Happy Birthday Brandon
On August 11, 2002 at 7:11pm our little boy Brandon came into this world. Tonight at 7:11 he was enjoying tearing open gifts as only a 6 year old can do. In a little over ten seconds flat the gift would be open and the look of wonderment would come over his face. Of course we could not quite capture it on film but a few of the shots below are close.
His real party will be on Saturday. It starts in the morning with a bouncy castle and 11 of his friends. I am sure that in itself will cover a full blog post.
For some reason only the first three pictures show up and then you have to scroll down to see the rest. Please do so to see the cool items that my sister sent us from Japan. Brandon and Aiden are having a gumball sword fight with some of the items. There are many things to choose from and we have sampled only a few. I am not sure if you can see the squid balls package but I am not sure they got the taste right. I tried them first and the after taste is horrible. Brandon tried them and at first gave them a thumbs up and then as the taste set in he had to run to the bathroom to spit up the rest. But thanks to Aunt Heather to providing excitment to his day!
Otherwise we have been busy with the soccer and swimming lessons, so no real other news. Will have a new post soon (I hope)
Soccer, Swimming and Dishes?!
The last week of July Brandon started Soccer. We went and got him some nice blue soccer shoes and some running shorts. He loves soccer so far! It is fun to see him running around the field before he gets tired. He has a bit of trouble on defense as he gets bored waiting for the ball to get near him. But where he really shines is goalie. He has made a few great saves, one he even dove for the ball. I am impressed with his soccer skills so far and he still enjoys it.
We go to soccer every Tuesday and Thursday, to various fields across the Cottage Grove area. It is amazing how many kids play soccer in this area. I heard rumors that our county has the most soccer players in the state.
We also started toddler swimming with Aiden. He goes to the pool every Monday and Wednesday for 30 minutes. He is our fish and it is hard to get him out of the water. Unless he wants to jump of course.
Like his big brother his favorite activity is to climb to the side of the pool and jump. The problem is he does not see if there is anyone there to catch him. Occasionally he also fails to jump far enough to actually reach the water.
The beginning of August also marked the end of our dishwasher. Our little Maytag dishwasher was really cheap and for a reason. About two years ago the wire racks started to lose their PVC coatings and stained our dishes. For a quick fix I applied a blue plasti-dip to the exposed metal ends. This lasted about a year or so before it started to peal off (And stick to our dishes).
Earlier this summer Aiden had a cup of sand that got placed into the dishwasher. After two complete cleanings we thought we got all the sand out. The dishwasher got steadily worse until it stopped cleaning most of the dishes we put into it. So government rebate money to the rescue!
We bought a top of the line Kitchen-Aid washer that got decent reviews in the Consumer Reports and got it at a decent reduced price at Appliance Smart. I spent last Saturday ripping the old one out (Good thing I did also), loaded it on the truck and drove to pick up the new one. When I started to assemble the new one I noticed that the old copper feed line had a pin point hole in it. Left in place this could have caused major water damage! After a few hours the new unit was installed and running. The Kitchen-Aid is so quiet we have to look at the display to see if it is running!
The extra bonus is that the boys love the box.
¡sɹǝʇʇǝן uʍop ǝpısdn ǝʇɐǝɹɔ ǝɯ sʇǝן ʇɐɥʇ ǝʇıs ʇɐǝu ɐ punoɟ ı ‘sʍǝu ɹǝɥʇo uı ʎןןɐuıɟ
