Summer heats up

The summer is flying by! Here are some of the highlights from that last couple weeks:

Jay's brother, Herb, and his son, Dean, visited for a few days on their way home to California. Even though Dean is quite a bit older than Kahlil - he's 11 - , they had a great time together playing and riding bikes. We all went to a Corvallis Knights (the semi-pro baseball team) game one night. By chance it was a 'Dash for Cash' night... basically kids go to the infield, and on the count of three a person at each base throws 1000 one dollar bills in the air, and then the kids do what they do. As Jay said the kids turn 'Lord of the Flies'. Dean only came back with one dollar... it's a sore subject. But after the game, they let the kids run the bases. Dean, Kahlil, and Langston all thought that was great. The video at the bottom of this post is of Kahlil running the bases.

Langston had his 15 month check-up. At 24 pounds, he is still 50th percentile for height and weight. He has been communicating more but mostly with grunts and head shakes. He will say 'uh-oh' when he drops something, which is very cute, but that is pretty much the extent of words... we're working on 'mama' and 'dada' but he's not really into it.

Blueberry season is in full swing. Kahlil's fantastic picking skills picked up where he left off last year. On our first day out last week, he filled his bucket and picked two pounds. We went again yesterday and meet a few friends. He was really disappointed when it was time to leave and his bucket wasn't full but he still managed to pick over a pound. Our combined efforts has yielded nearly 18 pounds so far. There is nothing better than frozen blueberries in the winter!

This is Kahlil running the bases. It's a little hard to see him, but he's the one with the goofy gate and getting passed up by everybody else.

Look what Kahlil can do!

And one more thing... We went to Jamba Juice today; Kahlil calls it Ba-Jamba Juice.

A 4th of July to Remember

We had a FANTASTIC holiday weekend. It is always great fun to spend time with my family and we love going to Modoc... so doing both at the same time is a double the fun. And however much fun I had, Kahlil's fun level was a least three time greater.

The roster - My whole family was there... all 13 of us - Morgan brought a few friends (Ross, Tracy, Damian, & Marty) - Janet and Jason came up - Timberlin and her family were there (visiting Modoc for the first time) - Vanessa and her friend, Cassey - and then there were all the locals. We had people in the house, in campers, and in tents. It was quite the group at Grandma's place.

The activities - Of course we went to the parade and picnic - it wouldn't be the 4th without doing that. And we spent lots of time socializing over drinks and guitars. And we spent some amount of time in ponds fishing and swimming. But there was also the horseback and quad riding. And a railroad tour of Bakerland - Modoc's own Old West Town, Botanical Garden, and Wildlife Preserve. Oh, and fireworks. Did I mention the BBQs?

The kids - I think Kahlil had the most fun of all. With Dean and Timberlin's kids, he had a blast running around like a wild boy. The kids had water fights almost every day. Kahlil loved riding the horses CR and Scotter and sitting on the quads (although he did fall of the parked quad and scrapped up his arm). And he got to sleep in a tent which he really liked. Langston, on the other hand, didn't have a very good trip. He seemed to be working on pushing through some teeth the first few days and was pretty miserable and clingy. Poor Jay spent a lot of time with Langston on his back. But by the end of the trip he was feeling better and enjoyed the last morning we were there.

Here are some of the photos from the weekend. Check out the rotating images at the left for all the other shots.

Water fights with Kahlil, Colin, and Aidan

Kahlil on CR... as soon as one person yawns, everybody yawns!

The intrepid pond fishermen -

Two of the cutest kids in the world! Cousins Langston and Helena -

What do you do when you need to get a lot of people to the Davis Creek BBQ? Load up the horse trailer of course!

Papa playing some tunes with Colin on drums and Kahlil on kazoo -

Kahlil helping the firefighters at the picnic -

Great father/son shot.

This is the dragonfly Janet saved from a watery grave -

Timberlin's family (Chris, Tyler, and Garrett), along with Auntie Valerie, Grandma Lana, and Great Grandma Grump (aka Pat) -

Kahlil and Aidan are ready for some serious quad sitting!

On the train at Bakerland -

Ettie and David's family of Lucky 13 -

Where's Bubba, Of Course

A couple fun verbal developments lately...

Kahlil as started to say "Yes, of course I can" whenever you ask him to do something... and he is in a good mood (that's a big 'and'). It's really funny to hear such a mature response... and I can already hear the grandma-eyes rolling... from the kiddo.

Langston seems to have one word: Bubba. As in Bubba the cat. If you ask where Bubba is, he will look all around to try and find the feline. He will also 'call' for Bubba which only occasionally sounds like 'Bubba':

Peak-A-Leak

Last Friday Kahlil and the rest of his daycare friends did a gymnastics demonstration at Peak Elite (or Peak-a-Leak as Kahlil likes to call it), a local gymnasium. Melissa takes them to Peak Elite every week to see Miss Maria where they learn to do all kinds of cool stuff like forward tuck and rolls and how to walk on balance beams. Peak Elite puts on a show every year so parents can see what their kids have been working on. It was very exciting and, of course, made me very proud to see Kahlil up there doing his thing!

Miss Maria put together a little story for Kahlil, Sean, Leo, and Cruz to wow the crowd with their gymnastic skills. The gist of the story was this... four friends are walking in the woods on a narrow path (hence the balance beam) when they hear a monster! They look high (everybody jumps up), low (everybody crouches down), and all around (everybody turns around) for the monster. When they see the monster they stick out their tails (everybody puts one foot in the air behind the other leg) and rise their arms (self explanatory) to scare the monster away. When that doesn't work they jump in the air and say "boo" (big dismount off the balance beam).

It was fantastic. The only person who didn't seem to enjoy it was Langston... during the whole show he was fighting to be out there on the beam with the rest of the boys!

What's the deal?

So about an hour after the post I did on Saturday, I was running to the bathroom to puke. I can't remember when I had a stomach flu before living in this house. In the year and a half since moving here I've had three.

The funny thing about this flu is that it's proportional to age. I got the fully blown yuck... fluids and gas coming from places they shouldn't, body aches, bad stomach, and low energy for 36 hours. Jay got all that but managed to keep all his fluids. Kahlil has been complaining of a bad stomach, but seems to be fine otherwise. Langston has been a little cranky, but that could be the two new teeth that just came in.

I hope we are done with stomach flues. I think I meet my quota for a while.

Spider-Man Hands

Since I've again missed a month of updates, I'm going to hit highlights and get into current events.

We had a fun Easter; colored eggs at a friends house and the Easter bunny hid them a long with a few cool toys (including Buzz Lightyear and Woody dolls) and then a very nice Easter dinner at Kris a Paul's house where I was able to get Kahlil out of the monkey suite for a few minutes, just enough time for a couple photos. (Notice how much happier he is in the monkey photo.) It was a really nice weekend.

Langston has had the most changes lately. He is now ONE!!! Grandma Ettie came up for his birthday - we went to the zoo and spent the night at the coast with a visit to the beach and a stop at the Aquarium. We also had a big party with the Watts, Salcidos, Delos Reyes, and Weisels. It was a fantastic birthday week.

Other big changes in Langston's life includes walking! He's been able to walk for a while, but just hadn't made up his mind it was a good thing. Then a couple weeks ago, he just made the mental shift and took off. His first real day, he walked circles around the living room laughing. It was pretty cute. He is also weened. It was a little sad, but he was giving pretty strong signals he was done with nursing so it is over.

Now for current events... we had a FREAK storm here this week. I have NEVER seen rain come down like that before. We had had a couple days of mild lightning activity and a little rain but nothing unusual. Then one day there seemed to be something special brewing... the sky was very dark, it was humid and the wind really started to kick up. Then the sky let loose and the rain came down in a torrent. I was at work and stepped out on the back porch to watch the show. I thought, you know, I should close the windows at the front of the shop. While walking up to the front, I heard water running... then I saw the gusher IN THE SHOP! The whole front half of the building was leaking like a sieve. It looked like somebody had opened up the roof and turned on fire hoses. We dumped every trash can and started to bail. The cans were filling up faster than we could dump them but we got a lot of the water out. Once the craziness stopped falling from the sky we started to vacuum and mop up all the water. It looks like we wont lose anything due to water damage partly due to the timing of the storm. We are in the process of expanding the shop and we had just cleaned out part of the shop that flooded... and we hadn't moved the new stuff in there yet. A couple days earlier or a couple days later and it would have been a different story.

And finally the reason for the title on this post. Kahlil and Jay have been watching old Spider-Man cartoons on YouTube. As you can imagine, Spider-Man and all his powers are now a big topic of conversation with Kahlil. He is pretty excited that he got to bring home "webs" (little nylon stockings for trying on shoes) from work. He has been putting them on his hands and feet and wearing them to bed. Earlier today he was playing with glitter glue and something clicked... "Mom, I can use the glue to stick to walls." Me, "No, not really. The glue takes a pretty long time to dry." But the wheels were in motion. Few minutes later he was walking out of the living room when I stopped him. I noticed there were little glitter hand prints on the wall... he had been trying out his theory. I was trying really hard maintain a stern voice as I clean off the glitter, but it was just too funny not to laugh.

A couple more special photos.