My Baby Turns Two

We woke up Thursday morning and celebrated in family tradition by having birthday cake for breakfast.


My Princess loved blowing the candles out and had me re-light them several times.


This evening we had some family over for a party where all the kids asked for a piece of cake with hair.

the Man

On Father's Day the kids surprised me by sporting very cute matching t-shirts:

I had a great Father's Day thanks to my wonderful wife and kids!

and the livin' is easy

Summer arrived with a high of 96 degrees.
We picnicked in the park and cooled off with popsicles as we celebrated the arrival of our first Boise summer. Back at home we ate warm ripe raspberries right off the bush. We wrapped up the evening by weeding the garden... a necessary evil.
I'm amazed at the size of our tomato and potato plants. We should have ripe cherry tomatoes by next week. Few things warm the heart like home-grown tomatoes!

New Member of the Family

Over the weekend we had a new arrival at our home. Gram and Papa brought up a new black kitten from a neighboring farm.

I'd told Ethan that we had a black cat named Blackie when I was growing up so when he saw that this new kitty was jet-black he wanted to name her Blackie too.
She's adapted well to her new house and the kids love playing with her.

Every Kid Does It at Some Point

I was trimming up Ethan's hair and I turned my back for just a minute. He grabbed the scissors and tried to help out a bit. Here is the result:


It's not a big deal. We can just go back to this hair style:


It's all OK just so long as he doesn't cut her hair:

Spanish Immersion

Last week Ethan finished up a year of Spanish Immersion pre-school at Puentes. On the last day they put on a program for the parents:

Then they whacked a pinata:

You should have seen the look on Ethan's face when he got swung at that pinata. He was determined to get at the goodies!
Ethan really enjoyed this school and it was amazing to see him learning Spanish.

A Mother's Day Bouquet

I know it was several weeks ago but here's the fun pot of flowers that the kids made for Grammy on Mother's Day:

What they Don't tell you

Here is is...

... the playset we picked up in five big boxes (plus a slide) from Costco. What they don't tell you is how long it will take to put the whole mess together. This probably took me 40 hours. Power tools (mostly an impact driver) helped.

Happy 4th BigE

On Friday BigE turned 4.
We celebrated with a traditional birthday cake breakfast. He is currently a Knight (when he's not a Pirate) so he had a crown cake for breakfast:



Saturday we had some friends and family over for a party. Continuing the Royal Theme, he had a castle cake for the party: