Golfin' with Dad

Michael finally caved to Caleb's pleas and took the boys "real golfing."

Here's a couple of thoughts about the day from Michael.....

They were both ecstatic about the chance to go. I found a par 3 golf course that cost $5 for me and $4 each for the boys. I thought it was only 9 holes, but it was actually 18! What a deal! Well, we only made it through 5 holes in an hour and a half, and the boys and I had had enough. At that point Nathan was so frustrated that he was walking back to previous holes on the mostly un-inhabited golf course and taking the flags out and laying them on the green. He was taking his frustrations with golf out on the course! As we walked off the course, after some counseling from me, the boys were in better spirits. (to be fair, Caleb really enjoyed the whole experience and kept his frustration under control). I asked the boys, "did you guys enjoy your time, even though it was really hard?" Nathan quickly responded, "It's not hard for me." Caleb agreed, "It's not hard for me, just frustrating." They both said they would like to go again...maybe next time we'll get through 8 holes!

Both the boys have some perfectionist tendencies. Sometimes Nathan's emotional and perfectionist tendencies collide and form a big storm. It doesn't happen too often but when it does -- watch out!

Michael took some cute videos but I'm not sure how to upload them on blogger.

This was a summer highlight...

The boys called 911 and hung up. When I say the boys....here's how it went "Nathan you want to call 911." "Ok."

Minutes later I look out the front window and see police officers getting out of their car and the boys running up to the house. They were freaked out. The police saw the rage in my eyes and for some reason they literally played the "good cop" role. It went something like this...

"Oh, boys, you'll never do that again right? Great! Now do you want to see the police car? I'll let you turn the lights on."

Really cop-per you're encouraging this behavior? The boys were so freaked out and felt horrible about the whole thing so it was good that he was nice, I of course played the bad cop role and after I took the pictures sent them straight to bed.

The cops were so nice. They really were excited about hanging out with the boys. It was super cute. As the cop was showing them the car I heard him say, "sorry the car's dirty, we were just in a dirty part of town." I wanted to to discuss the fact that he was apologizing to my 6 year old about the car being dirty and I was really wondering about the dirty part of town. Like so many times in my daily life, I'm too shocked by what is happening to ask questions.

Happy Birthday Adeline....

Yup... Late again, but only by a month.

Addie was so excited about turning 3. Ever since Addie saw Melia's ladybug cake she's been asking for a blue birdy cake for her b-day. I wasn't sure how I was going to accomplish that task so one day I took my little errand runner, Nathan, with me and went to the crazy craft store in our neighborhood. We found a real looking blue bird and some little cute birds. And the birdy cake was created with a little help from all the kids...

Addie has really come out of her shell this past year. She was a very calm, quiet baby for the first two years of her life. The past year she has really become a silly, sometimes feisty little girl. I think much of her feistiness began when she was ousted from the baby role in the family and became a big sister. After a good four months of being a big sister she finally embraced the role and her and Melia are getting along quite well. She loves her little sissy and has now embraced the role of being a little mama, which mostly means taking good care of her sister but there are also those times of rule enforcement going on too (I think mainly just to keep me on my toes). She's an awesome big sister.

She's also quite the little sister. She provides lots of entertainment for Caleb. She is often doing little crazy things, that can go unnoticed with all the activity we have going on over here. But sometimes I'll catch Caleb laughing and he'll say "mom, look at Addie, she's crazy." And yup, sure enough she'll be lip synching, making crazy faces to some song, or dancing like a crazy person really the list could go on and on. Nathan has taken her on as an apprentice. He likes things in order and he has decided to take her under his wing and I often hear him giving her lessons on something or another. A few weeks ago her and Michael were the first ones awake and she randomly looked at him and said "I love my boys." He made sure she was indeed referring to her brothers and she confirmed. She has since been calling them her boys.

Grammy found the cutest tea set!

I made her a little baby sling for her dolls.

Snuggling with Bubba.

Happy Birthday Nathan.....

yeah, so I'm really late but he still deserves a post :)

My sweet boy turned 5 at the end of June.

I can't believe he's this old. I mean really he was just a baby. At least he still lets me cuddle and smooch on him all the time.

Nathan is such an amazing child. He really is. He's sensitive, has an awesome sense of humor, is smart and is so loving. He tells me many times a day that he loves me. He's a great boy. I'm so blessed that I get to be his momma (which is what he still calls me).

Nathan loves Camp Dearborn so we went the night before his birthday and some of the extended fam was able to come, too. It was fun to have my mom's sister in town and have her and my gram come celebrate with us. Nathan got to spend his whole birthday playing and the big camp-D. Paddle boating, mancala-ing, beach going, putt-putting, the works! We had a great time.

Driving the paddle boat.

Playing mancala while a storm rolled in.

3 Months!

It's been 3 months since I last posted. Which means that I have very few details about those months. If I don't post something right away it's totally gone. I have very few brain cells left... anyway, I digress..... I made it through my classes this summer! It was great for me to be out of the house for a bit and even better for Michael to be with the kids. He did a great job playing Mr. Mom, but gladly turned the job back over to me once my classes were done. But really, very soon after Melia came home he started coaching soccer and was gone a lot. She didn't have the chance to bond with him that much and this summer was wonderful for their relationship!

Anyway, we made it through our crazy summer and next week will begin our crazy fall :) I'm going to do a few catch up posts of our summer highlights.

Crazy Summer

Michael's school year is almost finished and he's real excited about that! He's taught summer school for the past 8 summers now. He needs a break this summer. So he suggested I take some classes and try to finish my Bachelors degree (it's going on 12 years now).

So I did it. I registered for classes tonight at the community college in our city. There were pretty slim pickings as far as courses go but I excited about the African American literature class I'm taking. I'm not excited about the speech class and I'm pretty sure I'm going to get kicked out of the aerobic dance class once they see that I have absolutely no rhythm, but it's only 6 1/2 weeks so I'll be fine. I'm already worried about missing my babes, but they'll have fun with their daddy and my classes are only 3 days a week so we'll still have time to play.

I will just have one more class to take in the fall and I'll be finished with my degree. Woot, woot!!

It's been a while since I've posted, here's the lastest happenings over here....

~ Melia and I jet-setted (really train-setted) to Chicago last week. My beautiful, lovely, sweet cousin was in town for work. Melia and I stayed with her in her hotel and we wandered around Chicago all day last Wednesday.

(That is after I walked with Melia in the front carrier and pushing my lugguge in the stroller for a mile to a hotel, yes I said a hotel because I was at the wrong one! But we hailed a cab made it to Rhiannon.) Melia fell in love with "Whi."

We were also able to finally meet Jean and J.P! They have been praying and praying for Melia since we started the adoption process. Miss Melia also enjoyed spending some time with them.

~Miss Adeline, is loving potty training these days. She's actually loving the treats she gets after set tinkles but hey it works. Poopy not so much, but it'll come. And sorry Micah about the poop in the hair --you don't want to know!

~My boys are rocking their myjobchart.com. They get their chores and school work (very minimal school work, just to clarify so it doesn't seem like we're super studious) every morning and love it since they are earning points for a date. It makes our morning run smoothly (when the girls aren't playing WWWF) and they we play all afternoon. I'm increasingly happy that the boys are such great friends. Their conversations are hilarious!

~ In other news...I'm reading this awesome book- One Million Arrows and loving it.

I'm also working on a Bible streak, reading everyday and read through it in a year.