Our tiny swimmer

Liam's swim lessons started a few weeks ago, and he's still at the stage where Scott has to swim with him.  He does a great job kicking and getting his face wet.  It makes him laugh and laugh when he kicks and splashes water in Scott's face.


This is one of Liam's favorite parts of class - he likes to throw the pool toy then 'swim' to go get them. He often wants to do this more than any other activity during class.  The teacher might want everyone to jump into the pool, so Liam will jump into the pool, then throw his toy and swim to it.  Or, he'll throw his toy then jump in after it.






 





Karsten and I have fun watching lessons next to the pool.  Karsten often wants to get in and show Liam how to do things like blowing bubbles or swimming with ice cream scoop arms.



 

Wordless Wednesday - Horsey time

Happy Father's Day

We started the Father's Day celebrations with homemade biscuits and gravy for breakfast.  I've had issues with biscuits in the past, but I thought I could handle this recipe by Pioneer Woman because it didn't require them to be rolled out or cut.  I followed the directions carefully for the gravy and added flour to the sausage once it was cooked.  Turns out I read the directions wrong and added double the amount of flour because I added the recommended flour for the biscuits.  SIGH.  So, I kept adding milk until the gravy got to the right consistency - phew. Crisis averted and Scott said the gravy was great.


Scott decided he wanted to go mini golfing for Father's Day.  I had taken Karsten last year, but Liam had never been.


Check out that golfing form.  :)


Liam liked the obstacles where he had to hit his ball into them.  He would often pick up his ball, put it in front of the obstacle, then hit it as hard as he could.  Good thing this wasn't grass or we may have left a few divits!


We didn't trouble ourselves with rules of mini golf.



Sometimes it took teamwork to get a ball in the hole.  Sometimes the boys decided to play with someone elses ball.  Scott or I would hit our ball then find Liam pushing it towards the hole with his club.


Obtacles are the best part.


And this picture would have been way better had I stepped back and gotten the scary bat in the picture.  We had to hit the ball under his tree trunk.


Ah, water traps.  Irresistable for little boys. Let's just say we washed off our golf balls a few times.


There were a lot of people playing mini golf with Dad today, so we had time for a few selfies while we waited our turn.




I mentioned that water traps were irresistable, it was really any amount of water that was distracting to them.  See that look on Liam's face - he may have also said uh - oh as he dropped the ball!


Luckily, he is old enough to fish his own ball out of the water.


Yet another one of the mini golf obstacles.


Ghosts. Never assume that if an obstacle like a ghost has a big mouth that he will also have a hole in the bottom to allow balls to escape.  Yup, the ghost ate Karsten's ball.  There was quite a bit of wailing and whining when he realized it wouldn't come out.  But, when I explained to the front desk that we fed our ball to the ghost, he was happy to give us another.  Judging by the pile of balls in the ghosts' belly, we weren't the first to feed him.


One obstacle wasn't enough for this hole, Scott needed three!


And as soon as he hit the ball, it was in play and Karsten took over.


Mini-golf was a lot of fun.  I think we may need to make this an annual tradition!

After golf, we headed over to my parents house for dinner.  Chuck recently hung up a bell that had once been mounted outside his grandmother's house and used to signal to all the farm hands that it was meal time.  

A loud bell - sounds like an entertaining passtime for the boys!


Since we didn't want my parent's neighbors to hate them for all the bell ringing, the boys only rang the bell a few times then moved along to the sandbox.


My mom made a delicioius meal to celebrate Father's Day - grilled chicken, pasta, veggies and this wonderful new ice cream dessert with a crumbly caramel topping.  YUM!

I'm lucky to have such a wonderful husband who is a great father to our boys.


I'm also lucky to have a great dad who is a great father to me and wonderful grandfather to our boys!  Happy Father's Day!

Bluberry Pickin'

When I saw that the Berry Patch was opening this weekend, I immediately started thinking about how we could fit it into our weekend.  Liam has swimming lessons on Saturday mornings, so I knew we would be getting there late, and I hoped they weren't picked out.  It seems that the u-pick farms in the area are getting very popular and can get picked out quickly!

It ended up being a nice day, not too hot.  There were signs that directed us to the fields with the ripe berries, so we followed the crowds down the road, around the corner, over a little bridge and we finally got to the berries!  I had no idea their property was that large, we typically picked berries right next to the main area.


We saw a lot of people in the first few rows, so we headed past them to find areas that hopefully had more berries.  We walked past a lot of plants loaded with green berries but had a hard time finding ripe blue berries.


We worked our way back to where the rest of the people were, and started to find more berries.  We had to keep a close eye on Liam because he wanted to eat everything in site, ripe or not!


Karsten may have made a bad choice at one point and had to sit in time out for a few minutes. It was a beautiful place to sit and chill for a few minutes.


Then we were back at it and found some bushes with lots of ripe berries!


The picking wasn't as easy as it had been in the past, you had to look hard to find the ripe berries.  Karsten was great at spotting the ripe ones and getting them, even if they were in the middle of the bush!


Awww, brotherly love!


They were discussing if we had enough berries or if we needed to keep picking.  The vote was to stop picking and go get a blueberry muffin!


We got some blueberry muffins and found a picnic table to enjoy the picnic lunch we brought with us.  Afterwards, the boys wanted to play on these big bales of hay; however, when they got up there, they realized they were kinda smelly and poky.  So, this was a short lived game!

Pre Father's Day Celebration

Since we were going to be at my parents for Father's Day, I made Scott a pre-father's day dessert.  We had all these wonderful fresh berries, and we thought a red, white and blue triffle sounded delish.  Fresh berries, angel food cake and white chocolate whipped cream - YUM!

We love summer

I love watching the games the boys invent with each other while they're playing outside.  Sometimes on their fort they'll be searching for birds in the telescope or sometimes they can't get on the ground because there are sharks swimming around.  Ususally Karsten starts the story but Liam quickly catches on and adds his own details.



Don't get down there Liam - there are sharks!


Playing can be trecherous - there are occasional fingers stepped on or a small splinter.


But the wounds are quickly forgotten when they move along to the next game.


His hair is getting blonder as the summer goes on.  He's also getting so tan - I slather him with sunscreen each morning before school and he's still getting tan!


Oh that dimple...


Liam and his yaya.  It will be sad when he learns to say Karsten's name.


Peek a boo - where's yaya?


There he is!


Digging for worms with their super cool shovels from Gulf Shores.