Catching up

Anthony was doing some yard work in the back yard and found some snake eggs! Now we have them in a tupperware container on the back porch, waiting to see if they will hatch. 

We were talking about what we are planning to do with all of our extra roosters (eat them hopefully!) and we realized that we both have never actually eaten quail before. A local Mexican restaurant had some on their menu, so we decided to get take out. We loved it! Rett ate most of mine, he was all about it. James tried a piece and said that it tasted good.

I was painting my toenails and James wanted in on the action. He specifically requested pink fingernails and much to Anthony's dismay I agreed :) He chews his nails so much that I knew the paint would be gone in a few days.

We watched a documentary about using woodchips/mulch to cover the soil in your garden, so we decided to give it a try. After looking around awhile we discovered that the local landfill offers free mulch in their yard waste section, you just have to come and shovel it yourself. We filled the entire bed of Anthony's truck. It was hot and dirty work!

During James' weekly OT appointments, I have started bringing bags of preschool activities for Rett to do with me. It has been kind of fun having a set one on one date with Rett every week. He gets so excited to see what I have in my bag and it is so fun to teach him. He already knows most of his letters, colors, shapes, and numbers 1-10. 

When Rett gets tired of the waiting room, he likes to go outside and look for "yucky berries" on the bushes around the office park.

A few weeks ago James' OT asked me to bring one of his collared shirts that he needs to wear for school. She wanted to work with him on wearing it and it was surprisingly not an issue! He didn't complain about the collar bothering him and he wore it for the entire day. The next day he wanted to wear it again because he liked having a pocket on the front of his shirt. I hope he feels the same way once school starts! He looks so grown up and handsome in polo shirts, I had to take a picture.

James asked if we could get a toy at the store and I told him that I didn't have money for that. He picked up this play money and said, "let's just use this!"

We were playing Operation and James' changed the rules so that if you are a grown up, you aren't allowed to make the buzzer go off. But, if you are a kid if you make the buzzer go off, you get another turn. Makes sense :)

Rett was watching us play the game, but was also scared of the buzzer so he was hiding behind me. He has started this thing recently where he gets extremely scared of certain loud noises, like when toys light up and make noise, or when music comes on suddenly. He also has developed a fear of the movie theater and actually started screaming and crying when we tried to go last time, begging to go home (I'm thinking because of the noise). Other than that, noise doesn't usually seem to bother him so it is kind of perplexing. I hope he just grows out of it!

We needed some good compost soil for the bottom layer of our garden and the best place we could find for it charges per cubic yard (1 cubic yard is about the size of Anthony's truck bed). After work one day, we all got in the truck and drove over there. The bulldozer was ready for us! We were all in the truck while it came to dump the soil in the back. Rett was pretty nervous and kept saying, "No! No!". To be fair, from his perspective it did look like the bulldozer was trying to bury us in dirt.

The view from the front passenger side:

Once we got home, we had to move the soil from the truck to the back yard one wheelbarrow full at a time. The end result was worth it! We have our fall garden bed ready and we planted our seeds last week. The large plants already growing are some sunflowers I planted in the beginning of the summer.

Our guard owl:

James and I just finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I guess all the descriptions of the candy gave him a craving for some. He has a lunchbox where he keeps all his candy from holidays and he almost never eats any of it. One morning I came out of room and James was digging in. He said, "don't worry about getting me breakfast today. I have my candy"

James really wanted to camp out in our tent in our backyard for one of our summer activities. Since Anthony didn't have to work the next day we decided to give it a try. Never. Again. It was hot and sticky, the kids took forever to fall asleep and then James rolled around on top of us the entire night. The sprinklers came on at 6:30am and woke us all up and I was never so happy to go back inside the house!

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 :)