Catching Up…

The day after a birthday party is always fun because you get to play with all of your new toys. He loves his play tent that we got him.

Then he had to chainsaw it, obviously.

Poor Gabe was super jealous of Josy’s chainsaw. It took awhile for Josy to let go of it long enough for Gabe to try it out.

Gabe decided to try fishing for catfish.

Gabe’s class went to the beach and Josy and I tagged along. It was pretty windy and some other people had bright kits and Gabe begged me to go home to get the bomber kite that he’d bought with his own money two years ago that he just hadn’t had a chance to fly yet. I finally caved and went home to get it. I’m so glad that I did. Not only did Gabe love it (and it was perfect weather for kite flying!) but a WWII bomber kite was a huge hit with all of his first grade buddies.

Josy was supposed to be napping. But I heard a noise and he came down like this. Um, that’s not napping….

Gabe decided to make scrambled eggs for he and Josy ask by himself. I did grate the cheese for him and we turned on the burner, but other than that, he did it all by himself. He was so proud of himself and both he and Josy declared that the eggs were delicious!

After I took this picture he decided to spice up some grape tomatoes to add too…

It’s baseball season. This is hands down Gabe’s favorite time of the year. And he’s doing so well. The first game they had the pitching machine set too high for him, so he had trouble hitting. But after that game, they got it figured out and he’s been consistently getting good hits and getting on base every time. He’s doing a good job fielding, getting outs and even running down a kid at home plate from right field and making the out. It’s been a great season and it’s really built up his baseball confident and his love of the game.

He also worked on some Native Youth Olympics moves on the field…



His creativity is impressive. He may have made a cheese mess, but I give him massive props for creativity.

Pat’s big project this summer: replacing all of the windows in the house.

Old window:

New window:

Everyone has been helping as much as we can. Gabe was working on rolling flashing…

…and I got to hold the window in place.

It’s a huge project, but it will be so nice when it’s all done!

More creative problem solving. He needed to reach someone on the shelf in his closet, so he moved the bunk bed ladder. I’m not convinced that’s a safe solution, but it is good problem solving.

Does he have enough snuggle guys???

We went to high school graduation to watch Bella’s best friend, who is basically our second daughter, graduate from high school.

It was a very cold baseball game.

This kid. This is going to be my view for a very long time… I wanted to run yesterday but I was home with the boys and one of their friends, so I took them all to the track. I figured they’d play soccer on the grass while I ran. Instead, the two littler boys got bored quickly (although they were super excited about a guy flying a RC airplane!) and Gabe decided to run the track with him. We raced the first lap and he ran it fast. I had trouble keeping up with him! Then I kept running and when I turned around I discovered that he was following me. He made it a while mile and wanted to keep going, but I convinced him that the other boys were done and we needed to go home. I have a feeling that he and I are going to spend a lot of time running together.