::today--a year ago::

Last year on this day we were in Utah, and we had a little party up American Fork canyon with the Hendricks side of the fam.

I miss the mountains, and the canyons, and the fam. Both sides of it.

I also miss the skin crackingly dry air, and the chilly high desert nights. Oh yeah, and the fam.

I wish we got to spend a whole month visiting, like we did last summer. That was great.
Last summer was really crazy, now that I think about it. We traveled so much, and so much happened all at once.


It's always exciting when these guys get together:

They're much bigger now, but just as silly.

I'm thinking we might need to enter them into some sort of synchronized eating competition, what do you think?





Is there such a thing as synchronized eating? If not, there certainly should be.

So, I wish we were getting together tonight for a big Hendricks/Randle family weinie** roast up the canyon. It would make me happy.


**weinie is easterner speak for hotdog. Just in case anybody was confused. It confuses me. Why would anyone want to use the word weinie when there are other, less gross names for a thing?

::today::

Today it is SO grey, and so rainy. That could be fun and refreshing if it hadn't been that way for the last week--more like the last two weeks.
So Max is going a little nuts from being stuck inside, after all the fun he's been having in the yard.

Last night before bed Kris took him for a bike ride, and I guess there was a pretty monumental crash. Lately if he starts to feel out of control he takes his feet off the pedals and tries to stop by dragging his shoes along the ground. Besides being really bad for his shoes it usually results in bad things. He was brave and got back on the bike but came home pretty injured.

He was wondering why there is only one butterfly bandage in the band aid box. I explained that normally people just don't need them that often. But I'm thinking maybe I should invest in some more!

Today Max bought himself a balloon when we went to the grocery store, using some of his old money from feeding Sultan. It was pretty exciting.

He got it to match his shirt.


We were hoping to see a fire work show tonight. It's part of a big celebration Warwick has every year commemorating the burning of some British ship before the revolutionary war. I guess they have battle reenactments and people in costume and fireworks and a parade and all that. Sounds kind of fun. But it's so rainy! I'm not sure if it's worth it or not. We're also debating whether it's worth fighting for a seat and having to wait beside the road for two hours tomorrow morning for the parade. I just don't know.

SO. Max and I made dessert, just in case we don't get to do anything else fun today.

They're "magic bars", and boy do they look delicious. We can't wait for Kris to get home so we can get dinner over with and eat dessert! Friday is always the day he's stuck at work the latest, which is a little anti-climactic.


So that's today, so far at least. Already almost the middle of June. Crazy!

::nifty gifty::

When the Abbys came over the other night for dinner, Melissa was bearing gifts. She brought Max a pack of water balloons. It was his first ever water balloon experience. Even though it's been cloudy, cool and kind of dreary around here, there was a bit of sun, and of course Max had to try the balloons right away.

Chad found one with a convenient squirting hole.

Max can't really catch.

See?

He is cute though.

Hoping to ambush dad with a water balloon attack. I don't think he actually hit anybody the whole time.




Chad suggested getting out the tennis racket.

It made for some pretty spectacular explosions.
I'm going to spare you all the photos I have of Max swinging his racket very intensely, and the balloon flying right by (or else hitting him in the gut.)





I asked Kris and Max to stand together for a quick picture and the following happened:



Good thing the little guy is a good sport (at least when he wants to be.)

It was not particularly warm out there, and I'm guessing Max might've ended up a little chilly. But that never stops him from having fun.

Grant was just wishing he was old enough to break water balloons over his dad's head.

Ah well, looks like you've got to be older than five to pull that one off anyway.

Now, since it's rained every day since poor Max is going nuts because he can't use his balloons. I guess Sultan and I are glad about that, since we would be the obvious targets. But hopefully summer will come sometime soon so we can have some fun!

::sad (but happy)::

The last year has flown by so fast!
We're sure going to miss our great friends Chad, Melissa and Grant when they graduate and move at the end of the month.





We love youguys!

::prizes::

The first chore prize that Max got was rollerblades!
We really wanted to get him some anyway, now that we're someplace he could actually use them more. He had also run across my old pair before we moved, and insisted on bumbling around the house in them, until that was outlawed.

So the chore chart was just a good excuse to get the man a pair of blades! I found a great huge 2nd hand sporting good store out here and picked up a small pair. They're cool because they adjust about 3 sizes. So he should be able to wear them for a while. If, that is, he can ever figure out how to actually skate.






He spends most of the time like this:

We had to watch him a lot at first and make sure he didn't bash his face in--we know all about that kind of thing. But he's gotten a little better since.

But I would recommend against rollerblading around a hyped up crazy dog who's running circles.





Ahhh! Moon Bear attack!!!

When he lived through the Sultan attack I knew he was going to figure out these blades eventually. Luckily he has all summer to do it!

I just wish I could figure out some way to harness the energy of the boy and the dog and put it to good use-like generating electricity or something. Or if I could just borrow some of it for exercising with.

::last day::

Today was Max's final day of nursery school. I can hardly believe it! I mean, it seemed like the winter lasted a lifetime, but it feels like his school year just flew by.
The kids have grown so much in the last nine months--in lots of ways.

I don't know if I've talked about this before, but this school is a co-op school, where parents are involved in all aspects of the school. That means that I got to go in and be the teachers' aid at least once a month during the year. It was so nice because it let me have a little window into his world. I got to know the other kids at school, as well as the teachers, and I was able to observe the way their days went, so I could ask him better questions.
The co-op set up builds a community of parents around the kids, and it's really cool.

Today we all got together at the end of class, and the kids sang a long silly song they'd made up. Then each kid got a little certificate of completion. Then they all got ice cream. TONS of ice cream.
It was a fun little party.

I had to extract Max from a lip locked bear hug at one point with a little boy that adores him. It was pretty funny.
We're going to miss the kids and teachers, it's been a great school year!

(Max's b-day didn't get celebrated in school because we were out of town all of feb--they put him in with the summer birthdays today, and he was pretty happy about it.)

Thanks to our wonderful friends that told us about this school, we were lucky to know about it and to get him in!

::chores::

For the last long time I've been thinking that it would be a good idea to formalize Max's chores. He didn't have many. Basically we had him feeding the dog and that was about it. We were supposed to be paying him a quarter every time he did it, but often I would forget to pay him and he'd forget to remind me. So then after weeks he'd be like "HEY! Where are all my quarters?"
And the only thing he could really do with his quarters was buy gum or something like that. He didn't really make enough to ever save for something more substantial, which I think was a little frustrating.

So. Not to ramble any more, but since we're in our new place, finally pretty settled in, we thought it was time to come up with a better system.
We assigned him five chores to start with, and I made a chart for the week. If he finished all his chores every day that week he gets a prize. Some of the prizes are small, some big. Mostly they're just stuff I would've gotten for him anyway. This week we used our family outing to see UP as his prize for last week. That worked out well.

He's been doing great! I think it helps to have the visual representation of his progress right there on the fridge, and the prize is really motivating.

And next post I'll tell you all about his first prize, it was very exciting.

Any suggestions of other chores we could add onto his chart? It's hard for me to think of things he can do that don't just end up slowing me down. Give me some ideas!

::ups and downs::

Yesterday was kind of an intense day for Max.  He started it out well (at least in my opinion), by sleeping in until after 7.  This is unusual for him these days, and I really like it.  Even though he does a pretty good job entertaining himself if I'm trying to sleep in, there's something about a happy quiet morning house that just speaks to me.

We took a trip to the grocery store and I ended up with one too many of those clear plastic produce bags.  Max lovingly adopted it and played with it for the remainder of the trip as he rode in the basket of the cart.  I didn't realize quite how strong the attachment between them had become until he dropped it through the bottom of the cart while we were in line.  I was too busy trying to make sure that all the bags of food fit around him without squashing food or little boys to remember that I had promised him I would retrieve it.

We were halfway through the door when he realized it was still on the floor.  It was just too late.  He cried as if his heart had just been broken in two.  And he didn't want just any bag, he wanted THAT bag.

It took a while to calm him down.

After that he got to spend a lot of time in the backyard blowing bubbles, shooting squirt guns and playing with Sultan.  That always makes for a good day.

At the end of the day we met Kris at the movie theater so we could se UP, Pixar's new movie.  Max loved it, and Kris and I enjoyed it too.  (3d movies are pretty cool, who knew?)

But it was after that things really started to go downhill.  We had driven separately to the theater, so Max rode home with Dad, as he does whenever he can.

At home, in the driveway, Max's elbow got closed in the window.  (No big damage, just a scrape or two) It broke him though.  He was a wet noodle.  He couldn't walk or talk.  Just tears.

THEN, while getting his teeth brushed, someone who will remain nameless, missed and brushed Max's left eyeball.  Yes, there was toothpaste on the brush.  No, it didn't go over well.  It was like a cherry on the top of an already traumatic day.

BUT!  After that when I was putting him to bed, he whistled for the first time ever.  That was very exciting.  

Life can be tough when you're five.  I asked him today if yesterday was a good day.  He said yes.

::::

Did you know that dogs can laugh?

Yep.  That's all I have to say today.  Good night!