Hidden City

After bowling, we took Charles to the new park we found.

So apparently there's this whole other city... hidden behind a small mountain pass (if you could even call it that) right next to my city.  I pass it every time I go to or from my parents' house... and I never knew it existed.  It's called Copperton.  A bunch of women from my ward were going to have a park playdate there, and I decided to go.  That is how we discovered it.

For Charles' early Father's Day, after bowling we took him here.

This city is so cool.  It feels like I am 50 years back in time.  All the houses are so old, but they even have a bank, a post office, a fire station, a church building, and I'm sure a bunch more things that we never saw.  But it is seriously totally hidden away.

The kids really love this park too.  I don't have a picture of it, but there's like this pyramid made out of cement and brick that have tunnels going though them and slides down the sides.  I don't know if they heard someone else call it this, or if they came up with it on their own, but they now call it Pyramid Park.

Kaleb's getting pretty good on the monkey bars and rings these days.

They also have a tennis court over there.  Since we didn't bring any racquets or balls, the kids had to get creative. Haha!

Happy Father's Day, Charles!

Father's Day Bowling

For Father's Day this year, Charles and I were going to be out of town.  So we celebrated a weekend early.  We started by making Daddy his favorite breakfast, and giving him cards and a present.  His present this year was a bike and a bike trailer.  I was able to buy a used trailer from one of my friends for only $25 and then we got him an inexpensive bike from Walmart.

Later that day, we asked him what he wanted to do, and he decided he wanted to use the free bowling passes I had gotten.  So the kids got super excited. Bradley had never been before.  We got in the car and then realized that the free passes only worked until noon.  It was 1:00.  Well the kids were too excited to go, and we didn't want to break their hearts, so we just went anyway, and ended up having to pay.  Lame.

Bradley probably had the most fun out of everyone.  He has such a good attitude.

After watching Bradley toss the bowling ball and hear it come crashing down a few times, we finally got one of those rail things that you can roll the ball down.

That was better.

Brynnlee spent most of her time with me walking around the arcade.  After realizing how easy it was to end up flat on her back on the slippery floor, she decided carpet was the way to go.

Here's Kaleb getting all mad because the Nachos he picked out to share with everyone were disgusting.  He pouted the rest of the game.

Bradley is awesome.  He carries this big ole' heavy ball in one hand...

... and then grabs the rail thing with the other hand and drags it into place all by himself.

Jaden was pretty proud of his first strike. :)

If for no other reason, I was glad we went for Bradley.  He was so fun to watch.  He's such a good sport.  After bowling we decided to show Daddy the new park we had found earlier in the week...

Not a Great Bike Ride

One evening we decided to go on a family bike ride over to the church.  Usually we pile the kids' bikes into the van and drive there.  This time we tried just riding there.
So I rode Alli's bike that I'm borrowing for the summer, and rode ahead with the faster boys, Jaden and Kaleb.  Charles pushed Brynnlee in the stroller and walked with Bradley who rode his training wheels bike.  We figured that Bradley would stay back with Charles since he's not quite as fast as the other boys.

Well to get to the church you have to cross a 4 lane street with a 4-way stop.  Jaden and Kaleb followed me across.  We were way ahead of everyone else.  Apparently Bradley was too slow to cross with me and the boys... but too fast for Charles to keep up with the stroller.  When he got to the street, Charles was yelling his head off to him trying to get him to stop.

Bradley stopped at the curb.  The cars on the street were stopped at the stop, and Bradley took off across.  I didn't see him until he and Charles made it all the way to the church.  When Charles told me what happened I couldn't believe it.  We decided we should probably get another bike and a bike trailer for Brad and Brynn if we ever wanted to do this again.

While at the church the kids brought their sidewalk chalk and made a course to follow along and race.  Brynnlee found this chalk and quickly put it in her mouth and choked.  She threw-up huge chunks all down the front of her clothes.  I didn't have any wipes or anything with me, so I had to just hold her up by her hands and drag her face-down all around the grass until we could wipe off the majority of the puke. She giggled like crazy.  At least one of us were happy in that moment.

Here she is walking on her knees... on he asphalt.

And then running... out of control downhill.  Which one is worse?

Luckily Charles grabbed her before she face-planted.

Jaden was having fun.

But Kaleb?

Not so much. 

No, I'm not a crazy mom who just takes pictures instead of helping her children... He seriously threw himself into full-on drama queen mode and laid frozen like that, screaming for like 30 seconds.  I had plenty of time for the shot.

No bandaids.

Can we go home yet?  Yeah... not one of our funnest bike rides.  Times like these, we can't help but wonder, "Why did we even try?"

And speaking of Bradley doing unsafe things... here's another one.

One day I told him to clean his room.  He would not.  I told him he couldn't go out to play until it was clean.

2 hours later some friends who live down and around the corner and then up the hill of the next street over from us came and asked if the boys wanted to play.  Bradley started to get on his bike to go over, but I told him he couldn't go anywhere until he cleaned his room.

So he went back inside.

I watched Jaden and Kaleb ride off with their friends then I went back into the house.  About 5 minutes later I got a phone call.

It was Jaden.

He said, "Uh... Mom?  Did you know that Bradley is over here?"

Apparently when he went back inside the house, he did NOT go up the stairs.  He just walked around through the garage and snuck out with no shoes, and no helmet. 

When Jaden brought him home, he let Bradley use his helmet to ride back.  I'm so glad Bradley didn't get lost or taken.  But what a little stinker!

Walking

Brynnlee was a little different than the boys when it came to learning to walk.  She kind of did it in spurts. 

With the Jaden and Kaleb they seemed to learn overnight and never look back.  Bradley, was a closet-walker.  He  knew how, but never liked to show anyone for a while.  If he saw you watching, he would always stop.

But Brynnlee would take a few steps between my mom and I, but then choose to just walk on her knees.

We tried bribing her with M&Ms to walk between us.  She would, and she would get pretty good, but then she decided for like a month, that she was only interested in walking on her knees.

It drove me nuts because she would do it outside too  She would get holes in the knees of her clothes, and then really scuff up the toes of her shoes.  If I tried to stand her up she would just lift both feet up in the air so when I set her down she would be sitting.

But then one night, she just decided to try, try, try again. All on her own. Up, down, up, down, up, down.  No one was even paying her any attention.  Except me.  But I tried not to make a big deal about it.  I was afraid she would stop.  She kept getting up, taking 4 or 5 steps and then totally biffing it.  I was surprised she kept trying.  For like 5 whole minutes.  Which may not seem like a long time, but if all you're doing is getting up, taking steps, and falling down over and over again, it's actually a pretty impressive amount of time!

After this I thought for sure she'd become an all-or-nothing walker.  Nope.  Just another tease.  She went back to her knees for another month.

She didn't ditch the knee-walking till she was 14 months old.