Video Thursday: Swimming Lessons

Here’s a short video of the boys during some of their swimming lessons.

Happy Thursday!

Summer Days 2016, Part One

My apologies for disappearing on y’all last week. We were at the beach for our annual vacation and I didn’t have the time (or the content, really) to post anything while we were gone. But now we’re back and hopefully things will resume to normal!

I’ll do recaps of our beach trip later, but first I wanted to let y’all know what we’ve been up to during the first part of summer, aside from our trip to Disney, trying out soccer, shopping for school uniforms, and swimming lessons.

We went to the Cool Zoo at the beginning of June with Dana, Claire, Colin, Diana, and Alcee. We had a great day, but Dana and I both ended up with extremely sunburned backs. Oops.

 

The next week we got together with friends at Nola and Nopsi’s house to swim. Adam and Erin and their three boys were in town for a visit, so we hosted them and a few other families. The kids had a great time, and the adults had fun catching up. Riley and Henry didn’t want to leave each other!

We went back to Nola and Nopsi’s two days later to swim again, this time with Dana, Claire, and Colin. Claire’s dance revue was that weekend, and Riley bought her a flower to say good luck. So sweet.

The week of June 13 was a new adventure for Riley: a summer Lego camp with Bricks 4 Kidz. The theme was Jurassic World, and the camp took place from 9:30am to 12:30pm all week in an upstairs room at Palm Tree Playground. His friend Blake was even in the same class.

Riley had a great time. Ms. Renee was his teacher and did all sorts of fun things with them. They used Qtips to make a dinosaur skeleton (Riley’s was a dragon-saurus), painted pictures with toy dinosaurs, made binoculars (Riley even made a pair for his brother), traced their footprints to complete a dinosaur puzzle, made clothespin pterodactyls, and played dinosaur bingo. Oh, and they played with Legos. However, I think their favorite activity was the exploding Lego volcano that Ms. Renee demonstrated on their last day. Oh, and Riley also got to design his own minifigure to take home with him. Such a fun week for the wonk potatoes!

 

We left for the beach the day after Lego camp ended. More summer fun to come!

Swimming Lessons

The boys have been taking swimming lessons for the past two weeks. We went back to the same place as last year, which we love. All of the teachers (Mrs. Kellen, Ms. Abby, Ms. Emily, Ms. Fabi, and Mrs. Lauren) are wonderful. And this was Rory’s first year actually in the pool. He did great!

Riley’s technique with his arms has gotten better, and he’s even tried out the backstroke. His best style is definitely “streamline,” when he puts one hand on top of the other and holds his arms straight out in front of him. Mostly because he can just concentrate on his kicks, which are pretty powerful.

And Rory? He just loves to kick. He does not, however, like putting his face in the water. But he definitely made progress over the course of his 8 lessons.

But both of them love to jump. And eat their popsicle treats afterwards.

  

We had a bit of a setback our second week, though. Riley started complaining that his ear hurt, so I took him to see Dr. N, who diagnosed swimmer’s ear. She said to keep him out of the water for the rest of the week, so he played in Mrs. Jean’s hot tub while Rory completed his lessons.

Rory swam with Kellen during his last lesson yesterday, and she really worked with him to get his eyes in the water. She figured out that he wasn’t necessarily opening his eyes, and that may be part of the problem. He still told me after we got home that he doesn’t like putting his face in, but he was doing much better at the end of his lesson.

I was so proud of the way Rory finished. He’s made beautiful progress and I’m confident that at the end of next summer he’ll be swimming.

Thanks in large part to these two ladies, Ms. Abby and Mrs. Kellen. We love y’all!

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Video Wednesday: Soccer Shots Dribbling and Goal Scoring

Here are two short videos from the boys’ soccer experience the weekend before last. The first is them trying out dribbling for the first time, and the second is both of them scoring their first goals. Enjoy!

Happy Wednesday!

Ten Things

1. Riley posing with a few of his new Lego sets that he got for his graduation.

  

Then Rory wanted to show me his new monorail toy. Which, incidentally, is already broken. #boys

2. Two days after we got back from Disney, I brought the boys to Schiro’s to buy their uniforms for the next school year. Time is flying, y’all.

 

3. Sadly, Riley no longer needs a nap every day. I told him that he would only have to lay down in his bed on days when we are really active in the morning; otherwise, he has to have some quiet time upstairs in his room, either playing Legos or reading books or whatever. One afternoon he was super quiet, so I went up to check on him and found this:

My Sleepy Bean had crawled into his bed, got under the covers, and passed out with the lights still on.

4. Summer means backyard water play, no shirts or pants required, and short haircuts!

  

5. Look who started coming to Jazzercise with Nola and me!?!

6. Trying to rest my eyes with these two around is virtually impossible. They have no concept of personal space.

7. The Brownies are almost two months old and getting so big. (LPb put them in the onesies I gave them for their 10-week picture!) I stopped by to visit one day last week and got some Emma snuggles in. And both of them flashed their smiles while I was there; so darn cute.

8. Rory and Grandma had their very last Music Together class last week. Riley went with them since he’s out of school, and they even brought Ms. Meryl a present. We have loved this program and are sad it’s over. Thank you, Grandma, for taking the boys for as long as you have!

  

9. Brothers putting together a really long train and splashing in huge puddles before lunch one day last week.

 

10. Kenny’s 20-year high school reunion was last Saturday night at the Hampton Inn and Suites downtown. The venue was pretty terrible, but it was fun having a night out. And it was great seeing how much some of our friends have changed since high school; some of their senior pictures looked nothing like them today!

Kenny has certainly filled out since his last year at Brother Martin, but I think he looks better than ever. Love you, Baby!