Church time

Here's Gavin in his cute little church clothes. He's recently become aware of some funny things. When I held up two shirts the other day and asked him which one he wanted to wear--one of them being a button-down shirt like the one in this picture--he said, "Going to church." How funny and true that he's come to associate button-down shirts exclusively with church! He's also become aware that church happens on Sunday. If we tell him what day it is and ask him, "What do we do on Sunday's?" he replies, "Go to church." He's a bright one, I tell ya what.

Pool Day at the Bay Part 2

Here we've stripped Gavin of the water wings and are recovering in the sun with some lunch.
Brent has a special appreciation of this picture: two bellies!
Our son could live on "ning cheese," we're fairly confident. What a great picture that Brent captured of Gavin lettin' it all hang out, literally.
What a precious piggy!
Can you see his little purple lips?

Pool Day at the Bay Part 1

We recently took Gavin to the Bay--a fun local water park near our house--for the first time with both Daddy and the water wings. Amazing, how much help both of those things are at a water park with slides and dumping things and total chaos happening all around you.
Isn't this a great picture of Daddy and Son going down the big slide together?!
Gavin insisted--much to my dismay--on going down this straight vertical slide of terror, with Mommy of course. Can you see how carefully I'm trying to arrange our seating position?
That is a genuine look of fright on my face because we went SO fast down that slide and these cute little girls just warned me minutes before, "Be careful with him at the end. Hold him up at the bottom cuz there's a big drop-off." Oh, good! I'm so glad that Gavin chose Pregnant Mommy to accompany him on this one!
Here's how we both looked immediately after surviving the vertical slide experience. Frightful, I know.

Nice day at the beach...?

You'll soon understand why we have no pictures for this posting. One of our most recent attempts at a weekend adventure was going to the Boulder Reservoir with some free guest passes from Brent's work. The day looked a little cloudy, and we knew that there was potential for rain, but we were hopeful that the storm wouldn't happen 'til sometime in the afternoon. We loaded up the car with every swimming and sand castle apparatus in our possession and headed to the res. (Keep in mind that it's a 30 minute drive from our house.) We commented about how empty the parking lot was when we arrived, and we noticed the dark clouds...but, again, we were hopeful that we'd get a couple of viable sand castles and maybe even some "beach time" out of the deal. No sooner than we had spread out the towels on the sand--and by that I mean maybe sixty seconds--did the rain start pelting us and the wind kick up like we were in the eye of a hurricane. Brent, bless his heart, overturned one quick bucket of sand to show Gavin the general idea of how one makes a sand castle (one of our main goals of the day) and then started hurriedly gathering up all of our stuff. And Gavin, bless his little heart, was SO confused. I'm sure, without remembering exactly, that his next words were, "Mama carry you." So I swept Gavin into my arms and covered him with his towel, Brent threw everything else in our multiple bags (because where, by the way, can even a family of three go anymore without having at least two bags to tote?!) and we all ran--and I do mean hoofed it--to the car, as we simultaneously watched the only other kids there exit the water and run for shelter as fast as their little feet could carry them. Brent and I cracked up the whole way back to the car, and Gavin did, in the end, see this as a legitimate--though presumably also rather confusing and brief--adventure. Hey, at least we didn't pay for our one minute at the beach! And our Plan B turned out to be quite fun too: the indoor swimming pool at our local rec center. We took turns going down the slides with Gavin, and Brent finally got to see his son in our new favorite invention: water wings. What a God send!

Tiny Town Part 2

Apart from actually riding the train, Gavin's next favorite part is handing the conductor the ticket. I think that that's what Brent was trying to catch in this picture, but Gavin may have already surrendered the tickets by the time it was taken.
I'm so glad that we've been trying to get out on adventures with our son lately. It makes for fun memories for all!
The drivers are all volunteers. What a neat service!
That's Gavin's head poking out of the tiny house. The ones he could get in were definitely more fun for him.
He's gotten SO much better about keeping his hat on to protect him from the sun. Way to go, Buddy!

Tiny Town Part 1

A couple of weekends ago we took Gavin to Tiny Town in Morison/Evergreen/45 minutes from our house. (Pick whichever of those locale descriptions makes the most sense to you because I'm still a little unclear as to where, exactly, it was.) Anyway, the "town" is comprised of about a hundred little houses that may be anything from a tiny fire station to a little dress shop. They're fun to look into, and the original--some of which are built up on the hillside--were built in 1919. But the main draw for Gavin was, of course, the train! They tout having the tiniest coal-powered steam engine in the country (I think that sounds right), and Gavin loved watching it and riding on it.



The most unexpected and fun part of our little trip to Tiny Town was running into Chris and Megan Langer and their family in the first ten minutes upon our arrival! What a funny coincidence that we all chose that day to check it out and hadn't even talked about it in advance. It was fun to look at the houses and ride the train together. Great to see you guys, as always!

Visit from Grandpa Koel and Uncle Adam

Toward the end of July we had a fun visit from Grandpa Koel and Uncle Adam on their way back from Kansas. In these pictures everyone is talking to Emily (Brent's step-mom) on Skype.
I can't believe how big Gavin looks!
It was fun to see you guys! You're always welcome here, and hopefully next time we'll have some more time together to play and go do something fun.

Cruising the neighborhood

This is Gavin on his little Strider bike. It has no pedals and is designed to teach kids to balance before they learn to ride a "real" bike. I guess lots of kids that start on one of these can skip the training wheels step altogether.
Gavin is getting really good at riding his little bike, and he likes to put on his helmet with flames. We make lots of stops for "sleeping worms" and the like while we're out on rides. It's gotten so much more fun for us now, too, since we don't just push him with his feet up.
Sometimes you don't know what you're in for when you set out on a little neighborhood cruise, even when you make the end of the block the final destination. I do much better with this activity when it's not 9o degrees out and all we're doing is shade-hopping. It's a lot of fun for me to see Gavin getting so excited about his daddy's favorite hobby.

Just catching up with old friends...

Doesn't our son look like a little pro on the phone? I have to say that it's pretty darn precious every time Gavin wants to talk to Daddy. I love hearing Gavin's side of the conversation: "...yes, yep, ning cheese, truck, luf you, all done..." before he folds the phone in half and hangs up on Daddy...pretty much every time. Sorry, Babe :)

Aunt Jaan's visit...

Back in July (I'm WAY overdue for some new posts) my Aunt Jaan visited from Florida and finally got to meet her great nephew (does that sound right?), Gavin. She brought him a soccer ball, and the two of them sat on the floor and rolled the ball back and forth to one another. A new, fun game! This--if you can believe it--was the best collective picture of them both. We all ate some yummy pizza (Papa Murhpy's is just a little too convenient and good for us), Jaan and I got to chat while Gavin slept and then she and I even took a little nap ourselves. What a treat! It was great to have you in our home, Jaan, and we hope you know that you're always welcome here!