The Man-eating Vacuum

It seems like MONTHS that we have been trying to get Ben to go off the diving board, but he gets this deer-in-the-headlights look. Annie now goes off and can do so without her life jacket. Ben will walk to the diving board and then run back to shallow safety.

So, I was heating up leftovers for dinner tonight - of course with all the kids in the kitchen with me. :) If mom is in the kitchen, so is everyone else!

(Sidenote, Ben would rather be cooking with me than wrestling with dad!!! He is always in charge of eggs in the morning - I turn on the stove, do the salt, and separate the yolk for 'flat eggs' for he and Annie if we are having pancakes. He gets out everything, puts the butter in, cracks eggs, scrambles, flips (sometimes not so pretty), peppers, and wants to serve them on plates. He knows that with Dad he can do the whisk, but Mom takes away egg-making duties if he even looks at the whisk...okay back to the point of the story...)

So, there is no conversation and my brain is fried from 5 busy days of being mom. I say, "Tell me a story." So Ben starts on this story about a little boy who jumps off the diving board and sinks under the water and is eaten by the vacuum on the bottom of the pool. (This is while I am cutting watermelon and they are snatching pieces.)

AH-HAH! So we find out that is why he hasn't wanted to jump off the board (even though he is also scared when the vacuum is OUT of the pool, but oh well...)! So we talked seriously for a few minutes about that not being a possibility because he is much bigger than the vacuum and maybe it could get a few toes, but that is all. Then we decided he could try it with the life-jacket on. That brightened his face and we will try it!!! Hopefully tomorrow!!!

It's so funny - on another completely sidenote - his story reminded me of a mom who was trying to potty train her son. He was over four and would pee in the potty, but not poop. After taking him to many doctors and specialists, they found out he was afraid to sit because there was an elephant hiding in there and he would make noises when the toilet flushed. Once they resolved that fear, the little boy was great! Hopefully this will be the same way. Ben LOVES the water and LOVES swimming and diving for rings, and hopefully will soon (or later) LOVE the diving board as well!!!

Now I know...

...why all parents love Where the Sidewalk Ends! Ben has been loving tv this week, probably because we haven't been able to go anywhere alllllll week (more about that later)! Tonight I went to find him, hoping to now find a mess and instead found him watching tv! I told him he was going to turn into a tv set! So I had to go and find "the book" that I thought wouldn't be appreciated until my children were much older. It is hilarious! I just figured out that each poem is about some hideous behavior that children exhibit and takes it to the extreme! We've been reading it for the last 30 minutes and letting Ben and Annie take turns picking stories! I did have to majorly edit the Paul Bunyan one; I didn't remember that from my youth...

Happy Fourth!

It was a fun and busy day to celebrate our country's birthday! We started with a church picnic breakfast, and truth be told it is one of Andy's very favorite activities. You will see why shortly... We put everyone in red or blue; Ben chose his favorite cowboy outfit (a red FLANNEL shirt! with jeans, cowboy duds and trusty canteen) and used his hat to shade his face... Here he is getting on his horse. All the kids love this climbing apparatus.
Moms love that it can handle several kids at a time with room enough for all!
This is Annie and her friend Brynnley. We did a little photo shoot with the two of them because they were having so much fun playing!
Emily enjoyed swinging over and over and over again....

So, I looked over to find these two little munchkins without their shoes and climbing on the top of the tube slide. I have shoe issues (one must always wear them outside!!!) and Annie knows that, so she and B went climbing back up inside the slide. It took me a few minutes to convince them I only wanted to take a few pictures.

They are quite silly together!
Annie with B's little brother - riding away on his horse!
This is why Andy LOVES this church activity - an on-going game of Ultimate Frisbee with old out-of-shape men (the 30+ group) and the teenagers, who have the speed and the energy but lack the years of practice. They start with a little bit of football and then bring out the Frisbee. Andy would LOVE to bring out the soccer ball also, but that's not so popular down here...

Then we went to my mom's to swim and eat. This is Emily with Baby Claire - her favorite friend who she gets quite giddy about seeing! On the table you will see the most fabulous roasted corn and black bean salsa dip that my friend Farrah makes! If I was really good at technology I would give you a link to her blog for the recipe, but I'm not. Sorry. Really sorry because it is pretty much a little bit of heaven on earth!

Ben and my mom worked on painting when Ben needed a pool break. He and Andy made this last weekend, and he took it to Grandma's because she has birds living in a nest in her backyard.

Annie has learned to go off the diving board by herself - WITHOUT a life jacket! She is like a little daredevil and just jumps right off! Here is the succession of her swimming.

We sure missed the rest of our family, and the day would have been more perfect if we'd had some cousins here too! We were finally able to finish off our Independence Day with Andy's other favorite activity - fireworks! The last few years we've had to leave with Ben in hysterics because the fireworks scare him so much. Not this year! He did great!!!

Now I need to run and check on Ben and Annie. They are playing 'Mommy and Daddy' and somehow Aunt Nancy is cooking dinner, and I know how scary that can be!!! :)