Brady did hockey camp last week at the local ice park. Well - he enrolled in hockey camp, but it was alternately billed as "learn-to-skate camp," which was really more accurate. Some of the older kids did play hockey, but this was only his second time on an ice rink so he really worked on the skating portion of it. (He was really frustrated the first two days after attempting to play hockey, gear and all, while barely being able to skate.)
At the end of the camp, they had a short performance to show off their new skills:
The highlight of the week for Brady was when we all got to skate with him after the camp ended.
They had a few theme days during the camp. Crazy hair day and mix-n-match day. Brady won the crazy hair day (and got a free skating pass!) Rudy enjoyed his turn on the ice as well - although he enjoyed it because he could kick around like a maniac and James or I would hold him up.
The boys got some quality time with Papa last weekend, while all of the girls were at Rebecca's baby shower and James was at softball. They took a hike, got ice cream at McD's (a favorite activity with Papa!), and made fruit popsicles...
Grandma flew in for a quick little visit for Rebecca's baby shower. We met her and my parents for dinner her first night in town and then she came back to our house her last night. The boys were so excited to see her! (I was too, of course!) We went peach picking, but we also spent a lot of time playing at the house. I can only hope to be half as active and busy as she is when I'm nearing 90!
I guess if you go to the orchard with 4 adults and two kids, you can't really expect to come home with a reasonable amount of peaches! We were the proud owners of over 50 pounds of peaches. Luckily, James and I got an early anniversary FoodSaver from my parents, so we've frozen 2 peach crisp's worth of peaches, plus a lot of concentrate for peach lemonade or tea. We've gorged ourselves on fresh peaches every morning as well.
Rudy used to have the evil-ist evil eye of any kid I've seen. He's kind of lost it recently, though. He can't seem to hold a pouty, sad look for much more than a few seconds!
We headed to the beach with friends on Friday night for an picnic dinner. I got some almost good pictures - apparently, there was a giant smudge on the camera lens, which is unfortunate because there was a beautiful rainbow.
So, I found this new website (picnik) that allows lots of fun photo editing. I managed to entertain myself for a long time this morning while waiting for everyone to wake up. I wish I was one of those artistic-creative types who could actually create funky and fun picture edits and then still figure out creative stuff to do with them!
I was cleaning up the kitchen and the boys kept coming in and asking to borrow ingredients. I found them on the front porch "baking" an "experiment"...in the end, I think their concoction had tequila lime marinade, salt, pepper, baking powder, sunflower seeds, dried habanero pepper, and vinegar. They tried to talk me into trying it, but I declined. Charlie, however, was very interested in it!
In the end, we decided to spread it around the veggie garden as a possible rabbit repellent!
Rudy enjoyed having some time as an only child while Brady was at Oma and Papa's house. (He'll get his camp week after Brady goes back to school.)
He got to jump on the furniture, with no bossing around by his big brother:
He got to bake cookies with James
He got to pretend to be Mommy...which was a full day's entertainment!
We played whatever he wanted. I love that Brady and Rudy are such great friends, but it's gotten to the point where they don't always want me to play with them, so it was really fun to have him all to myself...he's a very different kid without his big brother around!
