Another pool day

Ben and Owen are swimming like fish! 

I have been working with Ben this summer to learn to swim without a floatie.  My instructions are from what I learned when I took him to the YMCA (as it was called back then) for Mommy and Me swimming lessons when he was 18 months old, kick and pull.  I added my own pearls of wisdom, keep your tail up, and guess what- he can do it! 

He jumped off of Matt and Kelly's diving board and swam to me while we were there a few weekends ago.  He is now jumping off the side of our pool into the deep end  and swimming back to the ladder by himself.  I am now trying to teach him to turn his head to the side to come up for air.

Owen has to do what big brother does and now swims around the baby pool without his life jacket.  Yesterday, he jumped off the wall into deeper water and swam towards me.  Later, I had him jump in and swim back to the wall.  Needless to say, I am impressed!  He could have done this a hundred times before I told him that he needed to take a break.  We left the pool and he took a three hour nap. 

It is just me with them and I have to be in the water when they are, so yeah, no pictures...again.



Look Mom

I'm Luigi!

Jeremy received a Super Mario Bros game for the Wii as a father's day gift.  Ben loves playing the game with him and looks forward to it every evening.  He likes to spend the majority of his time in the safety bubble. Owen gets the extra control and "plays" right along with them.  I have played a few times with him and he was proud of my skills, but I'm not much better than I was when the original came out.  The boys talked their dad into purchasing a movie that depicts the characters in cartoon form and they are obsessed.

Ben came downstairs this morning as I was finishing my breakfast dressed as Luigi.  What a riot! He makes me laugh every single day.

We spent a long relaxing weekend with friends, Perry and Lori, at Table Rock Lake in southern Missouri.  The boys now want a boat.  And a lake house.

Without hesitation they were both jumping off the dock with their girls, ages 5 and 7, and swimming around the lake.  Friday and Saturday were spent on the water.  At one point, both boys jumped off a cliff.  Watching Owen jump nearly stopped my heart.  They went tubing with Jeremy (I'm not nearly as adventurous as I once was) and Ben wanted to learn to ski.  We talked him out of that one for now.  It is hilarious listening to them talk about going to Perry's Lake. 

I don't have any pictures of our weekend.  I was afraid that the camera would end up at the bottom of the lake, so here's a map. 

View Larger Map

And this is Mario.



Field Trip

This morning we went to the Moon Marble Company in Bonner Springs, Kansas.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but I thought that it was a marble factory.  Silly me.  It is however a pretty awesome toy store .

We went with our neighbor and her three boys.  During the demonstration, we watched a marble being made by hand, similar to the one above,  and learned that most of the marbles that they sell are bought in bulk from a factory in Virginia, I think.   The boys enjoyed perusing the shelves of the store which were filled with vintage toys and of course, marbles.                                   

After a quick lunch at the Legends, we let the boys play in the fountain and got some ice cream.

At the beginning of summer, we had very lofty plans of weekly excursions.  The summer seems to be slipping by us very quickly.  We will see what next week brings.