Brothers, bruises, and bounty - a random update

Nothing says brotherly love like a flyswatter to the head, right?

It's not much better when I try to take a picture of these two together.

They like each other, they really do!

Charlie had a fever on Friday, which disappeared but then I saw the dreaded red spots and blisters in his mouth. Yep, hand, foot & mouth disease. We're much too familiar with this virus!

It was a particular bummer since Scott was headed out of town for the weekend to play in a summer bonspiel (they lost in the championship game - not bad for a 'spiel packed full of Olympians!). I had all sorts of plans to keep us busy while he was gone, and had to cancel all of them and just hang out at home. Fortunately some friends of ours took Zach to the Woodbury Days parade on Sunday, or he may have gone stir-crazy (not too many neighbor kids around this weekend).

He came home from the parade with an amazing bounty - a fireman's hat, a flyswatter, some beads, a frisbee, a beach ball, stickers, tattoos, more candy than any single person could want or need, and some chips & salsa. Yep, you read that right - chips & salsa. As you can see by his cheek, the Vulcans also got to him.

In other random Zach news, we had to laugh last night during dinner when he piped up and said "it's 6:00, time to go ring some doorbells - whoo!" If you spend any time with Zach, you'll notice two of his favorite things are playing with the neighbors and telling you what time it is. So that exclamation summarized him up pretty well.

And who does Zach tend to play with when he goes out and rings doorbells? The neighbor "guh-rels." That's how he says "girls" - with two syllables. He always has, and it still makes me laugh.

In random Charlie news, we're getting a kick out of his attempts to communicate. Most of the "words" coming out of his mouth still seem to involve that "ball" word - bah-bahl, my-bahl, etc. Sometimes he appears to be talking about a ball, other times, not so much. But anything he says he says so darn earnestly, you feel bad that you can't understand whatever the important thing is he's trying to communicate.

He does lots of pointing and finds other ways to tell you what he wants. I'm not really fond of the grunting - "uh uh uh." But I loved it the other day when he went into the mudroom, grabbed his shoes (from two different pairs), brought them to me and grunted, then looked at his feet and then the door. His way of telling me he wanted to go outside!

As you can perhaps tell by looking at the pictures, Charlie loves to be outside. Whenever he is cranky, which has been too much the last couple days, all I have to do is take him outside and let him run around. He rummages through the bins in the garage, saying "bah, bah, bah" until you get him the right ball. With all his ball playing, there's quite a bit of falling. It's rare to have a day when his little head is not sporting at least one bruise, and then there are days like this:

Scrapes and bruises on his forehead, courtesy of your standard falls. Scraped and bruised under his eye - courtesy of a weird fall into the woodchips (I think we're lucky that wood chip didn't poke him in the eye). And in this picture you can even see one of the many, many bruises on his legs. And I never even know when/how he got most of these marks, since he rarely cries. Tough cookie, this one.

Scott's parents were here for a week last week, and I'm embarrassed to say I never pulled the camera out once. We had lots of fun, as we always do, with the kids as well as some golf outings for the guys, shopping & pedicure outings for the girls, and Twins games for all. We did get this picture of Zach - we were in the front row at the Twins game, which means lots of perks like visits from TC and a Major League baseball!

And some video of my two monkeys at the Disney Store; they spent most of their time chasing each other around the racks, but stopped for a moment to boogie:

EI EI OHHHHH

As I was finally going through the pictures from some of our adventures in the last few weeks, I noticed we've had a lot of exposure to farm animals lately. First there was the county fair we attended with the Roses:

We checked out the cows, chickens, rabbits, etc, but Charlie was the most interested in the sheep. He kept getting really close, pointing and making all sorts of noises at them, until one made a noise back. I wish I could have gotten his face on video! His expression was somewhere between fear and amazement - absolutely hilarious.

Zach picked this contraption when he got to pick which rides he wanted to go on. He loved it so much he went twice - climbing up, sliding back down.

He and Kasey took a few laps in this jalopy, while Charlie tried to sneak into the Blue's Clue's ride.

Our other experience with farm animals was at Scott's division's annual family picnic. 3M goes all out for this party - bounce houses and inflatable slides, air-brushed tattoos, a dunk tank, rock-climbing wall, pony rides, and quite the menagerie of animals in the petting zoo.

Charlie could have chased those poor animals around all day. Not pictured are the miniature horses, llamas, bunnies, chickens, roosters, and dogs.

Our friend Sylvia had quite the adventure on the rock-climbing wall, while Zach preferred to try to dunk Scott's boss (he didn't, but was encouraged - not by us - to run up and hit the target with his hand).

Zach spent most of his time on the HUGE inflatable slide (not pictured); it was so fast he ended up with a friction burn on his elbow. Bounce houses are another place Charlie would stay all day...

Although he's equally content to sit and play with gravel and a plastic cup.

Summer in MT - Part 2

Does Zach look a little different to you? This is how the poor guy looked when we left the reunion. We're think he had some sort of allergic reaction to the mosquito bites, the many, many bites he got while having a blast in the woods. Fortunately a little Benadryl did the trick, and the swelling went down relatively quickly!

The rest of our trip was spent at Scott's parents' house in Belgrade. There's lots to do at their house, from hitting (or throwing, in Charlie's case) golf balls, jumping on the trampoline, and splashing in the pool. Charlie loved the pool, despite it's cool temperature, but he also got a big kick out of splashing in grandpa's fountain...

We hiked up to the "M" again this year; it was interesting to see what a difference a year made - Charlie was a lot heavier!!! But we made it to the top, where the kids celebrated by calling their dad on the phone and playing with hand-held video games!

We also took the kids around the Montana State campus, particularly the duck pond. Perhaps you're looking at another generation of Bobcats...?

It's become a tradition for Scott to throw his nieces Bryn and Maryn into the pool. At least this year Bryn had her suit on when he hunted her down and threw her in. And then she retaliated... doesn't Scott deserve an Academy Award for the look on his face?

^Kids warming up in the hot tub. Trust me, that pool is cold!

^Happy Birthday Aunt Mandy!

^Don't you wish this was the view in your backyard when you're making s'mores?

^ Home-made Mario Kart is just as fun as the electronic version.

We also visited the Dinosaur Park again:

And on our last day, Zach ran in his first race - a .6 mile kids' run that was part of Sweet Pea Days in Bozeman. He did great - ran almost the entire way! I got a picture of Maryn & Grandma as they went by, but I missed Bryn and Mandy - they were too fast I guess! Before we headed to the airport the kids got to enjoy the parade too.

More pictures to come... I didn't go on the fishing trip where Zach caught a HUGE fish! But fortunately Mandy got some pictures, so hopefully I'll be able to share those soon!