Lovely combined with active, fun, nutty and the other normal modifiers of our life.

Saturday was the first Lehigh home football game of the season. Kyle has been waiting a whole year for this. He couldn’t care less about the actual football game. It is all about the marching band. We had a low-key morning including the boys making Yogurt Parfaits — their new favorite thing to “cook” (they call anything involving food production in the kitchen “cooking”). We layer yogurt, granola, and fresh fruit (Saturday we did peaches, strawberries, blueberries). I can’t figure out what the boys like more: making them, or eating them. Owen insisted that I “take a picture!” of their finished products (they made one for each of us). Here are the proud cooks with their four yogurt parfaits:

The marching band did not disappoint. Of course we got there early so we could follow them around the tailgating parking lots for a solid 45 minutes before kick-off. Kyle was a madman. His reaction to live music (especially the marching band) is strange, to say the least. He is obsessive about it. Truly. He doesn’t appear to enjoy it, he appears to be fully immersed in it in some bizarre in-his-own-world-way. He won’t react to anyone/anything. He needs to stand perfectly still. He can’t tolerate it if we do anything that might distract him from his prime-viewing-listening in any way. He’s a strange little fella. He takes after his father. If you look closely at the picture below you’ll see a highlight for Kyle: one of the trombone players giving him a ‘thumbs up’… in case you haven’t picked up on it, Kyle’s obsessed with trombones. Obsessed. They are by far his favorite instrument and he talk incessantly about them daily. The marching band and trombones only fuel the fire.

Owen, on the other hand, is more into the action. (no surprise there) He likes to actually follow as closely as possible and sort of march along with them. He doesn’t like us to be too close to him. I think he’s in his own mind pretending to be in the marching band. Here he is doing his thing:

We had planned to meet up with Jackson, K & O’s best friend from when they were all in daycare together. The boys (K, O, and Jackson) had been looking forward to this for days. They were too cute when they found each other. Kyle and Jackson held hands all the way to where the football throw was set up inside the main gates. Then all three boys took turns throwing the football. Very cute. Owen was happy to see Jackson too, but in a strange twist (not shocking, but still… strange) Owen was clearly even happier to see “Baby Brother” (Jackson’s 12 month old baby brother). Owen, as usual, couldn’t keep his hands off the baby. Owen just loves loves loves babies. For as rough-and-tumble as Owen is, he sure is sweet and gentle with babies. It is very nice to see.

It was sweltering hot at the football game. During half-time we bought the boys their first ever gatorades. Kyle chose orange. Owen chose the traditional yellow. Amazingly, they each drank an entire gatorade!

After the game we hung out at the swimming pool for the rest of the hot and steamy afternoon. Around 5:00 Kyle says: “Hey guys!!! I know!!! Let’s go to CARRABBAS!!!” LOL. So, we decided spontaneously to go to Carrabbas for dinner. The boys are “Usual’s” there now. The waitstaff all know what they’ll order without even asking them: penne pasta with alfredo sauce and loads of freshly grated parmesan. Definitely not on the Children’s Menu. They ate it all up, of course. It was a very nice low-key Saturday for us.

These photos are from after school Friday afternoon. We were taking a break from the pool for cookies and milk. At the end of the day Alex came to babysit so that Braydon and I could go to “Parent’s Night” at K & O’s new school. Here’s what we know at the end of K & O’s first week at the River Valley Waldorf School:

• Everyone at the River Valley Waldorf School tells us the same thing: “Kyle and Owen are very social!” They say the boys are “very social” with the kids in their own room, and they say they’re “very social” with other kids too — one teacher told us she “couldn’t get over them!” (she says this with a laugh) and then told us a story about how she watched them as they talked to an “older girl” in the school hallway one day. (Braydon and I just roll our eyes at each other- can you imagine what these two are going to be like when they’re sixteen?????????)
• Their teacher, Miss Kathy, said that she’s noticed that K & O are “rough.” (At least they’re being themselves right off the bat, right?! And the teacher isn’t getting any illusions in the first week.) She was insistent, however, that “they are no more rough than some of the other boys.” We wish Miss Kathy luck with that.
• Miss Kathy says that sometimes K & O split up, but they mostly “stick together.” She said that they play with lots of other kids together. Interesting.
• Miss Kathy says repeatedly (sorta with a tone of shock and amazement) that K & O are “very good eaters”… They bring their own lunch (which they ate most of each day), and they also make morning snack together in the Acorn Room each day (side note: I can’t even imagine how the teachers accomplish this — making snack with 10-12 three and four year olds??? — I can barely cook with just my two?!/!!!//?!). Anyway, on Wednesday “snack” was brown rice with tahini sauce. K & O reportedly each ate “a huge bowl of it.” Thursday “snack” was oatmeal with maple syrup. K & O reportedly each ate “a huge bowl of it.” Friday “snack” was bread with butter. K & O reportedly each ate “a huge amount of it.” Note that “snack” is at 9:00am and they have just eaten breakfast at home at 7:30am. Uh, yeah, they are “very good eaters.”
• K & O say they “love their new school!”; it is “soooo beautiful!”; and “it is “not like daycare!”
• Owen talks every day about one boy in his class — Matthew. Kyle talks about a boy named Ben.
• K & O say the only part of school they don’t like is “Rest.” No surprise there.
• Highlight of the week for both K & O: “making bread!!!!” (Miss Kathy reported that “the two of them were covered in flour from head to toe!”)
• Braydon and I feel good about the school so far. Our major problem is the lack of racial diversity. The only thing that helps ease that at all is that the people there (like, all of them) are so incredibly embracing. It isn’t just accepting. It is embracing. And not weirdly so. It doesn’t send up red flags for us (the way that horrible-“Can we set up a playdate cuz I’d just love my kid to have a black friend!!!”-thing does). We feel really good about this school, the community, the faculty. We’re really feeling positive about it at the end of the first week.
• Miss Kathy said one of the highlights of the week for her was on Thursday, the 2nd day of school. It was time for lunch and Kyle wanted to sit next to her because he had strawberries in his lunch that day, and he remembered from the day before that Kathy had said she “loves strawberries,” so Kyle sat next to her and told her he wanted to share his strawberries with her. Kyle loves strawberries. Kathy said he got so wrapped up in what they were talking about, and so wrapped up in his own eating, that he gobbled up all his strawberries. He then realized there were none left to share with her. She said he was extraordinarily sweet as he said, “uh oh! I ate them all Miss Kathy!!!” Kathy said it was remarkable that 1) he remembered the detail that she loved strawberries – something she had just mentioned offhandedly at some point on the first day, and 2) that a three year old would be so conscientious of wanting to share something that he himself loves so much. Yup. That’s our boy.
• This morning (Saturday) when I told Owen that there is no school today he said, “But I want to go to school!” A successful first week all around. Here’s hoping for a good year.

We spent Labor Day Weekend camping at Assateague Island, Maryland. We had never been there before. Oh my gosh. It was unbelievably spectacular. Assateague Island is a part of the National Seashore click here (or here). Braydon and I both agreed, we’ve never experienced anything like it. Ever. It is absolutely gorgeous. And almost completely unspoiled. Parts of it are entirely undeveloped. The ocean-side of the island is incredible (check out our photos!!!), and the bay-side of the island is incredible (check out our photos!!!), and the fact that there are wild “ponies” (they looked like full blown horses to me) running wild all over the place (check out our photos!!!) just really makes the whole place sorta unbelievable. We’re fortunate enough to have seen many gorgeous ocean-front-beautiful-places: the caribbean, california, south carolina, the french riviera, the new england coast, etc. But this was right up there as one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever seen. And the tenting was super-fun for all four of us too. As you can imagine, K & O loved the whole thing (although we were pretty sure that Kyle would have preferred the creature comforts of being able to go ‘home’ to a hotel at night instead of a sandy buggy tent! LOL!!!). Other things both K & O would happily do without = port-a-potties (they hate them; who doesn’t?!); cold-water-outdoor-showers (Braydon and I loved them but the boys did not); National Park Ranger who pulled Papi over on Sunday afternoon and gave him a $50 Federal Citation Fine for letting the boys ride “freely in the vehicle” and not enforcing the child seat-belt laws (Braydon tried to explain to the boys that the Ranger was, indeed, in the right but the boys were not having it and just repeated over and over and over: “That police man was not good. That was not nice. He needs to GO TO HIS ROOM!!!!!!!”). Here were some of the highlights of this glorious vaca adventure:

• During the drive down (a 4 hour drive for us) we bought sandwiches and had a ‘picnic’ in the grassy yard of some random fire station somewhere along the route. A couple of the firefighters came out and started chatting with us. They invited K & O into the firehouse (!!!!) to check out the fire engines and use the firehouse potties. Peeing and pooping in the firehouse was a much bigger deal to K & O than the actual firetrucks! LOL!!!
• We all love the ocean. We also discovered on this trip that we all love the Maryland bay too. In fact, all four of us agreed that we liked the bay-side even more than the ocean-side (we were so surprised at ourselves).
• A major highlight of this trip was our first-ever-adventure with Over Sand Vehicle (OSV)tripping (click here). Luckily the timing was perfect: just a few weeks ago we traded in our ‘blue car’ (VW Passat Station Wagon) and bought the ‘red truck’ (Ford Explorer). We were up and at ’em by 6:30 am on Saturday. We packed up our stuff, let the air out of the tires, and were off-roading it on miles and miles of desolate pristine beach. It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience. Unbelievable. We let the boys ride minus-seat-belts and they both got to ‘drive’ the ‘red truck’ with Papi ‘on no road!’ and ‘in the sand!’ and ‘looking for horsies!’ and ‘loooooooooook at the beaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuutiful ocean!’ and as you can imagine it was really idyllic. By 8:00 am we were completely isolated on a perfect stretch of beach drinking iced coffee (H & B) and orange juice (K & O) and eating cereal (H & B) and 4-breakfast-bars-each (K & O — no joke, they each ate 4 cereal bars and would have had more but there are only 8 in a box and we had never even considered bringing more than one whole box with us). Anyway, the OSV was amazing (see photos below “Assateague Island II”).
• Horse poop. For whatever 3-year-old-boy-reason K & O were absolutely obsessed with the piles of horse poop that were randomly strewn about all over Assateague Island. They felt like the had hit the jackpot when they discovered “HORSE POOP!!!” right in our very own campsite.
• Crabcakes. Braydon and I ate the best crabcakes we’ve ever had. Twice. (Friday dinner and Saturday lunch). Owen had broiled fish. Kyle had french fries. We were all thrilled.
• Sleeping in the tent together. Waking up in the tent together. There’s nothing like it.
• Family bonding like only a little vaca can do.

P.S. As always, you can click on any photo to see it larger~~~

Now that we’re liberated from the Open Book Challenge we can resume our normal blogging. There are two big things that have happened in the past several days. One is that we went on a vaca (a little mini vacation). I’ll post about that later. The second thing is that our cat Ashley had to be put to sleep. We have had two cats for the past 13 years — twin kitties. Our “first twins” as we fondly have referred to them. We named them after the rivers in Charleston, SC (where we got them from a cat shelter in January 1995 when they were baby kittens)… we named them Ashley and Cooper (the Ashley River and the Cooper River flow on either side of the peninsula that is Charleston). We have loved these cats. Pre-K&O these cats were our babies. They’ve lived in 5 different apartments/houses with us. But Ashley has been deteriorating and her quality of life was really going down hill this summer. On Thursday night we had to make the decision to put her to sleep. It was an easy decision to make because it was clear to us that it was time to let her go. She had 13 great years. Now Cooper is an “only cat.” We are sad. We have tried to explain this to Kyle and Owen — we’ve been up front. We told them on Friday morning that “While they were sleeping, Ashley died.” They seemed to understand. But they didn’t seem to really be too concerned about it. We feel o.k. with that. Braydon and I, however, are heart-broken! But this is life. And life goes on. These photos were taken just a couple nights before Ashley died. We were very concerned about her and took these photos ‘just in case’… and I’m so glad we took them. I’m posting this on the blog because someday if K & O are reading this I want them to know that they had a cat Ashley and she died when they were three. For some reason this feels important to remember right now. And since this blog is partly a ‘scrap book’ kind of thing for K & O I wanted to post about it here.