Adventurers

A couple quick videos of the boys enjoying a few days on the lake with their cousins. I got Colin and Liam's first attempt at the solo kayak. By the next day they were complete pros. Colin, in particular, was fantastic at it and really loved it. We just may have to get him one!! Eamon went out on the paddle boat with me a bunch, but stuck to more land-lubber activities. Many more photos to come.

Home away from home.

Now that the sun has FINALLY decided to come out (sometimes), the boys are spending every free minute in the pool. Nothing tires them out like a day of swimming so we're all happy at the end of the day!


Colin is now completely floatie free and, as you can see, jumps off the diving board and swims clear to the shallow end with nary a helper. As long as he has his trusty goggles on!

Liam can take his life jacket off in the shallow end, but always looks like he's drowning even when he's not! Plus, he prefers to be in the deep end with the big kids!

Eamon hates being submerged this year for some reason and would rather just sit on the steps and kick and splash everyone else. But mostly he likes to spend the day getting grimy in the sandbox. Here, he was thrilled that Uncle Mikey's tidal waves + 11 kids in the pool caused an overflow and gave him a river to use in his construction zone!

Liam. That says it all.

Frequent Flyer Miles

Yet another night spent in the ER for us! I innocently took Colin and Eamon for icecream after dinner (Liam had fallen asleep already and didn't deserve a treat yesterday anyway as he cut up our feather comforter leaving mountains of down feathers all over our bedroom. He also carved up his shorts with the scissors while he was at it...we have no idea why). At any rate, Eamon fell straight back off the picnic table onto the pavement, producing quite the "crack!!" when his skull hit. We happened to be sitting next to an EMT who was desperate to bring us in the ambulance but I knew I could get him there faster myself. He ended up being fine, never lost consciousness and just suffered from a big hard egg on the back of his head! He enjoyed his outing to the ER, as usual, and entertained everyone with his antics. He never fell asleep once until midnight when they finally released us. They were happy that he wasn't groggy but keeping him busy for the four hours of observation in our room proved to be fun for Mom. Here he is making crafts in his room and showing off his silliness for the doctors who would come in to check him. Everytime a new doctor came to ask what happened, he would make a fist, smack himself on the head as hard as he could and yell out "Bonk head!" over and over with glee. Crazy kid, that one! We wish they would hand out extra points for frequent visitors or something, we assume we'll continue to show up a lot with three boys in the family!

Happy Fourth of July!

We have been celebrating our freedom from the oppression of rain! Finally a weekend with perfect weather. We managed to swim, eat, swim, eat some more, go to the Farmer's Market (where Eamon stole a handful of green beans), buy some flowers to liven up our trashy yard, finally do some MUCH-NEEDED yard work, swim some more, and just generally enjoy the long weekend. Here are the boys looking dapper for a BBQ on the 4th, in the ONLY moment I could get them without their swimsuits on! Liam looks like his usual nut-ball self, but Colin and Eamon, in particular, look deceptively sweet! Colin, not surprisingly, is very into flags this year and learning all about "The United States of America" which he must say in its entirety everytime he mentions the 4th at all. Now he wants to know why people still have flags up "if the party was yesterday?" Apparently, we haven't been doing our civic, patriotic duty with them and they want to know why we don't have a huge flagpole in our yard...

You know it's summer when...

the boys get shorn like sheep in the yard. The grass looks like it's been littered with the remains of a herd of fuzzy llamas. Colin and Eamon look fairly normal, right? Liam's "before" hair won't even fit in the photo, it's just insane. Since he was born, he's just had perpetual "bed head". Fortunately, he loves to be "bald" and begs me to buzz his head, so he is now thrilled. Colin is grieving his lost locks, however, and can't wait until fall when we let him grow it back. But for the summer, at least, we are celebrating our freedom from the usual hordes of haircuts, bushels of brushes and gallons of gel they normally require as normal "maintenance"!