My Side Kick

 
 Luke is my full time side kick these days.  It has been 100 % fun hanging out with him all day.  Luke has discovered Super Heroes and dressups. He wore his Batman PJ's all day yesterday, and I found the old Batman cape I made for Max years ago.  He was delighted and he wore it on an off all day.  Last night when I came home from taking Max to scouts, I went into Luke to say goodnight and he was wearing the cape to bed.  This made me laugh and I just had to get a picture.

 He also had found the toy bombs.  The perfect accessory for any crime fighter.

and since I was taking pictures he just had to make a few funny faces for me to capture.

I have been asked now multiple times to make a Robin costume too. I'll see if I can grant that wish soon. 

Scratch that!

Never mind...I figured it out. Or at least I made a decision and they are hung.  Yipee!

Again here is the before....

  And after...

Now all I need is some black frames for the pictures and I have an idea for an idea for a pillow sham for Lukes bed. 

I'd say that's progress!

In need of decorator help.

I need HELP!  I fell in love with this picture and I wanted to somehow use this as inspiration to fix up Luke's room.

I found it while browsing Pinterest. Isn't it so cute?

photo from Kara's Corner

I bought the white ledge shelves at Ikea the other day.  I bought 4 of them, intending to rearrange the room and center them over his bed. But I didn't think it totally through.

Here is what his room looked like.. in need of some decoration but  I mainly bought the shelves to solve the book problem on top of the dresser.



What I thought would be a cute quick idea, now has me baffled.   I don't know what to do with them.  I took a few pictures of the rearrangements, using tape on the wall to show where the shelves would lie.

Here's where I thought I would put them.  but with that big dresser, and the bed centered, it just eats up too much room

Here are some other lay outs...help!!!

The Cast is Off!

Yesterday Luke and I made a big trip to Orlando.  We spent the morning at IKEA and the afternoon at the doctor's office to get his cast off.  Mer gave him a Mohawk that morning in honor of the occasion.   Luke let all the kids sign his cast that morning as well. 

 All morning he told me that he didn't want to take his cast off.  I kept explaining it to him and wouldn't hurt, and that the doctor was going to take a picture to see if he needed to put on another one.  We had a lot of waiting to day so we played and took pictures.

And by the time the man who put the cast on came to take it off, he wasn't very nervous at all.   It was loud and buzzy and it tickled Luke enough to make him laugh.

He cut up and down both sides.

And then he used a special tool to crack it open.

The Goretex lining was pretty stuck onto the cast so the man had to use his superman muscles to pull it apart.

 Luke was pretty nervous about his leg once the cast was off.  His joints were really stiff and it hurt to bend them.  The doctor said it will take a couple of days before gets full range of motion back.

We went for an x-ray and the doctor said his bone has healed enough to for the cast to stay off.

For rest of the night and this morning he would protect his leg and asked to be carried everywhere.
We went swimming though today and that really loosened it up.  He has been walking on it all evening.   He is still walking with a stiff leg, the same way he used it with the cast on, but he can bend it a little better now.    He still has to take it easy, No parks or jumping off of things for the next 4 weeks.  Needless to say we will be doing a lot of swimming. 

Hopefully he'll just get better everyday.

First Days of School

We took our official "first day of school" picture today.  Technically it was Max and Mer's 4th day, having started last Wednesday. 

Do you like the boys' hair do's??  Jack's was supposed to be the "Draco Malfoy". I'm not sure who Max was going for... a little Pee Wee Herman-esk if you ask me. Or Johnny test??

And here's Jack...off to start a new life. 

I didn't have time for tears this morning... I was a little shell shocked as I left at the lack of organization and direction that we received that morning from his new teacher.  I tried to put it out of my head and spent the day playing with Luke.   We ran some errands vacuumed the house, played a lot of rescue heroes, and went to a movie.  We saw Cars 2.  The older kids saw it the day after Luke broke his let in Colorado.  So today it was our turn.

 This was my attempt to get a picture at the theater.

 As we picked up the kids this afternoon I heard good, happy reports about how fun school was.  Then out came the story about how Jack was taken to aftercare instead of the car loop and how the kids had to go find him when he wasn't where he was supposed to be... What?? What kind of Kindergarten teacher did this kid get?? He was in tears as it was all being explained.  He did say he had fun overall, though I hope tomorrow goes better.

We came home to afternoon veggie snacks and the kids quickly turned them into edible faces.

And then we had Klondike bars.

I hope this is a good year. Max has stellar teachers and Mer's are great too, so I'm crossing my fingers that Jack's will get better.  Hopefully we just got off to a bad start, if not, this will be one unhappy mama.

Girl Party and Metal Mouth

We had some big events the last couple of days that are screaming to be blogged, and now that I have napped through all of Princess Bride and watched some of the Teen Choice Awards and the rest of Everest, I can get to it.  Summer has made me so lazy, I tell you.

Thursday Mer hosted a "Girls Night In" for some of her best school friends here at the house.  We sent the boys off with dad and had a girl party.   Mer had it all planned of course.  The evening started off with volleyball and trampoline jumping while the guests all arrived.  Then they washed up and made their own mini pizzas for dinner.  The little boys hung out with us too, until Doug got home, which worked out perfectly because all eleven year old girls think little boys are "just so cute".

While the pizza was cooking they all  played games.  Mer gave out tickets to the winners so they could buy candy and popcorn at the "Concession stand" later that night.

 Pizzas were cooked and promptly gobbled up.  Look Rachel, Mer discovered that your strawberry bowl can double as the perfect fruit bouquet vase. 

After Pizza it was movie time!  They chose to watch the Parent Trap, and painted nails while they watched.

Then we had a little intermission where they used their tickets to buy snacks.

Above is the posed picture but the picture below shows really how the night went over, with lots of laughing and giggling.

  Mer's so lucky to have such nice girlfriends.

Oh... here's a pic of some of the nail art.

 The evening went off just as Mer planned and she went to sleep that night a very Happy girl.

Then we awoke early the next morning and were off to the Dentist office where Mer's smile changed from this....

to this...

And now she has a mouth full of metal and talks with a bit of a lisp.  Her pain is easing a bit but it will take a while to get used to everything in her mouth.

The kids also got their teacher assignments on Friday... School starts Wednesday!  It's going to be a good year!

Atlanta Recap

The calendar says August 2.  AUGUST!!  The kids were talking about how excited they are for Halloween.. HALLOWEEN!...less than 3 months away!  3 Months that are going to fly right on by.  How do I make time slow down?   It seems like every time I look at Luke, he is bigger.  Even at age 3 he is growing before my eyes.  We went school shopping today. School starts a week from tomorrow and I have mixed feelings about that.   Soccer season starts in a few weeks and I have mixed feelings about that as well.  Okay, enough of this rambling, here's our update...

We traveled to Georgia last week and had a fun time with Doug's family.  Here are a ton of glimpses into the good times...

We toured the World of Coke, saw the laser show at Stone Mountain, swam, tubed the Chattahoochee, and played with cousins.

Luke always begs to take pictures with characters

Tasters from the continent of Africa

Mini-golf outside the World of Coke

Sitting on a real American Idol Couch

We also went to Centennial Park and ate lunch in the CNN Center..

Everyone is holding their coke souvenir.

Posing at Centennial Park

We met up with Mike's family a couple of times and got to squeeze No No's Sumo arms.

Max and Aunt Sher

Cute cousins

 We tried out a new cupcake shop.  Gigi's cupcakes. They were delish!

 We can't forget the night we caught fireflies in the backyard.  Jack may be an entemologist when he grows up.

Max enjoyed picking on Mike way too much.

Mer put No No to sleep.  She was so proud of herself.

Thank you Mike for being such a good sport!

See what I mean?

All in all we had so much fun.  Thank you Grandma and Grandpa for hosting us!!