We Love Our Dad!

We thought we'd take a minute to recognize our husband/dad on his special day.

Did you know he is amazing? Like when he saved us mucho money this week by diagnosing and replacing parts on our broken oven. Or when he spent 2 1/2 hours mowing our grass on Saturday. Or when he held James the whole time that he was fighting sleep on our airplane ride. Yup, see? He's amazing.

Additionally he is a dedicated dad who spends all the time that he can with his wife and boys. We love him so very much!

We are also very grateful for our dads/grandpas and are so glad that we will be able to see them both this week!

Happy Father's Day!

Potty Party

Yup, we did it!  The potty party.  And it worked.  Pretty well.  Much better than I expected at least.  Our big boy is a champ.  We had half-heartedly tried potty training one other day about 4 or 5 months ago, but Scott was out of town and we were constantly running here and there.  We decided to put it off and have been so busy with house hunting etc, that we waited until now.  The little potty has been out since then though, so Alan was familiar with it.  A couple of Saturdays ago we decided to give it another go.  Something clicked around 10:30 that morning and we were golden.  Only 2 accidents since that time about a week and a half ago. Pretty much we are soooooo proud of Alan!  He is very very determined when he wants to be, and we are soooo glad that he has decided to be determined to use the potty.  I was seriously dreading this and we were quite surprised that it went so smoothly.  I didn't get many pictures but we had a really, really fun day.  I'll let him tell you about it.

Congrats Alan!  We are so proud of you!

Haircuts

So haircuts have been a kind of traumatic experience for us since the day Alan could scream.  He is absolutely terrified of them.  We've tried both buzzer and scissors, with terror resulting from each.   He shakes and screams, but since the buzzer is faster, Scott usually does that as quickly as he can, while I hold him.  It's just a traumatic necessary evil that we tend to put off.

However, after aforementioned tick incident, we decided it was best to break down and give a summer haircut.  Alan went first and started screaming the moment we mentioned the word.  He did do a little better this time, though, as he wasn't convulsing during the haircut and calmed down the moment we turned off the buzzer.

Enter James.  Calm James.  He smiles and laughs as Scott and Alan distract him and doesn't mind a bit as I snip his hair.  We'll see how he handles it when he knows what is going on. :) But the whole time Alan was just telling him, "Wow, James!  You're doing such a good job!"  It was hilarious.  Then Alan decided he wanted a scissor haircut right then.  We'll see how he feels about it next time.

I thought this picture was a good representation of our boys and their current temperaments.  :)  And we love them both.

Memorial Day Fun

Ok so in addition to all of the work we got done when my family was here, we had a little bit of fun too.  Here are some pics from their visit.

Alan got a little worm sprinkler toy as a moving away gift from one of his friends and was very eager to put it to use.

James was content to just sit and smile at first.

Until he became a little more interested

And a little more brave

And finally decided that he liked sprinklers too

And then he was once again content to sit and smile, as long as he was in the water.

Looks like this will be our new splash park.

Evan was delighted to have a little game of baseball.

We had just beautiful weather and it was a perfect afternoon

James loved playing peek-a-boo with Grandma

And giving lots of smooches to Grandma

We loved having Aunt Meg to play with the boys.  We will miss her when she goes to school!

Memorial Day BBQ

If you don't watch him, he'll eat the whole bag.  I wonder who he gets it from?

And just because I couldn't resist, I had to put up a few pictures that Megan took this weekend as well.  They were just too cute. And she edits them, and they turn out much better.

Getting Settled...

Well, we've been out of commission on the blogging front for a little while as we've been busy getting settled into our new home.  We had a whirlwind first week, which I wanted to recap, just so that we would remember it for years to come.  Here is a list of lessons learned:

• For some reason, it always seems to take forever to get the internet connected and working correctly, and you still have to pay someone to come out, even if your husband is a computer science internet security research guy.  
• Washers are more difficult to find on craigslist than we thought.  You use (or want to use) washing machines a lot when unpacking.  Thankfully Home Depot delivers.
• It is best to mount baby gates.  We bought one that would work mounted or unmounted, and had intended to mount it, but hadn't gotten around to it when we had a tumble down the stairs.  And no, it wasn't the 10 month old.  It was the almost 3 year old who thought he could either climb over or plow through the thing and took the gate with him down the half flight of stairs.  No injuries, and I don't think he'll try it again.  But the gate is now mounted, regardless.
• Don't have inside doors with keyed locks.  Especially when you don't have a key to the lock.  And when you buy a replacement doorknob, install it as soon as you get home.  Don't wait 12 hours like we did, or, in that amount of time, your son may lock the door to your room and close the door with no one in it, and you will have to call a locksmith.  And that is just not fun.
• Know where the nearest pediatric emergency room is.  Yes, I know this sounds like Alan, but it was James.  He had a fever which sent him into a seizure and completely freaked me out. When the doctor's office put me on hold twice, I called 911, and the paramedics came.  He was conscious again by the time they got there and they informed me that it is common in young kids to have seizures from fevers.  We still went to the ER to get him checked out, and thankfully he is fine.  Just keep your kids on ibuprofen, tylenol, or both.
• Turns out, we live in the woods.  Not like the middle of nowhere, where I grew up, but woodsy all the same.  We've met lots of fun creatures in our yard.  A wild turkey, groundhog that lives under our shed, tons of frogs.  Alan even had a tick attached to his head one night.  Successfully removed, and no worries, but we are constantly checking now.  And may get some spray.
• Wait to mow your grass until it is soooo long that the 12 year old kids down the street come and offer to mow it for you to welcome you to the neighborhood.  Great way to meet neighbors and get your lawn partially mowed.  (had to call it quits for baseball)  Turns out we have a kind of big yard.  And we put off buying a lawn mower because we couldn't decide on whether to get a riding mower or a push mower.  When the 12 year olds came over with the push mower, it helped sway us that way and we've decided on the push mower to start.  Yeah, it will take a while to mow the grass, but we figure it will be good exercise.  Luckily we had a great group of helpers this week.
• Have family come visit and put them to work!  My family came up for Memorial Day weekend and got sooooo much done.  They mowed the grass, trimmed bushes, planted flowers, cleaned bathrooms, cleaned our rental home, unpacked, assembled new shelves, took down old shelves, organized, moved freezer, and mounted tv and gate.  We are miles ahead of where we would have been. 

All in all, a fun first week.  Wait until you hear about our second week. :)