Catch-Up post

 For the regular readers of our family blog, you may have noticed greater gaps in-between posts...you can probably guess the reason.  But, John is asleep in the swing and we have about 20 minutes before we need to leave for an appointment, so here we go.  I apologize that these pictures are in no particular order, but they are a montage of the last couple of months.  The above being 4th of July.  We introduced the kids to the attack of tanks!  In the future, the race car fireworks were way cooler. 

 As I had about 3 minutes to scan a couple hundred photos, I'm not sure entirely what all I picked.  The above though caught my eye as the look on Will's face was great.  John is regularly surrounded by his siblings.  This morning they even had a short quarrel over who would get to sing to him.  They all took turns eventually. 

 On the morning of July the 5th, I awoke to the sounds of Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett calling the Tour de France.  As I had hoped, our immersion into the world of cycling got Dom back on his bike.  If you are on facebook, you have seen his latest tricks.  Yesterday, I unfortunately did not have my camera as he busted out a move Peter Sagan did crossing the finish line a couple of years ago. 

 We have been to the beach several times and John is getting to be quite the beach bum.  He really enjoys sitting in the shallow water and have waves roll up to him.  I know he will be a force next summer when he is mobile.

 Dom regularly requests I print out various team logos or national flags to color.  However, I put these on hiatus until the kids had finished coloring a USA map I purchased last summer.  I was afraid they might rush through it and do it sloppily, but I was very pleased with the result.  They dutifully got it out several mornings and afternoons and colored it together.  Now, Dom gets 5 print-outs every Wednesday.  We are investing in ink.

 As cycling re-awakened Dom to his love of the bike, watching hours of World Cup matches awoke a sleeping giant in William.  For hours, he and Dom would play in our front yard.  At the end of the season, Will's coach told Eric that Will had been a dark horse and was a wonderful surprise when he showed up half-way through the season.  Even now, he will play by himself in the front yard as Dom races up and down the block on his bike.  Though, Will joins him for that as well.

 Earlier in July, I got around to going through the kids drawers and re-arranging clothes.  As a result, Molly now had Will's Thunder t-shirt.  She has a lot of cute girly clothes, but something about this outfit melted my heart.  Someday I will look for a picture of Will wearing the same thing.

 As with the other two, Molly has taken to swiping our camera and loading it with hundreds of shots.  Agnes is featured in several of them. 

 For Will's birthday, we went to Postal Point on base and a couple of paddle boards.  They were a big hit.  Eric now has it in his mind that he would like to purchase one.  Where we would keep it is only one obstacle to this purchase.  The other being the hefty price tag.  Maybe he should just make a raft with all of the sticks and limbs that fall in our yard after a rainstorm...#homeschool

Will, knowing or not knowing my limited cake decorating ability, requested a Germany flag for his birthday.  This was to celebrate Germany's win at the World Cup and also to honor his recent German lessons.  I splurged and got the Ghiradelli brownies.  They were delicious.

 It was a happy coincidence the Will's birthday fell in the week the Reddigs came to the area.  We had spent the week going back and forth to Destin to spend time with them at their beach house.  It was so fun to see all of the cousins play.  And it was really neat to have them here for Will's birthday.  This marked the 4th birthday (5th if you include Eric's) that we were all together this year.  Crazy!

 William got a lot of really neat gifts.  His identity as being the 'science kid' was a major theme in the gift giving.  He received the book "Inside the Human Body" from Katie and Robert and the smile on his face was huge.  We gave him Snap Circuits Jr., which was not as impressive, but once we started working on it he didn't want to stop.  He also got blast rockets form Grandma and Grandpa which are pretty amazing.  Though, he arms aren't quite long enough to really battle it out with Dom...yet!

 William loves directions and figuring out how things work, so the Snap Circuits was pretty much the perfect gift.  And Eric loved expanding on the short explanations after each project.

 Nana and L'Opa also gave him a water table.  Though, it is generally believed that these are for a younger child, there are some nice physic experiments one can do with this one.  That is a catapult that Dom is using.

 A couple of pictures of John.  He has found his thumb off and on.  But, more than that, he has found his smile.  He beams up at me whenever I look at him.  And he loves his siblings.  Though, they can get a little overwhelming.  Lately he has become quite vocal.  The other day he laid on my bed as I folded laundry and told me story after story after story.  He has also started taking his morning nap in the Florida Room as the other three play around him.  I even put him in there yesterday afternoon and found him fast asleep despite Dom and William loudly battling with their lego weapons.

And I will end this here as I need to get the kids out the door.  See you in a couple of weeks!