Tucker asked me this questions yesterday.
Tuck: Mom, why don’t you call me by my full name?
Mom: All 3 names?
Tuck: Yea.
Mom: (In my head I am thinking: “Seriously? The only time you get the full name is when you are in BIG TROUBLE”).
Me: I don’t know. Would you like me to call you by your full name more often.
Tuck: You Betcha, that would be great mom.
All-righty then. So when you here me call my son his full name, he’s not in trouble. He just likes the sound of it.
So one of my new favorite places to go is Ikea.
It is really great. I love to just walk around and look at the showroom and get ideas, and just see there stuff.
So when Amy called me up, suggested that we all meet up, I was pumped.
Amy was babysitting a little boy named Conrad, and so we were evenly spread out. My mom, Amy and Me, with 3 kids. We thought we had pretty good odds. Three on Three.
We met up, and after some browsing, my boys got hungry, so we got a bite to eat. I love their kid friendly restaurant.
e ladies sat at a counter by them. (picture courtesty of Tuck)
and the boys sat at a little table with Conrad,
That is until Conrad became a running escape artist.
Like I said our odds were pretty good as long as Conrad didn’t start to run. When he did, he gave Amy a run for her money. He was fast and when Ikea was full of people, a little kid can get lost easy. But he didn’t because Amy was just as fast.
We had a great time, and after a great weekend with the Huffs and my Momma and Amy, I remembered how much I enjoy living close to family.
Sleepovers are alot of fun.
Especially when you cousin Owen comes to visit.
You get to stay up late, and have special treats, and be with your cousins.
The best part of all.
Thanks Em and Matt for coming down! We had a great time with you guys, please come again!
So Tucker has decided that he LOVES to take pictures. We have a digital camera, and so we can easily delete pictures. Occasionally I let him take pictures with the camera, then we delete the ones of the carpet, etc. Then load up the others.
But when I uploaded the pics today from the weekend, I was a little surprised to see this pictures of Truman:
Tucker started laughing when he saw this pictures. I don’t think I have ever seen him laugh that hard.
“Silly Truman”, he kept repeating in between belly laughs.
When quizzed about the orgins of the photo, I could get no response.
The best I can figure is, this photo was taken after our neighbors birthday party, where gum was stuffed inside the Pinata. The children had come inside, and I was trying to track down a missing shoe. It was found in minutes. Then I came in and the gum was promptly put up. (I had to many bad gum experiences with gum in my hair, couch, carpet when I was a child…) So it had to have happened before the gum was up. But I never saw that big pink wad of gum. I am hoping I don’t come across it stuck in-between my couch cushions or something. This is a mystery, but the real mystery is what else are they doing when I am not looking?
I’ll have to watch more carefully 😉
So, reading for me when I was younger was a long horribly painful experience. So when Tuckers Preschool teacher mentioned that this year they would be learning sight words, and we should be reinforcing them at home, I kind of got a little “anxiousy” inside.
That is cause when I was little, it took me a long time to get this concept. The concept of reading in general. I immediately began to question myself, how am I to teach this concept that I couldn’t understand for YEARS?
Well, It is a good thing that we are easing into things, we are working on sight words such as: You, I, A, It, And. I can handle that right?
And the good news, I found these simple books at the DI that had these sight words in them, and we sat down to read them last week.
We read them once or twice, and then this…
reading1.mov
reading2.mov
reading3.mov
reading4.mov
Tucker can read them! I am so proud of him! He is pointing at each of the words, and so he may have even memorized them, but either way, He understands what each word means (And that each word has a meaning!) That is a part of reading right?
Maybe this isn’t going to be so bad after all.
Conference weekend is always a wonderful time, a time to hang out in your Pajamas, eat candy, and get instruction on how to better your life.
It is even more wonderful when your sister in law named JoAnna comes to visit!
We loved having JoAnna in our home, and we did a whole lot of eating: conference candy, brownie Sundays, Ham and Potatoes, and don’t forget Conference Omelets ala Toph (a Phillips Fam Tradition):
And Tru and Jo played the song from Cars: “Your in my Highway” (really “Life is a Highway”) on the piano.
(Truman says you play it best Jo)
We love you Jo, thanks for coming to visit!
Oh, oh, oh. On Thursday what a grand time we had at Hee-Haws farm.
Very stressful, but incredibly fun.
Tuckers School had a field trip to Hee-Haws Farm. Since the field trip had been scheduled on a Thursday (not a regular school day) It was a parent attend field trip, meaning that the Parent had to attend if they wanted their child to come. No Problem for us.
So off Truman, Tuck, Andy and I went. Like I said, we had a great time, although I didn’t realize how hard it is to keep track of 3 children in a busy place, that is what made it so stressful!
Tucker being silly while we waited for the class to arrive:
There was a 30-Foot Hay Slide that they Boys LOVED.
Here is my friend Heidi and 2 of her kids:
Here is Diana with her kids:
The boys getting ready to climb up the huge haybales to go down (I didn’t think of giving someone else my camera to take a picture of me and the boys going down…oh well):
This is Leroy. He doesn’t look Huge, but he was HUGE. While we were watching him, he ate an entire pumpkin. I think they said he weighed like 1,400 pounds. I don’t remember exactly how much, but it was alot, because he was a Gigantic pig. He was actually really good too. When the instructors fed him a pumpkin he got up and moved to the other side of the pen, ate it, then walked around and sniffed all the kids with his snout. Most pigs I see that size are pretty stationary.
Feeding the Goats:
Hee-Haw instructor telling the class about how chickens lay different color eggs (there was one that was one that was bright blue):
Looking at the Turkeys:
On the Hay Ride (there were like 100 moms and kids in this wagon, we were packed on their pretty good. Hence the close ups):
They got to pick a pumpkin out of the pumpkin patch (which was quite large). We walked past many a good looking orange pumpkins to find these green ones that were just the perfect ones:
At the end of the day, Tucker and Truman wanted their picture taken here. I couldn’t get them to look at the camera though. Oh well. Choose your battles.
How much fun, I love fall time because we get to do fun things like this.
Dear Grandma and Grandpa Phillips,
You sure know how to grow some delicious Watermelon, and big ones too.
We ate, ate, ate and ate the yummy melon.
Toph finished it off last night.
Yummy Delicious, Thanks for sharing!
Please Pardon My Novel, there is not too many days
like this. There were so many pleasant surprises
today, nothing absolutely huge, but just lots of
wonderful small things. I felt like they just kept
coming. I love days like this and wanted to remember
it, a day where I can’t stop time. I can’t stop my
boys from growing, but I can enjoy life with them…
Tru and I sent Tuck off to school, and I just thought
that I would mow the lawn really quickly, then hop in
the shower, and continue on with the rush and business
of the day, but this is not at all what happened.
Truman found the sand box while I was mowing, and
there he stayed for almost 2 hours!!! He dug and made
roads, and sand food, and played, played played! How
much do I love this boy! He truely is a sweetie! I
loved looking over and just seeing him so happy to be
there, there was no doubt in my mind, The errands
could be run later… It brightened my day to see his
countenance, and the happiness that was there.
While the sandbox was happening, I got 2 bags of leafs
raked. I got My perennials trimmed, the patio swept and
of course a little digging in the sandbox. It is
amazing what can happen when I have no interruptions,
and when I choose to let my little boy, be a little
boy.
Tuck came home from school, and this is when another
pleasant surprise came. The phone rang, and I heard a
little unfamiliar voice. “Is Tucker There?”
A friend from his school had gotten his phone number
from the teacher. I think this is the first time
Tucker has gotten a phone call from someone I didn’t
know!
I know that it may sounds stupid or even silly…but
it was just another step towards my little man growing
up.
I coordinated the details whith Jarretts (his new
school friend) mom, and its set up. A playdate. Tucker
was so excited that someone had called him. He was
beaming. It makes me happy to know that he is making
friends at school, and he’s being nice even when I
can’t see him 🙂 I know he’s already got a good set of
values. I am proud of him.
The boys finished lunch, then down for quiet time.
They hadn’t been down but 10 minutes, and I heard the
doorbell. Who was it? A surprise visitor, Aunt Cat!
She had just flown home from visiting her friend, and
stopped by to see the boys. As always, she spoiled
them rotten with a trip to McDonalds Play Place and a
some new toys.
Tucker chose out a magnetic robot, and Truman got a
powerranger on a motorcycle. This will keep them happy
and busy for days! Thanks again Aunt Cat! I love
seeing my sister (well in-law, but whatever…) and I
am grateful for what she does for my boys. She is a
good woman that Cat, and I love to see her.
The last surprise happened two times today, Truman has
decided that if the price is right he is willing to go
potty in the potty.
Lucky for me, the price is small (realitively)–an M
and M for a successful visit to the bathroom. He went
twice by himself today. (note, this has never happened
before… so I don’t know what triggered his readyness,
but I am not going to complain. :0)
So that is it.
My boys are getting older, too quickly.
Why is it that somedays I can’t wait for them to be
just a bit older, but most days, I want to freeze time
in the happy moments, the days full of pleasant
surprises, when there faces are so full of joys, they
are happy, truly happy. If only life could be full of
these moments.
Of course if it was, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate
them.
But nonetheless I am grateful for the blessing of
healthy, happy boys.
I love them and I love to be there mommy.
Yesterday Tucker said/did a couple of funny things.
He woke up yesterday morning and was a little bit upset, I could hear him talking/yelling from his bed, and so I went to see what was the matter. When I got there he just kept repeating, “My arm, it’s sizzling, it’s sizzling mom!”
Finally I figured out that his arm was asleep. Sizzling?
Also, Yesterday Tucker decided to take up a new collection. We were cleaning out the markers box, the ones that were all dried up and not working we were finally throwing away, when Tucker got a new idea, “Can I have the lids mom?”
Me: “uh….sure Tuck.”
Tucker: “Wow mom, I am bursting at the seams with happiness”
Whatever happened to the days of stamps and bugs and rock collections?