Nicknames

Growing up I was never big on nicknames, some people called me Meg, Megs, or Meggers.  None of them ever really stuck.  I have always been Megan.  Daddy never really had a nickname either.  His given name was his name, end of story.  In our marriage we would rarely call each other anything other than our names or "Mommy" or "Daddy" for the kids.  Yet, somehow when it comes to our children there are not enough endearments.  Here is a list of all the endearments we have used for our kids throughout the years.

Sweetie

Sunshine

Munchkin

Monster

Stinker

Lovey

Lovebug

Bug

Sweetheart

Beautiful

Gummy Bear

Bugger

Buddy/Bud

Sweetie pie

Stud

Raccoon

Pixie
Gorgeous

Geez, I know there are more and yet somehow I'm drawing a blank.  This will have to be an evolving post!

Anyways, back to the point.  Even in all of that they still do not have what I would classify as "nicknames".  Kayda is Kayda, Dillon is Dillon.  But now there is a new development.  More and more frequently I am hearing Kayda and Dillon refer to Carson as "cars" not the word cars but carsss with the actual s sound, not the z sound of cars.  Daddy and I still call him Carson, but Kayda and Dillon are well on their way to giving him an actual nickname!

Thoughts from Papa H:

"When they were growing up, I used to call Brian “Bub” or Bubber”.  Not sure where that came from, but I was pretty consistent with it.

Even today I’ll occasionally catch myself wanting to call Brian “Bubber”.  And that’s always my first inclination with Dillon.

Now, I tend to call all my Grandsons, “Bud”, and my Granddaughters “Sweetie” or ”Sweets”.  But that’s more a reflection of an aging memory than a tradition!!!  J "

It's a Zipper Jama Kind of Day

Today is a very wet day.  The rain is coming down in big fat drops and it looks awfully gloomy outside.  It's the kind of day that you never really feel warm because everything looks cold!  Since no one has school today the kids are all in their zipper jamas!  I love that Kayda and Dillon still like to wear theirs!!!  

Bike Rides Galore!

Thursday was a beautiful, busy day for us.  I got Dillon onto the bus for preschool (it just started, it's an hour ride to school but he still wants to take it, I offered to drive him instead).  Then Kayda, Carson and I got dressed and ran off for lunch with Grandma and Papa H and Daddy.  We had a nice relaxing lunch and on the way home Kayda started talking about how she wanted to go on a bike ride to her school.  She asked if we could ride our bikes to pick up Dillon.  So as soon as I got home I was trying to find a way to transport Dillon's bike with us to school.

   I quickly adjusted the seat to a higher position and then tied it onto the back of the bike trailer.  It worked out quite well!  I threw in his helmet, some coats just in case the rain started and off we went!

 The wonderful thing about our new town is that riding our bikes to town, or to the kids' schools, the library, the grocery store, the big park, etc, does not require any strenuous riding so the kids can ride it no problem. It also doesn't require us to be on any roads.  There are sidewalks through our whole neighborhood and then an old rail road turned trail we can take from there!  Kayda wants to ride her bike ALL the time now!

We got to Dillon's school in 15 minutes and got to play on the playground for a little while.  He was even out playing with us for a while until they had to go in for snack.

 Then we headed around the building and played on Kayda's school playground for a while.  She has been wanting to show me that she can go all the way across the monkey bars even though they go up in the middle!

 Dillon hasn't figured out how to go anywhere with the rings... Doesn't stop him from wanting to play on them though!

 Finally the buses left, the parking lot emptied out and Kayda decided she was "getting worn out and wanted to head home."  I untied Dillon's bike and it was too tall.  His toes could just barely touch the ground and he refused to ride it.  Of course I didn't bring the tool with me to adjust it again so I ended up towing Carson, Dillon and Dillon's bike back home.  I'm glad the trail's flat!

 Once we were back at home the kids didn't want to stop playing outside so out came the scooters and such.

 They kept playing until Daddy got home.  We ate dinner and guess what, they wanted to go on another bike ride.  So back out we went to explore the trail going to OTHER direction.

 Hank proved to be quite the cycling dog.  Maybe I should buy him a harness...

 I was worried about Hank making it back home so we stopped not too far up the trail and walked to the bridge.  Of course all the kids were fascinated with the river.

 Until a girl came riding through with her horse....  She was kind enough to let the kids pet her horse.

Dillon wasn't quite ready for them to go so he ran alongside them for a short while. 

 Then we headed back home to bedtime!  I'm glad we took advantage of the clear weather.  Today it started pouring and it's supposed to continue all weekend.

 And this is just random.  Isn't he sweet all cuddled in with the many blankets looking at a photo book! He points out his Grandmas and Papas now!

Down by the River

*Apologies for the smudges in the pictures, it is inevitable that Carson gets his little fingers on the lens and I don't notice*

Last month we all wandered around searching for the "river access" our city claims is just off our neighborhood.  We didn't find any clear access points or trails for that matter but there were some "popular use" trails, by that I mean trails you can tell a lot of people have used, even if it isn't supposed to be a trail.  Since today was so beautiful the kids and I wandered over and spent an hour and a half there.  Kayda and Dillon would happily have stayed there longer but Carson wanted to go.

This is the meandering little branch of the river we decided to play in.  It was one of the only sandy spots there.

Notice the main river on the right?  The kids and I had a very frank discussion about the dangers of playing near that part of the river.  

The nice part of all of this is there is 10-15 feet of rocky walking between the play place and the actual river. Since it is impossible to run on that type of rock I have plenty of time to catch whatever kiddo may need catching.  Though that was never necessary.  My kids are awesome like that.

He hated walking on the rocks!

It worked out rather nicely that there was a sandy path between our play spot and this section of river.  I decided they were allowed to throw rocks from this very obvious place ONLY.  The reason, it is the only place along there that there is any kind of shallow water, so if they stumble they're not straight out into the deep water being swept away.  Can you tell what I was thinking about the whole time?

Another section of the "branch"

Carson kept pointing at the river going "Wow"

Carson quickly developed a

 love of throwing rocks. 

Get a mouthful of water...

Spit it out...

Kayda found these.  She says they're frog eggs. I'm sure they were eggs, I'm just not positive what kind.   They were EVERYWHERE!

"Pane!" a.k.a. plane.

Carson was determined to pick up this rock.  It was probably half the size of his head, I'm sure he would've succeeded too, if there weren't other rocks around it.

Not sure why they were stacking the rocks.  They would wash them, call them shiny then pile them on the log.

Kayda was taking our wonderfully sandy spot and burying rocks in it.  I made her move them back out, I would like my sandy spot to STAY sandy!

That is one strong boy!  What you can't see is that Kayda has one just as big!  She just never let me take a picture!

The view from our play place. A little hazy but still beautiful.  I didn't much care about this mountain until we moved here and now I see it all the time!  Suddenly I love it. 

Hello frog!

On the way out I saw a tiny garter snake slither under the log we stepped on to get on the trail.  Dillon was not happy and acted scared.  So we spent a good while talking about how we don't have poisonous snakes where we live.  We just have these friendly little snakes.  We talked about how Papa G used to catch them and let Mommy hold them, how he had caught them in a bucket for the kids to see before.  On the way back I saw another one, bigger, right by that log again.  So then we were on the look out.  We saw this on on the path back.  

Then Dillon spotted this one.  Kayda and I weren't even paying attention but Dillon has an eye for animals I guess and spotted it right away.  He was very proud and went on to tell me how he doesn't like big snakes but he likes little snakes!

I can see us spending many a summer day here!  I need to get my captains chair though so I can set up guard at the end of the play place and not have rocks digging into my bum!!!  I'm so excited that we have water within walking distance!