A New Blog

Well, friends and family. It finally happened. We ran out of room on our blog. Never fear, we've created a new one!

You can find our new blog by clicking here or by pasting this address into your web browser: http://jameyandjack.blogspot.com/

Our new blog "The Adventures Continue" is still a work in progress. Please feel free to visit, and thanks for being patient as we get things moved to the right spots. As for this blog (our now old blog), we'll leave it up and running. Mom wants to be able to peek back at our old adventures.

Remember to head on over to our new blog. There are pictures of our visit to the botanical gardens!

Projects and Penguins

Between packing up our house, going to Colorado, and coming back to our pretend house which contains just half our stuff, Mom got behind on some projects. She's been trying to catch up at naptimes, but today she realized she needs more time. So we played together with Mom all morning, and then this afternoon Mom asked Jack and me if we could play by ourselves.

We agreed, so Mom sewed some stuff...

...while Jack and I played Naked Penguin. I assured Mom that penguins do not wear clothes and that only people wear shirts and shorts as I was taking mine and Jack's off. Here's Penguin Jack climbing up an "ice rock".

And here I am swimming on my belly in the ocean. Can you see my flippers flapping?

It was a good afternoon. Mom got lots done while Jack and I had fun.

iPhone Store

These pictures are from a couple of days ago. I guess we forgot to post them...

Anyway, this was the day Jack and I decided to play iPhone store. We used our helmets for shopping carts and the box for the display case. We slid our plastic envelopes back and forth until we each had the phone we wanted.

Then we made a couple of calls. Jack called Grandpa Jere and Cousin Noah.

I called Grandma Lou, Grandma Carolyn, and Charlotte.

We're silly kids who want to be just like our Dad!

Two Packages

After a visit to the cafe (we did puzzles while we sipped our juice), we headed up to the campus post office to collect our mail.

We found two packages! Package number one contained airplanes from Great-Mom-mom.

We played airport right away. "Coming in for a landing..."

The second package was for Jack. Cousin Lilly sent him a huge picture (which we taped to the wall right away) and some crayons.

Those crayons might be the neatest thing ever! The rest of you may already know about Crayola Twistables Slick Stix, but we are behind the times. (Please excuse the shameless product plug!) They are the perfect thing for Jack. He often has a hard time with crayons because he doesn't understand how much pressure it takes to actually draw a line. Too hard breaks the crayon, and too soft means no line. Well, these Slick Stix are great! The bright colors just slide right onto the paper. Thanks, Lilly! Jack loves his picture and crayons!

We Tried

We tried. We gave it our best effort.

We thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent outside in Colorado this summer. We came home wondering if we just tried hard enough, could we learn to love the great outdoors of Arkansas? In spite of her personal feelings, Mom sees to it that Jack and I have lots of playtime outside most every day. We ride our scooters around campus, we go to parks to swing and slide, we take long walks downtown, and we play in the water table on our patio. But we don't really get out into "nature". We thought that today, Labor Day, would be the perfect day to explore the nature that Arkansas has to offer.

We checked online, found a National Park with a lake, packed a picnic, and headed out. We planned to spend the whole morning there playing and appreciating nature. We stayed for 30 minutes.

Sure it looks pretty, but looks can be deceiving! The air was sticky and humid (thank goodness it was only 79 degrees). The grass was super wet and wasn't going to dry any time soon because the air was so sticky. The bugs were out in full force. The lake water was murky, murky, murky, and the "beach" was mud. We tried to make the best of it, but it was just downright hard! Mom saw some showers and thought perhaps we would be okay in the end if we had a chance to get "de-bugged" and "de-mudded" by rinsing off, but then she saw the "problem with showers" sign. And on top of everything, we missed the part on the website about dogs not being allowed. Poor Norah was stuck in the car! (With the windows rolled down, of course.)

Shoes soaking wet from the grass, we headed up to the swings.

Apparently today wasn't a swinging day for Jack.

The tire swing was fun. I got all dizzy and giggly.

We decided to leave. We headed home to have our picnic in the park by our house. Sure the humidity, bugs, and wet grass were there, too. But in addition, there were sidewalks and a shaded picnic area! We had a nice time picnicking and playing together with Norah.

Now we're wondering just what our deal is. We truly do like the outdoors. The outdoors out west, that is! We seem to have a hard time getting past humidity, bugs, and murky water. What to do, what to do? We can't help the fact that our veins are filled with western blood. Do you think we could get a trade somewhere?

We might give this particular National Park another try later this fall. We think if we go some afternoon when it's cool, we might be okay. We'll have to see...

At least we tried.

S'mores

This evening we had Labor Day Eve s'mores with some friends.

Gooey marshmallows, melty chocolate, and crunchy graham crackers make for a good end-of-summer treat!

Yum!

And now we're ready for fall.
Bring on the pumpkins!!!

The Show

This afternoon we put on a show for our animals. I told Jack to line up the animals while I lined up our books. Then Jack and I danced around the books while the animals "clapped" for us.

Those animals sure made a great audience!

I told Mom we'd be putting on another show tomorrow.

Jack said he likes oranges, strawberries, and butterflies. None of those things really have anything to do with putting on shows, but Jack still likes them.

Sprinklers

Yesterday evening we played in Jack's new sprinkler.

My favorite thing to do was run and leap over the sprinkler!

After we finished playing in the water, we enjoyed a special treat. We found some gelato that Dad had left in the freezer!

Lunch with Dad

Today Dad took me to lunch. Just me and Dad. Jack had lunch at home with Mom. I even got to pick the restaurant. I picked Taco Bell. Imagine the fun I had! Mr. Eric and Mr. Paul even sat at our table. I guess they were hungry for Taco Bell, too! Dad has neat friends, and I had fun spending time with them.

Next time Jack will have lunch with Dad and I'll stay home and have lunch with Mom. I wonder what restaurant Jack will pick?

Oh, and do you like my outfit? I picked it myself. I told Mom I had to wear my sunglasses because Dad usually wears his.

Puddles

It rained all morning. We stayed inside and listened to Mom's rainy day music. Mom drank tea and Jackie and I ate blueberries. Then we started getting crazy and wild and cranky! Mom was happy when naptime came around.

After naps, we took a walk to the main campus to check our mail and run around. Running usually solves any trouble resulting from crankiness. :-) We found lots of friends to visit with on campus. Rachel was one of the friends we chatted with for a minute. She happened to have her work camera with her, so she took a couple of pictures. Mom thinks they turned out great!

Me! This is what I really look like. Usually I see a camera and put on my silly-camera-smile.

Jack! Mom needs to get out her hair clippers, I think...

And here we are jumping in puddles. Puddles are such fun!

Even our Mom, who loves grey and dreary, was glad the sun finally came out today! All is once again right in our world.

A Very Long Walk

The weather has been beautiful here! We're hoping fall has hit early, but we're not getting our hopes up just quite yet. To better enjoy the weather, we've been hanging outside lots. This morning we decided to load up the stroller and head downtown. Here we are all ready to go!

We had a great time, but we forgot to take any pictures! We played at the park, ate snacks at the cafe while playing a game, and found four different colors of tomatoes at the farmers' market (fyi for the locals, Beacon Hill Farms says they'll be selling pumpkins in the near future!). Worn out we headed home. Even Norah was tired! That puppy wouldn't walk another step! Mom found a spot for her on the stroller.

And let me tell you, our Mom is a good stroller pusher! She pushed that heavy stroller uphill 1.4 miles (we double-checked the mileage using our car this afternoon). By the time we got home, Mom was more worn out than Norah! Poor Mom!!! Just out of curiosity, Mom decided to figure out how much our stroller weighed today. Here's her best estimate using our bathroom scale:

Stroller: 17 lbs
Me: 34 lbs
Jack: 23 lbs
Norah: 9.5 lbs
Diaper bag: 4 lbs
Farmers' Market produce: 7 lbs
Water bottles: 3 lbs
Misc. toys, sticks, blankets, etc.: 6 lbs
And the grand total is 94 pounds!

No wonder Mom is tired!

Bunkbed

Once again Charlotte is sharing her bed with us. Charlotte got a new bunkbed, and she asked Jack and me if we wanted to have her old one! Of course we said yes. Charlotte's dad and our Dad put the bed together this evening. Jack and I sat on the sofa with Mom so we would be out of the way while the dads worked.

In a little bit the bed was put together! I hopped right up and got all my blankets and animals arranged. Eventually we'll get matching sheets, but this will do for now. Jack was a little unsure of things, so Dad held him and talked things through with him.

Pretty soon Jack was happy and excited to give his new bed a try!

My brother snuggled right in!

As for me...well...I'm super-duper excited! Mom hopes I calm down and get some sleeping done.

Mom thinks she might want to paint the bunkbed a navy blue. She thinks that might be a fun boy color.

Weekend Fun

Last night we started off our weekend making bubble beards in the bathtub.

Dad thinks we look like little Amish men. :-)

This morning we continued with weekend fun by taking a walk downtown. We did a few errands before stopping at the cafe for a smoothie.

We also spent some time drawing in our journals. We like to draw the things we see. Summer colors will only be here for a few more weeks. Before long we'll be using mostly the fall-colored pencils.

We're looking forward to the change in season.

Playing

Charlotte came to play for a bit this afternoon while her mom went to a meeting. We decided to crawl into Jack's tent. Even Norah came!

We tried to convince Mom to let us have dinner in the tent, but she wasn't having any of that! Maybe when we're older...

Yes, we're alive.

No, we haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Rather we've just been busy figuring out a new routine while living in our pretend house without most of our stuff. Thanks to those of you who emailed to check on us. It makes us feel good to know we were missed. Here's what
we were doing while we weren't blogging...

On Monday we went on a treasure hunt. We closed all the blinds in our house so it would be dark. For whatever reason, I'm convinced pirates like the dark. We used our flashlights and searched for "diamonds and treasure".

On Tuesday we were cold. Mom made us snugly on the sofa with blankets and pillows.

Mom isn't sure why we were cold as it is far from cold in our part of the country. She thinks the "feeling cold" may have simply been a ploy used by us to convince her to make us "cozy".

And this morning, well, we've been playing with dried beans. First we glued the beans on to papers. Mom drew some letters and we glued the dried beans to the letter lines. Then we spent some time scooping beans with our trucks.

Except for Jack. While we were gluing, Jack stuck two of dried beans up his nose. Mom used her tweezers to get the beans out, and Jack has been banished from ever touching beans again.

We're just grateful Mom is good with tweezers! She thinks it's a skill every mother should have. She's considering teaching a class titled "Tweezing Skills for Mothers".

So there you have it. We hope you have a wonderful day, and remember, do not put dried beans up your nose!

Is he, or isn't he...

Mom isn't sure if Jack is teething or under the weather. We decided that, just in case he was sick, Jackie should stick close to home.

He started off the day by writing a few thank yous.

Then he wore his new goggles for a while. We couldn't help but laugh at his goggle face.

Then I wore the goggles in the shower! I didn't even have to close my eyes when I shampooed my hair! Amazing.

After I was clean, Dad and I headed off to Auntie Joy's to see our cousin Mike who was in town for a speaking engagement while Jack and Mom stayed home. We hope Jack feels better tomorrow.

Jack's Goldfish Party

Jack's goldfish party was lots of fun!

It was a little bit challenging entertaining without most of our stuff (remember a lot of our stuff is in storage until we find a "real" house), but we still think the party turned out great!

Here's the table with the cupcake and bubbles (party favors).

Another view of the table. We had goldfish crackers for a fun theme snack.

We borrowed a friend's pool so we could swim like fishes!

And...we borrowed another friend's sprinkler so we could splash like fishes!

This is Jack having a serious moment blowing out his birthday candles. He knew just what to do after practicing on his M&M cake in Colorado. Jack sure likes birthdays.

Even little Sullivan got in on the water fun! The water table was a perfect height for him to hang on to while he splashed. And, boy, can my little cousin splash!

We're thankful the day was beautiful! It made for lots of fun celebrating Jack!

Now, finally, it's time to start planning my birthday! I told Mom I want a cement truck party. She's going to start working on my theme starting Monday. I'll keep you posted!