Lazy Summer Days

This week Travis has been going to baseball camp in the mornings.  Since it is so hot out right now we have been taking it easy in the afternoons.  This leaves us time for LOTS of photo opportunities!  Here are my boys before they went to the Dbacks game on Sunday. They had so much fun!

I have been letting the boys play with the hose in the evenings since we don't have a pool.  My intentions were to get some water on our dying grass.  Last night I went to check on them and they decided to make "a bathtub" in the dirt.  Do these two look "innocent" or what??!!

"Mom, what is the problem??  We're just hanging out in the mud. We ARE boys you know!"

"Hmmm, can I get that bird from here??"

I recently cleaned out the bedroom closets.  Evidently now Travis can reach the old Halloween costumes. I am glad to see them get some use!  The boys wanted to "sword fight" with these plastic bats.  As you can see from the helmet and gloves Travis was preparing to ease the pain from his little brother!  I was cracking up. I had to run for the camera. How could be be afraid of this little guy??  lol  (Even though he is little he packs quite a punch!)

Connor is "the police"! Watch out, he likes to give out tickets!

Here he is in his police car.

This was so ridiculous I had to get a picture.  I figure I can use it at some point in the future for bribery, payback or whatever!!

After the sword fight they needed an ice cream break. You can always use one of those, especially when it is 114 degrees outside!

Later on Travis decided to put his old police costume on. As you can see he has grown. (Somebody needs to tell Travis!  LOL) Kinda reminds me of the Incredible Hulk when he breaks through his clothes....

Yes, we were getting silly by this point.  Travis wanted to see how high he could jump so he wanted me to take pictures of him doing this.  He actually can jump pretty high!

 Connor wanted in on the action... oops!  You jumped too high sweetheart!

This is the perfect picture to show you just how my days raising two boys feels sometimes! Crazy, blurry, but lots of fun!

I just love these two guys so very, very much. We have our moments... time outs, screaming, yelling, arguing, hitting (boys do this!), while I do lots of redirecting... but then we have the sweet, loving, kind, sharing, caring, hugging moments and then it all seems so "normal". Whatever normal is anyway!     

I have to say I am really enjoying my summer this year.  It has been a few years since we have had a summer just to kick back and relax. Three summers ago I was starting the mountains of paperwork for the adoption. Two summers ago we went to Russia and brought Connor home. That summer and last summer I also was taking summer classes for my Master's degree.  Lots of adjusting was going on the last two years. I think it took us a year and a half to finally feel settled and adjusted as a family.  (Most of this was Travis adjusting... Connor had no issues whatsoever.)  Last summer was ok, but we were dealing with a lot of behavior issues with Travis. After getting some counseling we were all able to get through it and move along.  Finally, this summer I feel like a  mom of two very active, very energetic little boys. Connor is potty trained which means no more diaper bags.  I feel happy and sad about this all at the same time.  Connor is napping a little less and we aren't on as strict of a schedule this year.  We can go where we want and do what we want.  A whole new world is opening up to Connor and he is having a blast!  He has realized he has been missing things... and now he is old enough to participate.  Life is good.

Not sure if you notice or not, but Connor's birthmark is getting much lighter.  He is looking different to me around his eyes.  Gosh are his eyes beautiful! Actually, I know I am biased, but both of my boys are just so HANDSOME!!  They already have girls chasing after them ... I am still considering locking them up during those teenage years... lol! If anything it would be to keep the girls safe!!! 

Father's Day

I'm not so sure how I got so lucky yesterday.  Our original plan was for our whole family to go to the Diamondback's game for Father's Day since Daryle already had some tickets for the game.  The night before we started talking about what time we were going to leave the house.  I started to panic when Daryle told me we needed to leave at 10 ... for a game at 1:40.  What?!  I was informed that he needed to be in the first 5,000 to get his free BBQ set from the dbacks... really??  Suddenly I started thinking about the laundry and house cleaning that didn't get done on Saturday due to attending a funeral all the way across town and then celebrating Father's Day with my dad.  I was pleasantly surprised when Daryle offered to take the boys to the game and I could stay home.  Wow. I didn't know if it was Father's Day or Mother's Day!  I love spending time with my boys, but with the way my husband attends baseball games (batting practice is a must in his book.. and you can just forget leaving early!!) I just didn't think I had the stamina in me.  I was ok with him taking the boys. I knew he could do it and he did a great job.  Everybody came home with smiles on their faces... even dad was smiling!  (And he got his BBQ set too!) They had an awesome time and I got my cleaning done AND was able to go see a movie with my mom.  Everybody was happy!

The boys got to attend the No Chew Crew Meeting before hand.  I love how Travis is being the "protective big brother" here.  Nice to see once in awhile!

Connor is finally old enough to go into the playground... called the Sandlot.  He can run around and get out his energy and we know he is safe. 

Travis and Connor also got to bat in the whiffle  ball area.  Some guys pitch balls to the kids and then they run the little bases.  Once again this was a first for Mr. Connor.  He is a good batter so he did a super job hitting the ball, and he didn't even use a tee!

Visiting with Baxter was a huge hit!  Daryle said Connor kissed his nose at least 5 times. 

They had so much fun!  I think Daryle was thankful that they both fell asleep in the car on the way home.  I am glad to know that all three of them can go to the games together and they can come home all in one piece!  LOL  Daryle said he had a wonderful Father's Day.  After all, we did cook him breakfast in bed and we went to dinner at a restaurant of his choosing. The boys made him some gifts at the Home Depot Kids Club this month and we got him a gift card.  He is a wonderful father, I am glad my boys have him! Happy Father's Day Daryle!!  We love you!!  XOXOXO

My baby just turned 3!

Wait a minute here! Where have the last two years gone???  In some ways it seems like eons ago and in other ways it seems like yesterday.  On June 15, 2009 Connor turned one year old. It also just happened to be the day we got to pick him up from the baby home to join his forever family. What an incredible day that was! I don't think we will ever celebrate Connor's birthday without reliving some of those precious moments.  Here are some of those memories! Then we will move on to birthday #3! 

                                     

This is Connor once we arrived at our hotel and he began to settle in a bit.  He is starting to smile now!  Happy First Birthday little man!

Here we are on our car ride leaving the baby home.  Travis was on cloud nine while Connor was trying to figure out just what exactly was going on here!

And of course how can I leave out our very first family photo ever??  I know it isn't the best picture in the world, but it is our first and I think it speaks 1,000 words!  Finally, we were a family of 4!

Here is Connor celebrating birthday #2.  Happy, well adjusted and still incredibly loved by all.  Just look at that smile plastered across his face! Does this say happy or what??

Which now leads us up to birthday #3!  Since daddy had to leave for work very early in the morning I let Travis go ahead and give him one present to start out his morning. Travis had picked out a large bouncy ball and a small gift from the dollar store.  I decided those would be a perfect start to the day. As you can see from this hug, Connor LOVED his present!  It is nice to see them having more and more of these types of moments vs. the "other" moments, if you know what I mean!  (We still have plenty of those however! They just seem to be more balanced these days.)  Now that Connor is 3 they are able to play together more, which nice. (It also means the arguing can be more difficult... Connor is not always the victim anymore! He is a quick learner from his older brother!)

For months Connor has been telling me that he wants "party hats" at his birthday. I found this cute one for him, I think he liked it!  (It turned out dark, trust me, it was cute!)  Gosh he looks like such a big kid here!

Connor likes to dig, dig, dig! He got this cool wheelbarrow from his grandma in California and this shovel set from Grammy. He would have been content with this all night long!  We kept trying to get him to open a few more gifts but he kept coming back to this!

Mommy and Daddy got him his very own workshop. This has had quite a workout already this week.  (The power drill had to take a time out....  he was trying to "fix" Rock.... umm, no honey!) He has had fun hammering away and organizing all of his tools daily.

Next came the big gift of the night, his very own "jeep"!  Red Truck Grandpa had his mind made up and there was going to be no changing it! Both boys are in heaven with it and it has already been charged up more than once.  When the weather cools down (in like 4 months!) I am sure it will be getting a daily workout. It is too big for inside so outside it will stay!  I can see loads of fun in their future. =)

Connor picked out this birthday cake. I was going to make one but Travis insisted that we let him get one from the bakery. I must say it was pretty delicious!

Here I am with my boys!  Boy have we come a long way since this....

Of course we had a good moment to snap a nice picture with Grammy.  Connor was too busy playing with his toys to pose with anybody else!

                                    

Why is he looking so grown up? What happened to my baby???  Oh well, now he keeps us in stitches every day with the funny things he does and says.  He will break out into song at any given moment. He has a wide variety of musical interests.  I think the funniest things are what he says to his big brother ("Get OUTTA here Trav!"  "I need my privacy!"  "Grrr, I am Robosaurus, I breath fire and I eat junk cars!" This list goes on and on and on...  It is so hard to keep from laughing, I find myself constantly turning my head around!  Oh Connor, we sure love you! Happy Birthday Sweetie Pie!!

PS-The best part of being three is that we are now potty trained!!  Hip, hip horray!!  If you have ever potty trained a boy... well... there are extra challenges involved! So far he has only hit his face once while peeing... and I have to clean the toilet daily.... but it beats buying diapers and pull ups for sure!

Staying Busy

Where is the time going??  With two very active boys I have to keep things busy around here.  We don't have every minute of the day planned, however, the past two weeks have been jammed packed.  Every year we do swimming lessons at the same place and Travis has been doing basketball camp at our local high school. This year they fell in the exact same two weeks.  That means we have been going non-stop.  Today was our last day for both swim lessons and basketball.  Next week Travis will just have baseball camp and then the rest of our summer we can just go where the wind blows us.  I am looking forward to that!  Here are some of the highlights of our past week.

Connor loves playing with his playdough. I let him mix some of the colors, he seems to like it that way. Of course this makes Travis upset. He doesn't like his colors mixed.  He can be on the OCD side sometimes.. I have NO idea where he gets it from.  (haha! Probably me...!)  Also, Connor has decided he likes to hang out around the house without his shirt on.  Funny kid!

Travis has been having fun playing some video games between basketball camp and then swimming lessons. It has been some good down time for him.

We can't forget my "oldest son", Rock. He is hanging in there.  He loves these boys even though sometimes I think they tire him out!

Here is Travis doing one of the skills at camp.  Just look at that concentration!

Getting ready to shoot...

My iTouch has come in REALLY handy lately.  I found some applications that are easy for Connor to use and are very entertaining.  This is what he has been doing in between running away from me to use the bathroom in the gym and/or just running away from me in general. LOL All kidding aside, he actually did pretty well. It is encouraging to think I may be able to enjoy Travis' basketball games this year since the iTouch seems to be good entertainment!

Here is Travis at swimming lessons.  He keeps improving each year. Travis has come a LONG way.  When he was three and four he wouldn't even put his face in the water without having a fit. Now he has learned tons of strokes, kicks and can tread water.  

I am so proud that he finally will lay on his back and relax. I think this is the best he has done yet.  Connor is a little fishy in the water, but he hates being on his back. From what I hear this is quite typical for some kids.  Hopefully next year he will learn to relax.  Otherwise Connor is amazing with how well he can swim for his age. 

This summer it has worked out so well that grandpa has been here these past two weeks.  (Thank you, thank you grandpa!  I couldn't have done it without you!!)  After basektball camp he has taken Connor to his house for a nap. I take Travis to swim lessons and then grandpa has brought Connor to swim lessons at his time. This way I didn't have to watch him for an hour and a half before his swim lesson started. Each day he starts out here in the hot tub and of course he has to say hello to Shadow, the dog!  This child has NO FEAR. And I mean NO FEAR!!  He leaps into the air, arms sprawled out and lands face first into the water. Usually this is done into the hot tub area as I come running up just a few seconds too late.  Needless to say Connor has had  few timeouts this year during swim lessons.  I need to look into signing him up for Fear Factor. He would win for sure!

Here is Connor blowing bubbles, notice his entire head is under there. It is amazing to see how long he can hold his breath for.  He is part fish I think.

Connor even got to jump off of the diving board... into a ten foot deep pool.  Can you see the no fear in him?  Part of me is glad to be the parent who doesn't have the screaming child that is afraid of the water and the other part of me is scared.to.death! 

Our Summer So Far...

Wow, two weeks of our summer have already flown by!  We didn't do much the first week, we pretty much laid low.  This past week both boys had swim lessons every day and Travis had basketball camp Monday-Thursday.  We will resume the same schedule this week.  On Monday we went to sign Travis up for a basketball league and stumbled upon the Free Lunch program that some of the schools around here are offering this summer.  The boys smelled food, mom saw free, and off we went!  We took advantage of it twice this week.  That makes meal planning so easy! Every day the boys say, "Can we go to free lunch?" It is pretty funny.  We have been to two different schools and they have been pretty full of families eating lunch.   Travis always seems to find somebody he knows from school too. It sure is a nice thing they have to offer.

Now, back to our first week off. I have been going back and forth as to whether to even mention this.  But, after thinking about it I decided to go ahead and write about it.  There might be somebody out there in "blog land" who is facing a similar situation.  A few months ago Daryle and I decided to look into getting some laser surgery done on the birthmark that covers Connor's left eye.  This was a HUGE decision for us.  We always felt that is was no big deal.  We hardly even noticed it at all.  Everybody in our circle of friends knows about it and nobody ever says anything. However, we were starting to realize that when we would go places where people don't know us we were getting a lot of stares and comments. Now I can handle comments from kids because they are just innocently asking what is the matter with his eye.  The ones that were a little more unsettling were the comments from older people. By "older people" I am referring to people over the age of 70.  They would say things like, "Oh no!  What happened to you?"  We would calmly just say, "Oh, it is just a birthmark, he was born with it." Then people would feel really awkward and it was an uncomfortable moment.  (I think a lot of times they felt kind of stupid for asking).  Recently we began having more and more of these moments.  Then, in February, Connor underwent another eye exam under anesthesia to check him for glaucoma.  (He has to have this done several times a year because of the location of his birthmark.  Due to the location and shape of his birthmark he could be at risk for certain syndromes. So far he has been testing negative for everything.) At this time we are believing that this is just a birthmark and there are no signs of anything life threatening.  Each time he has been under anesthesia the anesthesiologist has asked us about doing laser surgery on his birthmark. I usually get a little defensive.  Who do they think they are?  We love him and think he is beautiful. So what if he has this mark? We don't even notice it!  I just calmly say no, not at this time.  I shake my finger at them (in my head of course) and think how dare they!  However, this past February we had an anesthesiologist who had a different tactic.  She asked me if I knew about a certain local doctor who does this surgery. I said no and then she went on to sing his praises. She was sure to tell me that she wasn't trying to suggest he needed it, she just wanted me to know that there was a fabulous doctor in the area and that maybe we should call him up and get an opinion.  After the eye exam our eye doctor told me that I might want to give said doctor a call, he thought I would like him.  He mentioned that he hadn't thought about it before, but that it might be something just to look into.  He also had wonderful things to say about this doctor.  Those two planted the seed in my head that day.  My next obstacle was to convince Daryle.  So, I started doing some research. I came across a video clip from CBS on a ten year old girl who had  a birthmark on her face removed with laser surgery.  In her interview she had commented that she was just tired of people thinking she had been hit in the face.  Her comments really made an impact on me. It almost felt as if that was what Connor might say to me when he was ten years old.  Daryle and I talked and talked and talked about it. We had already been gathering information on this doctor and we found out that he was a pioneer of laser surgery and he was sought out all over the country. I found two different people who had used this doctor for their children had they had fabulous things to say.  In April we (I made Daryle come too since he had lots of questions. I didn't want this decision being placed on my shoulders alone. What if something went wrong?) met with him and decided to move forward. The thing is that you just don't know how many times you will have to have it done. The fewest he has ever done was three times, the most was 16.  Wow. I am just hoping we are towards the bottom number!  On June 2 we went in for our first procedure.  When the doctor came out he said, "Well, don't be alarmed, but he does look like he got whacked with the ugly stick!"  His eye was swollen (it only lasted two days) and he said the marks should clear up in one to two weeks.  Finally after a week and a half I feel comfortable sharing some pictures because we are already seeing a difference.  Here he is when we got home.  One thing I want to say is that he felt NOTHING!  Later that day he looked in the mirror and said, "I got an owie!"  It did not hurt at all. 

He was still groggy from the anesthesia.  It took me a few days to take him anywhere mostly because I was nervous about what people might say.  Now if I thought people made comments before, boy oh  boy did they make comments now! Our doctor warned us to tell people he had just had laser surgery so that people don't feel the need to call CPS. (Evidently he had a family that almost had that happen once! Scary!)  It really did look pretty bad.  Last Tuesday I took the boys to Dairy Queen for some ice cream. You can sort of see how it was healing.

 Well, this one was Travis of course!

 You can see here how it didn't affect him much! It was starting to get lighter. One thing we were told that the darker the better.  If it is dark that means it "took" and you will have a good result.  We were thrilled at how dark it was. AKA: very deep purple!

Here he is today. Still healing but looking much, much better indeed. There are several areas that were pink before that our now just a normal skin color. Amazing!

I took this one to show how it goes/went into his hair line. It is almost completely gone there.

He still has some dark parts, scabs, and areas that still need to heal. I will post some updates as they happen.  In the end we are grateful that insurance was able to cover this and that it is turning out so well.  I really hope that he will appreciate this when he gets older. Believe me, a lot of prayer went into this decision for sure! Since it "took" so well we are hoping we might be able to get this done in 4 (or less) procedures. We will see!  (Fingers, toes, arms and legs are all crossed!  LOL)

This week I hope to get some pictures of basketball camp and swim lessons. It is hard because my hands are always full!  I hope your summer is going well, I know we are having loads of fun here!

Can we build it? Yes we can!

Yesterday we finally had a day where we didn't have to go anywhere or do anything. Days like that are very far and few in our family. So when Travis asked if we could put his clubhouse together I thought, well, ok, since you have been waiting since Christmas I guess today is a good choice!  I have been putting it off because I knew this would be a several hour project and I didn't want to start and then have to leave thus creating a huge mess. Plus, I figured we would have some days like this once summer came along.  When I said yes my boys ran and put on their "hard hats" and we were ready to go!

I have to say this was a pretty fun project.  It came with all of the needed parts, including the tools.  My boys loved it.  The directions were fairly easy to follow. I have put together some toys with difficult instructions and these ones were not bad at all.  It took us about 4 hours, lunch break included.  Connor held it together pretty well even though he really wanted to use that screwdriver!  I let him "help" but then he wanted to take over!  I don't think we had any meltdowns until at least 3 hours into the project. Not bad!

 

 Here is Travis hard at work. Since I had to help quite a bit there aren't many "work in progress" pictures.

 Finished product!  Travis wanted to add his own special touches. He made some stars and stripes on his flag and added numbers to the "clock".  He even tried building some shelves inside with some extra pieces. I am not sure how that turned out, but he had fun in there anyway. Now they have it set up so that Connor drives by a window on his bike and they pretend it is a drive through.  Funny boys!

So far we are enjoying our summer. The next three weeks will be busy with swim lessons, basketball camp and baseball camp. Then we will have a few weeks to relax before school starts again. If only I could freeze time! These boys are growing up so fast. Yesterday we were looking at pictures from two years ago when we went to pick up Connor. I am amazed at how fast the time has gone by. I had to laugh at Connor though.  We have been talking about Russia lately so it has been on  his mind. More than once he has told me, "Mom, when I was a little kid I lived in Russia!"  Umm, Connor, I hate to tell you this, but in two weeks you are only turning 3!  I wonder how old he thinks he is??!!