View of the cubby hole and the canvas flap I made for the opening
(we plan to paint something in the cubby hole next year)

I'm proud of this because I can't sew : )

Mr. Frog helped paint the fort

Jeff and I were SO excited to show Lucas his new room, but we were waiting for his fan to arrive. It came this afternoon, so we installed that and then moved his rug and mattress up from his old room. As soon as Jeff and Lucas got home from school we took Lucas up to show him. When we opened the door his face lit up and he said, "wowwww..." and then hopped down to check it out. He's asleep in there now and we're placing bets on how many times he'll wake up tonight... although I must say that he went down very easy (as usual for the past few weeks) and didn't seem phased by the change of rooms... we'll see.

Look at that smile!

The fan and fan remote was a big hit

And he also enjoyed the new placement of the rug

Curls

Lucas's hair is curling in the back now, especially when he's sweaty. It makes him look more like Jeff than ever before...

He also has his daddy's blue eyes (mine are blue too, just not as blue as Jeff's).

Sunday Morning Park Outing

Now that we are in such a wonderful routine during the week, I need a routine on the weekends too. It doesn't matter if we just stay home, but I need to know the night before that that is the plan. On Friday night we planned to stay in on Saturday morning since Lucas had a pool party to go to in the afternoon. We made pancakes, played with trains and puzzles, and then made a quick trip to the hardware store. After nap we went to Katrin's birthday party and had a fun time hanging out with some of the kids and parents from Lucas's class. (I forgot my camera and will have to steal some pics from Katrin's blog soon).

On Saturday night we planned to go to the park on Sunday morning. Luckily Kim and Wendy had the same idea, so we got to spend the morning with them.

Do you think going to the park is easy? No way. You need lots of snacks, water, hand towel, diapers and wipes.

water, goldfish, granola bar, nut mix, popcorn, watermelon and wet towel

But once you get there it is worth it. Everyone has a great time and you can break for a snack at anytime...

And then we can look for bugs and spiders! In this picture Lucas and Charles were looking for a spider with a little girl they met at the park today.

"Where did it go?"

After looking for bugs it's always fun to play in the branches of this old tree...

And luckily the boys found some time to play with the diggers today so that the mommies could take a little break on the bench nearby : )

What we've heard today...

"Dada. Dada. Pst. Golf over. Thomas Treen please. Thomas Treen please. Thomas treen please."

Jeff finally got to relax and watch a little of the Brittish Open tonight after Lucas went to sleep.

This Morning

Dada: "Lucas, don't push the chairs over like that. Please be gentle." - as Lucas was pushing his plastic chairs that go to his table over very loudly (he likes the loud noise when they hit the hardwood floors).

Lucas: "Go away." - as he grabbed Jeff finger and led him to the couch and told him to "sit."

Lucas: "Go away." - as he grabbed my finger and led me to the couch and told me to "sit."

Lucas: Smiling as he ran back into the kitchen to resume his game without mama and dada there to bother him.

Turkey Talk

Here are some things that our little turkey is saying now (most of it cracks us up)...

"I did it!" - when he accomplishes a task.

"Lucas's fault." or "Mama's fault." or "Dada's fault." - when one of us spills or drops something.


"Dada. Jeff. Psst!" - when Jeff doesn't immediately respond to his name.

"No, no, no. Leave." - when he wants us to let him do something on his own.

"Shhh. Stop." - to me the other day when I was singing to him.

"Green car is?" - when he is looking for something, like his green Ramone car.

"1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10!" - when he counts to 10.


"Here it is!" - when he finds something that he's looking for.


"I got it!" - when he catches a ball or finds something he's looking for.

"Ereen?" - when we told him that Johnny was coming to visit this weekend.

"Scratch. TT did it." - when we asked him what the little mark was on his hand.

"Covers." - what he asked for the other day when we were cuddling. Before that day he had always just said "cold."

"Ohhhh, another boo boo. Bump head. Right here." - what he said this weekend when he bumped his head for the 2nd time in about 10 min and was showing me where to kiss it.

"Last time!" - one of his negotiating tactics. One time he was asking Jeff to do something again and Jeff said, "Okay, but this is the last time." A few days later he wanted to use the juicer but wasn't getting much agreement from Jeff or me so he said, "Last time!"

"This broken this. This better this." - what he says when he's trying to tell us to use one thing over the other. For example, today his stool was too short to reach what he wanted, so he went and got the chair from his kid table and said this. Translation - the small stool doesn't work, so I'm going to use this one because it's better.

"Off. Leave here." - when he woke up from his nap this afternoon I had my hair pulled back in a head band. I usually wear bangs, so I guess this looked different to him. He looked at me with his just-waking-up face, pulled the head band off and said, "Off. Leave here." as he sat it on his night stand. Little stinker! I just bought that darn thing and now I don't want to wear it : )

And our all time favorite,

"Ohhhh man." - the hilarious thing about this is that he uses it appropriately every time. He just started saying it on Friday. He said it this weekend when the cd skipped, when I told him we couldn't go outside, when Marlin got eaten by the whale on Nemo, and several other times. It has got to be the cutest thing I've ever heard!

More Florida Pics

Jenn (my sister) posted some of her pics from our vacation last week. They are so darn cute.

Check them out: http://thetinglefamily.blogspot.com/

Among them you will see that the turkey LOVED the water slide. I forgot to mention that because I didn't have any pictures to remind me. He went down 6-7 times in a row - first with Jeff and then with my dad. He would have done it all day. I went down with him once and he giggled the entire way down. So fun.

What would you do for 2 M&Ms?

Lucas will go potty!

We haven't spend too much time on potty training. He randomly went pee-pee in April, right after starting school. I had the potty sitting in the hallway to give away and he sat down on it and went. I thought that he had seen someone at school do it and that he'd start to show interest, but he hasn't really since then. He'll sit on the toilet for a few minutes while we sing a song, but no results.

I've seen two friends in the past week that have used candy as incentive to go potty, so I thought we'd try it since the kid is a fan of sugar. Last night after dinner I told him that if he would sit on the potty that I'd give him two M&Ms. He was all for it. So he settled in and we sang a couple of songs. I then asked him to try and go potty. His face got red as he tried, then his face lit up into a huge smile and he said, "I did it!"

It was the tiniest little poop ever, but it counted. I told him to go tell Dada and he ran through the house screaming, "I did it! I did it!" He even called me-maw and pe-paw to tell them about it.

I bet the novelty will wear off quickly, but it was fun to see him so excited.

Florida for the 4th

We took Lucas Bryant to Florida last Wednesday through Sunday. It was a little rocky the first day or so due to routine changes, but we ended up having such a great time. Lucas absolutely loved seeing his family - Grandma and Grandpa (me-maw and pe-paw), Mom, Jenn, Neil, Ty and the dogs - and Jeff and I even got to enjoy a few nights out by ourselves. There are a lot of pictures, so I'll describe the trip with the pictures...

Our drive down... not so great. We thought we'd do Lucas a favor and leave on Tuesday night around 6pm so that he could sleep for most of the trip. It backfired because instead of falling to sleep at 9pm as I had planned, he fell asleep at 10pm and then woke up every half hour frustrated that he was still pinned down in his seat when he was so sleepy. Oh well, now we know that night driving doesn't work! Anyway, this lack of sleep for all three of us carried over into Wednesday and even Thursday morning. Lucas finally got back on schedule after his nap on Thursday.

Here we are on Wednesday morning - our first day at the pool. Lucas had a fun time, but not a super great time like I had expected. I thought it was because he was tired, but I found out later that day that it was because the pool wasn't as much fun as the beach. We had been telling him that we were going to the beach all week and he wanted to play on the beach! I really think he could have stayed there all day. You'll see what I mean from pictures below...

Lucas was thrilled when his cuz, Ty, was there on Friday morning. He was well rested and ready to play! The two of them are amazing together. They have completely opposite personalities, but get along so well. We joked that Ty is Mr. Go-With-The-Flow and Lucas is Mr. Swim-Against-The-Current : )

Here are the two cuties having a sno cone. It was Lucas's first, but Ty had lots of experience since they had them at his birthday party. Here is Lucas watching to see how Ty was going to eat this weird piece of red ice...

And here is Ty showing Lucas!

After they finished their sno cones we headed to the beach. Lucas had already been with his grandma and grandpa the previous two nights (while Jeff and I went on dates), but he hadn't yet had the chance to really get wet and dirty in the sand. He loved every part of the experience - the sand, the crashing waves, the cold (very cold) water, the digging tools - everything! He grinned from ear to ear the entire time. Oh wait, there was one time where he invented a game of filling up a bucket with water and pouring it in a hole that we had dug in the sand. If the bucket wasn't completely filled he would get so frustrated. That is when Jeff and I said that he is the opposite of go-with-the-flow. We were all having fun on the beach and he was mad that the little game he invented wasn't going as planned : )

Here are the boys with Uncle Neil, who by the way Lucas thinks is a big toy. He followed Neil around all weekend asking him to hold him, swim with him, and watch movies with him.

But he still saved some quality time for Dada : )

Friday was more of the same during the day, but since it was July 4th we had different plans at night. We grilled out some chicken and then headed to the beach for fireworks. The kiddos were ready to go by the time the fireworks started at 9:15, but they were troopers and stuck it out until the show was over. Ty was beyond tired, but Lucas still had some energy and really came alive when the show started. He said, "wow, big!" when the show started.

Here is Lucas saying, "beaCH!"

We got to the beach around 8pm, so we had about an hour to let them goof off.

And take some pictures...

Grandma (my mother), Mom (my grandmother) and Grandpa (my dad)

Jenn and Me

Team Schroeder (minus Tyson)

Here is everyone during the show. Lucas had a little bloody nose that you can see in the second picture...

On Saturday we headed straight to the beach since we knew that Ty and Lucas preferred it over the pool. They had lots of fun running in the waves and digging in the sand.

Here is Lucas in the hole...

And here he is about to get ticked that he can't fill the water up the same way every time because the waves didn't come in far enough to make the water deep enough...

While the boys were sleeping on Saturday afternoon my sister and I went to afternoon tea with my mom and grandmother. In addition to the tea we also had some yummy sandwiches, cookies and brownies.

After our snack we used the pretty view as a backdrop for some family pictures....

My mom and grandmother

Mother, Me, Grandmother, Sister

Jenn and me at 25 wks pregnant with our little girls!

On Saturday night we made drinks and then Jeff and I went out to dinner with Jenn and Neil. Check out the four beggers below! There were two shih-tzu and two cock-a-poos.

Tyson was pooped after all of the excitement. Here he is behind the couch cushion...

Lucas had a "Lucas Special" (juice and crushed ice)...

And I had a very delicious virgin pina colada!

There was an almost vacation ruining event on Saturday before dinner - Neil accidentally deleted all of their digital pictures from the week! Jenn was upset at first, but then we decided that Neil just had to take a ton of pictures to make up for it, so we headed to the beach after our dinner to get some more shots of the boys.

Lucas took off like a rocket for the waves...

So Jeff and I took a picture with just the two of us for a change...

And then one of the Tingle Fam.

The turkey finally slowed down enough to take a picture, but not enough to actually look at the camera...

We put them in somewhat coordinating outfits - blue collared shirts and khakis.

Here they are climbing up the sand hill...

They were so sweet to take turns helping each other up the hill...

And we can't forget about Baby Sister! Here she is at 25 weeks...

Two new cute things he's saying...

Lucas: "Rock" - as he pointed to the stone on our house and looked at Jeff.

Jeff: "Yes, Lucas, that is stone."

Lucas, in a condescending tone: "No, no, no, no, no. Rock."
_______________________________________________________

We were at dinner and I picked up my water to take a sip when I heard a concerned Lucas say, "Two hands Mama!"