Ladies evening golf

Last Wednesday, the ladies league at the golf club started an evening golf league - just 9 holes, which is perfect for me since that's all the walking I can do with this belly!
And I would normally get there earlier so Graham can have a little fun on the putting green:

He's working on his little putts:

Made it!

Yay!... as he drops his putter!

Hopefully the summer won't be too hot and there will be more of these wonderful moments together!

New upside-down planters

Bobby talked about getting some new hanging plants on the front porch, but I was not willing to pay $20 for each!  So... I decided to recycle a couple of metal canisters.  After a few sprays of paint, untangling a wire hanger, and even using a coffee filter - as Graham would say... "Ta da!"

When Bobby got home, I asked him if he saw the planter and the first thing he said was... "It's upside-down!".  I asked him again and he really didn't give me a straight answer.  So I'm still trying to figure out whether he likes it or not!

But after looking at the upside-down planter for a day, I decided to change it up a little.  I realized that I had some left-over fabric and some ribbon.  And after purchasing some multi-purpose adhesive spray (best thing ever, by the way!)... Ta da!!!    

Much better, I think!  And when I asked Bobby to go check it out, he said "Wow! It looks like you had purchased it from a store!".  I guess he liked it a lot better than the first one :-)

In the meantime, here is my pride and joy of our yard.  Look at all those blooms on our rose bush!

These other ones are not as big but thankfully doing pretty well after last summer's terrible heat!

And look!  Our lilac tree isn't dead!  The tree guy said that it was dead and was going to chop it off for free if we chopped off a couple other trees in the backyard.  I'm glad I didn't listen to him!  Although, I did send Bobby out to take it down so we could put another rain barrel in.  He came back a few minutes later saying that there were actually new blooms on it! Yay! 

And look at my Azalea!  I've never seen so many blooms on it.  I was having quite some Azalea-envy especially during the recent Masters golf tournament a couple of weeks ago.

There's still so much mulching to do around the yard.  As usual, Graham has been quite a helper, putting mulch on rocks, into the plants, and even into the garbage bag - basically everywhere else except on the ground!

Dinosaurs!

We decided to take Graham to the "Discover the Dinosaurs" event this past Sunday.

It was basically a walk-through of various dinosaurs, but the lighting and sounds made it more dramatic.  And unfortunately, it really scared Graham!

He would sometimes look up...

 But when the dinosaurs made strange noises again and moved... he would cuddle straight into daddy!

 Poor fella!

Once the exhibit was over, Graham was back to normal and off and running to the play area.

These dinosaurs are a lot more friendlier :-)

Graham was having a problem getting onto this dinosaur but a nice gal came by to help!

This was just too cute!  Graham didn't even flinch when she picked him up.

And off she went her merry way once Graham was on.

Look who's so happy now!

We're probably going to have to wait another year before next dinosaur exhibit though!

Scrabble re-match

It was a Saturday night and what do we do?  We bust out the Scrabble board game!  It's been a while since our last game and actually come to find out, our last Scrabble match was in Jan 2009!  Bobby actually has a spreadsheet to keep track of all our previous matches, including a fancy graph to keep track of our word scores for each turn!
And so, last's night winner was... drum-roll.... Mommy! :-)

What's funny was prior to our game, Bobby had talked about how I would make simple words and they would come up to 25 points or more.  And he would have create long words and if lucky, only have half of those points!  Well, I guess last night was no exception.  The word "woof" earned me about 28 points and the word "jar" was 26 points!
We definitely need to do this more often.  It was a lot of fun and a lot more productive than watching TV on the couch!

Graham loves to laugh (videos)

Graham has been having great laughs with daddy recently.  Instead of swinging, daddy would spin Graham on his swing!

And Graham especially loved it when daddy would make sudden stops while he was on his wagon:

I suppose anything that would keep my two boys busy and happy! :-)

Graham's own library card

A couple of weeks ago, I finally decided that we should get a library card for Graham.  We have been going to the library for story time consistently for a few weeks now.  Since he does like"reading", I figured he would enjoy learning the concept of borrowing some new/different books from the library.
I had picked out his first library book - "If You're Happy and You Know It!"

I have been trying to get Graham on video for the past 2 weeks and finally he decided he was up for it tonight:

And Graham's second library book is... "My big truck book":

 He had picked it out during story time two weeks ago and again this past week.  Such a boy!

Oh so tired!

This past Tuesday, I received a call from Graham's daycare - asking me to pick him up early as he had a runny diaper that morning.  So, off I went... right during their naptime.  When we got home, we had a little snack and instead of putting Graham down for a late nap (which he said "no" to anyhow when I asked him), I decided to take him out to the grocery store with me.  He yawned a little while in the car on the way to the store.  And when we returned and during our next snack of apple sauce and cheerios, it almost looked like Graham's eyes were getting heavy while feeding himself.  Once he was done with his apple sauce, I thought I'd get the video camera out :-)

He he he... I'm such a mean mom!  I did pick him up and put him into his crib for his nap.  I've never seen Graham so tired.  He was definitely out!

Minor league Drillers baseball game

Despite seeing the lightning bolts on the way to the game, we decided to drive to the stadium anyhow to see what the rest of the day might bring. And we are so glad we did! It turned out to be an awesome day!

We decided to have Graham join the kids' club and he got a nice hat out of it:

With the kids' club pass, Graham had access to the play zone, where Graham had a chance to take a few swings. He actually got a hold of one! Lefty, of course!

There was a new splash pad at the other end of the field, which Graham kept wanting to go see. I think we will be spending a lot of time here this summer!

The best part about last Sunday's game was Graham running the bases at the end of the game! After certain games during the season, kids are able to run on the field. When we heard about it, we weren't sure if Graham would actually be old enough to do it. We watched the other kids do it for about 5-10 minutes and after seeing one or two kids about Graham's size/age doing it, we figured... ok, let's do it!

And since the line was so long, we decided to wait until the very end. When Bobby put him on the field, Graham just stood there for a few seconds...

And then, he was off! Following the rest of the kids... so far so good!

But then, Graham started to go off course and so the volunteer/lady from 2nd base had to help him a little:

Yay! 2nd base!!!

Notice that now, Graham is the only one left on the field. Ha ha! It was so cute, I was almost in tears!

Ok, off to 3rd base!

Almost there!

And after rounding 3rd base, I guess Graham got a little tired!

Yup, she's carrying him to home plate!

"Did you want to give Hornsby a high-five?" And his answer? "Nope!"

So they went around the Drillers' mascot:

Hoorah! He made it!

And into Daddy's arms. I was later told that Graham was blowing kisses and giving the camera man high-fives and I completely missed it on the jumbotron!

What a memorable day! :-)

Can you spell...

I've been teaching Graham to spell a few words. This is where we're at so far:

The funny thing is now, when I ask him how to spell a different word (other than "bee"), he would always say "C... A... T..."! Ha ha!

Golf time!

We had taken Graham and his new set of plastic clubs to the golf club two weeks ago, but we forgot the camera! So this time, we made sure to take some pictures and video.

As usual, Graham loves riding on the golf cart:

"Golf ball, please Mama!"

Thankfully we have a practice hole at the golf club that we can take our time on:

Looks like Graham still needs a lot of work!

But in the meantime, we are teaching Graham some good golfing etiquette :-)

Graham loves pulling his little golf bag:

Off he goes!

Except it only lasted for a little while:

Only to get to the final destination... the bunker!

He loves raking that bunker!

I wonder when we'll actually be able to play the practice hole in its entirety!

Happy Easter!

Graham had a chance to go Easter egg hunting at daycare last week. It was his first egg hunt and I think he did pretty well!

Graham was excited to have the eggs opened when he got home:

And on Saturday, we were planning on more Easter egg hunting at the zoo. But Graham decided to sleep in that morning so we didn't get to the zoo in time! We did, however get there just in time for a free carousal ride. While waiting, Graham was so excited when the music came on!

And couldn't wait to get on:

When it was time, Graham was so focused on hanging on!

We finally did manage to get a smile out of him:

Graham got a chance to see the Easter Bunny as well. Thankfully he didn't freak out like he did during the Zoo Run last year when he saw the costumed zoo animals.

Unfortunately, our trip to the zoo was cut short due to the rain. It was time for his nap anyhow, so it worked out just fine.