Two Wheels

Last Christmas (his fourth), Gabe got a balance bike (a two wheel bike without pedals) so he could learn to stay up on two wheels.  He picked up on that so quickly that we gave him this two wheeler with pedals just as it was beginning to get hot again (what, three months after Christmas?  This is Arizona, amigos.)  Summer is not a time to ride a bike out here, much less learn to ride a bike, lest you fall on the asphalt and melt your skin off, so he had not had a chance to practice on it until now.  It has just begun to get cool (80’s) again, so Brittany taught him how to ride it after a couple afternoons.

Way to go, Gabe!

Who is Brittany, you ask?  Brittany is our wonderful respite provider/nanny.  She has been working with our family (in particular, Ari) since May.  She loves our kids and we love her!

Day On The Lake

We weren’t done with vacation after vacation was over.  I saw this coming.  I planned ahead.  Fridays are good for playing hooky on everyday life.  Even sweeter when you pass on a weekday for a day on Bartlett Lake in a pontoon boat. 

Ari was the skipper of the boat, and she stayed at the helm most of the time.  She knew exactly what that was all about, and she took her role very seriously.

This is how Ari feels about taking turns at the wheel.

Little girl knows how to soak it all in. 

As I said, it was a beautiful cool day, so we weren’t in the water as long as we might have been on a normal Arizona day, but the water was surprisingly still in the high seventies and it was exhilarating to be out in the great big lake all by ourselves.

Love days like this.

A Bit of Fall

It isn’t fall here yet.  I’m still having to buy Liam summer clothes as he sizes up every few weeks (he wears a size 9 months or 6-12 months, in case you were wondering).  But that doesn’t mean that we won’t try to get into the fall spirit anyhow… starting with a Groupon for a family hayride to the pumpkin patch.  Cute idea, right?

But alas, not every outing goes as well as planned… cue overtired crabby baby, three members of the family who happen to be really allergic to hay, and other pumpkin patch pandemonium. 

But my kids have a gift for being able to have fun under any circumstances.  They also happen to be really cute, if I do say so myself… so we continue the memory making and of course the picture taking, even if I do have to make a mad dash for the host’s homemade root beer keg in a vain attempt at calming my anaphylaxis (it didn’t work, but dang it was good).

  

Ari thinks farms are a little stinky.  She also does this when she enters a public bathroom, drives by a dairy, or smells Jake’s morning breath.

Gabe and Bella think that spider web and gravestone decorations are very, very spooky!  I put them on our front yard bushes at home after seeing this reaction.  Bella still shrieks every time I pull in the driveway.  Gabe compares our decorations to that of all the other houses in the neighborhood, and tells me how our house isn’t spooky enough.