Saturday, August 31, 2013

No se nada limonada

Christopher came home with a wild hair idea yesterday.  He's been bugging us all summer to do a Lemonade Stand.  But he always chooses the most inopportune times to  ask about it.  For once, he asked afterschool on a really hot Friday afternoon.  And for once, I was totally game to the idea.  A hot day is perfect lemonade weather.  So I suggested, as I had before, that we make a list first.   (After all, so many issues can be solved by first starting a list. ;)  ) So we did.  We made a list of supplies we'd need.  And as soon as we were done with our list, I thought that would be the end of it.  But No, he and Sam immediately started dashing about the house looking for things to use on their list.

First was a Sign.  So we took a page from a large activity book, and Chris idea, turned it over, and he wrote Lemonade.  When I asked him how much he was going to charge, he spit out 25 cents.  He said it was fair, and I agreed.


Chris with the sign, list, money jar and cups we'd retrieved for the list.  

Then came the Fun part - the making of the lemonade.  


We had to make sure that both boys were Equally involved in the lemonade making process.  So Sam poured the powder (with a little help) from me on pouring into the cup.  And Chris did the stirring.  


Daddy arrived home just in time for us to tote our goodies out to the end of the driveway and help us set up.


First someone had to do Quality Control.  Sam volunteered of course, as lemonade (with no red 40) is his favorite drink.  He immediately dug in drinking for Quality Assurance testing, you know, for Science.  


And the lemonade was met with his stamp of approval. 


Then he offered brother a sip - you know, for Science. 


Chris approved.  


Once the product was satisfactory to all parties, then we proceeded to open for business.  


We were just in time for "rush hour" in our little neighborhood.  We opened from 5-6.  

 
Our first customers were our neighbors, Jaime and her littles Noah and Ella.  
Daddy and Jacob were happy to aid in supervising...though it quickly got too hot for Jacob to stay outside.



Ella smiles as she drinks her lemonade. 


I loved how happy Noah was with his.  


We had a surprising number of customers who supported us.  Just as we've supported the local police department in the past, we were so happy to help quench the thirst of this thirsty officer!

We were only open for an hour on Friday night, it was oppressively hot, and the kids were doing a wonderful job, but we ran out of ice, it was 95 degrees outside.  

Saturday morning, while Chris and I were out at karate, Willman Lemonade Stand took a call asking for our Saturday hours.  Grandma and Grandpa wanted to come by.  And our friends the Saupes were interested. 
Well, with 2 requests for business to open again, we just had to oblige.  


So on Saturday morning from 11-12, before it got too hot, we were open for business again.


Jake and I stayed close to home, it had taken a while for me to get Jacob cooled down after his last lemonade selling experience, but we could see that once again the boys were getting lots of support from neighbors. 


And before we knew it we had some special visitors.  
Grandma and Grandpa couldn't wait to support our little businessmen. 


For a total of 2 hours of  "work", the boys made $16.60.  Not a bad showing, why it's above minimum wage, still they have to spit their earnings, and give their tithe to church.  I don't think it's going to be quite enough to go to Disneyland like Chris wanted to, but it was still an amazing experience.  The boys surprised and impressed me with their salesmanship...now all we have to do is work on their math, and change giving skills.  I'm pretty sure none of our supporters got any change.  But then again, they were probably just being generous in heart and pocket.   The boys had a great time, and I'm sure they'll want to do it again next summer.  



Saturday, August 24, 2013

Boys on couches


In case you doubted they are related at all.  


FYI - the top one is Chris when he was 2 weeks old, and below is Jake, this week, 17 weeks old. 

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Wordless Wednesday



OK - two words:  Pumpkin Frappaccino.  

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

BAM!

So a friend of mine had this crazy awesome idea.  A lot of our Butler band friends have had babies in the last year, and she thought it might be nice to get together, kind of like a MOPS group of sorts.  Of course, it's just 4 of us Butler band alumni from the northwest side of town.  We were joking what we should call ourselves.  So I suggested, BAMops - Butler Alumni Mothers of Preschoolers, kind of elaborating on the Mops name.  My friend suggested abbreviating it to just BAM.  That stuck!  So when I went to put our first meeting on the calendar, Eric asked me if it meant Bad Ass Mothers?  Yes, yes it does. :) 

Anyway, our first meeting was yesterday.  


We met while Chris and Sam were in school.  It was a little different.  I'm not used to traveling somewhere with only one little baby.  But Jacob had a great time trying out new toys that are different from stuff we've got at home.  I had one of these things that babies lie down on, for Chris and Sam but they didn't get into it much, so I gave it away.  Boy Howdy did Jacob love this one! I don't have the fundage to pick up something like this for Jake now, but he really got a 'kick' out of it.  He played there happily for Quite a while! 


He played there while his friend Meghan took a nap during her Tummy Time.  It had been suggested that M might do better with her Tummy Time with a roll under her arms and chest.  She just falls asleep on it.  I tried it with Jacob.  It didn't work.  


But we had a great time sitting around yucking it, oogling over everybody's cute babies.  


This is Baby John.  He's destined to become Jacob's new best friend.  
He's so tiny.  John is only two weeks old, and Jake is like...17.  
I know in my head Jacob was once this little, but I don't remember it. 


Jacob is twice as big as he is.  
It was funny, the twins were already getting their names confused, calling Jake John and John Jake.  
It was the first time, I don't think it will be the last. 
As soon as I put them side by side Jacob reached over to give his friend a 'hug' or a 'tickle', not sure what it was.  But as soon as he reached out John rolled toward him.  It's going to be Awesome that they are going to be such good buddies.  


Just reinforces how much of a hoss Jacob is.  
It's wild for me to actually have the Big Baby, the Butterball.  So unusual.  
I kind of love having the healthy fat boy.  I hope he stays that way.  

And I love our new group.   
I feel so good having a network in place, it makes motherhood easier to have folks with kids of a similar age to bounce things off of.  It's weird being an "experienced" Mom, and having some useful advice to share, instead of constantly needing help.  This time around is so much different than it was in the past.  I kind of know what I'm doing...sort of.  Getting there anyway.  I still need help.  So it's good that there's lots around for me.  I still need and want to learn new things.  One unusual thing I learned, was that Towhead is a derivative from the German word for flax, tow, to mean light blonde, thus used to describe light light blond haired children.  I never knew.  Then again, none of my children were blondies.  

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Roomies with Sweetboys


My ex-college roommate was in the state.  That's amazing because they've been living in Qatar for the last year, and we got lucky we were able to squeeze in a brief visit this week.  It's been difficult for either of us to schedule things, they had illness, and I'm still not up to snuff to schedule things too far out.  I'm getting better with that.  But her sweetboys are just a smidge older than my sweetboys, and they all get along swimmingly.


So we met for supper at Cracker Barrel.  
The kids were desperate to play, so after dinner, we let them play checkers on the porch. 


Note the differences from when a couple of 7 and a 1/2 year olds play vs.  when a 4 and 5 year old play.  

One is well organized, and the other..isn't.   




The kids had a lot of bottled up energy, and when we were trying to get them to pose sweetly for us outside before we hit the road, well, they weren't inclined.  Eric suggested that they hold hands.  They barely stopped moving.  



Then we suggested they Jump.  That worked a little better.  


Then they played Ring around the Rosie in the parking lot.  




It was a great dinner.   But Jake cried all the way home.  Shrieked actually.   We kept going, thinking if we made it through that would be better than the stopping.  But everyone got mad headaches from a half an hour of screaming baby, so the other boys lost their minds when we got home too.  After putting to bed, I am happy to say that Jake slept all night.  Not sure fully yet if it's worth the screaming to get a full night's sleep, or not. 


Another trip to the Zoo

Can you tell I've missed going to the Zoo?  I missed 6 months of it this past year.  I think this last month I've been making up for lost time.  Well, the weather has been great for it.  And we've got the membership, why not use it?!   And so I have.

A friend of mine from high school mentioned that she had taken her 11 month old daughter to the zoo with her parents last month for the first time, and she'd had a wonderful time.  I invited her to tag along on our pass sometime and she took us up on it.

We picked a perfect day for it!  And we avoided the crowds.  So Nice to go while the majority of kids have started school and field trip season has not yet begun.


When we arrived, Ray the sea lion had a lot to say to us.  


Sam and Emily loved watching the fish. 


This is Diego.  He loves to entertain the kids in the window.  He used to be Alpha, and Ray came in and has taken over.  


Then we went to the Dog Show.  We went with Kathleen a couple weeks ago, and Sam had been bugging me and bugging me to go back.  Last week it wasn't going, so we caught it.  Even Jake watched from my lap, and kind of mostly enjoyed it.  

The Dog Show is located behind the bird exhibit.  So we caught that afterwards.  We hadn't seen that one in a Long Time.  OK, we only went once, and Chris was flipping out, and he never wanted to go back.  


But Sam was a bit more interested.  He wanted to "Be a Bird".  Jake was snippy and needed a break, so we found the restrooms.  Turns out there's a preschooler/toddler park back by the bathrooms, and a spiffy nursing area.  


We went in to see the budgies.  I always have such a soft spot for these guys.   Sam has picked up on my love for them.  He didn't mind reaching for them.  


They remind me so much of my old parakeet Bud, who looked like the one in the middle below, with a yellow head, green body and blue tail feathers.  Pretty boys. 


Jake was a little less festive.  He fell asleep before we got in to see the birds.  And then in the African section, they got a little noisy and woke him up.  Then he was really not too sure about it.  And there was one peahen sort of bird, a guinea fowl, that worried Sam too, just a little too big for his liking, and getting a little too close for our comfort as we tried to exit. 


So we headed up to Butterflies.   We thought little Emily would love them.  She did.  She was content to just sit and watch them.   Me too.   The Julias were out flitting about in the sun, so pretty. 


An Owl Butterfly buzzed around us and the strollers before landing on the leaves and moving on. 


Sam checked out the chrysalis cabinet. 


Apparently, in the summer from 1-3 they have the Komodo dragon on display in the gardens.  Though no one could go near him.  He did look happy (ish) in the sun, like a lizard on a rock. :) 


Sam found pretty flowers, and liked running around, but these purple salvia had too many bees for his liking. 


He found a lot more Joy in these froggies.  


I love how they put sunglasses on them.  And Sam just loves playing in the water streams. 
Perfect for a warm afternoon. 


Sam was cracking me up. 


Meanwhile all that fresh air exhausted Jacob.  And he was slurping along trying to find his thumb.  


No luck, maybe next time. 

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

First Day of School shirts


This week Sam started school, and since he got to wear his first day of school shirt and shoes, Chris opted to wear them again.   So they 'let' me take some pictures of the two of them together.  


Such handsome boys.  


They were being goofy waiting for Christopher's bus.  It's so sweet when they get a little playing out of their systems in the morning before school starts.   

And before I knew it, it was time to take Sam to school.  


The big 4 year old PK.

Happy First Day Sam! 


I'm so happy for them that they are so happy it's time to go back to school!