Happy Birthday Oma!

Happy Birthday Oma!

We hope you have a wonderful day and have a delicous cake, cupcake or treat! It is the focus of my day!

We love you lots and wish you a happy, happy birthday and wonderful year.

Love,
Amy, Jason, Aidan and Leo

A trip to the Dentist

Aidan and Leo went to the dentist last Tuesday. Aidan has been to the dentist a number of times before this visit but this was Leo's first visit to the dentist! Whoo-hoo! The day before (Labor Day) we were over at Doris' house for dinner and I remembered they had their dentist appointment and excitedly told Doris that Leo was going to the dentist for the first time. To my surprise he cried and said he didn't want to go! We stopped talking about it immediately! Uh-oh, this did not look good for Tuesday. Let's just say he was not impressed and there is a slim chance that Leo will aspire to be a dentist.

Aidan went first in the chair and as you can see he is an old pro. The dentist said that his teeth look great! She said that he is getting his adult molars and that soon his other baby teeth should loosen and fall out. That was pretty neat.

When the dental assistant came in and wanted to check out Leo's teeth he cried and pretty much refused. She was very nice and didn't force herself or her tools on him and said "let's just wait for the dentist."


When the dentist came, Leo layed on Jason's lap and the dentist's lap and he did really well. No crying and he let her look at his teeth. He allowed her to look at them just enough to count his teeth. She said the first visit is really just to get the kids familiar with the dentist and the procedures and so all they really need to do is just look in their mouth and count their teeth. That was done! So there was a major success there!

Happy Labor Day Weekend

I'm not in the mood to blog, maybe it's getting back to the ol' grind after a long weekend, I dunno but here are some pictures with a few comments.

Saturday evening and Sunday morning...

Cousin Ryan, Cheryl, Aidan and Leo

Amy, Ryan and Cheryl sitting around talking. Jason is taking the photo and can you guess where Leo and Aidan were? Yep! Riding their bikes!

Aidan and Leo in the trunk of cousin Ryan's Porsche.

We also visited Connie and her kitties, Nat and Ana, on Saturday morning and ate lunch at a great place called Kiwi in Arlington.

On Sunday Jason finished putting the shelves up in the storage room and Sunday night, we went to the Doris' Parent's (Mommy and Daddy's) house for dinner and had great burgers and hot dogs and puerto rican beans and rice (yum!). On Monday we went to the Aquarium in Baltimore.

Jellyfish Invasion Exhibit

At the Dolphin Exhibit (super cool!)

Sting Rays

Happy Birthday Opa!

Happy Birthday Opa! We hope you have a wonderful day. We are thinking about you and wish we were with you to celebrate your special day.

Love you lots!

First Day of 1st Grade!

Today was Aidan's first day in 1st grade. We've been talking about starting school for the past few weeks. Let's just say that he was uninspired. Every time we asked him if he was ready to start school he would say, "no". Every time someone asked him if he was excited about going back to school he would say, "no". Plain and simple...he did not want to go back to school. Needless to say we were feeling a bit nervous about him starting school all the while trying to talk school up and say how great it was going to be (was it?), how nice his teacher would be (would s/he?) and how much fun he would have (would he?).


There were a few clues that gave us hope. He got this "snake eyes" shirt a few weeks ago and he said he wanted to save it for the first day of school. When we talked about his old friends from kindergarten he seemed happy and talkative. When we went shopping for his Marvel comics backpack and school supplies he was excited and into it. So we held on to these little pieces of hope and continued think things might go well on the first day.

This morning was fine (not great but fine). His mood was kind of up and down and bit sporadic but I think it was the nervousness and part excitement (yes, deep down in there I think there was some excitement!). He took a shower, put on his new snake eyes shirts and shorts and we remembered that we had a new pair of sneakers for him and he thought that was fun.


We got in the car and he did great. We got out of the car and I could tell he was nervous but still fine. He got a little clingy when we went up to the door and Jason said we couldn’t go in. I saw that there were parents going in so I said, "let's go in" and we all headed in. Leo was asking if we had to go in (yes, “had” to go in). Then when we went in Leo said, “can we go home now” – he had bike riding on his mind. Aidan was doing okay when we were waiting outside the door. On of his friends from kindergarten was also waiting outside of his classroom and she said "Hi Aidan" and he mumbled "Hi" back. The rest of his class came up from the gym and it was finally time to go in. Sadly, he hid his face in my shoulder and arm and cried. I felt so bad. I told him how brave he was, how big he was and how much fun he would have but he wasn’t buying what I was selling. I was trying to hold out until his friend William arrived because they were great friends (& Kentaro who he misses so much) and we found out on Friday that William sits in his quad of four desks (plus!). It was starting to get late and William had not arrived so I finally scootched him to the door and his teacher saw him crying and took him by the hand to hang up his backpack and sit in the circle with the other kids. His teacher and I gave each other the nod…mine indicating “he’s upset and nervous” and hers indicating “I understand. I got it from here. Go ahead and go”. After that I went out of the classroom and I told Jason “let’s go”. After we left, I cried too. I just feel so bad that he feels so nervous and unsure. I wish there was something I could do or say to make him feel less nervous, unsure and secure but I couldn't think of anything and anything I could think of didn't work. Jason gave Aidan a special coin to hold in his pocket and touch whenever he felt nervous but he still felt nervous.

After school we all picked him up and he was smiling and happy. He said he had a good day and only cried once in the morning. He said he liked his teacher and said his favorite part of the day was recess. He said he was tired at recess and had no energy because they don't eat lunch until 1:00pm and have recess first. This we thought was crazy...I'm hungry (seriously) by 11:30am. They have snack time earlier but the grapes we sent "were too sour" so he didn't eat too many of them. He said they did computer lab and he was quite talkative (always a good sign). After school we went to DairyQueen for blizzards (Aidan had M&M, Jason had, you guessed it Butterfinger and Leo and I shared Thin Mint). We came home and boys rode their bikes and played with the neighbor kids. Aidan is playing Wii for a bit, Leo is watching Polar Express and playing with a lego car and we will eat dinner soon.

All in all, it was a great day (no throwing up!) that got better and better. I'm sure tomorrow will be better!

More Bike Riding

We put together Leo's bike on friday and it is non-stop bike riding. If they are not already outside riding their bikes they are asking if they can! Leo can not get enough. He rides for about an hour, needs a 5 minute break, and he is ready to go again. All the other activities of the day are just distractions!

Where's Patrick?

Our "distractions" of the day included breakfast in the morning with Doris and Patrick. I had brought back (Puyallup) fair scone mix and jam from Seattle for Doris and instead of giving her the mix I offered to make the scones for her so that was the focus of our breakfast but we also had sausage, eggs, pancakes and fruit salad. Then the boys went out to ride their bikes some more. After riding bikes we raced over to the Air and Space Museum out at Dulles airport. We didn't have too long to spend out there because Patrick has a work dinner tonight (after all he did come to work) but it is such a great place we wanted to give him a tease so that he'll want to come back.

I love the Air and Space museum at Dulles. I like it because it is really, really big so it never feels crowded, there are great exhibits (and I'm not even an aircraft lover), and the kids can have fun and be kids (if you know what I mean) and remain unnoticed. They can talk loudly, run every once in a while, be silly and see cool exhibits (transformers, star wars, space shuttle, helicopters).

Finally Something to Write About

Our week was pretty quiet. Besides Doris finally coming home from Puerto Rico on Tuesday we haven't really been doing very much. But that all changed on Thursday when Patrick arrived from Seattle. We were so happy for him to get here. He arrived in the early evening so we went out to dinner to Uncle Julio's a Mexican Restaurant. We hadn't been there since Patrick was in DC celebrating his birthday 2 or 3 years ago. The boys had a busy day, they all came in to town to have lunch with me and Doris and Becs and visit my friends and colleagues in the office. When I got home they still seemed to be pretty happy so we decided to go out and they were great at dinner too. By the time we got home, they were exhausted so putting them to bed that night was a piece of cake.

Yesterday (Friday) was also a very important day (VID). Aidan had his open house where he got to meet his new teacher (Mrs. Hornstein - Aidan got the good teacher!), see his new classroom, find his desk, and see what friends are in his class. He wasn't exactly excited about it but I have a feeling that this school year will go really well, especially the first day. There may be some nervousness, an upset stomach and possibly some tears but I'm confident there will be no throwing up! Mrs. Hornstein is great and we are so happy Aidan is in her class! We also went to see Mrs. Stewart his Kindergarten teacher last year-she is fantastic. Afterwards we went out to ice cream and celebrated the start of a great school year. Aidan seemed happy and talkative so I am happy for and proud of him.

Friday night I went out to dinner with some girl friends-we were celebrating a special birthday. We started off at the Russia House in Dupont Circle and then had dinner at Buca di Beppo. We drank great beer at the Russia House (maybe a little too much) and then had good Italian food but all together we had lots of fun. The Russia House is known for its vodka but after reading the reviews I was a little afraid of getting into the vodka so I passed and had some great Russian beer. Becs is my beerfriend. The boys all had Ledo's Pizza for dinner.

Today, Saturday we had bagels for breakfast and then we all went to Mt. Vernon, Washington's Estate. It was a bit hot and humid but great fun because we had not been there for a really long time. It has changed so much. They now have this fantastic museum and education center that was really fun to wander around in. My favorite part of the visit was sitting on the back porch of the house and looking out into the Potomac.

After a couple of hours at Mt. Vernon we all went to Elevation Burger in Arlington (don't be jealous Heid!). It is a great burger place that uses organic, free-range, grass feed cow meat and olive oil for its fries. It is all about the ingrediants they say. The have great milk shakes too! Plus it's nice that they buy their meat from humanely raised cows.

Tonight Jason and Patrick are going to get out of the house and see a movie. I'm not sure if they decided which one to see yet but let's see if I can convince Jason to write a movie review. Don't get your hopes up but I'll try.

One last exciting thing that has been going on over the weekend...BIKES! Jason finally put together Leo's Thomas the Train bike. Leo got his bike from Pa and Crow for christmas but his mom and dad have been slackers and only now put it together. The boys have been riding their bikes like crazy. They rode yesterday afternoon. The rode before we went to Mt. Vernon and they rode after we came home from Elevation Burger. We left Mt.Vernon because the boys were exhausted but in the same breath they asked if they could ride their bikes when we got home. Leo has only been riding for two days but he is already a pro and Aidan has really become much more confident on his bike. He rides fast, wants to ride up the curb, and while he disagrees, I think he is ready to take off the training wheels. I predict it won't be long. They are both super cute on their bikes.