New features on the blog

So I changed a few things around here in the past few weeks. First of all, if you think my kids are the cutest kids around, but you think that my ramblings make you dumber than when you arrived, I included a link to our picassa site. Which completely counteracts the other new thing I did, which was to add a gadget to make it so that things cannot be copied off of my site. I've always been a little nervous about having this a public site, but this makes me feel a little better that now people cannot copy my pictures to their computers.
In other news, today is a big day for us, both kids have well child dr appointments today. Wish me luck. Jesse is coming home early today, so he'll come with us, not like last year.

The other one is sweet too

Graham has a new thing that he is doing these days. Any time he gets hurt he comes up to me and shoves his fingers in my face for me to kiss. It doesn't matter where he got hurt, it's always his fingers that he wants kissed.

Could you ask for a sweeter boy?

So tonight as we were putting Nate to bed we were talking a little about my dad. Tomorrow is his birthday, and Nate was asking me why I was so sad. So I said that I missed Grandpa, and that tomorrow was supposed to be his birthday, but I was sad that we couldn't be with him. And Nate then said that when we are resurrected we can have a birthday party with Grandpa. And when we are resurrected then Grandpa won't be sick any more, and he can live with Grandma all day. And that we won't be sad when we are resurrected. What a sweet little boy. How he can have such simple faith to help get us through some of the harder days. And then after I left the room, he and Jesse were talking, and Nate said he was so sorry that mommy was sad. Oh how I love that little boy and everything he brings into my life.

Mt Vernon

Today we decided to go down to Mt Vernon. Neither Jesse nor I had ever been there, so we thought we ought to go. We got a bit of a later start than we wanted to, and Graham didn't nap on the way down like he should have, so that made things a little hairy at times, but all in all, it was a good trip.

We got down there at about 1, and went straight to the mansion. And by straight to the mansion, I mean straight to the line to get into the mansion. We waited in line for about an hour and a half, but the kids were allowed to run around a bit, and that helped. When we finally got up to the house, Graham was pretty much tired of the whole thing. We put him on the monkey leash, but he didn't like being held back from rushing up to touch all of the centuries old furniture. But we made it through. By the time we were done with the house, he just about lost it. So we went and ate lunch, and after that things were a little happier. The big mistake that we made was that we didn't bring the double jogger stroller. That would have made a world of difference. Instead we had Graham in the backpack carrier, and wow! He's heavy! I think he gained like 30 lbs from the time we got there to the time we left. It was probably all rocks in his pockets and shoes. :)

This is the back yard overlooking the Potomac River.
Anyway, we walked around the grounds for a while, and saw the tomb of Washington and his wife. We walked all the way down to the river, and looked out on the water for a bit. But Nate got really really tired. He was such a trooper, and I'm so proud of him for walking so much. As were were headed out, Graham tripped and fell. Not so unusual, it was probably the millionth time that day, but this time he started to bleed pretty bad, so we were right near a gift shop, so we stopped in and asked if they had any bandaids, and they did have a little first aid kit, so we got him bandaged up, but he was pretty sad. So we just went home. As Jesse went to get us some more water, Graham passed the time splashing in a puddle out front. It was probably his favorite part of the day. It was all fun and games until he fell down, and got really wet. Of course he didn't mind, but the I had to carry him back to the car. So by the end of the day, we were all exhausted, and of course, the kids ended up sleeping in the car on the way home. Here's hoping that they sleep in tomorrow morning.

swim time

Well, we got the pool out today. Thanks to our new pump that we got for the bounce house it was a breeze to blow up the pool. And it took no time at all. The water was quite chilly today, and I imagine it'll be a few weeks before it warms up. Nate didn't care at all that it was cold. But this is my cold boy. He likes everything cold, washes his hands in cold water, eats cold food. He's a weirdo.

Graham on the other hand, didn't want anything to do with being in the cold water. He asked twice to get into the pool, and immediately wanted to get back out. So he just took all of the toys from the bucket and put them into the pool. Anyway, they both had a good time. I guess we're set for the summer now. Swimming and jumping every day.

The Original Washington Monument

On Saturday we drove out to Boonsboro, and we visited the original Washington Monument along the Appalachian trail. There is a parking lot and park quite close to the monument, so it was just a quick morning thing. The hike from the parking lot is perhaps a quarter of a mile, so it was not a bad walk at all. The monument was the first one built in the country to honor President Washington. It was built in 1827. There are some windy stairs inside of the monument that you can climb up to get to the top to see the view of the valley beyond west of South Mountain.

The kids enjoyed running around, and on the way back to the parking lot, it was all down hill, so we even let Graham walk the whole way, and he loved it.

So that was our fun little afternoon outing, Nate keeps on asking to go back, which he does of any place that we visit. (And for some reason, Nate would not show his face in any pictures. He is totally a Markham.)

The Party Continues

So today was Nate's birthday, and I can't believe how grown up he is these days. He started the day telling me that he just wanted to be 3 all day long. By the end of the day day he was walking around telling people that he was 4. I guess he came to terms with it. We spent most of the day just hanging out. Nate watched a few movies while I ran around trying to get things ready for the party. Then we had the craziness begin. I think that when all was said and done we had 10 kids there today. Almost all of them had a parent stay at the party, so it wasn't so bad. They ran around inside,

they ran around outside,

they ate pizza,

they ate cupcakes,

fun was had by all.

This year I made cupcakes for the party. I made some dirt ones,

and some elephant ones. (even though they look like koalas with weird multi-colored noses.) After all of this work, Nate decided that he doesn't like frosting, so his cupcake?

naked.

So happy birthday Nate! We sure love you!

Let the Party begin!

Tomorrow my little boy turns 4. How that happened I don't know. In what world do I have a 4 year old? Oh yeah, the world that I will be living in starting tomorrow. Tomorrow we are having a party for him, but Grammy Markham was not able to come tomorrow, so she stopped by today with a present for Nate, and what a present it was- His own little jumping house.

We didn't have a good pump, so we weren't able to blow it up while Grammy was here to see it, but we did get it blown up. I started out with our little foot pump. Does anyone know how many calories you burn working a foot pump for about an hour? So I finally got the top of it blown up, but the bottom part was not compatible with my pump, so we were going to need a new pump. However, the kids had fun playing in it even if the bottom was not blown up.

Since you can get pumps at Walmart for cheap, we went ahead and got one tonight, and then, let the wild rumpus start! I don't know that I have ever seen Nate so excited about anything in his whole life.

The rules say that only one child is allowed in at a time, but well, that would mean taking turns, and what fun is that? So we plan on letting them both jump for the next 6 years until their combined weight is over the 70 lb limit. So thank you Grammy for the fun new toy, just in time to entertain at the party tomorrow!