Clayton's First Day of Preschool

Clayton's 1st day of preschool this year went really well, despite his proclamation before we left the house of, "I'm not going. That's MY decision!" After a few introductions to friends and some fun toys he was quick to kiss me goodbye. Miss Susie and Miss Lori sent a note home that Clayton had a great first day! (By the way, Clayton thinks it's awesome that his teacher's name is the same as Sid the Science Kid's on PBS.)

And as is tradition, I tried to get a first day of school picture...typical Clayton style, here's what we ended up with. Oh well, here's to trying...

Happy 1st Birthday Baby Lincoln!

Time flies was the theme of Lincoln's birthday party - and boy, does it! Where has this 1st year gone?!

We had a nice birthday party with family, although Lincoln was super crabby (very out of the ordinary) and woke up from his afternoon nap with a fever of 103. Hence, the less than happy faces with his birthday cake. The picture in the swing was about 20 minutes after a dose of Tylenol - back to happy!

At his 1 year appointment he weighed 21 lbs 10 oz and was 30 1/4 inches tall. Still 97% for his head size! (Good thing all his shirts came pre-stretched from Clayton.) He's now turned around in his car seat and loving being part of the action. Walking should be just around the corner - he's cruising around everything and will stand on his own for brief moments, but his crawl is FAST, so the need isn't immediate for him.

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Lincoln LOVES peek-a-boo!

Perfect summer day!

Today was THE perfect weather....75 degrees, sunny, slight breeze, no humidity...AWESOME! We went to the park until Lincoln's nap time and then the kids played outside the rest of the morning while I cleaned the floors. Somehow with the windows open and the fresh air coming in even that was enjoyable - minus the fact that clean floors last all of 20 seconds. Oh well, at least I knew that for a brief moment in time, they were in fact clean! Mike was able to catch an earlier flight back home and he and Brooke are out riding their bikes.

Baby Lincoln was all smiles as he sported his independence

Madison and Lincoln

Also, if anyone is looking for a great way to use the green peppers and tomatoes that seem to be in abundance right now - we're having stuffed peppers for dinner. YUM! (For those wondering, Mike wasn't originally going to be in town...he'll be having something exciting like cereal.)

Three down...will the drama subside?!

After over a couple weeks of wiggling, wiggling, wiggling, one of Brooke's top teeth came out! It has been a lot of drama over which foods she could eat, blood during her wiggling sessions and Mike at one point told her that the tooth fairy can't come for teeth that are lost after 8 p.m. so that she didn't use it as a stall tactic for bedtime. (Those daddy's, they are pretty smart when it comes to knowing the secrets of the toothfairy...how did he know that Brooke wondered!) Then finally on Tuesday night it was SO loose that I couldn't send her to bed because I thought she'd swallow it during the night. FINALLY, it's out - and of course we couldn't put it under her pillow for the next couple days until daddy returned from his business trip so that he could see it before the tooth fairy took it away to never be seen again. DRAMA!

Guess what we did with Daddy?!

Since Mike is traveling the rest of the week, he gave me last night "off" and did bedtime with the kids while I went to the Y for Body Pump. Clayton had just settled down in bed when I got home (go figure that a 3 hr nap would affect bedtime...) so I went in to say good night. He couldn't wait to tell me all about the tower that he built with daddy. Mike said he got the idea from K-Love. Shortly after he took the picture Brooke's foot hit one of the cups on the bottom and down it came. Clayton thought that was cool - Brooke cried.

The rest of the story...

Did you know that Jack Be Nimble burnt his toe? Not sure how that very important lesson managed to be dropped from the story. Brooke was reading me a book of nursery rhymes this morning - I never knew there was a part two about Jack and that candlestick.


Jack be nimble, Jack be quick

Jack jump over the candlestick.

Jack jumped high and Jack jumped low

Jack jumped over and burnt his toe!


And now you know! Silly 'ole Jack - jumping over candlesticks is not a good idea.

Shedd Aquarium - check

We've been plugging away at the list that Brooke and Clayton made back in January of things they wanted to do this year. The kids decided the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago was next. (By the way 31 items didn't seem like a lot when we made the list, but over 11 months it works out to 3 items a month.) On Friday Mike took the day off and Grandma Nancy agreed to take Lincoln for the day - Brooke, Clayton, Mike and I took the 8 a.m. train down to Chicago. The kids could not have been any more excited. We then walked the 2.5 miles from the train station to the aquarium...good thing we did remember the strollers this time! What a beautiful day for a walk through the city. It was a nice, leisurely day looking at fish and other animals that we wouldn't have been able to see otherwise. I did comment to Mike on the way home that the "people watching" was almost more fun than the animals. And...as another side note...the Atlanta aquarium is ten times better so my expectations were probably a little high going into the day.

Brooke, Brooke, Brooke, Brooke

For those of you that know what a planner I am (or should I say was...since Lincoln was born there doesn't seem to be time...) Anyhow, when I was pregnant with Brooke I would watch the newborn websites of all of the local hospitals just to ensure that I wasn't picking too common of a name. Mike and I (mostly me) felt confident that Brooke was simple enough that she wouldn't have to spell it for everyone and unique enough that she wouldn't have to go through school being one of many with her same name. Best laid plans! Today we went to register for Kindergarten - pay all our fees, school pictures taken, school supplies picked up and to find out who her teacher was and which other children would be in her class. Turns out that there is another Brooke in her class....AND....two more girls in the kindergarten level (there's four classrooms) with the name Brooke. That's right FOUR Brooke's.


Even so Brooke could not be more excited to start Kindergarten! Three weeks from today and my baby will hop on the bus. She got the hot lunch calendar for school today and circled all but 4 days that she wanted to "buy lunch" - she's been working on memorizing the code that she needs to enter when she goes through the line. She put labels on all of her supplies the moment we walked in the door and was sincerely upset that she couldn't check out books from the school library yet (that's where picture taking was held.) Oh the excitement of kindergarten - I hope it lives up to her expectations!!

Summer in Review

This summer has been BUSY! We've had so much great weather and the kids are at such fun ages with friends and family that they love to interact with. We did our best to work around Baby Lincoln's naps and he was a trooper to sacrifice his sleep occasionally to allow for our fun. Anything routine was pretty much put on hold...including blogging!

Zoo Classes! We love them. The kids make a costume, learn about and go visit the animal of the month. Each child got to pick one zoo class this summer. Clayton learned all about HIPPOS. His favorite thing was to demonstrate how they scare the alligators away...by opening their mouth super wide. Brooke learned all about how to be a zookeeper and what hard work that can be. I love to watch them playing with the information they learn. The other day they were out playing in the pools. Brooke had the hose and was pretending to be the zookeeper while her friend Reed pretended to be the alligator waiting for his cage to be cleaned. Clayton the hippo came over to scare the alligator away with his wide open mouth.

Birthdays, birthdays, birthdays!!

We had lots of fun celebrating many friends and family birthdays. Grandma Nancy started off the summer. I asked each of the kids what she would want. Brooke choose a necklace and Clayton was convinced that she wanted a transformer (a blue one!) Turns out grandma DID want a transformer and at Clayton's suggestion, she thought it would be a great idea to leave it at Clayton's house so that she had something to play with when she came over. It was SO funny to listen to how serious he was with his explanations - he couldn't have been more excited to present his gift.

I have many, many stories that made me laugh and big bummer that I didn't get myself to write them down more often! One of my very favorites from the summer was one afternoon when the boys were napping and I was trying to get the "business of the house" taken care of downstairs - fun stuff like bills, e-mails, etc. Brooke found our birthday tote with all the wrapping paper and gift bags in it. She got to work decorating the table with all the leftovers from the years (eclectic would be a huge understatement) and also put together a gift for Clayton. She must have worked for a full two hours preparing for when he woke up. So Clayton comes down the stairs and Brooke announces, "Clayton, LOOK it's a party for YOU!" (Mind you I have slowly lost all patience hearing about their birthdays and their endless thoughts of what the day will look like...it's a long way until October and November folks! Regardless, Clayton is in his element when he is imaging how great his birthday will be this year.) Back to the story - Clayton is THRILLED to say the least...and probably doesn't really have a clue that it's NOT his birthday...nor will it be for another FOUR months. Brooke can barely contain her excitement in presenting him with his gift. He is even more excited to accept the gift. And he begins to unwrap the bag filled with Christmas themed tissue paper. "OH WOW BROOKE" he says. Up until this time I haven't been paying too much attention to the "party" going on 3 feet behind me, but I turned around at his last exclamation trying to figure out what his "gift" would be - knowing Brooke hadn't left the unfinished basement in preparing his gift. Out of the bag Clayton pulls out....5 random markers, a half used package of crayons clearly labeled with Brooke's name on it, 15 green straws that have been mummy wrapped in scotch tape, and a well-used text book that was Aunt Laura's 15 years ago. He paraded around with those items for the rest of the day more grateful than I have seen him for anything before.

Grandpa Mark's birthday was next. Brooke was adamant that he would want a necklace with his name on it. Again, turns out that is EXACTLY what Grandpa wanted.

AND, last family birthday of the summer - DADDY's.

Strawberry picking - Annual tradition, but lesson learned this year to make sure we get there earlier in the season. It was super wet a couple days prior to going, so we ended up pureeing most of the strawberries because they were less than the sweet, juicy flavors that we love!

Art Projects

Both kids love to draw, color, and paint. It's usually a HUGE mess, so it's not every day that we do projects. (I've found that preschool is great for messy, messy projects.) We had a lot of fun painting pots and decorating paper the size of the whole table.

Fourth of July Celebrations

I think our biggest adjustment this summer with our new house was not having our annual 3rd of July party with the Menomonee Falls parade and fireworks. Brooke asked what we could do instead - so we invited friends over to decorate bikes and have our own mini parade around the cul-de-sac. Maybe an annual tradition....we'll see.

Daddy's Helper

We got many items crossed off of our to-do list for the house this summer. Mike put ceiling fans in the upstairs bedrooms, framed some of the basement, built the swingset, and several smaller projects. He could have knocked some of those out much faster without his "helpers" but I was so blessed to see what a great dad he is to include the kids while he worked. He made them feel like he couldn't have gotten the project done without them....yeah daddy!

Okauchee Lake

Temperatures this summer have been much warmer than last and we enjoyed several days out on Okauchee Lake. Even Lincoln loved the water and the boat rides.

Uncle Chris & Brooke

Crazy Sleepers

Busy summer days apparently make for some dead-tired kids that are so funny to check in on at night. We never know what we'll find!

Governor Dodge State Park

With Lincoln being so little, temperatures being super hot and mosquitoes that could have carried us all away, we decided it best for our family to join Change-Pointe for the day at Governor Dodge rather than overnight. We had a great time swimming, hiking and hanging out with great friends.

Baby Lincoln

He has changed SO much this summer and not so much of a baby any more as he approaches one and learning to walk, talk, and express his own little personality. This little man LOVES to smile and laugh. It's fun to watch him play games with us and participate more in our daytime fun.

Driving the Bus at Betty Brinn

My Fragile Flower

Clayton is all boy - lots of energy...and loves to stomp, wrestle and out-run anything or anyone that will allow for it. Many times we've reprimanded him for being too rough with Brooke or mommy. The reason...we are "fragile flowers" and can't handle all of his boy energy. We have this flower towel that it typically Brooke's. Clayton requested it and when I asked why he wanted it, he says, "BECAUSE mom - I'm a fragile flower too!" OH, how he makes me laugh!

Helping Hands

Many of the things that we did this summer would not have been quite so enjoyable (or even possible) if I hadn't had the help of one amazing young lady. Madison helped us out so much this summer. She was game to participate in anything - she loved on the kids and they LOVE her. Any morning that we were involving her in our activities they could not wait to see her. One day we picked her up and randomly stopped at Basse's farm to do some raspberry picking.

Time flew....but what fun!!

Wisconsin State Fair 2010

Mike took off the first Friday that the fair was open and we could not have ordered more perfect weather. It was mid-70's with a slight breeze - a much needed change from the 90+ temps we had been having. We hit our traditional favorites of cows, horses, pigs, etc., the big slide, Brooke's bouncing apparatus, cream puffs, and flavored milk. After 2.5 hrs were on our way back home...check that one of the list for the year.

In the Dairy Farm area

Brooke's FAVORITE!

Practicing taking care of the animals.

Love this picture - about half way to the fairgrounds Mike says, "I probably should have brought a stroller for the older two kids too, huh?" Yeah - probably....Clayton spent the majority of the morning attached to Mike. Beginning...

...to end.