02 June 2014

I Hope You Had Fun in France!

Josh has been in France for the past 10 days, Paris and Lyon for those wondering.  Tough life, right? Now that he's home, I thought I would post what the boys and I did here in lovely New Jersey while he was gone. Now, most days went like normal, nothing out of the ordinary. After all, the boys are still in school and things like that keep us on a pretty normal schedule. However, there was a holiday in there and a full weekend, and the boys and I did have a pretty good time. So, without further adieu, how we spent our time in NJ while Daddy was in France:

Sunday the 25th. Josh left the day before, so this was our first full day without him. It went pretty much like a normal Sunday. Chapel, lunch, naps, play, dinner, etc.

Finn raising his hands in praise
Daddy would probably not approve.

Monday the 26th. Memorial Day 2014. To celebrate the day I took the boys to Denville for their Memorial Day parade.We bought some poppies and enjoyed the cheering for our veterans.



After the parade I filled up our little pool which the boys swam in all afternoon. It was a very fun day.


And they had ice pops. We can't forget
about the ice pops.

Tuesday the 27th. A normal Tuesday. The boys went back to school, Finn and I did a ton of food shopping (we hit ShopRite AND the commissary that morning). Speaking of the commissary, I saw this guy there:

 Josh asked me how I was able to acquire a 
baby picture of Mothra.

What?! We also started doing this with Deacon's hair during dinner since it keeps falling into his face while he tries to eat:


It might have actually been Wednesday, but one of the nights he was wearing this bow, Zeke said, "You look like a girl! You and Mom are girls and Finn and me are boys!" To which Finn said, "No, I'm a girl too!" Then Finn straightened himself up, and while sort of sashaying in his seat said in a falsetto voice, "Hi. I'm a girl." It really was quite funny, probably because it was so unexpected coming from him. One of the older 2, sure, but Finn? We all got a kick out of it. (When I told Josh about it he said he was going to bring us all back gift certificate for therapy sessions.)

Wednesday the 28th. I pulled out Zeke's tooth! Josh has been hogging all of that fun, pulling every tooth either boy has lost so far, but this night it was my turn. Boom! I pulled it out while the boys were getting ready for bed. After the younger 2 were in bed, Zeke wrote the sweetest note to the Tooth Fairy:

"Please give me a book. Please. Love Zeke"

Side bar: For some reason, my kids totally believe in the Tooth Fairy. Santa? No. He was a real man who lived a long time ago, but he doesn't come to houses delivering presents nowadays. Easter Bunny? Pfft. Like that's even a thing. The Tooth Fairy? Like Linda said, she is LEGIT. I have no idea why, but there it is.

So he writes that note, and it was so sweet I wanted to go to Target right then and get him a book to put under his pillow. Sadly, I was the only adult in the house, so I couldn't. Good thing I found a "good idea hand grenade" and launched it at myself. I totally ordered a book on Amazon, printed out a picture of the book and wrote a note on the picture from the Tooth Fairy:

"Dear Ezekiel, Congratulations on losing another tooth, and thank you for the sweet note! I like that you asked for a book. Sadly, I don't carry books with me - they get too heavy. But what I did was give a book to the mailman to give to you. I asked him to give you this Amelia Bedelia book, and he said he will bring it to you on Friday! Remember to keep brushing your beautiful teeth! Love, the Tooth Fairy"

Zeke. was. pumped. Not only did the Tooth Fairy get him a book, but it was a book he had been reading in school. "It's like she knew what I was reading in circle and got it for me!" Way to go Tooth Fairy! Well played.

Thursday the 29th. Thursday we had a play date after school. When it's nice out I like to let the boys play at the school playground when they get out of school before we go home to do homework. Most days another little boy from one of the kindergarten classes plays with them. On this Thursday, this boy's mom invited us over to play and have dinner. The boys all had a blast, I had a nice time hanging out with her, and she made a delicious homemade macaroni and cheese for dinner (one of my favorites). Sadly, I don't have any pictures from this day, except for her kitchen, because I walked into it and sort of fell in love.  But it's not a great picture, so I'm not going to share it.

Friday the 30th. Friday Finn and I went to the playground by the front gate with his girlfriend, Charlotte (as well as her baby brother, Theo, and her mom, Christine, who is a good friend of mine). When I was telling Christine about the Tooth Fairy's note, she said I should have added "And here's the tracking number for your book" which I find hilarious. We have a good time together. While we were there we decided to take a little walk around. To keep the kids occupied on the walk, we picked them a bunch of little daises. Finn gave me his by doing this:


I took them home and did this:



They're still looking just as good as they did on Friday, which kind of impresses me.

Friday afternoon, I let the kids play at the playground for a full hour before whisking them away to get McDonald's for dinner. Good times. Oh! The kids also found a spider preparing a dragon fly for dinner. Yes.


Saturday the 31st. I spent 1 1/2 hours weeding and pruning the chapel garden. I had to make 3 trips to the dumpster, one of which was thwarted by a bear lumbering around near by. I scratched up my arm, and even though I was wearing gloves, I still managed to get 4 splinters in my fingers. And can you tell I did anything at all over there? No. Not really. While I gardened, the boys played, and they played hard.

That afternoon I got out the bubble blowing thing I bought Thursday (that morning Finn and I did some more shopping - Target and Costco). See, the boys were taking turns blowing bubbles for each other to pop. However, this led to problems as the the ones popping were standing right in the face of the ones blowing, and the ones blowing were getting tired of blowing, and of being occasionally slapped in the face. Hence, the new toy. The toy that the boys LOVED.


Sunday the 1st. Before I talk about Sunday, I should also mention that Tuesday was Project Jump day for the boys at school (a jump roping fund raiser thing they do), Wednesday was a band concert and art show, then Friday was Field Day - all of which made for a pretty spectacular week in and of themselves. Back to Sunday. Sunday we went to chapel and what's it as usual.  Then, Kirsten came up and we took the boys to the Denville Street Fair, where we all had a really good time.  We walked through it to start, then bought some tickets and went on some rides, then got dinner and desserts and went back home, tired and happy.


Their first ever zeppolies. YUM!

Last night I also started reading our first chapter book with the older 2. I had decided this past week it was time to start reading chapter books with Zeke after his brothers were in bed, but Deacon wanted so badly to read this book with us, that I agreed. After all, who am I to discourage reading, right? So, last night we read the first chapter of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. We started off taking turns, but by the end the boys were happy to just have me read it. It was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to reading more tonight, and to having Josh there to read with us.

And that, as they say, is that, to those of you still reading this ridiculously long blog post. While we did miss Josh and it was sad not having him here for all the fun, we did have a bunch of fun. It's like Finn said to him one night on the phone when he called, "I love you Daddy, but I don't need you." 

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