Rett turns 3!

My baby is 3!! I don't think I can ever stop calling him my baby though :) We celebrated a week early since my mom was in town. In the morning he was excited for presents, so we let him open one: a motorized train set. He was a little bit scared of the train noise that it made, but James was happy to demonstrate it for him.

For his birthday we decided to spend the day at the zoo, see the animals and ride the train. Rett was very excited about our plans! For days before he would randomly say, "Go to the zoo?" I finally had to tell him that the animals were asleep so that he would stop asking.

We loved checking out the new meerkat exhibit! They had a fun little cave that has tunnels for the meerkats and the boys could climb in and watch them up close as they use the tunnels.

We were so excited to see a grown up version of our little tortoise! The zoo has the same breed of tortoise as our little "turtle". See how big they get?

Rett was also really excited to get to feed the deer. He was too scared to actually put his hand out, so he would just get it close and then drop it. But he loved watching everyone else do it!

The otters were feeling playful and kept following everyone's hands and doing flips in the water.

We fed the lorikeets and the cockatiels. The lorikeets were kind of vicious! As soon as we walked in, they swarmed us and started biting at our hands trying to get at the nectar cups we were holding. James got kind of scared but I couldn't move because 3 of them were on me at the same time! The cockatiels were much more calm.

After the train ride, we got to feed the giraffes. Rett was too scared to hold out his lettuce leaf, he kept dropping it on the ground in front of her.

After playing on the playground and checking out the petting area, we took a nice break in the air conditioned kids area.

After we got home it was time for pizza and birthday cake! When I asked Rett what kind of cake he wanted, he said, "Uhhh, a shark cake!!!" He said that every time I asked him until he said, "Uhhh, a car cake!!" So I did both :)

We got the relighting candles that light again after you blow them out, so they both got to keep blowing the candles out for a long time.

Present time!!! Rett loves playing with all of James' hot wheels cars, so we got him a box of 50 just for him. He still likes playing with James' though. I guess it is more fun when it isn't yours.

A tiny wooden house that has different keys and doorbells for each door.

A wooden parking garage for all of his cars to park on!

He also got a birthday card in the mail from primary with a shiny dollar coin in it. Which he used to buy a hot wheels car at the store (go figure!).

Happy Birthday our sweet, funny, lovable Rett!

Catching up

Anthony and James went out on the boat and James caught a catfish!

Waiting for James at the pickup area of James school. Rett is loving all the one on one time with mommy!

One night at bedtime we let Rett play with his cars in his room before putting him in his crib and then we completely forgot about him! When we were going to bed I realized that I never put him in, and I found him asleep on the floor like this. He played until he dropped!

The Elders Quorum had a family movie and pizza night and the boys did great! We had to go into the gym for the last 30 minutes of the movie because they couldn't sit still anymore, but everyone got along. It was so nice.

Every day they have "specials" at James school that they rotate: music, PE, yoga, art, IT (computer lab), and STEAM lab (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math). James' favorite is the STEAM lab. They talked all about airplanes and what makes them fly, lift, air molecules, force and drag. James brought home his airplane and was talking me all about it. I was very impressed!

One morning after dropping James off at school, I realized I didn't have any plans and I thought, "let's get pancakes!". So we did! I am still adjusting to my new sidekick and figuring out what he likes to do without James around.

James pretending to be a tortoise.

Showing me airplane pose he learned in yoga.

We had a hurricane day off of school right before the Labor Day weekend so we ended up with a 4 day weekend. We went on a hunt for umbrellas at the store and ended up buying some clearance summer stuff, including a cool bubble kit. So we used the hurricane winds to try them out!

Anthony met us at the park after work one afternoon and when we got in the van to leave, it would start and then all the dash lights would come on and the it would die. So we called for a tow truck through our AAA membership. When I said I was calling a tow truck James yelled from the back seat, "yes!!! I always wanted to see a tow truck!!". We were at the park by the water so we got out and looked for snails and crabs until they came about 45 minutes later. Since Anthony was there, we all went home in his truck.

It took a few days for the mechanic to check it out because of the holiday weekend but it didn't take too long to fix after that.

After seeing the game Bean Boozled on Happy's blog I knew I had to get for us to try. I found it at the store and we played it the next day. The boys loved watching everyone else get gross ones, but they weren't a fan of getting them themselves :)

Rett refused to chew and would just hold it in his mouth and pretend like he ate it. If we told him to chew it up, he would just spit it out without chewing. Sneaky kid!

It seemed like most of them were the gross flavor!

Rett thought it was hilarious when someone would spit theirs out. It was his favorite part!

We started incubating another round of eggs! 11 were collected from our quail and 15 we bought online just in case ours were too young to be fertile. It turned out that only 1 of the ones we ordered hatched, and that was only with me helping it come out (which you aren't supposed to do but it would have died otherwise). 6 of our 11 hatched so we ended up with 7 chicks. One of the chicks died in the first few days so now we have 6.

This is the one I helped out of the shell. He spent almost a full day just laying down in the incubator and I didn't think he was going to make it, but now he is doing great!

Our first 2nd generation quail chick! (We marked the eggs from our quail on the outside of the shell so we could tell if it was one of ours hatching)

All fluffy and looking cute:

We put them on my postage scale and most of them weigh 3 ounces except one tiny guy who weighs 2 ounces.

Once they are old enough we will put the new girls in with our others. Cross your fingers for more girls this time!