Starting the summer off with a bang!

We’ve officially kicked off summertime at our house!  It was Gwyn’s last day of school on Monday, and Jacob’s last day of school on Tuesday. The week started off a little rough, with Brian taking off Monday and Tuesday, his second and third sick days in 10 years of working!  He was pretty miserable, and thankfully the rest of us came out relatively unscathed…Gwyn did throw up on Sunday a few times, and Annie threw up Tuesday about 5 times…lots of laundry for me!!!  Thankfully, everyone is healthy again, and we were able to have a great rest of the week and weekend.  Oh, and that is Gwyn with her new summer haircut, her second ever.  She was so excited to show Brian when she got home.  

Here are a few pictures of Gwyn’s last day of school.  I wasn’t able to go to the splash day with her since I had my urologist appointment (yeah, I passed my kidney stone!).  She and her little BFF Laura are pretty much inseparable, but Gwyn won’t be going to the same preschool with her next year.  Her mom and I are planning to get them together a few times this summer.  Here they are with their teachers.

 Here is Gwyn wrapping up after their Super Summer Send-Off splash day, which was full of multiple slides, bubble houses, painting in shaving cream, sprinklers, etc.

Here she is riding a tricycle around and pulling Laura.

A friend of mine watched Gwyn and Annie for me on Tuesday, so that I could go to Jacob’s last day.  I missed the splash day part, but I was able to pick up the pizza for the kids and catch the last hour of the party.  Hungry little Jacob ate 4 pieces of pizza and a breadstick!

Here he is with his sweet teachers that love him so much!

Here is a picture of the cute little bag they made him.  Both Jacob and Gwyn also were given little picture books, filled with pictures of them throughout the year.  It was so much fun to look through them and see them doing things that you never knew they did…a look into the daily things they did the entire year of preschool.

Oh how times have changed.  I ordered Jacob’s school supplies online, $63, and it took me about 3 minutes to do it.  I was a little sad because one of my favorite things about going back to school was going to pick out all my school supplies…I may just have to let Jacob do this in the Fall, and just let him keep it at home for us to useJ

Jacob and Gwyn got to go to Tadpoles at church again this week.  Next week is their last week, they don’t know it yet, but it is a surprise trip to Chuck E Cheese!  They will be excited.  It was our turn to bring snack this week…POPSCICLES!  Brian said it was the first snack all year, that there weren’t any complaints out of the kids and they all loved it.  They also made some goo…which we played with everyday until it mysteriously disappeared one night after the kids went to bed…it was a mess.  Here is Jacob in control of his goo:

 Here he is having a blast with it, but getting a bit crazy!

 Gwyn in control of her goo:

 Gwyn with it getting a bit out of control:

 Annie trying it out (it didn't make her fingers blue, she had colored them blue earlier in the day).  She did also try to eat it too, but apparently glue and borax don't taste too good:

So, with three days last week of nothing really going on, I decided to take a trip to Nordstroms with all three kids.  Jacob had been wanting some “tie” shoes for awhile.  There are a few kids in his class who can tie their shoes, and since Jacob only has Velcro (poor kid, it is just so much easier for me, and when you’ve had 3 kids in 3 years and 3 months, you’ve gotta take some shortcuts!) he didn’t even have a pair of shoes to practice with, much less know that they were called tennis shoes, just that they had shoe laces that you tied, thus, “tie” shoes.  So, we had to go to Nordstroms to return something, so I took them up to the kids’ shoes, and I realized that I had never taken him into buy shoes before.  He just picked up the first shoe that he thought was cool.  Put it on, said it fit (it was a size too big), and said he wanted this one.  He then looked at me very confused and said, “but I’ve got two feet, why do they only have one shoe out here to buy???”  We got someone to help us, they brought him two shoes in his size, he tried them on, we bought them, and left.  We were done in about 5 minutes…boys!  Oh, and they give away “free” balloons (Brian would say you are paying for them and they aren’t really free), but we got 3 of them.  This picture was the best I got with my camera phone, but we looked pretty funny walking out of there with our balloons.

On Saturday, we took our semi-annual trip to the beach with the Mulsow’s (Brad, Erika & Maddy).  The kids had SO much fun.  Jacob and Maddy were little mud messes, and Gwyn LOVED the water.  Annie was content sitting and watching the birds who kept trying to steal our food.  It was a great night with roasted hot dogs and smores.  Everyone say "CHEETOS!"

 Annie mesmerized by the birds:

 Gwyn having fun digging in the sand:

 Jacob, while he was clean:

 He was covered, head to toe, in sand:

 Some brave birds after some leftovers:

 Sweet little Annie:

And here is the one video I got:

To round out our eventful week, we played outside for several hours per day, went to the park, and the kids got wet just about every chance they could.  The kids are constantly trying to one up each other by figuring out words that rhyme, it is funny to hear some of the made up words that Gwyn comes up with.  “Bread rhymes with snead,” she said this week.  You’re right, that does rhyme??  Gwyn also has been trying very hard to keep a secret.  Brian told her the secret that they were going to tadpoles.  She made such a big deal about NOT telling me, that she forgot what the secret was when Brian told her to tell Jacob.  She's hilarious!  Here is Jacob and Annie playing Angry Birds:

 Gwyn with her water squirter...best $5 spent at Target yet!

 Jacob trying out the basketball and goal for the pool:

 Jedi fighters:

 Milk mustache?  That's for babies, a brownie gotee is what's in now:

Jacob helping Brian put in an automatic chlorine tab dispenser thingy this weekend:

Annie is getting to be so funny.  If you tell her to say please, she’ll say “peeeeeeeeeeeesssssss.”  It really lasts at least 30 seconds!  She will run across the room to give you a high five, if she sees someone else giving one…she doesn’t want to miss out, those are important!  She loves babies, has a stuffed animal of some sort with her every night for bed and for her nap.  When she gets up, she wants to take it with her.  She has at any random moment, at least 4 in the car…when she got sick, I had to wash about 5 of them as well!  She likes to pretend to give her babies food, bottles, pacifiers, etc.  Here she is trying on my shoes:

 Here she is trying to put her little cabbage patch doll's pacifier in her mouth:

 She thinks sticking out her tongue is super funny:

I had to throw these few pictures that Jacob has done this week.  He came and asked me how to spell I love you.  I told him, and then he had taped this picture to the back of my chair at the table later that day.  So sweet, he says that is me and him.

Here is a picture of our family.  All 5 of us, along with Obi Won Kanobi, who Jacob says thank goodness was there because that is General Grievous sneaking up in the grass.

Here is the grocery list.  He was so excited about the beach, he wanted to help with the list.  Smores, Chips (spelled backwards), Buns (spelled backwards), and Hot Dogs.

Funny things the kids said this week:

Jacob (while Brian was sick):  If you got sick too Mommy, then there wouldn’t be any adults in charge.

Me:  Maybe you would have to be in charge.

Jacob:  But kids can’t go to work!

Gwyn:  Daddy, when you are sick, you can’t have any juice (since I cut her off of juice after she threw up a few times)

Me:  You can have milk or water, which do you want?

Jacob:  I’d like my water with a lime in it (seriously!)

Gwyn:  Annie can’t go to tadpoles, she pukes.

Gwyn:  If you see a snake, you’ve got to tell Daddy, not Mommy.

Me to the kids before we walked into Nordstroms:  Stay right by me, don’t run off, and no acting crazy.

Gwyn:  I not gonna act crazy Mommy.

Gwyn:  Mommy, if I was really tiny, I could swim in that (pointing to her ketchup on her plate)

Jacob:  I might marry Maddy since she can ride her bike without her training wheels.

Me:  What about Grace?

Jacob:  Can she ride her bike without training wheels?

Me:  I don’t think so yet, she’s a little younger than you.

Jacob:  Then no.

Gwyn:  You can’t marry your brother, you have to marry someone else like Stacy or Justin or John or Claudia.

Gwyn singing after church:  Y and D, Y and D there is a fountain flowing Y and D

Me:  I think it might be deep and wide, deep and wide.

Gwyn:  No, that’s not how you sing it Mommy.

Brian to Jacob:  Sit in time out and think about what you did.

Jacob (immediately):  I thought about it Daddy, can I get up?

A guy at tadpoles:  You guys can go play or sit and wait patiently while we get the goo ready. (every kid goes to play except for Jacob and Gwyn who are still sitting)  You guys can go play, and we’ll call you when we’ve got it ready.

Jacob:  We’d like to sit and wait patiently.