Little Orange Rocks

Remind me to thank our neighbor Jennifer for showing Alex these little orange BBs that seem to litter the ground at our local park. Alex picks them all up and makes a pile of them to bring home each time we visit the park. Here he is showing me his special finds yesterday.

Today we found a good yard sale near our house and walked over to search for more treasures. He hears the words "garage sale"and really perks up each time.

Ohio Vacation

Alex and I recently returned from a week long visit to Cincinnati where we got to spend lots of time with family. Alex especially enjoyed his very first visit to Gigi's house in Hamilton, OH. He found all sorts of special treasures there to play with and loved the bridge in her backyard over the creek. Other trip highlights include swimming, going to the zoo, and a special trip to the firehouse where the fireman's name was also Alex :) Mom found some great deals outlet shopping around Ohio and we came home with a full car as usual!

Here's Alex and Aunt Nicole at the end of a long day.

Cousin Lauren was happy to show Alex how to play with these little Legos. He really liked these, much more so than the bigger Legos I think.

Pedaling Away

Before I forget, Alex started pedaling on his tricycle by himself yesterday. He's doing a great job with it, thanks to our neighbor who showed him how--not that Brad and I haven't been trying to get him to do this for months now! Sometimes all it takes is someone else to show him how to do something and he's all over it. He also likes to go down the kiddie water slide at our pool now because he saw his friend Emily do it. I'll try to get pix of both of these soon!

Happy Father's Day!

While we did have grand plans to go out to dinner, both Brad and I are having allergy attacks that made chicken noodle soup sound much more appealing :) Happy Father's Day Brad! We'll rain check that dinner for when we return from Cincinnati next week. Brad and Alex did have fun this morning playing in the baby pool out back and we all had a great time at the Joliet Jackhammer's baseball game last night. I wish I would have brought my camera along to catch some of the fun!

It's Finally Summer!!

Now we're talking--80 degree temps, a light breeze (ok, some days a strong wind), and lots of sunshine! That was one looooooong, cold winter, even by Chicago's standards. I will say that in this photo, it was warm outside, but not hot, so this was about as close as Alex got to the sprinker.

Alex, Emily and Josh played in the baby pool after dinner and even though Alex looks like he's freezing, he loved it! He was soaked a few minutes later. Another of our favorite summer activities is playing outside in the evenings with our friends.

After spending the day at the pool yesterday, we stayed close to home today and Alex played in his water table. This is NOT what I had envisioned when I got the water table out of the basement this morning. Alex filled the water with sand from his sandbox and created a sludgy mess. At one point he had one of his big dump trucks in there loading wet sand into the back of it. What a mess! But, this kept him busy for a very long time and he loved it. Now, what to do with all that wet sand... Boys will be boys I guess!

Candy Land

Karen and Chris gave Alex the game Candy Land for his birthday, and we are amazed at how fast he has picked it up. Not that this is a difficult game to master, but what's to stop a kid from throwing the cards all over the place or wanting to use all four game pieces himself? I showed him how to play this one afternoon and since then we've played it the "right" way each time. He even beats me most days because he gets one of the special cards that sends him super close to the candy castle, leaving me in the dust!

Here's Alex's goofy "cheese" face with Karen.

Our neighbors gave Alex this outfit for his birthday and I think it is so fitting.

Tornado Drill

I'm blogging from the basement with Brad, Alex and Scooter. There is a tornado warning so we are hunkered down for a bit until all is clear. I suppose we should look for Cassie too :) We heard the sirens and hit the deck, although we are told Plainfield is pretty trigger happy with the sirens. Either way, we won't be going out to dinner for a little bit.

A Sleepover?

3 is too young to be scheduling sleepovers, right? :) Alex's fave book of the week is Froggy's Sleepover by Jonathan London and Frank Remkiewicz. Froggy and his buddy Max get to have a sleepover and Alex thinks this is a really fun idea. He has asked to have a sleepover, so I told him next weekend we can get out the sleeping bags and sleep in the living room. This seems to have appeased his curiosity in the whole sleepover idea. We'll have to post photos next week!