Baby Steps

 I'm an attached mother.  I take all my childrens' milestones as personal attacks on our relationship, as if they are trying to out grow me. I'm constantly reminding myself of the dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  At least once a day I can hear his voice in my head saying "Why you want to leeeave me?"  It is for this reason that Dash won't start Kindergarten this year, Colt can still 'nuggle in the middle of the night, and Sport just had his first bowl of cereal yesterday, the day he turned six months old.



First bite.  Sport hated cereal.  He gagged and had the shakes through the whole bowl.



Daddy took a turn shoveling the stuff in.  Sport only looks happy.



Finished! Time to hose off.



Easter

We had a super fun Easter starting with egg shaped sugar cookies on Monday, climaxing with a sugar high that lasted through Saturday and into Sunday and ended in a bellyache.  Ah, traditions.

We spent Saturday morning dying eggs and then we went to the egg hunt at the city park.  The boys made a haul, well, mostly Dash did, but Colt didn't realize that Dash had more eggs so it worked out.  Back at home, Brandan and I did a treasure hunt for the boys that ended in a Cadbury egg, a treat we discovered the boys don't like. 
Because the day was so beautiful, we decided to go for a walk back over to the park.  Dash climbed to the top of the igloo shaped monkey bars and then fell off onto his little tailbone.  Poor guy, he was moving like an old man come Sunday morning.  In fact, he dropped something on the floor and rather than go through the pain of bending to pick it up, he kicked it all the way across the floor to Brandan and asked him to reach down and get it. 

Dyeing eggs

The finished products.

The egg hunt.  You can see Dash going like crazy in the background.

The egg hunt.

The loot.

Brandan is reading the boys the next clue in the treasure hunt.

On Sunday the boys got dressed in their Easter best, or rather, the best we had to offer and we went to Church and then over to the Ivies for dinner and another little egg hunt.

Easter Sunday morning

The Ivie egg hunt

The Ivie egg hunt

I should say that with all this Easter commercialism we did try to stress the real reason for Easter, the Savior's Atonement and Resurrection.  I don't think we did a very good job though because I asked Colt what happened when Jesus was resurrected and he said, "Some bad guys killed Jesus and then He came and cut off their arms".  Close enough.

Father of Lying (Down), Mother of Invention, and Good and Bad Sports

The two younger boys haven't been sleeping well lately so by the end of the day we are all exhausted.  Brandan and Sport often conk out on the couch while watching the news.


Sport and Daddy sleeping.

 Dash has been asking for a basketball hoop lately.  Finally, after being pestered for a solid week, I came up with, if I can say so myself, a pretty clever substitution.

I cut the bottom out of an ice cream bucket and nailed it to a tree.  The boys found some small balls and immediately went out to "make some shoots".

Sport is growing up super fast and getting cuter, and more michievious, every day.

This is spectator Sport observing the basketball game.

Sport loves to sit up like the big boys.

Someone (okay, okay, it was me) left a pen within Sport's reach.  I think the picture says the rest.

Mixed Company

We had an awesome week.  Dan and Jill, Boe and Kamber came to visit on Wednesday and stayed until Sunday morning.  On Thursday they went to see Mt. Rushmore and then on Friday after Brand got done with school we all went over to Spearfish and went to the animal sanctuary.  We got there in the early evening which was perfect because all the big cats were roaring at each other and the whole place echoed with the noise.  Michael, the sanctuary owner, had Brandan go in between the lion cages to show us how protective Stinky the lion is of his little dog friend in the adjoining cage.  It didn't take long for Stinky to jump up against the fence and growl at Brandan.  Brand acted brave, but I know my heart stopped. As we were walking away from the lions, I asked Colt if he could hear the roaring and he answered, "Yeah, they're saying 'waaa, I want to go with my friends, waaaa!'"


Dash and Boe looking at the buffalo.




The family in front of one of the tigers.

  Brandan was coaching an indoor track meet at the rec center in Gillette on Saturday so the rest of us went to watch for a minute and then to go swimming at the rec center pool.  Sport even got in the water and absolutely loved it.  With Dan and Jill's help, Dash and Colt both got to go down the tubes enough times to make us all motion sick and, overall, I think everyone had a good time.  Poor Brandan missed out.

Dash, Dan, Colt and Kamber at the pool.

Jill holding Sport in the water.

We had a really good time with the Clayson family and we were all a little sad to see them go, but as the picture below illustrates, it only took us a few hours to get back to our regular manners.

Colt relaxing in front of the tv after the company left.



A Good Start

The first few days of April have been pretty good to us.  I pulled off a pretty stellar April Fool's Day trick by mixing huge amounts of salt into a few of the chocolate chip cookies I baked and then fed to my family.  Colt ate most of his without any problem, but Dash and Brandan had to down several glasses of water in order to recover.  Brandan would be upset if I didn't mention that he also was able to pull one over on me when he went through the house and switched all the clocks that evening while I was getting ready for bed.  I was pretty shocked to see that I had waited until 11:30 to go to bed when I thought I would be asleep by 10:30.

Saturday was a beautiful day and the boys literally spent hours outside and even got the first little sunburn of the season. (Brandan spent the day at a track meet and got more than a little sunburn.)




The boys spent a good portion of the day chasing bubbles.




The boys are suppose to be getting ready for bed, but they are goofing off instead.

We watched conference at the Booth's house on Sunday.  Colt asked their 16 year old daughter to hold his hand and then came home and announced to the family that he loves Danny Booth.

On Monday we invited the Ivies over to watch the NCAA Basketball Finals.  Dash and Colt thought we were having a party so they requested I make a basketball party cake.


The basketball party.

 
 Sport has been able to roll and maneuver to where ever for quite some time now, but on Monday night he started hoisting onto all fours.  It's only a matter of time...



I didn't get him at his best, but this is Sport practicing his crawl stance.