Dumb and Dumber

I get home from book club last night and Carter is walking around the house with a frozen can of orange juice and Gage has a ziploc bag of frozen hamburger meat in tow. "What in the world do they have those for?" I asked. Jared then explained to me that while they were making cookies Carter accidently bumped the cookie sheet and burned his hand. He had given him a can of OJ from the freezer to help it feel better. Well, of course Gage wanted to have a can of OJ too. Jared tried to explain to him that Carter got to hold the orange juice because he burned his hand on the cookie sheet... so what did Gage do?? He went over and grabbed the cookie sheet and of course started screaming because he now had burned his hand as well. Sheesh! There was no more OJ so Gage got a slab of beef! (I'm not sure why the ice cubes in the freezer weren't put to use!)

Late Nights and Early Mornings

Saturday we went to Chicago for our stake temple day and decided that while we were there we wanted to do something fun with the kids. After the temple we drove into the crazy busy city with even crazier city traffic and headed down to Navy Pier. The best part was that as soon as we got there and pulled Gage out of the car we realized that on the way there he had totally expolded out of his diaper. Of course we didn't have a change of clothes, nor did we know where to go to get him some new shorts so Jared pulled out the wipes, the water bottle and the hand sanitizer and went to work. We cleaned them up best we could put sopping wet shorts back on our boy, threw him in the stroller and headed into town. I must admit we both avoided holding him all night as the smell seemed to linger with him.

We took the boys to the Chicago Children's Museum which they loved! I love children's museums because they let kids be kids- they can touch whatever they want and run around to their imaginations delight! They loved pretending to be bugs, paleontologists, firefighters, policemen, inventors, you name it, they pretended to be it! Everytime we go to a children's museum I am reminded that I have 3, yes 3 kids... not 2... Actually I lOVe that Jared is a hands on dad and gets in there and plays with his boys! We stayed until they closed then headed out to the mobs and gobs of people at the pier, had some dinner, people watched (one of my favorite pass times) rode the 150 foot ferris wheel while enjoying the Chicago skyline, stayed for the fireworks and then headed home. It made for a long night as we didn't get home til 1am but we probably won't have too many more opportunities to hang out with Jared like this as his schedule will pick up this next month. Of course Gage was still up at 6:00 the next morning... maybe that's why he slept through all of Sacrament Meeting and most of Sunday School today!

German Fest

Milwaukee is such an interesting place. They seem to have a new festival going on every weekend of the summer. Maybe it's because they have only a few short months of nice weather so they make up any excuse that they can to get out there and enjoy it. They have Summerfest, Bastille Days, Italian Fest, Oktoberfest, Tosa Fest, Mexican Fest, Irish Fest, Polish Fest, Indian Summer Fest, Kite Festival, Strawberry Festival, Pride Fest (aka gay fest), African world Fest, Arab World Fest, Greek Fest... to name a FEW, seriously they have a festival for everything!

Well we made it to our first festival this week, which of course was German Fest (Jared served his mission in Munich). We decided that since Thursday was family fun day it would most likely be the most tame (not to mention we got in free). I have heard that the festivals are an excuse for Milwaukeeans who already like to drink beer to drink even more beer. I must say I only saw one person that was totally plastered and it was early... before 7pm. We had a great time eating brats and hot dogs, listening to the German and not so German bands, walking through all of the tents and vendors, admiring at all of their German treasures, and musing at the adults all decked out in lederhosen. The night ended with a firework show over Lake Michigan. Mostly it was great to spend the evening together as a family enjoying Milwaukee summer nights. Now that I attended a fest I can say that I really LIVED in Milwaukee!

The boys sporting rediculously ugly German (or not so German) hats with signs on them that read German Fest ist Wunderbart!

In front of the human sized Glockenspiel (Cookoo clock)

Gage's First Dental Visit!

My Dad retired from being a "full-time" dentist the end of May and since we were moving I decided that although Gage wasn't even two and a half yet we better get him to the dentist so that he could have his first dental visit with Grandpa Mangum. He did sooo good. Carter had his cleaning and exam first and Gage is always so excited to get to do the big boy things Carter does. All during Carter's cleaning he kept asking, "My turn now? My turn now?" He was ecstatic when it was his turn and climbed up in the chair and opened wide! Grandpa even let Carter be his assistant and work the suction. After Carter got Gage's tongue a few times we decided that maybe Gage had suffered enough torture for one day. Hopefully they'll be just as excited to go to the dentist when it's Uncle Brett!

"Gage look how EASY this is!"

Balloon animals at the end of a dental visit are a MUST!

Is that wide enough??

This is a piece of cake...

"When I grow up I'm going to be a dentist... that is after I'm a paleontologist and a veterinarian." (This was right before he almost sucked Gage's tongue out of his mouth.)

Slip n' Slidin' with Daddy

I came across these pictures from May and thought I would post them. I missed a whole month of blogging when we were traveling and getting ready to move and found some pictures I wanted to post. Jared and the boys whipped out the slip 'n slide while I was out running errands one day. Jared called and told me to come home quick because I was missing out on ALL the fun. Sorry guys but someones got to get stuff done! Although I missed slip n' sliding with the boys I managed to get home in time to take some pics. I wasn't too upset about it... while slip n' slide was a blast as a kid I find it somewhat painful these days! While looking at these pictures I was thinking about how much I miss our big fenced in backyard but at the same time I was laughing at our pathetic area we called "grass".

Math Whiz

Gage sat down the other day and started counting the toes on one of his feet: 1...2...3...1...2! "How many toes do you have Gage?" I asked. He got all excited and announced "I have 5 toes!!" I had him count my toes next. Same thing, 1...2...3...1...2. He gasped, "Mommy has 5 toes too!!" I don't know but I think I might have a little math whiz on my hands!

Mommy's Little Helper

Oh my goodness! Tonight we were getting ready for bed and Carter, being the great little helper that he is, offered to change Gage's diaper. (He really LoVeS his brother... although not enough to change a poopy one and quite frankly I'm a bit afraid of the mess that might result, so no worries here, just a little bit wet.) He has done this a couple of times and has done quite well, all the right parts of the diaper in all the right places. I was really impressed the first time he changed it because it was better than our most recent babysitter who somehow managed to diaper Gage up backwards... seems like it would be hard to do. Well tonight Gage was a little bit on the hyper side and was a bit wriggly and gave Carter a run for his money. I wish I would have had the whole thing on video because it was HiLaRiOuS watching Carter struggle to get that diaper on... it either wouldn't cover the front, or the back, or it was too far to one side! I was laughing so hard I was crying (it really was that funny). Well below are pictures of the final product...

Well it withstood the handstand test!

Happy Birthday America!

Although I missed all of my favorite festivities back home in Prescott - the rodeo, the bootrace, frybread, water balloon fights and hanging out on the square - we had a pretty good 4th here in Wisconsin. The fireworks over Lake Michigan on the 3rd were the best fireworks I have ever seen. A big group of people from the neighborhood all got together and rode the city bus into downtown Milwaukee (to avoid the traffic and parking hassles) and watched the fireworks together. There were probably 40-45 of us in all, so much fun! Carter had a blast playing football, catch, tag, building human pyramids, driving all of the older kids crazy, etc while we waited for the show to begin. Gage got super excited about the fireworks although he may have been even more excited about riding the bus. Friday we had an event filled day with a parade (which was VeRy entertaining), 2 BBQ's, and more fireworks. So, although it wasn't our traditional 4th of July and we missed being with all of our family and friends, we had a GrEaT time, experienced something new, and made some new friends along the way! More importantly we were given the opportunity to remember our independence and how grateful we are to be American!

Riding the city bus to the fireworks! We managaed to get a seat - barely. I don't think they could have fit another person on that bus!

The kids and their human pyramid. We got there over 2 hours before the fireworks started, yet there was never a dull moment!

Yes, it really was COLD enough for hoodies (I stole Jared's and wore 2!) It was 50 degrees outside!!

Gage's first 4th of July fireworks (he fell asleep last year). He was very excited... for the first 7 minutes.

Watching the Wauwatosa Parade, there were some pretty amazing stunts!

Gage came up to me, took my glasses and said, "I need these!"