- Darr Family Blog - https://darr.org -

New Friends

This past week was pretty average: piano students (I’m getting two more starting this week…yay!), grocery shopping, house-cleaning, etc. We are getting to know our new neighbors (they finally built a house next to us where there was the empty field, so that will hopefully mean fewer bugs since there won’t be a bunch of digging right next to us). We were pretty excited to find out they have a little boy who is only 5 months older than Joseph. Also, their family story is kind of similar to ours. The wife (Erica) had their son (Hayden) right before her husband (Gene) was deployed to Afghanistan with the Army. Considering that’s the same thing that happened to us, we find that rather cool. They are really nice, too. They invited me and Joseph to Hayden’s birthday party this past week at Chuck E Cheese. I must admit, even though I really like them, I was a little wary about Chuck E Cheese. I remember it as being a loud, LOUD place with crowds of kids and a lot of flashing lights. Those are things that Joseph is not a fan of. It turned out really great, though, because they had it on a week day before school was out for the day. It was quiet, not crowded, and not as many flashing lights as I remember. Erica and Gene had gotten tokens for all the kids, so Joseph got to play some games and get some tickets. There was also pizza (which he refused to eat, but he doesn’t eat pizza at home, either, so who knows?) and a guest appearance from Chuck E Cheese himself. It was really fun for him. A couple of days later, we invited Erica and Hayden over to our house to play. Those two little boys get along so well. It’s really great!

The Weekly Weather: last week was pretty normal, except for Monday. Monday started out fine (sunny, breezy, warm) but then black clouds rolled in and it started raining, HARD. Then it started hailing. At that point, I remembered my cilantro out on the front porch. I ran out into the hail (not too bad since the porch is covered, but it was still hitting the cilantro) with boards to throw over the planter so that the cilantro seedlings would not be totally destroyed. After it finished hailing, it settled into a steady rain, which cleared up into the sunny, warm, and breezy conditions that it started out as. This was all within a space of two hours. Crazy!

Cute/Funny Stories for the Week: Joseph decided to put all his weight onto the top of my foot, which seriously did not feel good. I told him that it gave me an “owie”. He looked really concerned, asked where the “owie” was, and then kissed my foot “all better”.

He is still really into pretending to be a doctor. This time, he wanted to look in our mouths, so he would come up to us and say, “Ahhhh” so that we would open our mouths and say “ah” for him.

Paul wasn’t feeling very good today, so he was resting on the couch. Joseph went over to him, noticed his eyes were closed, came over to me and said (in a whisper), “Shhhhh! Daddy’s sleeping.

Our “no-sweets” boy has deemed a couple of different sweets as being acceptable: peanut butter cookies, root beer cookies, and Reese’s peanut butter cups. Neither of the cookies are overly sweet, and the Reese’s are mostly peanut butter, so we can kind of see why he likes them.

This Week in Pictures:

IMG_20140407_074810637 [1]
Still in love with the firefighter hat he got from the “Farmer’s State” (State Farm) booth.
IMG_20140407_074749114 [2]
Oh, and also in love with his Mickey Mouse super hero shirt. He convinced me to let him wear it two days in a row. I caved since the first wearing hadn’t made it too dirty.
14 - 5 (3) [3]
Playing ski-ball at Chuck E Cheese. He would throw it as far as he could (after which it would roll back) and then I would help him get it up to the hoops.
14 - 1 (14) [4]
He really liked putting the tokens into the games.
14 - 3 (4) [5]
Willing to smile for me, but NOT willing to eat the pizza, lol.
14 - 4 (4) [6]
Willing to smile, clap, and wave at Chuck E Cheese from a distance, but when asked if he wanted to get closer, he said, “No!” while vigorously shaking his head, so we kept our distance.
14 - 2 (8) [7]
He didn’t want to give up his tickets at first, but I explained that we could trade them in for a prize, which he was okay with. There was a machine that munched the tickets and then printed a receipt that said how many tickets we put in. We took the receipt to the prize counter and Joseph picked out his prize: a mini back-scratcher, lol.
IMG_20140410_080916856 [8]
He loves his “Unstoppable Rex” t-shirt. I love that it’s a T-Rex with grabber things that extend his reach. 🙂
IMG_20140410_093349175_HDR [9]
At music playtime, learning about farmers and plants.
IMG_20140410_101803255 [10]
After music play time, whoever is hosting usually lets the kids stay and play for a bit afterwards. Joseph was loving this car.
IMG_20140412_145037170 [11]
Paul’s boss gave Paul this broken laptop. He salvaged some parts out of it and then let Joseph play with the rest. Joseph thought he was pretty cool!
IMG_20140412_144736 [12]
Typing on his “compooter”.
IMG_20140412_144739 [13]
“Cheese!”
IMG_20140412_162319424 [14]
It got warm enough this week to pull out the pool again. Joseph loved filling it up with the hose.
IMG_20140412_162450823 [15]
This was right before he asked for some of his tub toys to play with.
IMG_20140412_163513147 [16]
Paul suggested that we move the pool out onto the grass so that it would be easier to dump the water out directly onto the grass. Smart man. 🙂
14 - 1 (13) [17]
He discovered that reclining in the water felt good, too.
IMG_20140413_174837625 [18]
He knew that Daddy wasn’t feeling good, so he kept trying to snuggle with him…he would invariable get too wiggly and want to get down, though.