Molly (left) and her friend Eliana (right) are at Trout Lake Camp through Saturday morning. Christa and I brought our daughters to camp yesterday, and they were incredibly excited. I'm sure they are having a great time.
Molly was so silly and excited when I dropped her off. I asked her to smile, and this goofy photo is the best I got. :) The camp is 3.5 hours away, so it made for a long day of driving to take her up and drive back. Thankfully our friend Jason watched Alex for the day. Thanks, Jason! Alex had a lot of fun with your kids!
When Alex and I got to our house, he looked all concerned and asked why we were at our house. I said, "We were going home, Alex. Where did you think we were going?" He said, "But what about Molly? Don't we go get her?" The poor guy didn't understand that she was staying at camp until Saturday. When I told him, he actually started crying! He was soooo sad, and said, "I want Molly here with me!" He loves his sister. :)
Alex's preschool wheel-a-thon was actually back in May, but I just uploaded photos from my phone today and found these.
Here's the crazy scene. They are all supposed to be riding in circles following the chalk lines... but it didn't always happen that way.
Here's Alex (in front in the red coat)! The kids raised money to help build a water well for a school in Guatemala through this wheel-a-thon and a silent auction earlier in the year.
On Wednesday, Jamba Juice had $1 superfruit smoothies, so I took the kids all there for smoothies. Yum! When we got back in the van, I asked them all to lean toward the middle so I could take their photo. I think it's funny how far they are all leaning!
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Fruit Tooth
Tonight at dinner Alex ate a lot of grapes and strawberries. Cory said, "Wow, Alex, you at a lot of fruit!" Alex: I know! I have a sweet tooth AND a fruit tooth, because I like sweets and I like fruit!
Yesterday I took the kids to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. They had a great time exploring all of the sculptures.
Alex
Molly and Alex's friends Isaac and Leah are staying with us for a little over a week. Their parents are on a mission trip to Haiti to help rebuild a clinic that was destroyed in the earthquake. We've been having a fun week!
Molly's last day of school was Thursday, so summer vacation started Friday! I can't believe it's here so quickly.
The last week was kind of crazy.
On Tuesday, Molly had a dentist appointment. It was the 2nd attempt to fill a cavity, and after 1.5 hours of calmly struggling and attempting to get the now two cavities filled, we again left without any fillings. :( It was a really hard day. Molly is incredibly oversensitive to things in her mouth. Even the air tool that blows air and the numbing gel were extremely painful according to her. :( She really wanted her teeth fixed so they stop hurting, but, even with laughing gas, she couldn't make herself cooperate.
Our next option is to try oral sedation, but she has to be willing to drink a small cup of medicine. Molly has never been a good medicine-taker, and she is insisting that she will not be able to drink the sedative. If we can't get the oral sedation to work, we'll have to take her to the hospital and have her teeth filled under general anesthesia. This is not fun. :( Unfortunately, Molly gets cavities extremely easily, too. Her dentist said her enamel on her molars is defective and weak. Poor girl.
On Wednesday just before 5pm, Alex started crying that his knee hurt and he needed a new bandaid. Alex had scraped his knees after falling on the sidewalk at a friend's house the previous week, so he had had bandaids covering his knees for a week. When he was crying on Wednesday, I looked and saw that one of his bandaids was soaked with blood. I carried him to the bathroom and took off all his bandaids to find several infected areas. :( The spot that was bleeding looked terrible, and it didn't seem normal. After tending to his knees, I did a little internet research because something made me suspect MRSA - the antibiotic resistant staph infection.
After seeing some photos that looked like Alex's knees, I took him to the Target clinic. They swabbed the really bad spot to be cultured and tested, and they put him on antibiotics that would work for MRSA just in case. Cory and I stocked up on bandages, antibacterial soap, and other things to make sure we did all we could to prevent the spread of MRSA. We didn't find out until Sunday afternoon that the cultures did come back positive for MRSA, and thankfully the antibiotics are working. Alex's knees are nearly fully healed! Hopefully nobody else gets this crazy stuff!
Then on Friday, Cory woke up early in the morning with a terrible case of food poisoning. We suspected the Thai food he ate at work on Thursday, and today we found out another coworker (who also ate Pad Thai) came down with identical symptoms Thursday night. Cory barely moved all of Friday. :( It did not look pleasant.
Then on Sunday we hosted a fun update BBQ for friends of ours who have been living overseas in Asia. It was great!
Before our last guests left Sunday evening, our friends Denny and Nicole stopped by to drop off their older two children. Denny and Nicole are going to Haiti with a group from our church to help with construction projects there, and we volunteered to watch Isaac (6) and Leah (4) for the 9 days they will be gone. Yes, we'll have 4 kids for a little over a week!
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Here's a photo of Alex... just because I thought he looked cute in his puppy towel after enjoying the kiddie pool. :)
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This photo is of Alex and his good buddy Jerusha. They were enjoying popsicles after their end-of-year preschool program.
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Yesterday, Alex and Cory were talking, and I overheard Alex say, "When I'm a dad, do you know what car I'm going to have?"
Cory: What kind?
Alex: A hot dog car! With mustard on it. (We saw the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile in a parking lot over a year ago, but Alex still remembers it and thinks it is awesome.)
Then Alex went on to tell Cory that when he's a dad, he's going to have a Wii. Instead of buying his own Wii, he said he would take ours. When Cory protested that idea, Alex said, "Well, I'll leave you the games. I'll just take the Wii." Nice.
I ran a half marathon (13.1 miles) with my friend Sena in Fargo. It was fun! These photos were taken once we finished. Woohoo!!!
Here we are running. I'm wearing the blue shirt and pink visor. Thanks, Sena! It was great to train and run with you! ---------------- While we were in Fargo for the weekend, we had dinner with a high school friend and his wife, stayed at a hotel with a waterpark (Molly and Alex keep asking to go back!), and had lunch with my parents at their campsite. It was a fun weekend!
One day I walked upstairs to find this (below) on the outside of Alex's bedroom door. Yes, 3 drawings connected by sparkly pipe cleaners with 3 plastic spoons taped below. When I asked Alex what it was, he said, "You use it to knock on my door." I've left it up on his door because I think it's cute. :)
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One day I walked past a play tent in our house and noticed there was a box inside. The box was heavy, so I took it out to see what was in it.
I opened the box, and I found quite a random assortment of things inside. The box contained a gift bag, a mask, a toy, blue clogs, some paper, a card Alex made, Molly's pajamas, two cardboard tubes, one of Cory's shirts, and a HUGE stack of kleenex. What??? My kid (Alex) is strange. I do not remember all of these items being near each other, so it's not like he was told to clean the room and just put it all in the box. I have no idea what inspired it.
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Last night I took Molly and Alex to the Mall of America to the free Lego build event. They got to make cute little lego grills with cheeseburgers on top. On the way to the mall (only about a 15-minute drive), Molly finished reading Stuart Little. She said, "Mom, I finished Stuart Little!"
E: Great Job, Molly!
M: Are we close to the mall?
E: Yes.
M: I don't have another book with me. What will I do for the ride home?
E: You can look at the Lego thing you build.
M: That will get boring. I need another book. Mom, can we please stop at the book store and buy me another book so I have something to read on the way home?
E: Sure, sweetie.
I can't say no to books! However, Molly will soon need floor-to-ceiling book shelves in her room, I'm afraid. Yes, we do use the library (often!), but she likes to own certain books. Plus, Molly likes to have choices. She is usually in the middle of 2 or 3 chapter books at the same time, and she usually brings them all with her wherever she goes so she can choose which one she wants right then. I just bought her the entire Ramona series, but she needs more books so she can have more choices. Keeping her supplied with books this summer is going to be a challenge I think. It's a good problem to have, though! I hope Alex likes reading as much as Molly does.
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Last week, Cory was reading a bedtime story that mentioned children in a family. Alex announced that he was going to have 10 children. Cory asked why, and Alex said, "so I can have a LONG car!"
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A few days later, I was driving with Molly and Alex in back. We were taking Molly to a birthday party that was only for girls, and Alex was very upset to be left out. I started talking about how siblings should try to be happy for one another when good things happen to one of them. That led to a discussion about what the word "siblings" meant. Then Alex said, "When I am a grownup, I will have six children."
I said, "Wow, Alex. Six?"
A: Yes, six.
Molly: But Alex, then you will have to take care of them ALL, and that will be so much more work!
A: No. They will all stay together so I can see all of them at one time. Then when they are bigger, they will want to go to Mall of America with me and ride my favorite ride.
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Tonight we ate corn on the cob for the first time this summer. Molly and Alex are big fans. We were all eating together and talking. Then all of a sudden, when Alex and Molly were 3/4 done eating the corn off of their cobs, Alex looked at Molly, smiled, and said, "I'm winning."
Cory said, "Alex it's not a competition... " but was cut off my Molly saying, "No, I'm winning!"
There was no stopping it... apparently the race was on. They are both so competitive!
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Alex was recently given a whoopie cushion as a party favor. He thinks they are the best toy EVER! The fun just never ends.
The cutest part is that he keeps forgetting their name, so he calls it his "squishy pillow that toots". Ha!!
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One morning on the way to school, Katy Perry's song "Hot'n'cold" was playing on the radio. Molly listened for a bit and then said, "This singer copied the song from the Chipmunks!!!" She was outraged! (The song is on the Squeakquel soundtrack, which Molly plays daily.)
I had to explain that it was really the other way around.
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On day, Molly and Alex were playing with toy dragons. Their dragons are fighting each other. I overheard Alex say (as his dragon), "Well I'm going to go to God, and he has a plan for us and Jesus will come down and fight you with his light saber!"
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We went bowling for Mother's Day. It was really fun, and the place was empty!
We haven't taken Molly and Alex bowling many times, but we got a great deal on a summer pass to a bowling alley here so we'll be bowling a lot this summer! Molly and Alex love it!
Alex was really fun to watch while we were bowling. He watched his ball very carefully, and he cheered when he did well. In the movie below, he had moved the ramp and lined it up all by himself before bowling.
