At the Park

I love Deke's hair in that last picture. The wind was blowing and it just blew it straight up. He looks so funny! It's so hard to get a good shot of these two together. One of them is either not looking or pulling a goofy face.
It's 100 mile garage sale this weekend and I'm so EXCITED! We hit a few in this neighborhood this afternoon. Ty's really starting to get into the whole garage sale thing and enjoys looking at things. Fortunatly he's really good with the word "No". And doesn't throw a fit when he asks for something and I say no. Deke doesn't ask for anything yet, but he'll be the one that'll be pitching a fit.

Keeping it Cool

He's too cute. While watching Ty's soccer game, he found Ty's sunglasses and wanted them on. Then he took off for the playground. See below. He kept checking to see if we were still sitting there, but he kept right on walking till he got to the playground. Joel finally went after him.

Ty guarding his goal. His enthusiam for this game just cracks me up. At one point both him and another little girl were guarding the goal and Ty's in a stance ready to stop the ball and talking to the girl. "We get to stop the ball!" The ball went in the other direction, he takes off after it yelling. "Let's get the ball!" He scored at least 5 goals this game, but he does have a little bit of a problem of stealing the ball from his own teammates. Hopefully, next week, he only steals it from the other team.

Deacon-7, Mommy-1

We finally made it to the potty! He has no problem sitting on the potty, but we hadn't done anything on it this weekend until this afternoon. I heard him in the bathroom saying "potty" in a desperate voice. I ran in there and plopped him on it and we had success! I'm so torn on whether to admit defeat this month and try again next month or keep pushing on. I'm pretty sure I'm going to concede this round to Deke, but we all know in the end, Mommy will win. He'll eventually be potty trained. It may be a year from now, but he will be potty trained.

Deacon-5, Mommy-0

The battle of the potty is definitely leaning in Deke's direction. So far today, we have not made it to the potty once. That kid has some pretty darn amazing bladder control. He can stop it mid-stream when he's going on the floor and not get a drop out when I get him to the potty. Also, no BM today. He's held it all day long. I wonder what I'm going to wake up to tomorrow. At this point, I'm feeling pretty discouraged. I'm not sure if I should keep up the fight or admit defeat for this month and tackle it again next month. I suppose we'll see how it goes tomorrow. He seems to understand and he doesn't like getting any of it on him, but I also don't want to create an aversion to the potty. It's been very low-key so far and I really don't want to become too pushy with it. Today, he was pretty much naked all day except for when we went saling this morning and at naptime. When he had an accident, he let me know and we went to the potty and sat on it and talked about how this is where we go. I didn't get upset once, just discouraged. I even had Tyler show him how to go on his little potty. Ty's been very encouraging so far and trying to help Deacon with learning. Tomorrow is another day.

Potty Training Adventure

It's that time. At least, I think it is. We've picked this weekend to attempt potty training Deacon. So far, he's not been on board, but I will push on. At least until Sunday. If he's managed to outlast me, I'll shelve it until next month and then try again. He's proving tougher than Ty. Ty was overjoyed to begin this process and ran around super excited when I started it. Deke on the other hand has been his usual self and has peed on the floor at least twice and on Daddy once.
I'll keep this posted and let you know who wins the first round. Will it be Deacon or Mommy? I'd play it safe and bet on Dekey.

Soccer

Ty had soccer tonight. Usually they have a lot of warmup and drills, but tonight they played a game. Ty did really well at getting the ball and going to the correct goal this time. All the kids seem to get better every week.
I'm really missing Texas right now. As much as I love Winona and the wonderful friends we have here, I miss home. It's probably because its been a whole year now since we've been back and I know that I won't be back until November. It hasn't helped that I've been doing some marketing pieces for Texas at work and so I've been looking at pictures of that wonderful state and its just making me miss it more.
Congratulations to Melanie and Chris. My sister-in-law is getting married next April (whoo hoo another trip to Texas and at my favorite time of the year to visit!) I'm super excited for them.

A beautiful day

It was a gorgeous day out today. We had a morning of saling, then an oil change for the van and this evening we had some friends over to help eat some of Joel's famous ribs. When we are at the dealership getting the oil changed, the lady checking us out asked me how old Tyler was. I told her four and she said that she was wondering because he seemed to be very articulate for his age. She said you could tell we must work with him quite a bit. I almost responded with: "How would you explain this one?" and point to Deacon. Deacon has some words, but he's nowhere near as articulate as Ty was at this age, so it obviously has very little do with us.
Ty's been talking about fishing this week. He really wants Daddy to take him. He saw some fishermen in a boat on the way home and said: "Mom, you know what we should do, we should get on a houseboat and go fishing." Ever since then, he's bugged Joel every night to take him fishing.
Deacon's been his normal self terrorizing his big brother, his daddy, his mommy, the dogs. You name it and he antagonizes it. This morning he looked right at Joel and upended his drink on the chair. He did it completely on purpose. His memory for things is outstanding except for when it comes to bad behavior (or else he chooses to ignore the consequences). This morning after breakfast, he walked to the basement door and said "bike". Months ago in February, I'd let the boys ride in the basement on their bikes and I left Deacon's little trike down there. I couldn't believe that he remembered that from all that time ago. He is such a smart little boy, but as Joel says he uses his genius for evil. Just kidding.

Costumes

I love garage sale season. I picked up the pirate costume above for $2, the batman costume for $1, and another spiderman costume for $2. These are so awesome.
Ty had soccer practice tonight. They actually got to play a game. He did pretty well although he was headed for the wrong goal. He figured it out before he made the shot.
I just have to brag about one of my coupon stints this weekend. I'm not a hardcore couponer, but I don't turn them down either. Hyvee had their $5.00 off if you buy 5 boxes of Kellogg cereal. They had some of this cereal on sale for $2.99 so with the $5 off that effectively reduces the cost to $1.99 and I had coupons for $1.50 off two so we're talking about $1.25 per box which is very, very good to begin with. When I checked out, I got two coupons for FREE milk (up to $4.19 value) effectively making my 5 boxes totally FREE! Love those deals and the boys go through the ceral so its always nice when its free or super cheap.

Bowling Party

How cute are these little bowling shoes?

Ty was invited to one of his friends birthday parties at a bowling alley. All the kids loved to bowl. Even Deke got to take a turn throwing the ball down the alley.

Let's go for a walk...

That turned into a hike. I wasn't planning on doing a very strenous walk, but it turned out that way. When we started, I let Ty chose which direction. He chose straight up. Okay, I gotta be honest, if it was left up to me, I would have chosen the exact same path, it just looked more exciting. So that's the route we went and it was exciting. A little too exciting. It got very, very steep and it was littered with leaves which made the path slippery and treacherous. We perserved though because the Kelner's are not quitters (or we're just very stupid, but I prefer to think that we are not quitters). We made it all the way to the top of the bluff! A very strenous hike indeed and my little 4 year old never complained once. We didn't want to go back down that same path because I really couldn't see how we could make it back down unless we slid on our butts. There are several trails branching off this one and we chose the one that might be an easier way down. We did get a teensy bit lost and walked around in a circle, but we eventually figured it out. We were out there for two hours hiking all over the bluff and I have to say I am quite proud of Tyler. There was only one time that he said he was tired and I carried him on my back for about five minutes before he asked to be put back down and then he walked the rest of the way.
Towards the end of the hike, we pulled Deke out of his carrier so he could walk. He was getting pretty restless by that point and Daddy's shoulders were killing him. We had walked for so long that he ended up taking a nap in the carrier through some of it. He was quite glad to get out and stretch his legs and Daddy was very happy to not have to haul him on his back anymore. Deke held onto my hand, Tyler held onto Deke's hand, and Daddy held onto Ty's hand. I so wish that there was some way I could have captured a shot of that because it would have been so cute.
I think both boys really enjoyed the hike and I'm looking forward to many more (hopefully not quite that steep though),

Elba Fire Tower

Some more phone pics from last summer. I took the boys up to Elba Fire Tower. It was a great hike straight up one of the bluffs. Fantastic workout. At the top is this fire tower that you can climb, but I'm not totally reckless so we didn't go up it. We just hung around the base of it. Deke was in the backpack carrier (love that thing and a steal at a garage sale for $3!). Ty climbed the steps up and down all by himself. Not the steps to the firetower (again, not totally reckless). The people who created the hike built stairs up the bluff to make it easier to climb up. On the way back down he did take a lot of breaks which I was totally okay with. Although I would have preferred them on the way up. I'm looking forward to more hikes this summer. Hopefully Deke doesn't mind the backpack carrier again because if he does that will seriously put a crimp in my hiking plans.

Phone Pics

These were all from last year. I just now figured out how to get images off my phone. You would think being married to a techie I would hav already figured this out. Anyway, I just had to share them as there are some really cute ones of the boys. The ones above are from our hiking trips last summer. Ty and I did the Garvin heights one. That's the bottom two pictures. The two top ones are from Whitewater.
We did some garag saling this morning and got some really good deals. I got a pirate, spiderman, and batman costume for $5 at one. They were in excellent shape. Not that they'll stay that way with my boys, but as Joel said, that's why we shop the garage sales.

Deke the Terrible

I think we've hit the terrible two's. He can throw a fit faster than a snake can strike. (that was the best analogy I could come up). He goes from screaming bloody murder to being just fine in about two seconds and there is no determining when or where the fit will happen or what will cause it. He can be a joy and a delight, but there are times when there is no pleasing him. Yesterday, I got the dogs groomed and I picked them up before I got the boys. When I opened the van door to put Deke in, the dogs were all in the backseat and he freaked. He took off running in the opposite direction, screaming his head off. I had to chase him down and when I picked him up, he just started kicking out and squirming, it was all I could do to keep a hold of him. I had to make Java get in the front seat so I could make some attempt to get Deke in the carseat. He was so upset. I don't think he recongized the dogs with all their hair cut off. It took him a few minutes to calm down and finally understand that it was still Java and Manny. I guess they do look very different without all the hair.

Bounce, Bounce, Bounce

Both boys really loved the trampoline.