Feeding the Animals

Jens already knows that she likes to eat.  She is still mostly on a dairy diet, but grunts and whines whenever she sees someone else eating in front of her.  Well, DeA tried to eat potatoes in front of Jens and she was not happy.

DeA finally caved in and started sharing her dinner.

Jens seemed pretty happy about her grubs.

She didn't leave DeA and her potatoes alone until she killed the whole bowl.

"Mmm...Potatoes..."

Meanwhile, Ryker has been rocking some unders over the weekend.  He did go pee in the office and in the bathtub, but he seems to be making progress.

Rock talked Mommy into giving him one of his Christmas presents a little early.  I might have to hide the presents from the kids and Mommy.

Oh, one of the downsides of Ryker in unders is that he keeps playing with them.

The boys have been excited about their aunts coming home for Thanksgiving.  They appreciate that they add more players to the Turkey Bowl.

Jens isn't sad in this pic, she just thought that Whit was bringing her more food.  She likes food.

And Now A Real Post

Yes, I know that the last post was a little weak.  I mean, how could anyone be happy with blurry phone pics?  Well, Rock wasn't happy about, I can tell you that.

 Rock took it upon himself to give us great pictures for the blog, so we happily obliged.

 "Fried pork, high caliber hand guns and home made pastries, you hear me?  USA!!  USA!!"

 "Don't tread on or my NY beating Seahawks!"

 "Hey, wanna go shoot rockchucks up at Top Shelf?  I know my Mtn. Dew and I do!"

  Oh, and somehow he thought a samurai sword and banker's vest would cap off his USA! apparel.   

 Even thought he is a full red blooded  gun shooting American doesn't mean that he doesn't have a tender side.  That's the side that offers to watch Jens while Mommy goes to powder her nose. 

 He can even control the PS3 while holding her.  A true renaissance man.

 "Yup, I'm a good big brother" 

 Jens seemed to give her gummy grin of approval...until I found her alone on the edge of the couch about two minutes later.

 I closed the office on Monday for Veteran's Day and enjoyed the morning with DeA and the kids.  DeA invited me to join her workout and the boys showed me how they participate with her. 

 She has been a freaking stud working out after Rock and I leave in the morning.  Rock is also a little stud muffin who pounded out the exercises.

 Ryker came in to help, but he doesn't quite have the technique down yet. 

 And now we ssstttrrrreeeettttccccchhhh.....

  Ryker finally decided to just watch the dancing people working out instead of putting in the effort to copy them.  Besides, chasing down Jens and giving her 'loves' is work enough.

Halloween and Wenatchee

All these pictures are hazy, that's because the camera on my phone is scratched to heck.  But you can still see some of what is going on.  Here is Jens and Huddy just soaking it all in.

Rock wanted to move into the Firehall and live with this talking remote controlled fire truck.

A fireman was sitting up on the real fire truck with a headset and microphone along with the remote control.  Rock monopolized the truck's time until we pulled him away kicking and screaming (literally).

Our second son, Mike Tyson, was a cowboy with a stuffed horse.  You can't see the horse, but you can see his Mike Tyson-ish mark.

Jensley loved being dressed up like an elephant.

Mama Rae and Papa Dale took Rock over to Seattle for the weekend.  That gave us time to shower Ryker with attention, which he seems to crave.  Who would have thought that the second child with a younger sister would feel attention starved?  We took him to Wok About Grill and let him have some fancy Ramen noodles.  He loved them and even used the chopsticks. 

He slept like a little champ with his baby zaguar.  He still carries that thing around with him everywhere, and with his bedhead in the morning it is adorable.

Jensley and Soccer

 Jensley is adorable.   There, I said it.  Now deal with it.

 Even with her scarred head she is still our favorite daughter.

 "Yeah!  You're darn right I am!"

  Um, yeah.  She has been doing this and variations of this waaayyy too much lately.

 She loves watching DeA work out in the mornings and is looking forward to joining her one day.

 Rock's first soccer game was this morning.  Watching 22 preschoolers/kindergartners play soccer is like watching kittens fight over one ball of yarn.  Here we are going through our pregame warm-ups. 

 They start out well, but then the attention spans starts to fade.

 Speaking of attention span: Rock wore his Buzz Lightyear costume as his soccer uniform. Oh, and he followed around this girl named Isabella the whole time. 

 She's in his class and apparently they play at recess together all the time.

 Occasionally he would chase the ball, but he got distracted easily.

 Here he is actually running away from the ball to try and find Isabella.

 In this shot he thought he heard someone offer free tamales.

 Here he is chasing Isabella.  He calls her Captain Isabella because they pretend that one of the playgrounds is a ship.

 Herd of cats chasing the other cats.

 We ended up winning 3-2, but the second leg is next Saturday at 11:30.

Trip to Seattle

DeA realized that we haven't taken the kids on a family trip with just the boys and us.  So we loaded them up in the car and took them to Seattle and the zoo.  We started Friday night off by getting the kids in the mood for animals by taking them to Rainforest Cafe.  

 Ryker wasn't sure about all the animals.  He was especially leery of the gorillas and thought that they were going to come get him.

 Rock used to be scared of the animals, but this time was cool as a cucumber.

  Ryker's chocolate milk was his soothing drink and gorilla-repellent.

DeA and Jensley enjoyed the atmosphere and laughing at scaredy pants Ryker. 

Jensley also loved playing with the napkins and salt shakers on the table. 

 Rainforest has a gift shop to try and get you to buy overpriced shwag.  I told the boys that they weren't getting anything, but then Ryker saw a baby Jaguar like the one on Diego...and you try telling a kid that is hugging a toy like this that he can't have it:

 Baby Zaguar has been his best friend since then, and he is constantly hugging and snuggling him.

 Look at him.  How cute is that?

 We got a smoking deal on a good hotel at Southcenter that was a suite.  Jensley liked having the boys in one room while she was in the other.

"Space, I like space" 

 Ryker cuddling with Baby Zaguar.  It was a theme during this trip.

 The zoo was misty and rainy at times but lots of fun.

 Jensley was all bundled up in her stroller and had loving brothers that wanted to push her everywhere.

 The attention span of these boys was not great.  They would get to see these cool animals and then say "okay, let's keep going!".

 They saw the giraffe and then started leaving before we snapped a pic.  So we forced Ryker back to the pen and made him pose.

 Ryker hated the gorillas at Rainforest but loved them at the zoo. This old gorilla just sat and watched the people walk by.  Occasionally he drifted to sleep but then the head snapped like a high priest in church and he'd wake up.

 Ryker really enjoyed taunting the adult jaguars with their baby jaguar.  They didn't seem to notice, but he knows that they know that he knows that he made them mad.

 So remember how I said that the boys ran past every exhibit?  Yeah, except for the blue frog display. They wanted to stay there forever.

 Our little monsters.

 For lunch we stopped at the food court and enjoyed some ostrich nachos with elephant milk cheese. Delicious.

 Rock likes the cartons of milk like the one in this picture.  He calls is 'house milk' because it looks like a little house.

 Snug as Benz in a rug.

 Snuggling with baby Zaguar.  Even Rock knows that it is awesome.

 We came back to the hotel and Jensley again enjoyed her space. After the zoo we took the boys swimming for a couple of hours and then to Chuckie Cheese's for a few hours.  They didn't make it out of the parking lot.  They seemed to have a blast, but I don't know how soon DeA and I will feel up to taking them on a trip like that again.