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August 25, 2007 - Sam is now 7 months old.

August has brought many changes in Sam. His activity level has skyrocketed. He is pulling himself up, scooting and getting into trouble. He is not quite sitting up on his own, but can "tripod" sit, and get there on his own from a crawling position. Sitting will not be far behind. He is also able to feed himself his fruit & veggie puffs, and can hold his own bottle. I can't believe how quickly time flies when life is so busy.

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August 18, 2007 Nicholas on Two Wheels

We have been doing a lot of camping this summer, and have been really busy the rest of the time, so we haven't had many chances to REALLY work with Nicholas on riding on two wheels. However, this weekend we were able to bring his bike camping and had plenty of time to practice. SUCCESS was achieved. Here's some footage of a few of his first successful attempts. He even managed to complete a turn/curve without stopping.

August 16-19, 2007 Another Camping Weekend at Pioneer Park

This weekend, the temperatures were cooler and so we never even went down to the lake. We filled our weekend with activities we had not yet done. We went out for breakfast at Mr. B's, then headed to downtown Muskegon (sans my camera). We went through an railroad depot, which is now the visitor's center. We also got to see a train come through by the harbor, the kids got to be pretty close to it. We went for a ride on the trolley, which took us out to lakeshore and back. We got off the trolley and tried to visit an old fire station, but it wasn't open so we could only look in the windows - maybe next time. On Saturday, we went mini golfing and go-karting. We also took the opportunity to try to fly our kites - the wind was too gusty though - we could get them up but we couldn't keep them up. The kids had fun trying though. On Saturday night we had a visit from Uncle Shawn, Aunt Erin and Owen. Unfortunately, it started to rain and was a fairly wet night. NO campfire that night. However, we loaded into our camper and, believe it or not, we got all the children to fall asleep while the adults played some games - I think this was the first time this year that we really did that. It was a little soggy and cooler, but a great weekend none-the-less.

July 28, 2007 - August 4, 2007 Family Camping Trip Well, as you can tell by my posting date, I have been running extremely behind on keeping the blog up to date. Given the fact that we were gone for whole week, there were many pictures to go through and it was difficult to find the time to work on the video. By the time I got caught up on laundry and got caught up at work, it has made me quite a bit behind.

Anyway, we had a great time camping with family at Myers Lake Campground. We hope to return there next year. It was such a great place for the kids. The lake was warm, and with a shallow beach area they were able to run around a lot. There were swings right on the beach which the girls loved. The kids had so much fun playing with all of the 2nd and 3rd cousins that are their age ( a privilege they do not often have). It was a great week, spent together, and having lots of fun.

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July 26, 2007 - Doctor's Appointment time!

I loaded up the kids and headed into town for another trip to the doctor's office. My kids are very healthy, but with 4 kids whose birthdays are pretty spread out throughout the year sometimes I feel like I am going there constantly just to keep up with well-child visits. Fortunately, most of Sam's appointments during this first year are able to be coordinated with a visit for one of the other kids.

This time around it was Allison's 2 year appointment and Sam's 6 month well-child. Here are their stats (as well as how they compared to the other kids).

2 year appointment

Allison 26 pounds (25%) 35 1/2 inches (90%) Head: 47.5cm

Gabrielle 25 pounds 34 inches Head: 47.5cm

Nicholas 25 pounds 34 1/2 inches Head: 48.2cm

6 month appointment

Sam 15 lbs 12 oz (15%) 27 inches (75%) Head: 43.8cm

Allison 14 lbs 15 oz 27 inches Head: 43cm

Gabrielle 17 lbs 2 1/2 oz 26 1/2 inches Head: 43cm

Nicholas 17 lbs 1 1/2 oz 27 1/2 inches Head: 44cm

We are thankful to have 4 healthy children, and surprisingly enough they are all actually fairly close in size from check-up to check-up. If Allison keeps this trend she is actually going to catch up to Gabrielle fairly quickly. When you see them side by side they don't appear to be that far apart in height. For having a slow start the beginning of his life, Sam seems to have caught up to the others fairly well and is right in the middle of the pack.

July 18, 2007 - What in the world is a Pandora Sphinx?

We were getting ready to leave the house to go to the grocery store the other day. On this particular day the van was backed into the garage so Nicholas was on the garage window side of the van. Right before we pulled out of the garage, Nicholas says "Mom, What's that?" and points to the window sill. I took a quick look, and at first glance I thought it was a very weird looking creature and it gave me the heeby-jeebies. I got out of the van and went to take a closer look and then thought it was a dried up leaf that had somehow managed to get caught on the sill. But, as I got even closer I realized it was a HUGE moth. The wing-span on this moth was between 3 and 3 1/2 inches and one of the ugliest things I've ever seen. Needless to say, this moth was not going to fit through the tip of the bug vacuum. So I grabbed a gladware container and managed to collect it for a time. That afternoon, we got on-line and struggled to find a website that would help us identify what we had caught. We finally came upon whatsthatbug.com There are some really awesome pictures of moths and other bugs and after going through many pages, we finally found our bug....it is a Pandora Sphinx Moth (sometimes called a camo moth). Several posts indicated that others have mistaken this moth for a dried up leaf as well. This was definately our bug find of the summer so far....we did let it go that evening, but have some cool pictures to preserve the memory.

July 16, 2007 - Astronaut or Astronomer?

Nicholas has continued to express interest in the stars and planets lately. We have gotten several books out of the library and he has memorized several facts about them. He knows that Pluto is the smallest and Jupiter is the largest, Mercury is the closest to the sun and Pluto is the farthest. He also knows which planets have rings and their order in size. One of the books we got from the library had a page where it explained how to make a mobile of the solar system. We found numerous shapes in the house to that we could make them in order from smallest to largest, and Nicholas studied every page and colored the planets as close as he could to what the pictures looked like. He did a very good job, I was actually surprised at how long he stuck with the project (through all 9 planets). We put little facts on the back so that we can review them periodically. So anyway, for the time being we now have a mobile of our solar system hanging from the ceiling fan above the kitchen table.
(by the way, we do know that they are no longer considering Pluto a planet, but that is a little too deep for a 5 year old who is reading older books from the library, so for now...Pluto is a planet again. )

July 12-15, 2007 Another Camping Weekend.

This was a fun filled weekend, with lots of fun. The kids got to spend a little more time in the lake this time, as the water wasn't quite so cold. They also spent a lot more time riding scooters, etc. There wasn't as much hiking, but Nicholas and Grandpa did head out to see how many kinds of leaves they could find. The weekend also included Allison's birthday celebration, the details of which are in the previous post. Nicholas has continued his interest in the stars and planets, so we got the binoculars out one night for him to check out the stars.

One special note for the weekend, was that Thursday evening a storm came thru very quickly. There wasn't much warning and all of the sudden the wind picked up and it got super, super dark. We just started to grab things and put them away and the wind picked our awning right up and "threw" the awning right up onto the roof of the trailer. The awning pole brackets ripped right out of the roof of the trailer, the awning poles actually flew over the top of the trailer and one of them landed on the windshield of the van. Thankfully, it hit right on the edge and there was only a scratch. We are very grateful that no one was in the way of our awning poles when they decided to take flight, it could have caused some serious injury. (Needless to say, we now stake them down right away). The storm passed as quickly as it came and we were able to repair the awning. Some friends of ours were also in the park that weekend and filmed some awesome waterspouts on the water. That was quite a night.

July 12-15, 2007 - Allison's 2nd Birthday

We were camping over Allison's Birthday, so we ended up spreading her birthday out over several days. We also had her birthday party with aunts, uncles and cousins out at the lake. We had a lot of fun. Then, when we returned home Allison got a few more presents that we didn't want to take out to the lake.

I can't believe how quickly time flies, Allison is 2 already, seems like just yesterday that we were camping and she couldn't even walk yet. She is such a "little lady", she carries on such conversations...talking up a storm all the time. She also, can be quite a pistol, with a temper that just won't quit when she decides to unleash it. We can't wait to see how much she grows in the years ahead.

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