Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

In honor of the upcoming birthday of Dr. Seuss, Amy and Andy invited us to the Magic House in St. Louis to celebrate with the kids.  If you've never been to the Magic House, it's pretty much the best children's museum out there.  Mom and Dad had a quiet morning and afternoon watching Owen, which I'm sure they loved.

 Doesn't Sophie look happy? It was a great day!

 I like how Caleb forced Ryan to be "Sally" in this picture on the Thingamajigger. 

What a true friend.

 Trouble!

Making pizza at the diner. Yum!

This was our first stop...no one was ready to take their coats off yet...it was freezing outside!

 The Cat in the Hat!  Caleb told me later that he knew "it was just someone pretending to be the Cat." Ah, how wise.

 I'm pleased to introduce you to the next President of the United States....President Caleb Myers!

 Did I mention....trouble!

 Fixin' up cars - a little piece of heaven for Caleb.

A rite of passage while visiting the Magic House.  It's hard to tell in this picture because my hair never really took off, but the static electricity in the ball I'm touching made our hair stand straight up. I  have pictures of me and Amy as kids doing this.  Caleb was a little afraid of actually touching the ball by himself (which I don't blame him for...it made a pretty loud scary noise).

We then had a yummy Steak n Shake lunch nearby and then headed home for the afternoon.  Gabe took the kids over to Amy and Andy's for dinner that night with Mom and Dad.  I had a great night out with my high school friends, whom I haven't seen in a long time.  I forgot to take any pictures though (duh!).  Oh well, guess we'll just have to plan another night out.  And then on Sunday we had church and then back over to Amy's house for an early birthday celebration for my mom.  All in all, a pretty great weekend!

The Do-Gooders Club

On my way home from picking Caleb up from preschool yesterday we had our normal "how was your day?" conversation.  Generally I have to prod to get anything out of him (I didn't realize that started this early), but this time he was bubbling with information.

He informed me that he was part of the Do-Gooders Club and that there were 5 members: Caleb, Johnnie, Jimmy, Ricardo and Elijah.  I asked him who the leader was and he proudly said that he was.  I suspect that if we asked any of the other 4 they would say that they were the leader too, but I digress.  I asked him what the Do-Gooders Club does and he informed me that they use tools to fight criminals and to "get Kelsey".  Poor Kelsey...I envision her being attacked by 5 rambunctious boys everyday.  I should clarify that Kelsey is Caleb's big-kid buddy (so as not to make you believe their attacking another 4 year old - that would be terrible!)

I'm looking forward to hearing more stories about the Do-Gooders Club.  I love his imagination!

In other preschool news, we made valentines for Brooke and Kelsey for the Valentine's day party.  He gave them to the girls on Thursday.  When Brooke came out to get him from the car, he jumped up and down excitedly and told her he had made her a valentine "with a sucker and tape on it" and the proceeded to get a little shy and put his head down and said, "because I love you" and then he ran away like he was embarassed.  It was adorable!  He has such a sweet heart!

We're on the move!

That's right...we have what I will call a "scooter" on our hands.  I wouldn't call it an official crawl yet, but he can definitely get across a room in minutes.  And he definitely has eyes for all of Caleb's cars.  Danger!  He's been keeping me on my toes!



 Owen has been doing this strange thing where he cocks his head to the side when he's in the highchair or when I'm feeding him.  I don't know if he thinks he's being cute or what.  I admit, it is pretty adorable (but kind of frustrating when you're trying to squeeze sweet potatoes through those chubby cheeks!).

Playtime with the cousins! Owen is in love with his cousin Simon.  He can't get enough of him...they are sure to be buds when Owen gets a bit bigger.  And Caleb and Gracie are already like brother and sister (sometimes to a fault).

I-L-L....I-N-I!! Footie pajamas are the best for watching Illini games!

 I wanted to post a video of this, but I can never get videos to work on this blogsite, so I'll just post a pic.  When I put Owen in his crib, he reaches up so he can see Caleb.  Then Caleb does his thing and acts like a crazy person, and Owen just belly laughs.  It's great! I love how they're forming their own little relationship.  Doesn't Owen just look like he saying, "Wow, I just think you're the coolest big brother ever!"

What to do when it's cold outside...

Well, first you let your kid dress himself and see what he comes down the stairs wearing.  Then you surprise him with an indoor race track and hopscotch made entirely of maskng tape.  Cheap, easy fun...sign me up!

Because my mom needs her grandkid fix

Owen at 7months (attacking George)

My boys!

And one of me and Gabe because I like to believe people like to see what we look like, not just our kids, now and again. :)

Growing

It just seems like my boys are growing so fast.  Gabe took Caleb to an ISU basketball game last night and I stayed home with Owen. I took the opportunity to go through some of the bins of clothes and change out what fits and what doesn't fit.  Owen definitely does not fit into the same outfits as Caleb did within the same timeline of life.  But it's been fun to go through and remember when Caleb was small enough to fit into some of these outfits.  I've got Owen's room done, now I've got to carve out time for Caleb's stuff.  I simply dread it - but it must be done.
   We also got some really cool CARS license plate-type things from someone I work with.  Her husband knew that Caleb was a CARS fanatic and scored some really cool things for him at some sort of State Farm giveaway.  We finally got around to hanging them up.  They round out his CARS bedroom theme quite nicely.

 An update on Owen.  He's 6 months now.  I can't keep him from grabbing George.  He used to sit so nicely while I took his picture next to George, but now he thinks he's a friend.

Baths are starting to be more fun.  Owen can sit up on his own now (something that has happened within the past week), so he loves playing with bath toys more and he especially loves to try and eat the bubbles.  They're quite fascinating, you know!

Happy New Year!

Well, we're officially into 2012!  2011 was a great year filled with many blessings to our family!  Winter break is over for Gabe, so he is back at school and we are back to our normal routine.  Caleb doesn't go back to preschool for another week and a half, so we've got lots of downtime to fill each day.  Good thing we got new toys for Christmas!

We headed to Highland to celebrate with my family for a couple of days.  We saw just about everyone! It was a full house.  And this was Owen's first Christmas! He mostly enjoyed chewing on anything that came within a foot of his mouth, but he did seem genuinely pleased to get the toys that he did.

My grandma came up the next day so she could give the boys their gifts.  I love Caleb's reaction in the picture.  He's so expressive - I love that kid!

Then we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day in Normal.  The kids opened their presents and had a lot of time to play with them as we didn't have anywhere to be until Monday.  Then we headed to Urbana to spend Christmas with Gabe's family at his grandma's house (a.k.a. GGMax, as Caleb calls her).

All in all a great Christmas season!