The Wild Wortley's Adventures!: July 2011

Pictures of our NEW 5 year old!

Our first handwriting lesson...

Keegan using his 'sorting' skills!!

Ella reading Baby Moses to Keegan...Keegan loved for her to read to him, it's SO cute...

Good Morning Birthday BOY!!

The kids all fight over this remote controlled 'Mader car...thanks Aunt Mamie!

Shopping $$ he was bummed that he'd used all his $ to buy the net so this made him SUPER excited!!

He also loves his new California shirt and Transformers book, thanks Grammy & Papaw!!

This toy was awesome to take camping...but in the apartment, not so much...you have to watch out cause these darts are always flying...and it really does hurt to get pegged in the head with them...he LOVES to shoot the window!! Thanks (I think) Nauna & Paw-Paw!!

His awesome dinner. Ella made him his special Birthday hat...isn't that sweet of her!

Earlier in the day during school the kids made the monster masks...so they wore them for cake!

I for some reason didn't bring my cake stuff...so this was his little Monster cake...he loved it!

Grissom thought it funny to eat with his face...

...I guess it WAS a little funny!

Why is he SOOO cute?!?

Ella had a hard time parting with her gift to Keegan, Kidding she was reading him the title, "The Wizard of 'Ha's' a Veggie Tale movie!

We got him this little kids shaving kit. He was super thrilled...funny the things that got him!

And a Cars Racetrack!

So what did he decided to play with first? He NEEDED to shave before bed! We figured it wasn't a bad idea to bath the kids before our camping trip cause we'd be going 3 days in the wild without showers...

the funny part about him shaving was that he knew just what to do and he didn't even watch as he rinsed his razor...he went right back to shaving!

How fun!

The ONLY thing that could have made this birthday any better would have been to be at home, BUT thanks to all of our family (I know it's NOT cheep to mail out gifts) but seriously, THANK YOU for sending them...this really helped him keep his mind off of being all the way out on the other side of the country!! Also a big thanks goes out to Papaw Mac and the Copes, Papaw sent a special card...which they LOVE reading up-side-down (ha!), and he got a Pirate Lego Kit from the Cope's!! LOVE IT! Thanks!!

Now...onto our camping experience...are you ready for that?!? ha! I'm sure it'll be a 'wild hoot!'

Life AFTER Riah and Keegan' turns 5 years old!!

Life after our 'visitors list' is done for awhile.

Wow…how boring is life when you have no one coming until September! Now it’s time to go back and rethink some of those fun things we did in the beginning and some of those other things we still want to do. It’s funny the more comfortable we get here the harder it seems to find fun things to do…maybe that’s why Indiana started getting so boring and it’s totally up to each of us to add color and creativity to our lives and our children’s lives so they are able to really truly learn how to FIND or make up a good time no matter where life takes them!

We ended up buying our Sonlight Home School materials early this year and we got them in the mail this week! HOW FUN it was to go through this big ol’box of books and watch our kids jump up and down with excitement over what we GET to learn this year at school! If it were up to them we would have started school the day we got the box! But mom needed at least this week to prepare for the year and get things together to be ready. SO I promised the kids we’d start the next week (the same week as Keegan’s birthday) much to my surprise Keegan says, “YES! This will be the best birthday week EVER!” what a nerd in the making! Ha!! I LOVE it!

This week was mostly spent catching up on laundry after Riah’s visit, stocking back up on food, etc. We headed for Salinas and ended up getting the van’s oil changed…and of course a nice ice cream visit! Mommy’s gut IS getting big and I’m NOT sure it’s ALL baby!! Ha!

Saturday we ended up at our mall close to home because they had a celebrate kids’ day! It was cute! Grissom got to use a net to catch rubber duckies out of the fountain…good and NOT so good…that was the same fountain we have to run and grab Grissom from getting into EVERY time we are at this place, and now he got to play in it! Great! Keegan got a tiger shark painted on his face, Ella a dolphin, and Grissom the ever so loved red ‘slug-bug’ but the rule was NO slugging because of this bug! Ella also got her hair braided by the local hair salon! They got candy, and they go to pet bunched of animals! It was cute! Sunday we hung out at the park.

Monday was our ‘first’ day of school; Ella – first grade, and Keegan – our big Kindergartner! How much fun we are having with that! Ella’s reading on and slightly past a 2^nd grade level while Keegan is starting his journey to read…Ella’s also starting strong by memorizing the first chapter of Psalms! Holy work load!

School was a nice change of pace for the week of Keegan’s birthday. It gave me and the kids lots to do during our foggy July here in Monterey. Now…Keegan…IS MY SON because Monday he announced to the entire family that this WHOLE week was HIS…cause his birthday is in this very week! Ha!! I’m SO proud of him.

Mark and I asked him what kind of a birthday he wanted but had to stop asking because he kept wanting to be home with his cousins and friends…so we picked a MONSTER birthday! How much fun we had getting stuff to make it as fun as we could and we must have succeeded because I’ve not seen Ella this green sense his last birthday, ha! So with El being the enviously green monster it fit well! Daddy also happened to be working days this week (they switched for awhile); this made it possible for us to have our traditional birthday dinner and gifts!! So we tried to keep it as normal as possible. We started out with gifts from the family (before it got too late), then his pick for dinner; tuna casserole (gagged the entire time making it!) then back to our family gifts for him! Then we finished with a nice monster cake! AND the real excitement came after everyone fell asleep because early that next morning we were leaving FOR Keeg’s birthday to go on a family camping adventure/ home school field trip!

Once the kids were in bed Mark and I packed up the van and hit the hay!!

Getting over Riah leaving...

Ella LOVES reading...especially when she can get someone to sit and listen, shhhhhh, don't tell her daddy's 'resting!'

This is Denice the Menace...the kids have played and played and played at this park...seeing this statue but never getting who it was...UNTIL Grissom went and touched him!! Now we read all about him in the paper!!

A REAL cowboy!! He wears every one's shoes all around the apartment...and you'll trip over them all the time, yeah...kid stuff!

this is the fountain at the mall that the kids got to net some rubber duckies...it's got a seat around it which puts you above the water...

Aren't they pretty, the flowers AND the kids...

Keegan's 'Tiger' Shark...

Grissom's Red slug-bug...

Ella's Whale and getting her hair braided...

I know...we ARE obsessed with trees...but didn't YOU climb them when you were a kid? You can find Mark and Ella up pretty high!!

Grissom had been playing in my room for a nice long time, I'd just finished cleaning out our closet and he comes walking out of our room with these on. He comes up to me and with these squishy cheeks he says, "Mom, take my pi-ture...SHEESE!"

He makes me laugh ALL the time!!

Keegan thought he was spying on me as I worked on my eyebrows in the bathroom...I couldn't resist...

Onto Keegan's Birthday week...

Pictures with Riah!!

RIAH'S SO LOVED!

This was during the super HOT parade in which we sat in the 90* no shade hot sun and the kids got NO candy...what's a parade without candy? oops!

Yes, the 3 amigo's made an appearance!

This parade was FULL of patriotism...and a few other things...I mostly added the other things to this bunch...cause it was super funny!

Yes...even the Arabian Prince joined in our freedom celebration!!

This was AFTER ALL the hussel and bussel of trying to find many parks and finally went to the fireworks' area...which happened to be the BEST place to play...we played football...

Baseball...

Beach Ball...

Bubbles...running...tackle each other...mommy rests...

and playing with Riah!!

Finally dark enough for the works to start!!

they gave the kids free glow sticks and Gris got his 'bing' on his 'Ga-Ga!"

Too bad he fell asleep after the first firework and we couldn't get him to wake up for the life of him...poor little guy...between the play and the heat he was BEAT!

We took Riah to pick-yur-sef and stocked up on our berries: Strawberries, Boysenberries, Olallieberries - YUMMY!!

I took Riah shopping...made her look super cute! ha!

Ft. Ord was cold for us sitting and watching the kids, but Grissom had his clothes off before no time...but got cold, duh!

Like I said before, we had a super fun time. We sure love Riah as if she's apart of our family! My kids truly went into depression when she left!!

Our Depression buster after the Cope's Left

We just went out to find a NEW spot of rocks that we hadn't discovered yet. We LOVE rocks! Enjoy these pictures:

First off...notice the water in all these pictures...this time a year the bay acts more like a lake and not like the ocean. There are still waves that come in but you don't see near the white caps that we've been used to. Very calm and quiet...lake-like...

The kids used their OWN $$s to buy these nets...their goal today: catch SOMETHING alive...poor birds...I think they chased everyone of them away. We finally had to make a rule that birds were off limits when it came to the nets! Save the birds...save the birds!! Does this make us "bird-huggers?" ha!!

Grissom's posing after saying, "Mom, take my pi-ture!"

Yes...Grissom's without clothes. Within the first 3 minutes he fell face first into the cold water...with the sun out it was warmer for him to be without the wet clothes...we cuddled him and wouldn't let him go into the water much afterwards!