A Week At Sea!!

I have to start with this picture:

Doesn't that just make you smile?
Mosquito bite on the forehead, and all, isn't that little guy just the best??
I sure think so!
I also think the world of his big brother here:

Who has turned into quite the colorer. Seriously, this boy could color all day long. I most definitely took advantage of the 20 cent boxes of crayolas at Wal-Mart this past week and stocked up!

We had a celebration this week...

Kade turned 3 1/2!!
You might remember me mentioning that we celebrate half birthdays as our own little family tradition. The half-birthday honoree gets to choose what's for dinner and the flavor of their half-birthday cake. Kade chose lasagna for dinner and chocolate/chocolate birthday cake. Since we did the airshow all day the actual day of his half-birthday we had to have a celebration for lunch last Sunday. I remembered why I buy frozen lasagna....it's a lot of work to make lasagna from scratch. But it sure was yummy! Besides, when it's my half-birthday, I can choose to eat out and not have to cook or clean. Yes!
Kade did enjoy the lasagna...

But he was most excited about his chocolate/chocolate cake!

There was a High Seas Expedition in town this week and you guys know how much we Lewallen's enjoy adventure so we couldn't miss out.

This captain charted the course for a week of Vacation Bible School
and
Kade got to go to his very first week of Bible School!
I checked him in on Monday morning and he went right to work...


Said goodbye to me and Ryne and never looked back!
He did great!

These guys did a great, too:

Deck Hand D and Captain Kyle!
Kyle and Derek had the privilege of doing the opening and closing for VBS each day. They really did do an amazing job.

Ryne and I would hang out to watch in the morning and come early to watch them again before picking Kade up.

Here is a bit of what we caught Kade doing....

holding the rope with his class, making his way to his seat.

snagging his leader's cell phone so that he could type a message

standing in line waiting his turn at the pinata

taking a swing

and another at the floating boat

bagging up some of the candy that rained down from the busted boat
Every day that I picked him up, his teacher said that he did great. And every day he told me what lesson he had learned and all the fun things that he had done.


Ryne had to get his picture taken with Captain Kyle on the last day
because...

all the other children were lining up to have their pictures taken with him.
Isn't that great?

Know what else is great?
Packages!!!

This one came from Granna and Paw!
And it had goodies from their trip to Florida!
T-shirts and Airplanes!


I think the boys were especially excited about their airplanes after last week's trip to the airshow. They have been flying them around like crazy.

Speaking of crazy....One night last week we had our friends Corbin and Aeden come over to hang out while their mom and dad went on a date. Those boys had crazy fun!!
They ran and played so hard outside. How hard?
Well, hard enough that we fed them supper and let them have movie night, and this was this result:

Those boys never moved. I'm sure the movie was good, but seriously, come on, you know that they had to be worn out when all four of them sat still for a couple of hours in a row!
My boys are hardly ever still and quiet at the same time!

Ryne, however, did get quiet the other day...quiet enough that I knew it was time to see what he was up to. The first place I always check is the pantry. And sure enough....

I found him there!
Sitting in a box devouring a package of crackers that he had managed to get open.
I'm telling you, there is never a dull moment around here!

Wonder what we will get up to next week?

Pie-Rats, Chalk and Airplanes!

My boys had me on the go last week!
Kade had a play date with some of his classmates that he will be going to preschool with in the Fall. It was lots of fun to meet them and the boys had great time playing at the park but I didn't take any pictures. Why? Well, I didn't want all of our new preschool friends to freak out by how much I love to take pictures. Besides my two boys at the park keep me so busy that I wouldn't have had time to take pics anyway. They tend to run in opposite directions and neither one of them are afraid to try anything. But we all survived and actually managed to meet some really nice people. Super excited about two days of preschool coming our way starting in late September. I think Kade is going to really love it. And I think I am going to be able to get a few things done while I only have one little tot to tow around.
But for now, I'm having so much fun towing two around.
Just read on and take a look at the pictures and you will know it is true!

Tuesday there was a "Pirate Concert" scheduled at the library. And you guys know that there was NO WAY we were going to missing any pirate concerts.
In fact, we got there too early and the library wasn't even open yet so we had to go release some energy at the closest park:

I think they were racing to see who could climb up the hill the fastest?


My little dancing machine!


Give me that camera Mommy...let me see what I can do with it?
Energy burned. Off to the library for the "pirate concert" where we met:

Mr. Eric and Anthony, the Pie-Rat!
They were hilarious and my little guys were totally into it:


But they didn't stay still for long. Mr. Eric had them up singing and dancing along with his silly pirate songs...

I thought this was hilarious because Ryne is up checking Kade out trying to figure out what he is doing. What was Kade doing? Exactly whatever Mr. Eric told them to do. Here he is a shark.


Kade was not going to miss a thing that happened....her this little girl got all wrapped up in an "octopus hug" as Mr. Eric presented a poem about it.
It was such an interactive program. So much fun!

Kade has just been given his "egg shaker" and is waiting for instructions on what to do with it.



As a gran finale they got to all play an instrument and join in the song.
Guess how much fun they had...

This was on the stroll home...they had both conked out on me.
But I woke them up soon because it was time for the Farmer's Market.
Our friend, Holly, was there selling her jewelry so we went to see her and have lunch with her.
And the boys tried to be super salesmen for her:

Kade is sorting out her cards because he thinks we should give one to everybody.
Holly makes amazing jewelry. If you have facebook you can see some of her work here: Adornments by Holly

Guess seeing Mrs. Holly's work put Kade into the creative mood...

He set to work with his sidewalk chalk and spruced up our retaining wall rocks in the back yard.

Just look at my little artist work.

If you look hard you can see Ryne keeping an eye on things from the playhouse door.

We actually enjoy having a little extra color to liven things up in the back yard.
If you need any side walk chalk art to spruce your place up, I will start taking appointments for Kade now.

On a completely non-creative note, we went to a big air show on Saturday.
The Joint Base Lewis McChord Air Expo was happening and we thought the boys would love it. So we invited some friends and headed off. The Air Force Base is only about 10-15 minutes from our house but since we were not the only ones who decided the air show would be a fun Saturday activity, it took us almost two hours to get to the show. Yikes! But it was worth it...we had a great time.

There were all kinds of airplanes on display that you could check out and get in and explore. We just looked from the outside this go around. Maybe when the boys are a bit older we will look more closely at those.


Will and Kade were just as happy to be sharing candy on the picnic blanket.

And talking right in each other's faces so that they could hear through their ear plugs.
Ha!

Ryne played ball...

and played ball, as long as anyone would play with him.


But sometimes the jets were so loud it scared him. (wouldn't keep ear plugs in) So here is Mrs. Belinda taking care of his little ears.

Here is a roll call of our smallest air show attenders:

Cool Kade!


Silly Ryan!


Fun-loving Jana!


Wild Will!


Kicked-back Carson!
(Seriously, little guy was so calm, cool, and collected that he chilled out in his stroller the entire time we were there.)


Relaxin' Ryne!
(not sure why but at some point he got bored enough to just sit back and read a book)


And he even spent some time in Daddy' lap.
And I was afraid when we let him out of the stroller, we'd be chasing him ALL day. It was only MOST of the day! And he never managed to run away from us. Success!

Now, my favorite story of the day has to do with Kade and his earplugs...

He really wanted to wear them because of the loud jets. But when I first put them in he would wear them for a second and take them out. Then let me put them back in and he would take them out again. After the third time of putting them back in, he grabbed them and took them out and said, "Here, Mom, I don't like these." I asked him why and he said, "They keep making me talk funny. And I don't want to talk funny!" Isn't that the cutest. After I explained that he only sounded funny to himself and not to the rest of us then he was cool to keep them in.


While we were busy keeping an eye on the kiddos some people like Russell here, were busy keeping an eye on the sky.
What did he see?
Well, here are a few of the planes that I was able to get shots of...









There was really some cool aircraft flying that day. We some some crazy trick flying, too! And it was a beautiful day...hope you noticed Mt. Rainier in one of the photos.

By the end of the day. This was Ryne...

All tuckered out!

And this was Kade...

No longer entertained by the planes but having a ball playing in the dirt.
Little boys will be little boys, right?

I think we all slept great Saturday night! Which was good because that got us prepared for Life Church Sunday. We had a great night! AND we had 11 little boys in Life Kids. 11 little boys who were seemingly all set out to prove their boyhood. Mission Accomplished! It was a fun and busy night. We couldn't have been any happier to have those 11 little guys hanging out with us at the Rubber Room....because that meant their parents were hanging out at Forza doing church!!!
Believing Jesus for even more little guys and maybe even some little gals join us in Life Kids and believing Him to send us more helpers to go along with them.

Hope you all had an eventful week as well.

This week Kade is attending his first Vacation Bible School...can't wait to post about that for you later. And can't wait to see what Ryne and I get done every morning this week while we are only a party of two!