Wishing for a boat...

So I would love to have a boat.  I think it would be so much fun for the boys, and they love to be towed on those inflatable toys....  But we keep going back and forth as to whether or not we would actually use a boat enough.  And then Johan found this gem:

He thought it was perfect because we already have a trailer.

My friend Rocky (who has an amazing boat) thought Johan's plan was spectacular.  Although she was slightly skeptical as to whether or not we could ski behind it...  But she had to one up Johan, and found this beauty:

There is certainly a lot to love about Rocky's... and there is really a lot going on in that photograph if you take the time to really appreciate it.

Hello Toes

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this picture of K grabbing her toes.

Sailing Camp

The boys are doing a sailing camp at the Klamath Yacht Club this week.  They are on day two and have already soloed.  I am a super proud mama because only two campers have been allowed to solo...both MY boys!

Here is a shot of K coming in from his first solo.

And here he is on shore.

C had soloed earlier in the day so I don't have any shots of his solo.  Here is C coming in at the end of the day.

So Very Sweet!

At four months old our Miss. K remains an incredibly sweet and content baby.  Easy and happy...she eats, she smiles, she sleeps.  She is the only one of our four babies who can be laid down AWAKE and fall asleep peacefully...no "cry it out," no tip-toe the sleeping baby into bed, no feeding to sleep.  Just bed time, she looks around for a bit, kicks her feet for a bit, and then...

And!  She sleeps through the night with considerable regularity.  We are in love!

"Fly Flies"

Miss A is obsessed with butterflies.  We have been working on minimizing her fear of bugs, and K started taking her into the yard to catch butterflies.  She love, love, LOVES catching them, "Catch Fly Flies..."  She would ask K over and over, "K!  Catch Fly Flies?"  Actually, it was more of a demand than a request, and K, good big brother would usually accommodate.  Happily for us, in the summer our yard really attracts butterflies.  Sadly for the butterflies it is just a cruel trap..."Like a moth to a flame..."

Well A was home with Johan and no boys the other day...Johan caught a few for her, but she learned how to catch her own.

This poor butterfly was her BFF for about half an hour.  Here he strikes a pose...no longer able to fly...

Yes she is laying on the dirty dog bed...

"Here fly flies is!!!!"

Great Day!

Today was a fabulous day.  We slept in (as much as the parents of four children can expect to).  A called to us a little after 7:30 so we brought her into our bed and put on cartoons while we tried for a few more minutes of rest.  But A likes her calories and it wasn't long before she wanted to "Eat food, eat food..." Which she repeated in her very cute voice countless times until Johan relented and got up to make Dutch Pancakes.

After breakfast we decided to ride bikes down to the framers market and check out the action at Lake Ewauna, where the regional master's rowing contest was being held.  There are over 500 competitors in town for the event, so many boats.  I love being around those healthy competitive people so it was a lot of fun to see.  There was a memorial service being held at Veteran's Park at the same time.  A WWII ace with 18 confirmed kills.  The PC announcer at the rowing contest announced him as a WWII ace with 18 confirmed "Air Victories."  Whatever...

There was a fly-by, the missing man formation that never fails to give me chills.  I didn't get any good pictures of everyone on their bikes, but I got Ms. A wandering around in her helmet.

We decided to ride from Veteran's Park to Harbor Isles for lunch at Nibbley's.  Fun ride along the Link River Trail.  Yummy lunch at Nibbley's.  The boys borrowed some clubs so they could hit balls at the driving range while we waited for lunch.  We got to eat outside, and the weather was glorious!

Ms. A spotted a line of golf carts parked near the pro shop during a trip to the restroom.  I told her she could "drive" after we changed her diaper.  I didn't know how literal she was taking me at the time.  After our bathroom trip, she ran out for the golf carts and hopped into the driver seat.  I looked around and confirmed that the car was positioned in the "park" position and returned to our table which was less than 50 feet away.  At some point Ms. A changed golf carts...  As the waitress was complimenting me on my well behaved children and marveling at how well they waited for their food (the wait was really, really long) we heard a loud crashing sound...  Then I heard Johan exclaim, "You have got to be kidding!!!!"  Ms. A had found a car that was in the drive position.  She rammed one cart into another.  No damage, but thank goodness it wasn't in reverse, she would have taken out all of the outdoor seating along with our bikes...  The waitress burst out laughing, and I couldn't stop myself either.  The boys LOVED it!  No damage, no injuries, so it actually was pretty hilarious.

We headed for home, and nap time.

When we got home the boys got out their GPS for Geo-cacheing.  They looked online and found quite a few geo cache spots near our house.  They took off, and found one!  They were exhilarated, and went for more.  When A woke up, they loaded her into the stroller and went to look for another site called "Night Ranger."  They couldn't find it, so they came home disappointed.

Johan was working on dinner and they boys still wanted to find more.  The boys are pet sitting for some friends who are out of town for the weekend, and it was time to put the dogs into the house so I loaded A into the jogging stroller.  The boys hopped onto their bikes and I was going to get a run in while we checked the dogs and searched for another geo-cache site.  On the way C sliced his calf open with his peddle but wanted to "power through."  Dogs fed, we headed down to Matteo's to search for geo-cache.  First site we struck out...

Then,

This one was called "Rock On!"  So when we found this rock 20 feet away from the coordinates I told C to look under the rock.  He stuck his hand in and then yelled, "Ow!!!!  Something has me!"  I TOTALLY freaked out.  I jumped up and down, my heart was racing, and then he started laughing!  He totally got me!  For years he has tried to trick us but he always fails.  We have talked about having a poker face...well, he has got it!  The boys marveled later at my geo-caching skill they couldn't believe how good I was at it.  Who knew...the site called "Rock On" was under a rock...

We did find the geo-cache.  It was so fun.  K was loving our treasure hunt, he couldn't believe how fun it was.

Our third geo-cache was supposed to be somewhere around the fire station, but we never found it.  At 8:45 I had to call off our quest, Johan had made dinner at home, and I knew he would be waiting.

Johan made Hache, a yummy Dutch meat dish.

As I cleaned the kitchen and Johan did some work in the garage, K decided to help put Ms. A to bed.  Amazing boys!!!!!

With the girls in bed, Johan decided to take the boys to find "Night Ranger." The geo-cache that they had tried unsuccessfully to locate earlier with Ms. A.  We looked on-line and it turns out to find "Night Ranger" it has to be dark and you need a flash light to shoot off a reflective point in the distance...

Two Years!!!

Happy Birthday A!  What can I say, you have rocked our world for two years.  We love you more than we could ever imagine, we love your spicy, spicy personality!  You are so incredibly fun and sweet and absolutely wonderful!

Happy Anya! And more...

At the Lake of the Woods, C spotted a frog!  Always exciting of course, but now he loves to share these things with A.  K jumped into the action too.  A was nervous and excited all at once.  She desperately wanted to hold the frog herself, but she was also scared of it, and as she reached out to let K put it in her hands she was trembling, and squealing, and jumping up and down...

We had planned to spend the day at Lake of the Woods, but even on June 2 the weather was a little chilly. So we headed home.  I got out the trains to build with A and the boys quickly jumped in and took over.  My how times change.  I used to play trains with the boys for hours, mostly me building and them "rearranging."  Now it was the boys building and hurricane A doing her share of dismantling...  However I have to marvel at their ingenuity.  For years I played with these trains and was always frustrated because we have a couple of pieces that have "inny" connections on both ends.  Almost all of the pieces have one "inny" connection and one "outy" connection.  I would always get frustrated because I couldn't complete my track if somewhere along the way I had unknowingly used one of the pieces with two "inny" connections.  I was ready to jump online and order a specialty piece to remedy this situation, fortunately, when I pointed this out to C, he quickly showed me how he could hammer one of the "outy" pieces out of another piece of track to fix my problem.  I guess it is better to build Thomas the Train with a 9 year old and an 11 year old than a 35 year old!

RUN!

I don't love to run...but I do love what running does for my body.  When the boys were younger and learning to ride their bikes without training wheels, they loved to ride their bikes with me while I ran.  They couldn't keep up, and I often ran beside them, pushing their back to maintain my pace.  Soon they were much faster and much more coordinated on their bikes, they would circle me as I tried to maintain a pace fast enough to keep the ride interesting for them.  They are growing up so fast...recently the boys have started to run with me.  I lost a year while I was pregnant with Kyra, so while I was busy gaining 50 pounds with pregnancy and now struggle to drop that weight my boys have continued to get stronger.

I remember years of playing hide-and-go-seek, and tag, where I feigned ambitious efforts to "catch" them, how many times I dramatized a struggle to "get" them and I marveled at their remarkable speed all the while confident in my superior adult strength and speed.  Alas, those days are gone.  My boys are without a doubt faster and stronger than I am--this knowledge slapped me in the face yesterday at the Lake of the Woods 5K run.

On the drive up to Lake of the Woods I listened and mildly encouraged the boys as they "talked some trash."  They were so confident that they would beat me.  Both wanted to finish in the top ten.  But I had my doubts...  They had participated in a local race a few weeks earlier, "The Run for the Birds."  Both had done well beating me and finishing in the top ten.  But I knew that I had been training harder, I felt fitter, stronger, faster.  I wasn't so sure that they would beat me this time.  And I was pretty sure that a top ten finish wasn't going to be so achievable, this was a bigger race, more competition, etc.  All the boys (Johan included) were sure that I would finish last, the big question mark was who (among our family) would finish first.

The race was a 5K out and back, so half way through the race I got a good look at who was in front of me.  The lead at the turn around was held boy two men, followed not far behind by....C!!!!!  "Third place!  Third place!" I yelled to him as I swerved out to high five him.  He was intense, barely cracked a smile.  Behind him a man I didn't know, and then...K?!?!!!!  My boys were in the top 5!!!!!  I swerved again, "5Th Place K! 5th Place!"  Next was Johan, and he wasn't right on K's heels.  "Your boys are ahead!" I shouted, and we exchanged exaggerated looks of disbelief as he threw up his arms signaling that he was all in.  I rounded the turn, and I could barely see the boys' orange shirts in the distance.  As I struggled to maintain my pace I wondered if the boys could sustain their efforts, and my mind wandered to earlier runs where I struggled to keep them entertained so that they would peddle their bike just a little further so I could get just a little more running in.

Cut to the finish line...C finished first and wanted to know if he could give an interview to the newspaper and the radio station!  C was first overall not just for his age bracket, K was third OVERALL!  Johan finished fourth, turning in a very respectable time of his own.  I was the first female finisher, but well behind my boys!  I am a proud mama!

I read, with tears in my eyes, today's Herald and News article, "Boy, 11, wins 5K's Crown."