Beginning of July

Taking selfies in bed:

He woke up wanting to show me how his plane flies. So much energy!!

We went to our first summer library program for kids. They had a magician come and do magic tricks and some juggling. They loved it!! James couldn't stop laughing at everything he did. Rett made it about halfway through the show before I had to take him out and walk around the library. James did great staying in there by himself to finish watching the show. This week we are going to go again for a ventriloquist show!

The chicks are about 3 1/2 weeks old now and are so much bigger now. They seem to grow over night! They finally have enough of their adult feathers for us to tell how many are males and females. We have three that are definitely female, five that are definitely male, and two that could go either way. I hope they end up being female, we need more egg layers! 

We don't know how it happened, but one of the boys got a toenail ripped off and ended up with a bloody toe. The other chicks were pecking at it, so we had to separate him until it is completely healed. James loves it because now he is much easier to catch and hold. 

I found this map of the US at the dollar tree and it made me think of an idea I had of putting a trackable (a small item with its own barcode you can track on geocaching.com) in a geocache and track it across the country. James helped me pick one out online and I looked for a popular geocache to put it in so that someone would hopefully pick it up and move it along quickly.

Placing it in the first geocache!

Someone picked it up the next day and placed it in a geocache not far from us. The one he placed it in isn't very popular, so it is still sitting there. I am thinking we might have to go get it and put it somewhere else to get it moving again.

When James put his car in, he traded it for another trackable from someone in Germany. A few days later, we placed it in a geocache by the beach.

After we dropped it off, we walked down to the beach. On the way we met a very friendly gopher tortoise. He didn't even care that James was petting him, he just kept on eating grass.

One night James decided to help feed Rett dinner. They both thought it was the best game ever!

I bought the boys lcd writing boards for their church bags and James discovered that he loves drawing funny pictures of people in our family (mostly Anthony). He cracks himself up so much! It is a good thing we were in the relief society room instead of the chapel this particular Sunday because he was laughing so hard :)

I woke up one morning to find James hard at work with his circuit set. He was very proud of himself for putting it all together himself and making the light work. 

Getting our free slurpees on 7/11. Rett didn't want to be in the picture, he kept yelling at me, "No picture! No picture!"

It has been so dang hot! We've been eating a lot of all fruit popsicles. Rett likes to lick them like a lollipop, so they usually melt all over him into a sticky mess. Fun.

Rett does this thing with his toes when he is relaxing. For some reason he likes to put his big toe up in the air, separate from his other toes. I just love his juicy baby feet and I wanted a picture to remember them :)

4th of July Week

At the beginning of the week, Anthony took James to the grocery store and then to a friend's house to check on his aquariums, leaving me at home with Rett. I was trying to get him to finish his dinner and he kept winking at me. The face he makes when he winks is so ridiculous! He scrunches up his whole face to do it. I laugh every time!

At bath time Rett had so much fun having the bathtub all to himself. He got to play with anything he wanted and didn't get pushed over or have toys taken from him. At one point he decided to start hiding under a bucket and then peak out to see if I was watching him. Love this boy!

The chicks are growing so fast! It is hard to believe they are only 1 week old. They are started to look more like birds than chicks.

While at the playground at McDonalds, James finally convinced Rett to climb up into the tunnels with him. Usually he is too scared to go up there. He liked it for a little while, but then he was crying and I had to climb up there and get him back down.

James tried poprocks for the first time. He loved it! He laughed and laughed!


Rett didn't want to try it, but he watched Anthony eat some. Look at that face! So amazed!

James built a magnatile maze to put the chicks in whenever we clean their cage or I need to check their bottoms. It is so funny to see them stick their heads out of the open squares!

We trekked to home depot to buy wood to start building the pen for the quail. This is the frame Anthony built and painted. He spent all of the holiday adding mesh panels and a door that latches. It is so close to being done! We will probably move the chicks into it in about a week.

They were looking cramped in the tupperware bin, so we switched them to a larger cardboard box. Now it is harder to watch them since the sides aren't see-through. But it is fun to watch them stretch their wings in the larger area!

Smashing a pinata was on our summer list, so the 4th of July seemed like a good day to do it. James was ready to smash it!

Rett wanted to hit it a few times, then he gave the bat back to James to get the job done.

Then we did some sparklers. Just a few because James wanted to save some for after dark.

It was finally time to go see the fireworks! James decided to bring a few firefighter hats.

While we were waiting for the fireworks, the people around us were doing sparklers and small fireworks. It was a great preshow!

Time for the show!

Rett was scared of the "big fireworks", so I brought some headphones for him. He liked them, but he still refused to watch. As soon as they started, the closed his eyes and shut down. I picked him up and he was clung to me for the entire time. I would ask him if he was ok and he would keep his eyes closed and just nod his head.

James laughed and laughed! He loved every minute of it!

Of course, on the way home, Rett was happy and excited and kept saying, "Fireworks! Fireworks!" like he loved it. At least he wasn't traumatized!

Our town had the fireworks a day early, so on the actual holiday, we didn't do much. While Anthony worked on the quail cage, the boys took turns "helping", watching tv, going with us to the store, and we took a few minutes out to do a fireworks craft. We seriously only do crafts twice a year, so here is proof that we did it :)

Happy 4th of July!