We started watching my niece again this summer. Crue has been totally loving having her here to play with during the day. Here they are with some nerf guns shooting the monsters that might be coming up the stairs.
Claire became best friends with a girl in our neighborhood and each day was filled with crafts, swimming, riding bikes, baking, and most importantly making up dances. At least once a week they had a new dance for us that they had come up with. This is pretty much how it would go...
1- Spend hours going through each other's closets trying to come up with outfits for the dance.
2 - Decide what treats you wanted to make for those that came to your dance.
3 - Make and deliver invitations to everyone in the neighborhood
4 - Hurry and make up a dance or talk the older girls in the neighborhood into helping with your dance.
Here is the invitation to their first dance of the summer. I just smile every time I look at it.
Brexlie and Claire all ready for their first performance.
They had the older girls in the neighborhood help them with this dance.
They even talked some of the little brothers into helping out.
This handsome boy of ours had a lot going on this summer. Right as summer began he noticed that all the other boys in the neighborhood rode their bikes without training wheels. It didn't matter that the other boys were between four and eight years older than him. He begged me to take the training wheels off and refused to let me put them back on. Several times a week we would go out and practice for quite awhile and in about two weeks (at 3 yrs and 3 mo. old) he was riding without training wheels. Of course the next week he noticed that the boys were going off of jumps and he had to give that a shot too. Then he noticed that they were all using big kid scooters (razors) and suddenly his mickey mouse scooter was being left behind and he was taking Claire's razor to go ride with them. He had a great summer.
I put Claire in swimming lessons at the beginning of summer and then a month later I put them both in lessons. The first time I had Crue in lessons earlier this year he hated it and didn't finish the session so I wasn't sure how it would go this time but he ended up loving it. He even jumped off the diving board several times. We were so proud of him and how great he did. Here he is sitting on the edge of the pool waiting to get in.
He always had some "great idea" that he was wanting to try out. Here is one of his less dangerous ones. He wanted to see how fast his John Deere tractor could go.
I think I must have blocked most of his "great ideas" from my mind because I can't seem to remember a lot of them. I just remember thinking all summer long that any day now we would end up in the ER with this boy all because of one of the great ideas. The only one I remember right now is walking into his room when he was supposed to be taking a nap to find him almost to the ceiling because he thought it would be a great idea to use his blinds as a ladder.
This little beauty loved sitting outside in the evening and watching all the big kids play.
Claire and Rilynn both earned a ticket to ride the zip line out at the Miller Motorsports Park. The tickets were given to the kids that had really good attendance at school. They were each supposed to ride with an adult but Crue tells the story best what happened.
"Uncw Tim wouldn't ride with Riwynn because he was a chicken. And Aunt Steph wouldn't ride with Riwynn because she was being a big chicken and she was screaming wike a baby. (They weren't even off the ground yet) It was so funny because she was screaming and screaming wike a baby. So she wouldn't go with Riwynn. So Cwaire went with Riwynn the first time."
Both girls absolutely loved it and got to go several times. Claire got to go with Rilynn and then Luke and I. Rilynn went with Claire and then we eventually talked Tim and Steph into going and I am not sure who screamed the most. We had a great time.
And of course lots of fun in the water. We would have the bigger pool, the giraffe pool, or the slip and slide out almost every day.
