asparagus picking

i love asparagus picking. i love being out in the fields and enjoy teaching and showing Jack where are food comes from-or where it should. (i am loving jamie oliver lately :) ) i also love the pictures, i think the farm is so beautiful!

on the tractor ride over to the field

jack wore his rainboots just in case it was muddy....do you remember last year?

jack loved snacking on the raw asparagus.

the boys with their full baskets.

4/27/10

our last trip to the farm

So everything we do now is a little bit sad because I am pretty sure it will be the last time we are able to do it. One thing we will really miss is Deanna Rose Farm.

Jack waving at the chickens

Jack feeding the chickens

Jack and David milking the fake cow.

Jack was so brave, he sat and pet the baby cows. He said, "I pet them and made them happy!"

Jack and his buddies, David & Aaron. He will sure miss his friends!

Of course we had to feed the goats. Jack loved it this time! He was so brave and did it all by himself. He would give a goat a bottle and after a few seconds he would try and pull it away and tell them "that's enough, that's enough"

Jack riding a tractor.

When we were paying for the goats bottles I saw the pony rides. I asked Jack if he wanted to go and he said no. I didn't push it because the sign said that they had to be 3 and willing to go all by themselves. But as we ready to leave that part of the farm he started saying he wanted to ride a horse. So I took him. He asked me, "can I be a cowboy?" too cute. He was a mighty good cowboy! He rode the horse all by himself and loved every second of it!

Jack playing on the barn slide.

This is how fun it was to try and get a picture of 6 crazy boys:

This one is missing Evan and Jack is about to run off.

This one Jack is long gone and the boys decide to be monkeys.

This one Jack decides that being a monkey looks funner than running so he comes back but it looks like Owen has had it with pictures. Oh well we tried.

Charlie was with us he was just stuck in his carseat and stroller the whole time. We can't wait till he can get out and play!

4/26/10

old friends

Brad and Mandy, our old friends that graduated last year, were so nice to make a visit to Lawrence before we moved. Jack was SO excited for Jane to come! I told him she was coming and he said, "Mom, she's really coming?" They haven't seen each other since October, but Jack still talks about Jane all the time and has been waiting for the day when he could see her again. When we pulled up to the park Jack and Jane started running towards each other and started playing like old friends right off the bat.

The Serafines planned a little lunch get together with us and the whitings at South Park. We had a great time catching up!
Then after lunch the boys went golfing (or at least we thought they did) and the girls and the kids went on a stroll down Mass street. Charlie sat with Annie in her stroller, it was so cute how happy Annie got when she realized she was sitting by Charlie!
I pushed around Jack and Jane. Do you see how close they are sitting by each other? They sat like that for a good couple of hours without any fighting. I don't think Jack has ever been that close to another kid without him being rotten and making the other kid cry. He must really like Jane.

We visited the toy store.

We were quite the scene again with all of our strollers. Some guy even stopped and snapped a picture of us. (It probably didn't help that people probably thought that Jane and Jack were mine and Charlie and Annie were Mandy's. That would be crazy.)

Then we went and met Brad and Luke for dinner at Papa Kenos. Jane and Jack had fun running around and dancing outside. Before Mandy and I got there the boys said that Jane and Jack had a little kissing session and made quite the scene in Papa Kenos. When I asked Jack if he kissed Jane he said ya and everyone laughed.

We had to hurry and say goodbye and snap a picture because the rain started to really come down. We really miss living by them and we were so glad they were able to come visit us before we leave Lawrence. I just keep crossing my fingers that one day we will live by each other again!

4/24/10

what Jack does all day...

No we do not tie him up for punishment he actually begs us to. Ever since he got Toy Story 2, he spends his days trying to recreate the movie. Here are a few examples:

One day I was cleaning out my closet and Jack found this belt. He told me that it was Buzz's new belt. In the movie when they arrive at Al's Toy Barn, there is an aisle full of new Buzz Lightyears, and they all have new blue utility belts. After Jack put on his "utility" belt, he then wanted me to tie him up in his box. The real Buzz in the movie ends up getting tied up and put back in a spaceship box, because another Buzz thinks he is breaking the rules by being out of his box. So here is Jack with his utility belt tied up in his box, he even has to do a cheesy grin like Buzz. And then he will yell, "you got the wrong Buzz!"

On another day he came up to me and with a sad voice tells me Woodys broken. He then wants me to "shelve" Woody and put him up on the fireplace mantle.(like in the movie when Woody's arm gets ripped and Andy's mom puts him up on the shelve) Then he ran and grabbed his penguin to put up by Woody(like Wheezy).
We also have the Toy Story 2 book and one day I was reading it to him. After we got to the last page he rushed to his room and brought out these toys and set them all up like this......

I soon saw what he was doing and had to laugh, he was trying to create this page of the book:

Its a little hard to see but he has all of the characters in the same position, T-Rex is a little hidden and we dont have a slinky dog so that's missing. We also don't own an etch-a-sketch so he improvised and went and got a pen and put it in Buzz's hand.

He found a better way to recreate Buzz being tied up and put back in his box:

and yes he made me tie his wrist, the one with the laser, to the laundry hamper

And at least once a day he wants us to come in his room so he can show us this:

Then he says "tada- Al's Toy Barn!"
He gathers all of his Buzz Lightyears of every kind and puts them on his book shelf, he even puts them back in a box if he has one.

He also has the entire first part of Toy Story 2 memorized, the part when they are playing the Buzz Lightyear video game, and he will act out the whole scene of Buzz going and fighting the Zurg robots and then eventually getting to Zurg and fighting him. It is pretty funny, I have video that I will have to post.

When he wants to find one of his Buzz's he has to describe them completely like "the one with no helmet on, no belt on, with no broken nose & eyes, little one" (and then he will turn his head the way the Buzz is and do the face the Buzz is doing) And he will not settle for any other Buzz. Even if the only difference between the 2 is which way Buzz's head is turned.

So you can see that Jack does do other things other than beat up kids and run away. He is actually very funny and creative! He definetely keeps us entertained all day long!

Charlie's 6 week

A 6 week Charlie update:

We took Charlie in for a 6 week checkup on April 15th.

His stats:

Weight: 11lbs 8oz 72%

Height: 23 inches 78%
Head: 15.5 inches 56%

He is growing like a weed! I think he is starting to catch up to Jack's stats at that age. He is getting little rolls on his thighs, I love it. He is still a great baby and usually sleeps around 6 hours at a time. He spits up all the time which is awful but we still love him anyways :) The doctor said he is just getting too much milk too fast so there really is nothing we can do. It is making my laundry out of control though! Good thing he is cute.....

4/11

trying to keep up with his brother's crazy hair.

4/9

He is starting to get more used to the bathtub and is starting to enjoy it more. He hates getting out though and cries because he is cold.

3/28

Taken on his first day of church. He wore Jack's first Easter outfit and looked darling! He was a great baby during church and made it through the full 3 hours. Jack was so excited to have him there. THe week before Charlie and I stayed home and Jack had a really hard time in nursery. He just wanted his brother and mom to be there. He had to show his friends in nursery his brother when we dropped him off, he loves to show Charlie off!

Oh Jack.

I have been meaning to do a post about just Jack for awhile. He is definetely at a fun age and he always keeps our life interesting. This has been a age of extremes where he can be extremely hard to handle or extremely sweet. It isn't very often that he is inbetween the two :). He loves to have have fun and be silly- he loves to be funny. He is very creative. He plays well by himself but then he always wants to show you what he has been up to. He is fearless. He will run away and then when we have a talk about strangers taking him, he just tells us over and over that he will punch the bad guys. He struggles to be nice around other kids, especially kids that are smaller than him- I am afraid we have a little bully. (It makes gatherings with friends a lot of fun for me) He has always loved playing with kids that are bigger and older than him. He would be totally happy playing with his 9 year old cousin Ethan and his friends all the time. He has continued to be a very sweet brother though. He has NEVER tried to be mean to Charlie and he rarely walks by Charlie without having to stop and kiss him and tell me that he loves his brother.

Here are his 3 year old stats- we took him for his appointment on March 18th:

Height: 38.75 inches 78%

Weight: 33 pounds 63%

He says the funniest things all the time now. Here are a few of them (and some not so funny things he has learned):

"I want my life back" or "I want my old life back"

We have no idea where he got this

"Don't do that, Oh-kay!"

"leave me lone"

"I don't like you, anymore"

He adds Anymore or Oh-kay after just about everything in a rotten tone.

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our conversation the other day:

We had just left some friends and he said to me "I don't like my friends, anymore" I told him, "well your friends probably don't like you very much either since you screamed at them." So he repeated over and over, "My friends don't like me & I don't like my friends, anymore."

Okay Jack, whatever.

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I made hamburgers the other day and we melted swiss cheese on them, he looked at the cheese and said, "gross". I told him it was cheese and he said, "oh I thought it was whip cream"

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The other day it took me awhile to get out of bed while I was feeding Charlie in the morning and Jack was watching cartoons in th living room an when I went out there he had gotten into the cookies, I said Jack, and he replied "sorry mom, I was just starving"

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He does say sweet things too:

he tells us multiple times a day "I love you"

"you're the best thing EVER"

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This has been our week so far:

*he got into his paints and spilled them everywhere

*cut his hair and then came and told me, "mom look I dont have crazy hair anymore"

*almost got hit by a car, because he ran right behind it and then told me, "mom I just missed the car" No Jack you are darn lucky the car missed you.

*he picked up and tried to carry Charlie when we weren't looking, and was holding him by the neck

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This kid will be the death of me :)

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Like I said he keeps my life interesting and busy! I just hope & pray I can keep him alive! I love this kid so much though. I will always have a special place for him, with him being my first and he was the one that made me a mom. It was also just me and him most of the time when we moved away from our family and came to Kansas and Luke was so busy with law school, I couldn't have done it without him! I loved having 3 years with just him being my little buddy and rarely leaving my side. I still prefer to take him with me (most of the time) if I am running to errands, even if Luke is home and tells me to leave him, I am just used to having him by my side. And now that we have added Charlie to our family, it has just made me love Jack more and has made life so fun as we get to watch him be a big brother and be so sweet to Charlie.

We love you Jackers!

pictures

On Charlie's 2 week birthday we had our pictures taken again by the wonderful Lori George. They turned out great and I am so glad we captured Charlie when he was so tiny!

Here are a few of them:

You can go to Lori's website to see some more, I love

how teeny tiny he is in the picture with Luke.

You can find Lori's website here.