The exciting news in our household this week is that Zachary has his first bike. He has been very interested in riding bikes - we have lots of riding vehicles on our back deck (it is like a car lot!) but he's also been asking for a bike. So, we took him to Toys R Us last weekend and tried out a bunch of bikes. We ended up getting a 14 inch bike, which are VERY hard to find as they don't make very many but we lucked out as it was the right size for him and they had one left - and because it was their last 14 inch bike, they gave us a great deal!


A few weeks ago, Jennifer took the boys to Green Meadows Petting Farm - this is their first trip to the petting zoo, and they had a really great time. Zachary got to milk a cow (although he wasn't too sure that he should be touching the cow there....we're pretty sure that he thought that the cow's teats were the cow's "pee-pee"! :) Jennifer had to convince him that it was okay to touch the cow there! Zachary also caught a chicken all by himself - he was grinning from ear to ear! We're actually all going as a family in a few weeks with a group of our friends, so we'll all get to experience it. Kaleb is a bit nervous about getting up close and personal with the animals at this point, so he enjoys from afar.



Zachary has reached a fabulous age - he seems to have crossed the bridge finally of the terrible two's and even worse three's (not to say that he doesn't still have his moments) but he is definitely much improved in terms of mood and behavior. He is so sweet - he tells us that he loves us, that we're his best friends, that we're nice to him, gives us tons of hugs and for the most part he's very loving to Kaleb. In fact, this week Kaleb was laying on the floor crying about something and Zachary walked over to him and rubbed his belly and tried to console Kaleb by saying "It's okay Kaleb, I love you. Daddy will come pick you up."
Kaleb is also at a really sweet age - he really hasn't reached the "fits" stage of life (which we're thankful for!). This is always the age that makes a parent say "Perhaps we should have another kids, because they are just SO cute and precious right now!" - and then the terrible 2's hit and you run from that idea! :) He is very cuddly, and loves to laugh. He is always laughing at Zachary's antics. He has mastered the art of walking now and rarely do we see him crawling at all. He is very independent and insists on feeding himself, although as long as he starts feeding himself and keeps the fork, he will allow us to begin feeding him some bites in between his attempts. He definitely likes to sleep in longer than Zachary ever did - and usually sleeps until about 7:30'
ish every morning - whereas we have to enforce the rule that Zachary can't get up before 6:45 in the morning - otherwise he'd be up before 6:00!!
Amy is in charge of crafts in November at Sabbath School. The story is 'Paul and the Shipwreck.' Now, for all of you who know Amy well - she is NOT CRAFTY. What was she thinking volunteering for crafts??? So needless to say it has been a bit of a struggle to come up
with ideas, but there is now a plan for all four weeks of crafts, so hopefully it will go well. She volunteered to be the Sabbath School secretary in February, so we'll see if that is better.
True Bizarre Story - Yesterday at work, Amy was sitting in her office working when she heard a
helicopter approaching, and getting closer and closer and closer until it was so close that you could feel the vibrations of the blades. She jumped up and ran to her window to look at and sees a military
Blackhawk helicopter screaming towards our building. The doors of the helicopter are open, and a military guy in full gear is sitting in the back with HIS GUN. The helicopter flies parallel to our building between us and the restaurant to the lake behind us, when he reaches the lake, he turns around and flies back between us and the restaurant so low that he is level with the third floor of our building (the building is a four story building) where Finance is located. Once he gets to the front of the building, he just flies away as if no big deal. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, people are naturally skittish so the buildings occupants were pretty freaked out. Two ladies in the corner office on the third floor had run out of the office when he flew by because they thought they were about to be shot - imagine, you're in a meeting and all of a sudden a B
lackhawk helicopter flies by right beside your window with a guy with a machine gun hanging out the open door!! We're in the middle of town, and the closest
airforce base is over an hour away, so this has definitely never happened before to us. Anyway, it all ended well but it did seem very irresponsible for the pilot to fly so close and so low to our building but we're all clear, we'll never know the true story of what was going on.
Phrase of the week: Zachary is very clever about coming up with plausible excuses for getting up after we've put him to bed - the typical excuses of needing to go pee, needing a drink etc. We've solved those excuses by putting a
sippy cup in his bed, and having him go to the bathroom right before lights are turned off. So, Zachary then decided that he'd ask for another hug, and what parent can say "No" to another request for a hug! So, we started being very specific in giving him a hug before he went to bed (he'd always been getting a ton of kisses but we hadn't been doing a special hug prior to going to bed). Well, he figured out how to get around the fact that he'd already had a hug when he came out one night and said "I need a hug." Amy replied "We already gave you a hug - you need to go back to bed". He looked at her, thought a minute and said "Yes, but it wasn't your BEST" Ha ha ha - who could argue with that clever logic - so one more night he got to use that excuse - we fixed it the next night by telling him when we gave him our hugs that the hugs were our BEST hugs. So clever!
Zachary insisted on vacuuming - who are we to argue?