"Balloon" show

We drove to the Middletown airport for the annual balloon festival. I was very excited to see the hot air balloons. Note: do not rely on a sleep-deprived mama to plan! I didn't look carefully at the schedule, and we (Jeff and I, the kids didn't seem to mind) were very disappointed that we completely missed the balloons. If you want to see the balloons at the balloon festival, you have to get there at 7 am or 7 pm. *sigh* We got there at 4 pm, so obviously we didn't last until 7 pm. And of course we spent most of the time there wondering where the balloons were, why they had none out at all, etc. Maybe next year.....

Anyway we made do with the other activities, which included eating fried food, sitting around the grass in the shade, and riding a train! Yay!


Sean has always loved these. Oh I will be so sad when one day he has outgrown it! So cute!

Teresa and I found some shade and hung out.

Note that she is wearing blue. Never you mind that it was a dress - I heard at least two people refer to her as a "he." :/





















We also found one of Sean's FAVORITE trucks, a Chevrolet Avalanche, so we took a picture of him in front of it. He loves these and is "saving 100,000 quarters" to buy one some day! :)

In completely unrelated news, I was very excited to see this out on our deck one day. After two years of trying, I finally got a poppy to bloom! Too bad they only last a day or so, but I love them!

Eleven months!

Around the house

My sweet baby.

My sweet boy. (It was bow day apparently, and he is working on coloring in books for a reading program the library is having this summer.) The top of the buffet is his realm now, since that's the one place in the family room Teresa can't reach....yet!

The fourth of July parade

Some brief highlights from the fourth of July parade:


Sean was very excited about all the trucks, cars, and other vehicles. I'd say this is one of his favorite days of the year!




This was something I'd not seen before at the parade.




My favorite, the calliope. Oh I would love to play the Notre Dame fight song on one of these....

More Safety Town

I am now going through July pics and found some more from Safety Town. Oops!

I'm guessing maybe this was the stop drop and roll?

All of the children got to play around Safety Town one last time on the last day, after graduation. Teresa and I found some shade nearby. Unfortunately the fun for her ended when she started licking the fence, and then I had to hold her the rest of the time. She is my little puppy! And by the way did I mention that her first word was "doggie"? She loves dogs, cats, birds, oh and the fly that's been buzzing around our kitchen for a week that we just can't seem to smash.

Ok anyway back to Safety Town..... Sean loved riding around on the cars.




The leader of the pack!

Cincinnati Museum

Someone on the Cincinnati homebirth email list had extra free tickets to the Cincinnati Museum Center, so I decided to give it a shot in taking the children there for an afternoon. It is about an hour drive for us from where we live in the boonies (I REALLY wish we lived closer to the city sometimes!), plus traffic, plus getting lost, but we made it. We wandered around the natural history area briefly. I was glad that Sean has been watching Dinosaur Train on PBS, so he was interested in something besides things that have wheels!

I did not take any photos of the dinosaur stuff, but I did see a box full of hissing cockroaches. This just made my skin crawl. I try to be tough for being a girl, but when it comes to bugs I just can't handle it! EWW! In fact even looking at this picture now is giving me the willies....

Then we ventured on to the children's area. We found this place with plastic balls everywhere, and there were several ways to get them up high into a bin that periodically emptied onto whoever was standing under it. Sean thought this was hilarious. We didn't see much else of the museum after this, he was so intrigued by this whole thing. He ran back and forth to the different stations, getting balls in the bin, then when the bell sounded to warn that the bin was about to dump, he and all the other children would run as fast as possible to stand right under it. It was very cute!

The smaller, dark tube you see here had a vacuum motor attached to it at the top, so you could just hold a ball at the opening and it would get sucked up into the bin at the top.

This white tube blew out air, so the point here was to steer the floating ball into the metal basket, then another contraption took it up to the bin.

Teresa was too small to enter the ball area, so I hung out with her on the outside. She practiced some crawling and tried to eat little things off the floor - you know, the usual stuff.

We had a good time, but I don't know if it was worth the drive with two little ones. I guess to most people it's not a big deal to drive an hour, but when you work at home, driving longer than 15 minutes is nearly unbearable!

Fireworks

We bought a few "fireworks" at the store for the fourth of July.... smoke balls and sparklers. Sean got excited about it, which honestly confused me because the explosion sounds of loud fireworks (and by that I mean anything from a little popper to a real firework) scare the heck out of him.

It must be a boy thing - I definitely do not get excited about anything firework-related, including setting them off or watching them.

I'm not sure what Teresa thinks.


There goes the smoke ball....



Ok, that was kind of interesting!

Safety Town

Sean participated in Safety Town this summer. He loved it! I am so grateful that he had the opportunity to do it, he had so much fun.

On Monday, it rained, so Safety Town moved from the park to inside the student center at Miami University Hamilton.

The rest of the week, it was hot and sunny so everyone was outside. Here is Sean in front of the tower. All the Kettcars and road signs are kept in the bottom of the tower.

All the children listen to Officer Bob give instructions.

On Wednesday, the children got to ride a school bus to the local fire station. I went home to put Teresa down for a nap (we will join him at the fire house next year!) but he told us all about it. He even got to turn on the valve for the fire hose!

Notice that Sean did not take a fireman's hat. He is very anti-hat. With the exception of us wearing hats out in the sun, Sean does not even like anyone else in the family to wear a hat.

Sean got his very first ride on a school bus. He was SO excited! It was a fun week and he is looking forward to doing it again next summer!

So, next time you see Sean, you can ask him about what to do if you see a gun lying around, how to cross the street, whether or not to go with a stranger, or what to do if your clothes catch on fire. :)

Rochester summer trip

We drove to Rochester to visit the Spoons in June. The weather was beautiful, so we spent a lot of time outside. It was lovely!



We went for a walk near Lake Ontario.

Sean found a piece of a 2x4 and decided to throw it in the water to see what would happen. He guessed that it would sink.




Then, he got to test his hypothesis and adjust it accordingly. :)

Uncle Paul climbed out on the rocks, so of course Sean had to follow and practically give Grandma a heart attack watching them out there. :)

He is very brave sometimes getting close to things I'd rather not even look at!




We had dinner one night at a little restaurant near the water. Sean had a blast feeding the ducks and watching the boats come in.

I usually tell him this is not good manners, but, in this case he was keeping himself entertained and not making too much of a mess (eating outside is great with kids!), so I let it slide.

After-dinner play. Ah, to be young, carefree, and energetic....




We had a great visit! Thank you Spoons!

Quick pics

Looks like I need to unload my camera, the only pics I could find for today are as follows:



Sean in his favorite chair.

Teresa loves to zoom big cars all around! It looks like very serious work. Her pose reminds me that she has a very unique way of crawling. I'll have to see if I can find a video of it.