The Little Gym

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to sign Tyler up for a free introductory class at The Little Gym.  It’s a place that has various gymnastic-style classes for kids of all ages.  Tina had Josh in these classes from the time he was really young, and they always enjoyed them.

We haven’t put Tyler into any sports or any type of classroom settings where he has a teacher that he has to listen to.  This may prove to have been a mistake on our part.  I think I’ve talked before about how when he is in a new situation, he gets really quiet and shy.  Today was not different, and was actually quite a bit more than that.  He was excited to go in at first, but about 5 minutes later, his face got red and it was clear that he was trying to hold in his tears.  This didn’t last long though, and a few seconds later he erupted into tears and came running for the door.  There were only two other kids and the teacher and they had the whole room to themselves.  He was not interested in the little songs and stretches they did during the warm-up, and he just didn’t want to be out there!  He cried for awhile, and then Dave convinced him to go back in and give it a try.  He did, but it only lasted about a minute and a half before the water works started again. He spent about 40 minutes of the 60 minute class doing this (and crying) and begging us to go in there with him.

I have to mention that I am so glad that Dave was there with me.  He talked to Tyler about why he should go in there and have fun, and we told him that when he starts school, he’ll have to get used to being in a class with other kids and a teacher.  He couldn’t get over his want for one of us to be in there with him.  Finally, Dave gave in and said he’d go in and sit at the back of the room and watch.  It took a few more minutes for him to ease into it, but of course, once he did, he had a great time. 

The other hard part was keeping Ava from opening the door and running into the gym area.  She certainly wasn’t scared to go in!  That was another reason I couldn’t have done this without Dave.  He took care of Tyler while I kept Ava busy, and out of trouble.  After class was over, Ava went in and climbed around a little bit, and loved it.  At this point, Tyler loved it too!

They said we could come back for another free trial day and see if Tyler does better next time, so we’ll probably do that.  It’s sort of expensive, but might make for a fun summer activity.  Although, I wish both kids could be in the same class together.  As it stands, there aren’t many evening classes, and Ava’s age group (which is with a parent) and Tyler’s are on different nights.  I don’t think we’d want to drive out there two nights a week.

What we learned is that we have approximately 3 months to get Tyler into as many programs and group activities as possible to help his transition to school be much more smooth and much less traumatic! 

*Don’t mind the crummy pictures…I only had my phone.

Baby Brinley—a preview

I had a photo shoot with little Baby Brinley today.  She is about 3 weeks old, and was a little angel!  She was a very good baby, but just didn’t want to go to sleep and miss out on any of the fun.  I have lots of pictures to get through, but for now, enjoy a sneak peak of sweet Brinley.

Family Camping Trip, part 2

Here we are again with part 2 of our camping trip.  We went for a hike over to “Big Rock” and on the way, the kids found a collection of deer bones.  They tired to ‘put the deer back together,’ but with no head (or many other bones) they didn’t have much success. 

Have I mentioned how dirty the kids got?  Aside from the usual outdoor dirt, there were lots of burnt logs that the kids kept picking up.  What better to do when you’re in the woods then to get dirty?

Fantastically, filthy dirty.

I mentioned before that I like going camping with the Dairmans because they think of everything.  They brought Dutch Oven Stew and we put it in some coals in the ground right when we got to camp.  It was delicious! 

Much time was spent exploring the woods around the area. 

After cooking hot dogs on the grill and eating our Dutch Oven Stew (and after that, Dutch Oven Peach Cobbler), we had some S’mores by the fire.  How good does this look?!

After the campfire, it was time to get these kids to bed.  Tyler decided he wanted to sleep in the motorhome with Hailey, and there was room for him, so he lucked out and kept warm all night.  Dave, Ava and I toughed it out in the tent with the help of Fran’s tent heater.  Ava slept on the air mattress with us rather than in her Pack and Play crib.  She did not want to go to sleep though. She spent a good 15 minutes crying before Uncle Joe saved the day.  He brought us Talon’s DS (hand held video game) that had some movies on it.  He put a Yogi Bear cartoon on, and Ava calmed down right away.  After watching for about 10 minutes, she was asleep.  Sometimes, I guess you just need to watch a little TV to relax.  Who knows how long she would have cried (and kept the rest of camp awake)?  Thanks Joe!  I can’t say that I slept very well, but Ava seemed to sleep ok.  That is, until about 6:00 am when she decided it was time to be awake.  This was also time to turn the tent heater back on because it had gotten pretty cold in there!  Luckily, we were able to get her to go back to sleep until about 8 am, which was when Tyler creeped back into the tent. He slept great in the camper, lucky guy.
In the morning, we had breakfast and the kids played around camp.  Then we had lunch (I told you we had a ton of food!) and the kids played some more. 

Kathy and Joe had a bubble machine that the put on top of the camper.  The kids had fun playing in the huge cloud of bubbles.

Dave had brought Tyler’s baseball bat and balls, so he and Talon took turn doing batting practice with Dave and Grandpa Ed.  Here are 3 generations of Horihan boys playing baseball.

And here we are just before we climbed in the car to head back to civilization.

It was a quick 24 hour camping excursion, but it was just about right.  Thanks so much to Kathy and Joe for all they did to pull the trip together (all that food!), and for letting us drive their vehicle up north.  We are looking forward to doing it again a few times this summer and for years to come. Hopefully Jen and the kids can come one of these times, and Tina and her family will be back from Germany for any trips after August.  I can just see that this will become a favorite family activity that the kids will always remember, as family camping trips are for so many of us. It’s part of growing up!
This album has all of my pictures from our trip…!  Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday

Family Camping, Part 1

I’ve decided I have way too many fun pictures from our camping trip, that this will take a couple of posts, plus a whole Picasa album before you see them all. 

We headed up north, about a half hour past Payson, Arizona to an out of the way area north of Strawberry for our overnight camping excursion with Kathy & Joe and their kids.  Joe’s sister, Fran and her husband camp in this particular location several times a year, and they were nice enough to let us crash their spot for the night.  It always helps to go with experience campers when you’re new to it.  They had all kinds of things we wouldn’t even think we would need!  They even had a bathroom tent.  Luckily, they also had a tent heater, which saved us (Dave, Ava, and I) from freezing out butts off in our tent that night.  That will be a necessary purchase before our next camping trip.

We got to the site at about 2:30 on Saturday afternoon.  Dave and his dad, with the help of the kids, got our tent set up right away. Kathy and Joe drove his family’s motor home up, so they were all sleeping in there overnight.  I have to say, it sure is nice to have a motor home when you’re camping!  Our family might need to think of investing in one of those if we are going to make this a regular occurrence.

The running joke for the weekend was that we had enough food to be in the woods for 4 days.  Here are the kids enjoying their first snack of cookies.  We really had a lot of food.  Really.  I like camping with the Dairmans….they think of everything!

Ok, so remember the picture Tyler drew of “Big Rock,” well, here it is!  The kids had fun climbing on the rocks, and were proud of themselves when they made it to the top.

Tyler and Hailey are really good buddies.  They get along so well! Now that Hailey has been in Kindergarten all year, they don’t get to play together as often, but we should really try to get them together more. They had a great time together on our camping trip.

Here they are picking flowers in the forest.  So sweet!

Ava may appear to be having a good time, but she wasn’t too sure about this whole camping experience, at first.

Shortly after we arrived and got camp set up, she was tugging on the car door saying “go now?  Go home now?”

Fortunately though, she came around eventually and had a good time.  She had her moments throughout the trip, but I think she did pretty well for her first time.

Tyler got to shoot his first BB gun on this trip, so that was exciting for him.  This other boy, Tanner, was the son of one of the other couples camping with Fran.  You could definitely tell he was an outdoor boy!  This was not his first camping trip. He was nice enough to let Tyler and Talon shoot his BB gun, and helped them aim into the pond.

There was a huge, fallen pine tree that the kids had fun playing on too.  Here are a few pictures of our kids climbing the tree.

                        

There are many more pictures from our trip.  I will post more later, as well as a Picasa album of them all.  We really had a nice time, and I look forward to many more camping trips with family and friends!  This was a practice run to see what kind of things we will need to start collecting, and to get the kids used to the idea of sleeping in the woods.  Thanks to the Dairmans and to Fran for helping make it so much fun!

Our first camping trip, by Tyler

We took our first family camping trip over the weekend.  We went up on Saturday and came home again on Sunday.  At first I was concerned that it was an awful lot of work and driving to stay for only 24 hours, but for a first trip, I think it was just about right.  I’ll tell you much more about it soon, but Tyler beat me to the punch.  He wrote a little book about our camping trip before I even had a chance to download all of my pictures!  His pictures tell just as good of a story about our experience as mine will!  I asked Tyler to explain what was happening in each of these pictures and will share that with you.

This picture is of Tyler (on the left) and his cousin Hailey (on the right) chopping wood with their axes (the blue things).  Clearly, his story is a bit embellished, as this didn’t actually happen.  They may have pretended that was what they were doing, but no children handled axes during our trip—they may have asked to, but they didn’t.

This one is my favorite, and once I explain it, you will think it is pretty awesome too.  So just behind the area where we camped was a large rock outcropping that the kids named “Big Rock.”  This was different from “Little Rock,” which was a smaller rock hill nearby.  Talon, Hailey, Tyler and I went over to Big Rock along with Talon and Hailey’s Aunt Fran (who was nice enough to let us all crash their camping trip).  The kids had a good time climbing to the top of Big Rock, we took some pictures and I worried about one of them slipping off the top of the rock relaxed while they played. Talon was at the very top and he shot off his Beyblade toy thingy.  I’m not really sure what it is, or the point of it, but it’s a toy that he can shoot off and it spins or something.  I really don’t know.  Anyway, he shot it off from the top of Big Rock and it went flying down into some crevice.  We looked around for it for awhile, but then decided it was a lost cause.  Apparently that is what Tyler remembers from our first trip to Big Rock, and he depicted it in the picture below.  See Talon and his Beyblade at the top?  The person just below Talon is “Talon’s Aunt Fran [with her hand up to her mouth to yell to him] saying be careful!” That’s Tyler just below, and of course, that’s the little blue Beyblade right in the middle of the pile of rocks.  Pretty good, huh?  When you see pictures of this rock, you’ll see how good this drawing really is!

Do you see what’s going on in this picture?  That is Tyler cooking hot dogs on the fire.  Again, this didn’t actually happen, but he helped.  You’ll see that the sun was just starting to go down and the moon was coming up.  Tyler recently saw the moon in a telescope and has started adding craters to his moons (and moon rays, apparently).

Here we are roasting marshmallows around the fire.  This is pretty accurate too, because our sticks had two prongs on them for double the marshmallow fun.  You’ll see that the crater filled moon was out by this time. 

After we were done eating our S’mores, we all sat around the fire trying to keep the kids from falling in enjoying each other’s company.  It’s funny that he drew so many chairs around the fire because we really did have way too  many camp chairs for the number of people there.  He drew the moon again, but this time he said we couldn’t see the craters.  He also drew Earth "because Earth is in space too."  The concept of us not being able to see Earth in space is a little difficult for him to grasp right now, but nice drawing of Earth, huh?

This last picture is of our tent with some fireworks above it.  He said this was a picture of our tent when he was changing into his pajamas just before he went to sleep in the camper.  Not really sure where the fireworks came from…again, just a bit of embellishment.  Maybe he had so much fun on this camping trip that it was like fireworks bursting above.  He really did have a good time!

The end.

Much more to come from our trip.  I have a few pictures to get through before I can post those, so for now, this gives you an idea of Tyler’s interpretation of the trip.  He said he’s going to work on another book for the second day.   Thanks to Grandma Claire for helping him put this fun book together!

That look

Please take a look at her face in this collection of pictures.  I’m going to compare this to looks she gives me in about 12 years.  Sometimes, she can be so serious! 

Come to think of it, let’s do a side by side comparison, shall we?  I wonder where she got the serious face and the scrunchy little eyebrows?  Any guesses?

      

I think these two little girls just may be related.  What do you think?

Peach Festival

Last weekend was the Schnepf Farms Peach Festival.  This may look familiar to some of you, as we went last year too.  Since Mom was in town, I thought it would be something fun we could do together.  We didn’t get out there until about 9:45, and by then, half of the east valley was there.  It was crazy busy!  We went to the food line and it would have been at least an hour wait for the peach pancakes.  Instead, we went over to the playground hoping to wait out the lines a bit.  Grandma and Ava took a look at the peacocks, while Tyler…..

..played on the wooden train that he has been asking about for the past two months.  Something reminded him of it awhile back, and he has been talking about it ever since. 

Ava’s favorite thing to do at the park lately is swinging.  She loves to swing on the big girl swings and get pushed underdog, or as she says it “unhdadah.”

The kids have so much fun with Grandma Jean!  Ava even got much better at saying “grandma” while she was here.  At the beginning of the trip, she said “wah wah dee” for Grandma Jean.  By the end, she was saying “gwamma,” or more accurately screaming “gwamma” from her crib at 7:30 in the morning.  The one morning, she woke up the whole house yelling for Grandma, and when I went in her room I couldn’t help but laugh at her.  I said “who are you yelling for?” She looked at me with a straight face and said “gwamma” in a tone that indicated she thought I was a dummy for not knowing who she was yelling at.  I had a glimpse of my little girl in about 12 years, when she thinks I’m the biggest dork she knows.  It starts too soon!

The petting zoo had goats, sheep, a cow, donkey, chickens, a ram, and a few other things.  You could go in the goat’s pen and feed them, but Ava wasn’t too excited about getting that close.

Dave and the kids got to ride on the train while Mom and I waited in line forever to buy some salsa and other peach goodies.  Did I mention how crowded it was?  They ran out of food and the lines were ridiculous.  It was almost as if they hadn’t planned for that big of crowd.

We decided not to wait in line for the peach pancakes (so never even had anything peachy the whole day), and opted for the shorter fry bread taco line.  Tyler got to have a snow cone in a baseball hat, and had to be goofy, of course.

After we had a bite to eat, we decided to walk over to the peach orchards.  By this time, we were all pretty hot and tired, so weren’t sure how long we’d last.  When we got there, the line to pay for peaches was really long (surprise, surprise), so I decided to get in line with Ava while everyone else picked peaches.  When they got back to me with a flat full of green, hard peaches, we decided against staying in line to pay.  We set the box down on a table and walked out of the orchard.  Apparently the peaches weren’t quite ripe, so we will just wait until they are and buy them at a store…and we won’t even have to wait in line! 

It was a fun morning, but I don’t think I’ll go back there again during any of their big “festivals.”  I’d rather go pick peaches on some random Thursday during peach season—which is also an option—rather than fight those crowds again.  I sure love peach season though..bring on the sweet, juicy deliciousness!