What a thrill

 

Whew, I think I need to keep up with this blog a little more huh??  I couldn’t believe when I retrieved the pictures from my camera and I saw pictures from Kings Island, which felt like a million years ago!  So, Tom took off several days around the Fourth of July and we headed up to Kings Island for a morning/afternoon…

It’s great at Kings Island because there are SO MANY rides Marlo can ride, and ride by HERSELF (which is a major source of giggles and smiles for her, and a few near tears for me).  It is such a weird feeling watching her go riding off in these little cars, all on her own…

And of course this little guy enjoys the cars as well :)  Beep Beep!

I DO NOT want to even think about:

1. the age of 16

2. Drivers Ed

I’m about to keel over!

Driving “the Hummers”!

 

Watch out people, Marlo’s behind the wheel of this monster vehicle!

Off to the trains…

I was lucky enough to get to join the kids on this ride, Woooo baby, what a thrill :)

 

And speaking of thrill, we came upon another small-ish ride, which just looked like these little cars that went around in a circle-kind of a flat rollercoaster going only in a circle and definitely no twists or turns.  So I strapped them in and told them to have fun, I took my post behind the railing and settled in to watch them go mosey-ing around the little turnstyle type ride.  OH BOY, was I wrong!  It was surprisingly ROUGH!  And JERKY!

Thank God, both of them loved it and they were in hysterics the whole time  (though look at the girl behind them with her hands on top of her head, could she look MORE BORED!?! Ha)  (For some reason I cannot figure out, I am unable to load videos embedded within the post where I want them, so I will post that video separately in another post-you HAVE to watch the video of the kids on this ride to get the full effect!)

While Ty and I were off riding some “big boy” rides, Daddy and Marlo went and had a little visit with some of the Peanuts gang :)  Marlo already has an affinity for Snoopy, so she was definitely on the lookout for the pup, but in the meantime she became buddies with Linus, Lucy and Charlie Brown :)

I know some children will not even come within 10 feet of a large character like these, but Marlo in fact does the opposite, she barrels in and smothers them in hugs and high fives, etc.  Not only that, she keeps coming back for more and more!  I’m glad Daddy was the one policing this!

Oh, there he is!  Snoopy actually wasn’t a live character, but Marlo still showed him a lot of love…

Ty and I were keeping busy on this WILD rollercoaster (at least that’d be Ty’s description!).

A little low thrill on the Merry Go Round :)

Marlo likes to screech “Geee UP”, in toddlerspeak that is “giddy up!”.  To say it’s cute is a huge understatement…I wish I had that on video!

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Yay, Ty was actually tall enough to ride the BUMPER CARS!  For the first minute or so, he could not figure out the steering and went in a circle about 10 times.  Finally, he got the hang of it, and he had a few straighaways and a bump or two with another child, then the ride was promptly over…

Sweet story:   The ride was over and all of the kids were getting out, well Ty couldn’t figure out how to get his arm back through the strap and then over his head, so this sweet boy stopped and went out of his way to help him out.  Makes me feel good about “kids these days” ha ha…

 

There’s Marlo again, finding her friend Linus again.  This time she is sharing her Woody doll with him.  Tommy says she was very insistent that Linus keep taking Woody…

Everyone with me now…AWWWWWW!

One more pat for Snoopy.

Just a few random pictures…

A little goofing around in the car, Tommy enjoys taking funky pictures!

Fourth of July at the Adams’ Party, having a little rest in the SUPER DUPER heat!

Enjoying the fireworks, both kids stared at and watched every single BOOM, till it was well after 10PM.

Little Miss Guilty snuck her way into the pantry and smuggled out a juice bag, and as she retreated to the great room she tried her hardest to get the straw into it.  What surprised me about this little episode the most is that she has NEVER had a juice bag before, how does she even know what to do???!!!

I’ll have you know, she was not successful in piercing the straw into the juice bag, so I had to wrestle it away from her and give her a drink in her typical sippy :)

He has my sense of humor.  Clearly.

And finally, we have instituted a new Regan Family tradition…Family Movie Night :)  So far we have done one on a Friday and one on a Saturday.  It has just involved a slight tweak on bedtime routine with everything being done earlier, and we sit the children down in front of the TV in their chairs with a safe snack and a milk.  Maturity levels and attention spans vary (hey, that includes Tommy and I, ha ha ha ha ha), so we know that Ty can pretty much watch an entire movie with only a few hiccups in his attention, but Marlo can only last about 30-40 minutes, tops.  This picture was from our inaugural movie night, during which we watched Madagascar.  I’d say as a family we’d give it a B+, it was cute, but not cute enough that it could keep Marlo’s attention, but it definitely has staying power-we found a Madagascar book story book and Ty has requested that to be read to him every night since!  For our second Family Movie Night we watched Happy Feet.  Final grade on this one, C-.  It was cute for about the first 15-20 minutes, then it just became too mature and the humor went way over the kids’ heads, Marlo was up out of her chair the minute she finished her snack!  Ty lost interest rather quickly, and there were quite a few scary parts.  I think the member of the family who enjoys FMN the most is…Tommy!  And I’d have to say I share in his enthusiasm because it’s just so fun to have the anticipation of the time we spend together, extending bedtime, breaking routine just a little but not enough to be damaging to sleep schedules.  It sort of feels like an itty-bitty vacation :)  I’m constantly on the lookout for the next great choice for our next movie.  GG has broken the Disney Vault somehow and scored us a copy of The Lion King, and we should be able to have that for our next movie night.  I am beyond excited to watch that movie, and I hope the kids find it entertaining as well.  Though, I have to say, nothing has gripped our household as tightly, in terms of movie/character mania as TOY STORY!  Here’s a blog challenge for you to illustrate this very point: go ahead and scroll back up and through all these pictures and count just how many times you see Toy Story paraphernalia…go ahead, I dare you! 

Happy 34th (right?!) birthday GG! :)

Marlo and Grandpa just ‘a swingin’!

To Infinity and Beyond

As Tom informed me yesterday, “You haven’t done a blog post in a while”…

So, while I don’t have a lot of material, here’s what we’ve been up to the past few weeks.

For Father’s Day, I had this great idea to take pictures of the kids with their hands outstretched and then framing it and writing on the frame: “We love Daddy this much”.

Here were my first few attempts to get that pose…

 

Wow, as I look back over these pictures of her I think I’d like to frame these anyway, just because she’s so darn cute :)

This is Marlo’s new little coy expression…I just want to kiss her little face!

This is actually the picture I chose to use, but it ended up being the 2nd runner up…

This is the picture I eventually put in the frame for Tom, and we just wrote “We love Daddy” on it…

If you stop by our house at any given point lately, you will catch Ty or Marlo (or maybe a few others…) “hulking up”, displaying those impressive muscles!

 

(I’m so glad this Windows Live Writer gives me the option to make a picture MUCH smaller, because I cannot believe I let Tom take that picture of me!)

 

 

A few weeks ago we went to the first Music Night at the Park at Ault Park…

I do not have any pictures of the music and dancing, or the fun playing on the HUGE hill, but I do have pictures of a fun little character they met…

We also had to get a new little chair for the kids (from Ikea, one of their favorite places to run amok!)  Even though I put it by the window and bookshelves in the playroom, Marlo has decided she likes it out in the great room.

A very popular activity lately has been playing in the trickling hose pool and sprinkler toy at GG and Grandpa’s!

Thanks Grandpa for setting up this elaborate baseball game/sprinkler!  It took a few times to get everything to stick together right.

 

After they played in the pool for about 2 seconds, we changed them into regular clothes..only to have them 2 minutes later go play in the trickling hose :)  That was the best idea ever, thanks GG!

Look at the little munchkin running around with her little cup of water :)

Cousin Gunnar was there to join in the mischief…I think there may have been water dumped on heads, water dumped on butts, water smacked on heads (thanks Ty for teaching Gunnar that one!)…

 

Here is my favorite Gunnar-ism…”oooooooohhh”

 

I love that there will be so many fun cousins to grow up with :)

Gunnar and Louie having a little cha cha cha…

For the longest time we had been anticipating the premiere of Toy Story 3.  We really built it up for Ty-we bought the DVD combo pack of 1 and 2.  He definitely got into the fun and magic of the movie, and I’m so glad because it is actually a classic that I think will be around for a very, very long time.  So…Amanda and I had been planning to take the boys to see 3 in the theater as soon as it came out.  So on a very rainy, stormy afternoon we took the boys to see it, and all I can say is…WOW.  Wow because it was SUCH an incredibly cute movie, so tender and heart warming and still retained that awesome humor and nostalgia from the first two films.  And also WOW because Ty sat through the entire thing with almost not a peep.  He was entranced!  Trent had brought his plush Buzz and Woody, and since they have fully decided that Trent IS Woody and Ty IS Buzz, they each held onto their respective doll the entire time. 

We tried really hard to get a picture of them in front of the cardboard “3” and the lineup of characters, but it became too much of an ordeal-with Ty initiating the kicking of the cardboard characters!  STINKER!

 

Aw, Trent gave a great smile :)

Here they are leaving the theater, I just had to snap this picture of them still clutching their Buzz and Woody as they left :)

As many of you know, I’m having an unbelievably HORRENDOUS a hard time potty training Ty, so Tom decided to take matters into his own hands….

He told him if he peed in the potty (which he had only done ONCE before this) he would buy him an Escalade.  Did you hear me correctly??  Because I wasn’t quite sure what I was hearing when Tom told me about his purchase!  AN ESCALADE!  So…after a few days of seeing it sitting in the garage, in the box, Ty was so moved and affected by the bribe vehicle that he in fact made the much awaited pee pee in the potty…

Hopping in the door…

Turning up the tunes (this thing has LOUD speakers!)

 

And they’re off!

On another congratulatory note, Ty is enrolled in the Summer Reading Program at the Public Library.  Every time he reads 5 books he progresses to the next level.  He is keeping track of his reading on a worksheet with bubbles that he colors in, and I record them online as well.  His first level was a pair of sunglasses, 2nd level a squirt toy, 3rd level a coloring book and crayons, 4th level a free book and the 5th level was this sign…he was SO EXCITED to get this!  Every level after this is an entry in the grand prize drawing for an art easel.

Who remembers Ty’s first Hyde Park Blast race???   Well, he came back for a repeat performance!  I ran the race first at 8am, and then we all convened at our friend’s house very near the square.  After some playtime we took the kids back to the square to run the kids version of the race.  The 2-3 year old group was to begin at 10am (a 25 yd dash), and each age group was to follow a few minutes after.  We got there at 9:50 and they started the 2-3 year olds just as we walked up!  Bummer.  So we scooted the boys, Ty and PJ, into the 4-6 year old group!

Packing up the stroller to head to the square, Marlo will be a fierce contender next summer!

There’s JD, in yellow, running with PJ in his arms!

The BEST part of the race, by far, is the medal and the water bottles, OF COURSE!

 

And guess what?  Another evening of playing in the trickling sprinkler at GG and Grandpa’s!

Look at that wet heiny!

Ty and Gunnar seem to always go after the same tiny little cup :)

 

We were outside playing the other night and Tom caught a glimpse of a mama deer and her little fawn taking a little break in our street…

The little baby nursed for quite a while, even while seeing me snapping pictures of them!  Then just like any good mama, it was as if she said to her young one, “Get your bum out of the street, and look both ways while you’re at it!”

So they just moved their little private time off to our side yard :)  Baby continued to nurse, mama continued to preen and clean up her baby.

But they became spooked by my presence again, and off they went, to the backyard :)

Some close ups :)

No captions needed for these fun photos :)

Marlo:  “Balloooooooooooon”

Hello Woody :)

Whew, what a long and chock-full-o-pictures post! 

Have a wonderful Fourth of July!  We plan on going to a parade here in Anderson and then a party on Sunday, many pics to come I’m sure!