Tuesday: 6 1/2 birthday party

There were streamers, as always.  Isaac made a "kid area" where the streamers hung vertically.  He and Joshua had a great time running through them and getting boosters.

Isaac got a bike from us.  It wasn't a surprise as he was there when we picked it up, but everyone kept pretending that he had no clue what it was. :D

And the cake!  We got it from the store because I had no time to make one, but it was an excellent choice.  Isaac picked out a yummy one.

Monday: home

I got home late last night after a lovely vacation...of which I hope to post soon.

Joshua saw me in the morning, seemed rather disappointed, and proceeded to ask when I was going on vacation again. :)  I got more love from Isaac though.

We ran a bunch of errands and then started the second session of swimming lessons.  Did I mention that we decided to do another set?  Isaac was progressing so well that we were afraid he'd lose it if we didn't do just a bit more.  I got to swim in a lane too.  Swimming is hard work, but I took plenty of breaks.

Wednesday: new playground

The local Timbertown playground was recently remodeled.  Everyone was rather sad to see the old one go as it was one of a kind.  The new one is almost as cool.  Not quite as many places to climb up, several cool new toys.  Isaac especially liked the zipline.

Tuesday: friends

Amy, Brian, their kids, and Amy's brother & family came over tonight.

The was cooler than we were hoping, but a great time was still had by all.  The kids played so well together.  The adults talked well and played a game.  And it was lovely.

Monday: marble art

Isaac came up with the idea of painting with marbles.  Well, it seemed worth a shot.  I covers some trays in press-n-seal, gave them a cup with paint and away they went.

It actually worked a bit better than I expected.  The paint isn't super runny, so they could pour the marble onto the tray without touching the paint.  By the time the marble was out of paint they could use their fingers to put it in the cup with minimal mess.

Of course, the marbles escaped a few times, and by the end Joshua was doing more playing than marble painting which got his hands all messy.  But it washed off.

We did find that the larger, heavy marbles work a bit better.

Sunday: Happy Father's Day

I'll admit, for the most part it was a pretty normal day.  But we did get Ben a gift.  It was the most poorly kept secret ever.

Joshua decided that Ben should get a penguin lovey, because Ben is always inserting penguins into conversations in which they don't belong.  Unfortunately, all the penguin loveys are currently discontinued.  So we got him some pajama pants instead.

Joshua told him the day we ordered them.
Isaac mentioned it when he opened the box.
Joshua brought it up randomly one time.
Ben saw them "hidden" in Joshua's closet.

When I asked Joshua if he thought that Ben knew what he was getting, Joshua seriously said, "no!"  Joshua especially was super excited about this gift, which makes it a perfect Father's Day gift. :D

We also played on the beach for a little bit.  A hole was dug and Ben's legs were buried.  I had left my camera inside, but there were several cute moments.  The boys love their dad a lot, as it should be. (I wanted to put a heart here, but blogger interprets it as html.  So you should just think of a heart.)<3 p="">

Saturday: scooters and bikes

We had a bit of a hard morning.  We're in between house cleaners for a month, and so I made the boys help pick up.  It didn't go over well.  Well, once I gave them five minutes on, five minutes off it worked ok...but they weren't as useful as I had hoped.  We might need to do more cleaning in the middle of the week too.  Anyway...

Ben brought Isaac to practice bike riding.  He did an awesome job and almost got around the whole loop.  Yesterday he could only get around about 1/8th of the loop at a time, so there was a big improvement.  They celebrated at Captain Sundaes.  (To be fair, I think they were going to go there no matter what.)

Joshua and I went for a walk around the lake.  He started out on his scooter, which went better than I had expected.  (Staying on the side of the road was our biggest challenge.) Half way through he stopped, and then we found some puddles to splash in.  We both enjoyed the squelching of my sandals.