::new toy::

Max was so sad when we moved from RI because we had to give our trampoline away.
It was old and kind of gross and we had to hold the safety net on with wire ties. We weren't going to pay to move that dang thing across the country.
Besides the yards out here aren't exactly made for playground equipment.

And that's the problem. The yards are just different than what we're used to. Before we moved, Max spent hours out in the yard, swinging in the hammock and playing on the deck. Out here it's more complex. Our yard is less contained and the in the afternoons the little garden area gets HOT. There's also not a lot of room for chairs or hammocks or anything. Our hammock is out there, but it's on the part of the patio that's not contained by walls, so I'm not thrilled about him being out there all alone.
So there's not a ton of motivation to play outside, which I don't like.

So I thought maybe we could get a tramp again. A smaller one. One that would fit right in our useless gravel patch.
And I found it.
The other day when we got home from work/school/whatever, there was a big package waiting for us by the door. Max was psyched to see that the box said TRAMPOLINE on it!
Kris said he'd set it up right away.
When we started working on it the sun was up and the evening breezes were starting to blow. It was really nice outside.


(see the flower petals on Sultan's back? I love it when he goes out and rubs around the bushes. He comes in looking like he's been at a wedding or something, all covered with purple petals.)

For some strange reason Max had already gotten dressed in his PJs. This is honestly so weird and never ever happens without us bugging him a bunch. But that day, somehow he was on top of things.

He was just SO excited about the trampoline!!

And we worked on it and worked on it. Max played around and Sultan ate apples.


Isn't it tiny? It's probably half the size and half the height of our old one. It kind of looks like an overgrown exercise trampoline. I think it's cute.
Setting it up took way longer than it seemed like it should. And the sun was going down.


The sunset over the mountains never fails to disappoint.
And Kris finally finished up the last bit of the safety net set up in the dark.

And the little guy finally got to jump. He waited so long and so semi-patiently! We let him jump for about 5 minutes and then shuttled him off to bed.


It was a nice night. And Max was way excited to get up and jump on his trampoline the next morning. I'm hoping it'll inspire a lot more outside time this fall!
Thanks for spending the evening with us.

::legos::

Max has just barely gotten interested in legos. And he's very very interested in them right now.
I've gotten him some legos before, and even spent time putting them together for him, but he never really caught the vision. He didn't realize you could customize and change things I think.
I really like legos. I think they're a lot of fun and they're good toys for learning dexterity and fine motors skills and lots of other things.
I have to give Kelly & Lechelle the credit for this. They gave us Lego Star Wars for the Wii for christmas and Max has really been enjoying it. Once he started playing that he started thinking about legos a lot.
He started playing with the sets he had and making star warsy type things out of them.
Then he took his chore money he'd been saving and purchased a small official Star Wars set.

He was thrilled. Ok, I know in this picture it looks like he's a little less than thrilled, but that's just his "cool guy" smile.

I also got a little set that you could make a house and car and dog out of which he thought was really fun. Especially the dog. The little dog is so cute!

He enjoyed that. But we had a problem. The Star Wars set he got only had good guys in it. No bad guys. Lots of blasters but no bad guys. The poor people in the house and car set kept getting enlisted as bad guys and it just wasn't right.
So I told him that if he could try hard to keep from chewing his fingernails for a week I would get him the bad guys.
I made him a chart of course, and he did well enough (with lots of reminders and mercy of course) that he could get the bad guys. Now he's complete.

It's just fun to see him playing and having fun and being a little creative with it.
And it's fun to see him enjoying Star Wars--it was definitely a part of my childhood, and Kris's too. Fun stuff.

::buzz & woody::

We love PJs from the Disney Store. It's my new favorite place to get them. Not only are the PJs adorable with characters we love on them, but they come in sizes bigger than 5. And somehow it's hard to find good PJs for those that are older than 5.

What could be better than pretending to be a toy when you're going to bed?
I love how the Woody PJs even have "boots" at the bottom. Max was a little bummed that there wasn't a pull string on the back of the shirt though.
I especially love his side profile. He's got quite the figure, doesn't he?


Max was a little confused as to why I was writing my name on his foot. You're not though, are you?

::grandparents' house fun::

I remember when we used to visit my grandparents houses. It was so fun to go to a place where we belonged, kind of like home, but was so new and different and changed while we were gone. I remember my grandparent's in California had some really cool toys. They had a big yellow stuffed dinosaur that I loved when I was little, even though it wasn't really very soft. It kind of crunched when it was squeezed. They also had these crazy sand/oil/water things. Flat and oval shaped with beautiful blue and beige sand that would mix together with the oil in fantastic shapes when tipped. I loved playing with that stuff.
I remember that my grandparents in Texas had a ton of books. And that's a big deal to me. When I got there and saw all the books I could hardly wait to start reading. It was awesome.
Anyway, all this leads me up to watching my own little son enjoy his grandparents' houses and connect with different objects. There are so many things that he loves and things that he looks forward to playing with. It's really fun.
There are a lot of magical things to find in UT too.
I think probably his very favorite (out of so much fun stuff) thing in Highland would be Robby the robot. He's a vacumn, but I don't know what Max sees him as. When he realized there was a remote and Robby could be directed it was probably the best day ever. But the bummer is that Robby has to charge up for hours at a time. So poor little Max gets to practice patience. (Which of course in my mind is never a bad thing!)


In Provo this visit he found a couple of things to love (out of the many magical things).
Some "colorful blocks" that he spied when doing illegal recon in my parents room. He requested some play time with them, and luckily my mom allowed it.



What a classic little boy pose! No, he didn't step on them.
(hmmmm, anybody else think he's growing out of his PJs?)

Another favorite this visit was the "trick pony" money bank that has sat on the hearth in my parent's living room for pretty much ever.
I snagged some change from various parts of the house and he played with it for hours.

you put the money in his mouth

you pull the little lever in the back and....

he drops it in the feed box or whatever that is.
This is a very dramatic process--or at least his out of control photo pose says so.


Silly.
What a lucky guy to have such great grandparents.

::new toy::

I've been watching Craig's list quite closely, and as a result of all my hard work saturday we went and picked ourselves up a new family toy.

What do you think it is??
It's pretty fun and took a lot of (re)construction.

Good guess! It IS a half pipe!

Just kidding.

If you haven't figured it out by now I'm a little worried about you!

We went and picked it up from a toothless guy out in the boonies in the morning. By the time we got it all put together it was late afternoon. Max was all cranky from staying up late the night before for the fireworks, and it was driving him nuts that the trampoline was there and he couldn't use it.

Sultan just lay in his special hole in the corner of the yard and wondered what all the big deal was about. He's not that impressed.

Then once we had it all up--including the "enclosure" of course--it was time for some fun.
And we had to have the fun fast, because though there was sun on saturday morning, the storm clouds started moving in, and we knew rain was sure to come!

Max was kind of like Mr. jelly legs when he first got on there, flopping all over.

Especially if Kris was up there jumping. It barely took a step for Kris to knock him over.

It doesn't take too long for these little guys to learn though, and by the time we had to get off he was doing really well.

Anybody ever played crack the egg? It's that game where one of you sits in the middle of the tramp and holds onto their feet and the other person tries to bounce them around until they have to let go of their feet.
Much more fun though--crack the mama fish.

It was hilarious because he could hardly get her to bounce--not for lack of trying. Or for lack of serious face making.

And he certainly couldn't get me to bounce very high. But it was fun all around anyway.


The biggest triumph is that he taught himself over the weekend to bounce to his bottom and back up to his feet. He tried a zillion times on saturday and could never figure it out.

It's definitely good exercise. I was sore all weekend!

::nifties::

So I don't know if everybody feels this way but to me, growing up, my grandparents houses were pretty magical places. Like my grandparents in LA had a pool, which was awesome. And that gumball machine I mentioned earlier. And a cookie jar that was always full. And special cereal just for us to eat in the morning. And an orange grove in the yard! It was all pretty special and exciting.

I didn't get a chance to spend too much time at my mom's parents house, but I remember cool things there too, like my grandad's woodshop, and their cool decorations. Their fuzzy wallpaper in the entry hall was so interesting, and I remember them having a closet full of kid's books, although my mom claims that never existed. I also read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory there for the first time. Good associations.

Grandparent's houses are cool places no matter what. They're just fun. But my mom has gone to a lot of trouble to find a bunch of cool exciting things to make her house a super magical grandmother house. Such as this awesome chinese checkers set with big gorgeous marbles.

My mom and max played with this a whole bunch. Max loved it.
And I have to show you a color picture of this set, it's too cool!

Another thing, one that Max is completely in love with now, is this cup.

There's a puppy in it. He's hidden if you're drinking milk, and slowly shows his face as the milk is slurped up. Or he just sticks his head out of the water the whole time you're drinking it. "Dog water!" Max says in delight.

He's been drinking and drinking out of it which is so cute.

The last thing I'll show you now (though there are lots more fun toys and such) is this cool marble tower thing. You put marbles up at the top and give the first one a push.

Then as the first marble goes down the little track it gets dumped into buckets which dump it down to the next level. Kind of hard to explain. But the 2nd marble waits somehow until the 1st is far enough down. It's really cool. The little marbles are very civilized and take turns!

Max calls it a marble party. It's really a neat thing.

I think Max is going to have very special memories of his grandparents' houses out here in Utah. He already has particular things he loves and remembers about each house. It's really fun for me to see.  He's a lucky boy.