect!

 Collin and Auntie Jenn Jenn came along to watch too. Thank goodness for Auntie Jenn being willing to be drug all over the county with us! I would never get any pictures of events like this if it weren't for her entertaining Collin for me!

 "Oh! I got that one!!"

 Meghan had put a sticker on the bottom of Drew's shoe to encourage him to pivot and lift his heel at the end of each swing. She walked him through the motions first, and then let him try.

 This was his attempt to show her the sticker as he swung. Looks more like the start of a skip, right? Hehe.

 And just in case she had missed seeing the sticker during the "skip", he made sure to turn all the way around to give her a good look. Silly boy.

 By the end though, he had actually gotten the hang of things!

If you look carefully, you can see Drew's ball.  Look towards the middle of the bush behind the shed on the top left.

 Putting. 

Someday Coll-brother, someday you'll be big enough to go play too...

Drew and Daddy. Thanks hun, for talking the time to come and play! Drew loved loved loved it!

Technically I think my three things should have been last week, but since last week's post was long, I saved them for this week.

Collin:

1. Has another tooth! His top left tooth (next to his front teeth) has come in, bringing the total to five little chompers!
2. He's started climbing things. We have to be careful about putting chairs or toys too close to counters now because he will use them as stepping stools to get onto the counter itself. Yikes!
3. Loves to play outside-in the sandbox, in the dirt, in the water....he's not picky! He just loves to be out!

Drew

1.  Asks "Are we here yet?" or "Are we here now", within the first 5 minutes of every car trip.
2.  Love to sing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm". The only thing is, instead of "E I E I O", he sings "E I E I...F!"
3.  Loves to be read to. His favorites right now are any Curious George books and any tractor related book. I actually really enjoy reading to him, so I'm glad that this is something he is enjoying now as well.

Quick Trip

Well, we're back! We had a fun and quick trip up to see my parents in Oregon, where my sisters and I threw a bridal shower for our other sister Christi. Since a twelve hour drive is a major undertaking with two small hooligans, Jenn and I decided to head up Tuesday so we could at least make somewhat of a mini vacation out of it. However, thanks to a week filled with plenty of dinners, entertaining, Ty Ty's graduation from University of Oregon (yay Tyler!), a friend's birthday, and Christi's shower, our mini vacation turned into quite the whirlwind week! We came home exhausted and teasing that we needed a vacation from the vacation!

We left our house around naptime, as it's the easiest way I've found to make the drive with kids in tow. The boys go down for their naps as we start out, they're awake for a bit, we stop for dinner and to change into jammies, and then they go down for the night for the rest of the drive. Fabulous! (If you could call a 12 hour drive fabulous....). The boys were such troopers! Even with Drew's "Are we here yet?" questions every half an hour or so, they did great! We ended up arriving at my parents' house around one in the morning where we were greeted by the entire family waiting outside for us as we pulled in the driveway. :)

The first night we arrived, Christi let Drew sleep in her bed, where he spent a good hour talking to her about "joker soakers" (a.k.a. super soaker water guns) before falling asleep. The next morning, on a run to Target, Christi happened to find similar water guns to what they had been talking about in the dollar section. She brought a few home and roped Tyler into running around and getting wet outside with Drew. I honestly think this was the highlight of Drew's trip. He loved it and is still talking about playing with the water guns and Tyler. 

P.S. Check out Drew's "bad guy" face in this picture! :)

Drew and Poppi spent plenty of time out in the yard playing trucks

My little blondie

Collin loved the sandbox!

This was the other thing Drew loved, "flying" with Auntie Kell

We had Christi's shower on Saturday evening. I had a ton of fun meeting all of Christi's friends and coworkers, but couldn't get over how weird it was to be at my parents' house and know hardly anyone the girls hang out with these days! Guess that's part of growing up and living apart. Everyone was great, and we all had a fun time embarrassing Christi while showering her with lingerie!

"Christi hearts Tyler"

The delish desserts!

The delish dessert makers! Casey and Jenn. Casey is one of the girls' friends in Oregon. She was not only super sweet and fun to hang out with, but she was a huge help in getting the shower all pulled together

Christi and Ty Ty before we kicked Tyler out for the night 

Party animal Collin, who wanted nothing to do with sleep while there was the possibility of fun to be had!

Since we threw the shower at 7pm, we tucked Drew into Lala and Poppi's bed to watch movies. Spoiled boy!

But of course, not to be left out, party animal Drewski made his appearance half way through the night as well.

Oh Ty Ty...you thought you might get a sneak peak if you checked the blog, didn't you??? Nope! This is as close as you're going to get to seeing what she got! ;)

When I got married, my sister-in-law Kim threw me a shower and while I opened gifts she asked me a list of questions she had already asked Nathan. My job was to give her the answer Nathan had said. For each question I got wrong, I had to chew a piece of bubble gum. Well, of course, I ended up with a wad of gum in my mouth by the end (To this day, I blame Nathan and his ridiculous answers!). Anyway, I have been waiting patiently to put another little bride through this hilarious torture and Christi was the perfect fit! We asked Ty Ty a list of questions and had Christi answer them in between opening each of her gifts. By the end she had so much gum she could barely talk (I think she ended with 9 or 10 pieces of Bubblicious in her mouth!). Christi was a really good sport, and we all got a good laugh.

Christi and her ginormous wad of gum!

Me, my sisters Jenn and Christi, my Momma, and my sister Kell

Anyway, like I said, it was a week filled with fun! Always love our time in Oregon!

Over the river and through the woods...

Gone to Lala's. Be back soon.

Oh, to be three

Well now that I have gotten my mandatory "You're late!" phone call and daily texts from Christi, I suppose I should sit down and actually blog for the week- and yes, I am aware, this is four days overdue. Think of it as a double entry week! This post will be so close to the next post, you'll hardly know the difference! Two posts in one week equals more fun, right? Right?

This week Drew had his last week of parent/child classes at Little Gym. When he comes back after summer break he will be in a class that has only the teacher and other little kids. No parents. It is so strange to me that he's now old enough for things like this! I'm sort of curious to see how well he takes instructions from someone other than mom and dad too! Fingers crossed he does great!

Anyway, because the weather has been so nice, I decided to drag my sister Jenn along and ride my bike (with the boys in tow) up to  Little Gym to drop Drew off with Grandma. I hadn't planned on staying, but since this was the last week of the semester, we ended up staying to watch the kids showcase all the skills they've learned over the past few months. They were all really cute and loaded with plenty of showoff charged energy.

Warm up circle

Drew's favorite, the parachute!

aaaaaaand, the reason why the parachute is his favorite.

Collin also got to try out some of the fun

At the very end, they had a little ribbon ceremony. Drew literally danced up to receive his ribbon. He was so so excited!

And finally, as part of Drew and Grandma's Little Gym dates, they usually go for lunch when his class is over.  This week, Kathleen called me to tell me that they had stopped by Petsmart after lunch and that Drew had a surprise he was bringing home. Since Drew is obsessed with the lizards and snakes there, I was hoping he hadn't somehow convinced Grandma that he needed one. Fortunately when they got here I found that his surprise wasn't actually the scaly reptilian surprise I had imagined (phew!), but was rather a little blue Beta Fish . Drew came bouncing (a major understatement) through the door with his surprise in tow and when I asked him what he had named it, he told me "BlueFish" (gotta love the creativity of the three year old mind!). So, we now have BlueFish who lives in a very blue world picked out almost entirely by Drew. Grandma did managed to convince him he needed a little bit of green in the form of a plant and a few rocks, but everything else is blue. 

Later in the day, Auntie Jenn Jenn also decided to jump in on the BlueFish fun when she made mention of the fact that without a sandcastle in the tank, Drew's fish was without a home. You should have seen the look of panic that crossed Drew's face (and the mini meltdown that followed) over the tragic fact that BlueFish was without a home to sleep in. I thanked Auntie Jenn Jenn for her insight and assured Drew that the next day since we were in need of dog food anyway, we could go on the hunt for a tiny home for BlueFish to live in. Ug! Needless to say, Drew's pretty proud of his pet. Here's hoping he I can keep it alive!