Little Mr. Peanut AND Busch Gardens Rides for Henry

At this year's 2011 PPP Festival in Surry (Pork, Peanut, and Pine) Jake was honored with the title of Little Mr. Peanut. This title is given to a little boy ages 5-7 who lives in Surry and his part of a farming family. Jake was asked to hold the title this year, and it was alot of fun. His photo and bio were in 2 different papers, which was his favorite thing of all. He felt famous :) He got crowned on the big stage at the festival and got to ride in a convertible in the festival parade :) He got alot of attention from spectators who waved, took his photo, oooed and aaaed. One lady even asked if I would take a photo with her and Jake - she was a fan - sooooo cute! Little Miss Peanut was a sweet little girl named Amanda Barlow who was 7 :)

Jake went to the dentist this week and has 2 cavities! So we go to a pediatric dentist next week and we shall see what those visits hold for us.....cringe :( On a more cheerful note, he has learned how to play Tic Tac Toe and really enjoys it. He weighs 63 pounds now.

Henry has been talking alot and today, counted to 22 (but did skip 14, 19, and 21) - pretty good though, I thought :) We went to Busch Gardens last week and Henry got to ride several rides for the 1st time, such as the swings, airplanes, and his favorite, the bumper cars (cumper cars, as he called them)- He had soooo much fun! We watched a Pirate 3D movie that scared him to death. Had to take off the 3D glasses but that still didn't help him too much when the big spider came on the screen or the scary bats looked like they were flying at us. He especially didn't like it when the water shot at us from the back of the seats...Henry doesn't like getting squirted with water or getting dirty...he is different from Jake in that regards :)

a first for mommy

Yesterday, I got to take Jake to a movie - the first time I have gotten to go with him :) He has been to several before with his grandparents (Poppy and Sassy took him to his first movie) - But he was so cute and so excited and I loved looking over at him and watching his cute, little face. He enjoyed the popcorn (we bought waaay too much) and the soda and also played video games afterward. My Mom went too and the 3 of us sat in a photo booth and took pictures. Jake was too short so I tried to lift him higher and that made him mad. So he is not even in the last photo of the series because he had left the booth - lol. Oh, the movie we saw was Cars 2 :)

Henry tells us now when he poops and asks us to "change me" - he has started to pretend to talk on the telephone and today called JC and his conversation went like this..."Hi JC how are you good yeh...Love you byeeeeeeee" - it was so cute! At bedtime we likes me to sing what he coined "Poppy's song", which is a song my Mom use to sing to me when I was little. It goes "By a baby bumpkin, Poppy's going hunting, to get a little rabbit skin to wrap our baby Henry in" - I remember when I sang it to Jake when he was little, he got sad and cried. But Henry likes it, because it is about Poppy. And we try to talk about Poppy alot every day :)

Jake weighed 63 pounds today. And Henry is starting to drink a little plain milk out of a cup AND he decided today that he actually likes ketchup after all :)

July 4th

Jake and Henry had a good 4th of July. We watched our county's fireworks last night and went out on our boat, too :) We also did our own small fireworks in our yard, which Jake really enjoyed. Henry, on the other hand, did not like the loud noises that they made. He got very scared and wanted me to hold him and take him back inside. Today, we were going to go watch fireworks on the river from our boat, but bad storms are passing through. So we are waiting for them to pass so we can light more of our own fireworks out in the yard :)

Henry asked today if we could get a ladder and go see Poppy. He knows that Poppy is in Heaven and know that Heaven is up in the sky. I wish we could go see him, Henry! At Poppy's Shack, we found tadpoles in an old pot Dad had that he used to keep goldfish in. We caught 9 and brought them home to raise into frogs - then we will take them back to the Shack to release them :)

The boys were also excited because we have had 2 rabbits in our yard recently, which is a new thing for us. They took carrots out and left them in the yard for them :) We will go check and see if they ate them, soon :)

1st tropy

Jake's TBall All-Star team won 2nd place in their tournament and Jake received his very first TROPHY! He has wanted a trophy for a loooong time. In fact, he kept one of Steve's old baseball trophies in his room, and found one of my old science fair trophies. But now he has his very own and he loves it :)