Simon Says. . .

Simon: "I'm doing my homework"

Me: No idea were he learned about homework. . . Maybe he saw it on TV?. "What's your homework for tonight?"

Simon: "I work on my house! That's my home work!"

Me: Stares for a few seconds until it sinks in. "Oh, I get it! Home, work.

I'm one of the few mom's that can say my kid loves to do his homework.

What better place to celebrate

Our little Ryan just turned one yesterday! Time flies so fast!

I wanted to do something special for Ryan because this is his very first birthday!
I know, I know, he is too little to remember anything we do. I like to think of it as the first birthday is for mom. It is a celebration that she made it through the first year with her sanity.

So to celebrate this momentus occasion, I took the boys to the Children's Museum in Phoenix. I had heard a lot of good things about this place and it definately lived up to my expectations. Both boys enjoyed themselves thouroughly.

I had to pry Simon away from the race car track with a crowbar. He was determined to live there forever.

Simon and Ryan got to paint a little house, ride tricycles, race cars, meet new friends, ride a pushcar train, sit in a race car, roll balls, build puzzles. . . etc.

I completely wore the boys out. Ryan slept the whole way home and Simon actually cried when we walked out the doors.
Don't worry Simon, we will definately be going back.

Once we were in Phoenix I remembered that my camera's batteries were dead! Grrrr!
Thank goodness for cell phones. I didn't want to go all the way out there to celebrate Ryan's birthday and not have any pictures to show for it. So these are the few pictures I got. Enjoy.

I'll have more on Ryan's birthday up soon.

Pickle ice

This afternoon Simon stared intently into the pickle jar. No pickles were left, just pickle juice.

Simon: "Mom! Look! The pickles melted and made pickle juice!"

Feelin' hot hot hot!

When we moved to Mesa we expected heat. But every year it hits with just as much force as the last. HEAT WAVE!

So what do we do? We stay inside and complain about the weather. When we go out we go to places like the Mall, Wal-Mart, other people's air conditioned houses, etc.

Once in a while I'll get brave and take the boys out swimming or to the zoo to play in the water. This week we made a trip to the zoo. We are Phoeinix Zoo members so we can go whenever we please. This time we chose one of the very hottest days of the season 113 degrees! Yes, that is sweat. Good thing we brought tons of ice water with us.

Poor little Ryan got sunscreen in his eyes and was getting a cold too! So he had red eyes and a runny nose all day.

The good news is we had the whole zoo almost to ourselves. Everyone else was smart enough to stay home :)

Nonetheless, the boys had a great time splashing around in the water and checking out the few animals we got to see.

I love this picture. The girl in the background is thinking "what is that kid doing?"

In a giant nutshell. . .

Ok, stick a big fat L on my forehead because I'm a LOSER. I'm supposed to be keeping up this stinkin' blog but I haven't been doing a good job at all. As you can tell by the fact that my hubby had to post pics of our goldfish because I'm a bad blogger. :)

So. . .

I'm going to be better!~

I wanted to let the world know (or at least the 5 people who read our blog) what we are up to!

Jeremiah is still working at Farnsworth Wholesale in Mesa, currently a dispatcher. He tolerates his job ok but he really likes some of the people he works with and that has been the biggest thing that keeps him there. He works 10 hour days and doesn't start work until 9 or 10am so we don't get to see as much of him as we like. There are many days that the boys don't get to see him at all when he gets home. :( But, looking at the bright side, Simon gets REALLY excited to see his dad now, and Saturday is Daddy's day. Simon only wants to hang out with his daddy, not mommy, all day long. (bittersweet for me). Jeremiah is also the ward Sunday School President curently and that keeps his Sundays busy too.

I'm just as crazy as always. I always seem to have about 13 projects going at the same time and can never figure out why none of them get finished. Cantaloupe Corner is doing well for still being new and it keeps me busy in my not-so-free time. Right now I am in the processes of learning the nuts and bolts of screenprinting and creating my own screens to print new designs. YAY! If you know me at all you know that I LOVE to learn to do new things! Especially crafty things! I get a bit obsessed. . . I don't know if that is good or bad.

I also get the amazing opportunity to stay at home with my little angels. I wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Not even for chocolate mousse cheesecake! (mmmmm) I get giddily excited to see my kids learning and growing. I am amazed everyday at how much they can do!

Simon is now 3 (yes 3) years old! He is incredibly smart and so silly! I know I'm his mom and everything but I swear my kid's a genius :) He's known his letters and thier sounds since his 2nd birthday and now he can put it all together and read! He reads lots of 3 or 4 letter words but starts to give up if the word seems too long.

His very favorite thing to do is play trains. Thomas is his favorite. He has tons of little magnetic trains and some battery powered trains and he doesn't go anywhere without them. He even sings to Thomas sometimes when he is going to sleep. He knows the Thomas the Train song by heart and if anyone else sings it he gets very very upset.

Simon also adores his little brother (most of the time). He is so happy to have a friend that lives in the same house as him! He loves it until Ryan tries to play with one of his toys (a train, for instance). That's when Simon tackles Ryan to get that toy back or just pushes Ryan out of the way. . . .brothers. . .

Ryan is almost 1! I can hardly believe it! Sept 2nd is his first birthday and I'm so excited I want to jump up and down! I went shopping today to get him some b-day gifts. It's great when their young enough that they can test out birthday presents in the store. That way if they don't like it, you just leave it there. No returning nessecary.

Ryan just barely started really crawling up on his hands and knees about 2 weeks ago. I thought it would never happen. He crawled on his belly using one leg and one arm for a long time. I adoringly called this the "wounded soldier" crawl. Then he discovered he moved faster with both legs and both arms (still on his belly). I called this one the "lizard crawl". Boy, could that kid fly across the floor! Finally, he discovered that if he gets up off of his belly he can crawl over things too!

He cruises around the furniture pretty well but I still think it will be at least another month or two until he takes those highly anticipated first steps. I'm not in a hurry though. I like that he can't run away from me yet :)

And, if anyone is interested, Zeus is doing great too! He loves company, so come over and bring a doggy treat or two and you will have a buddy for life!

As for our goldfish. . .

Poor little Lemuel lost his life due to being fed by a three year old. Too much food in the bowl. *tear* At least he didn't starve to death. Lamen is still alive and I've taken over feeding our little fishy friend so hopefully he will survive. . . at least for a little while.

Bonnie and Clyde

Whelp, it's finally happened, I (Jeremiah) am doing an update on our (Jeni's) blog. I wanted to get you updated before the fish die...

Jeni got this great idea of getting Simon a gold fish. I don't know why other than, just because. When we were getting them, I told her to go ahead and get two, that gives us double the chance of keeping at least one alive (worked with our cats, we still have one somewhere).

We decided to give the fish "original" names since our last fish was named "Ketchup." At first, we couldn't agree on any names, we had anything from Tom and Jerry to Bonnie and Clyde. Finally, we ended up with Laman and Lemuel, because those are names he knows.

Simon was so excited that he began to talk to the fish. He would turn to us and say, "Dad, they say they are hungry..." or when Jeni told him that they didn't have eyelids to close their eyes, he ran and asked them "Do you have eye lids?" and then came running back saying, "Yes, they said they have lids, they are growing eye lids!"

Simon also keeps trying to put anything and everything in the fish bowl. He asked his mommy if he could wash his hands in their bowl or if they would like to play with his lego car. It is so much fun to see his enthusiasm, or at least until his mommy told him that they are just to look at and not play with. :-)