Glasses and doughnuts

So far, summer has been busy but good at our house.  Jack got glasses and is able to see much better.  He wears them all the time and has been really good about taking care of them.  He looks like a little man when he wears them!

We've been spending a fair amount of time in the pool.  Jack has swim lessons this week and next week in the morning, and then some days we also go in the afternoon so Thomas and Peter can play and practice swimming.  It can be tough sometimes to wrangle all 3 of them in the water (Jack does fine in the shallow end, but Thomas can't touch bottom and isn't swimming yet, and Peter is a wildcard).  But, the boys enjoy it so much and it's a great way to escape the heat and humidity.  It's also great to not feel the full force of gravity on my pregnant tummy :).

Today is Peter's feast day so I wanted to do something a little special for him.  I decided to make Pioneer Woman's doughnuts, and they were fantastic!!  The boys are serious doughnut enthusiasts, but they're a rare treat for us.  Anyway, these doughnuts are by far the best I've ever made from scratch -- very light and fluffy -- and they were pretty easy to make.  We didn't do the glaze recipe, but I'll try that next time I make these, because I think it would be awesome.  We tried powdered sugar, powdered sugar+cinnamon and regular sugar+cinnamon.  I think the favorite here was the plain powdered sugar.  The recipe did make a heap-o-doughnuts, though, so hopefully we can be disciplined enough to save them for breakfast tomorrow :). 

And, I'm just throwing in one more picture of the boys enjoying a make-shift sandbox that I set up in the garage.  It's hard to believe that when we left CA, the boys were 5, 3, and 1.  Nearly 2 years have passed -- they're getting so big!  We're so ready to be settled down somewhere -- not too much longer!

Tying up loose ends

We're just a couple of days away from finishing off Jack's school work for 1st grade, and all of us are looking forward to summer break.  It has been a great school year.  There were some bumps along the way (stubborn teacher + stubborn kid don't always mix well) -- but Jack has done really well these past 2 quarters, attitude-wise and he has really learned a lot this year.  I feel like we can continue to homeschool successfully if that ends up being the best decision for our family, depending on where we move after October and what schools are available.  We're going to celebrate the end of the school year with a trip to Chuck E Cheese on Friday!

Today we had a full day of appointments -- a 3-year well check for Peter and an eye doctor appointment for Jack. Peter's appointment went great.  He's right on track for everything.  He proudly told the nurse-practictioner "I'm wearing underwear!", and then he went on to describe the colors of David's and my underwear (I guess he takes notes when looking at the laundry basket)!  The nurse-practitioner thought it was hilarious :).  Man, that kid has a sense of comedic timing.  Peter is usually very reserved with strangers, so for him to decide to be chatty during the appointment at all was a surprise, but then for him to pick the subject of underwear was just too much.  He's a firecracker, that one.

Jack's eye appointment went well, and he definitely needs glasses.  They should arrive in about 10 days, and then he'll be wearing them pretty much all the time.  Thankfully, his eyes are healthy -- he's just very near-sighted.  The doctor told him that he'll be able to see much, much better once his glasses arrive, so I'm eager to see how much of a difference he notices.  He picked out some stylish metallic-blue glasses with a little bit of camoflage detail on the sides.  They look great on him!  Now the trick will be to make sure he takes good care of them and they don't accidentally get broken or misplaced.

Other than that, we're all doing well.  The baby (who still doesn't have a name yet, but we're working on it) is doing very well.  He's active and it's nice to be able to feel kicks every day.  Although, it does sometimes feel like a crazed squirrel is trapped inside me!  I'm eager to meet this little guy, but at the same time I really want to enjoy the next 3 1/2 months and make the most out of them.  The boys are all getting more and more independent (first time with no one in diapers in 7 years!), and I'm able to get enough sleep (not that I always do, but I certainly could get 8 or 9 hours a night if I really wanted to), and I want to savor these things before we have a newborn to care for again.  Hopefully my body will cooperate and I won't get too tired/big/achy to go on some fun adventures with the boys this summer.

We continue to look forward to mid-August, which is when we should have a better idea about where we'll be living next.  David has been working hard on cultivating good leads on potential offers.  I'm oddly calm about the whole thing, which I'm grateful to God for.  October will be one wild month, but there really isn't anything can do about it now except put one foot in front of the other and try to juggle everything as best I can. 

Happy Birthday, Peter!

Peter turns 3 today!  He had a great birthday breakfast with David yesterday at "Bobebbans" (Bob Evans).  He managed to eat 4 chocolate chip pancakes, bacon, sausage, and juice!  Today he enjoyed his birthday cake and ice cream before lunch (because David has to leave for business travel this afternoon).  He requested an airplane cake and cookie dough ice cream, and he was pretty pleased with both.  Then we had a birthday lunch, which was chicken strips, biscuits, fruit salad, and artichokes.  Peter wasn't much help with deciding what I should make for his birthday lunch.  Everytime I asked him what he wanted, he said "cake and ice cream".  I explained that he could have cake and ice cream, but was there a regular lunch or dinner food that he wanted to go *with* his dessert?  And his answer was... cake and ice cream :).  So, I put some things together that I thought he would like.  Not the artichokes -- those happened to be on sale and they looked good, so I figured why not? 

Peter is a feisty, funny kid.  He has a good sense of humor and really enjoys making his brothers and David and I laugh.  He usually knows exactly what he wants and he'll go over (or through) obstacles to get it.  I'm always impressed with how well he stands up to his big brothers and really holds his own.

One example of his stubbornness / self-assurance: We got him a stuffed giraffe recently during a trip to the National Zoo, and it has become one of his most treasured possessions.  He decided to name the giraffe "Phoebe", and yet he insists on calling it a "he".  So we've tried to ask him directly:

"Is Phoebe a girl or a boy?".
Peter's response: "He's a Phoebe giraffe".
"Well, if it's a "he" then it's a boy, right?"
"No, he's a Phoebe giraffe".
So we ask "Then, is it a girl Phoebe giraffe?"
"No."
"Is it a boy Phoebe giraffe?"
"No."
"Well, it has to be one or the other ... is it a boy or a girl?".
"He's a Phoebe".

And Peter will go around and around like this, as sure as anything that he knows exactly what he's talking about. 

Happy 3rd birthday, little man!