New Scarf

Since I had been making leg warmers for the girls I told Dude that I would knit him something too.  He was really excited about the idea of going to the fabric store and picking out which yarn he wanted... and, of course, he picked out bright yellow!  i was going to do stripes of different colored yellow because he had picked out two, but he it didn't really show up, so he just went with the brightest yellow he found.  he loves it!  And I think that he looks pretty darn good in it too :)



JVG

Boy Scouts

Something that I wanted Dude to try out was Boy Scouts.  I was never in girls scouts and G wasn't in boy scouts for long so we both don't have any experience with them, but I figured it would be good for him to try.  I saw a sign up for it at the elementary school by our house so I figured we give it a try!

He seems to like it well enough, and the leaders seem good.  They don't seem the most organized which isn't easy for me since I don't get to go to the meetings, so we will see if it sticks!  But for now he seems happy to be running around with other boys and learning :)  

They gave him a fishing pole on the first meeting because they were gonna go to the fish hatchery, and they wanted to make sure that he was able to go fish.  Since he had gotten one for his birthday he told them he had one already and when they said he could still have it he gave it to Lucy.  That makes this Momma's heart proud.  :)  he has since done a few activities and earned a badge, which he was so excited for.  We haven't gotten the uniform yet, so we will see how this goes!

JVG

Tae Kwon Do

This year seems to the be year that we start the kids on everything.  Dude has started TKD because I thought it would be a good way to get coordination, exercise, and discipline.  He does really well listening to his swim teachers, and I figured that having another adult authority figure in his life would be good too.  The first meeting we had with his instructor was interesting.  He was very good with making sure that he knew what the rules were and how his class ran.


































Dude does a really good job at class.  I think he really enjoys it and I know that he is one of the better behaved kids in there for sure. He understands that they have different goals, long term and short and I think its really good for him to see what he has to do to achieve them.

JVG

Blood Moon Eclipse

We were able to witness the blood moon eclipse which happens every 36 or something crazy like that years.  I was on my home from the gym and I saw that the moon was huge but didn't know when the eclipse was gonna happen.  I was a little worried that it was going to be too cloudy to see anything, but right when the eclipse started to happen it seemed to clear up!





G took Dude out to watch it and they got some awesome shots of it.  I know that it was a really nice thing to do together and that he really liked staying up late and hanging out with Papa.  :)

JVG

Dude's birthday party

I think his party turned out really well!  I was exhausted from working on stuff all week long, and entertaining people while they were here but they had so much fun.  The Mins showed up on time, and so did my parents but Gaetan's family and Holly and Jason didn't.  I guess there was a lot of traffic and they were almost 2 hours late... oh well!  We started the games without them and the pizza came right when they did, so it was timing for them!

We started out with the water balloons game where we put up various pokemon around the backyard so they could 'catch' them with the water balloons… and then they ended with battling Team Rocket for their final victory.  The kids had a lot of fun with it.  Some of the adults got in on it too!  I was surprised that Norah wasn't more into it than she was, but all our water balloons lasted about… 5 minutes haha.




























We had a few kids that needed to change because of wet clothes, because, well, we all knew that if we had water balloons there would be wet kiddos.  We played pin the Pokeball in Ash's hand and Dude had been 'practicing' ever since he saw us put up the thing of Ash… haha.  He actually did really well with it and got it right in his hand!  It was impressive!





We took a break for snacks because we were still kinda waiting on the rest of the people to show up and this gave them a little bit of downtime from running around and being crazy… but then, we moved right onto the last game and we ordered pizza then!  mmmm…




Last game was Pokemon Bingo.  It was awesome.  Some of the adults played and helped the littles who weren't obsessed with Pokemon know which ones to find and all that.  Prizes of course were given out to the kids who got Bingo and i think that was a lot of fun for them to be able to make their prize box.  We had a candy station that was kinda specifically for making their treats and prizes after winning!












By that time all our guests had arrived and it was pizza time.  We got it from a local place called Maestro's which is absolutely delicious.  I thought that we had gotten more than enough but it turns out that it was just enough!  We did cake and ice cream out on the deck and sang happy birthday to Duder. My Mom made this cake and it was fabulous, as always and even made Pokeball cookies!  Too cute!











Gaetan's family stayed after everybody else left so they could visit more, so that was nice.  It was a bit hectic and chaotic during the actual party and I know that Oma Oma wanted to hang with the kiddos more and Karl-Jan too.  Dude got some sweet presents!  Grandpa Mike gave him this really nice fishing pole complete with this snazzy fishing vest and of course there were lots of pokemon things to be had.  He got a nice kite, this remote control car, and really nice books.  My Mom always likes to make little things for all the kids during the birthdays so that the others don't feel left out, and she made their pals little Pokemon blankets!  Dude used his birthday money and got so many books… he was really excited.  And, I'm excited that he likes reading so much!  :)






























Happy birthday Duder!  We love you so much.





JVG