Here's my version of what we did on Sunday:
I discovered a new thing called Letterbox hunting. It started in England, but basically someone hides a logbook and a rubber stamp, often a stamp that they have made themselves. Then they post clues on the web. Someone else takes the clues and goes to look for the "treasure". The hunter brings a rubber stamp and stamps the logbook that is hidden, and puts the hidden stamp in their own personal logbook. Yesterday we went to Snoqualmie falls and found 3 on the trail to the bottom. It was a lot of fun. They were hidden in Tupperware containers. You can do the same kind of game hi-tech with GPS (Global Position System), which uses 2 satelites to triangulate your position anywhere on earth. So the clue is given in GPS coordinates and there is a treasure hidden. You are expected to take something out and put something back of greater or equal value. We don't have a GPS yet though. Maybe next year.... It was fun, but I don't think the kids really got it. They liked the idea of a treasure, but didn't have the patience to look. As they get bigger it will be good.

Kyler often tries to get out of dinner. Usually he says he is too tired. Tonight he came up with a new one. "Mom, my penis hurts. I think we need to go to the dr!" Kipp and I were laughing so hard!!

I'm having LASIK done this Thursday. I went to my first appointment with Dr. Lomas this morning and everything went fine. The only thing that has worried me is if my cornea thickness was ok to have the surgery. My cornea was 649 microns. They need to have 380 micron (for the flap I assume) and 14 microns for each diopter measurement. They said I was at -7.75 so I was well within the thickness requirements. So I'm scheduled to go in on Thursday @ 2:15. I cannot wait to get the surgery because I'm getting very sick of wearing my glasses.

I was upstairs trying to read Kyler a story before his nap, when Ilea came in to listen. Kyler wanted to "read" the story himself. Ilea pipes up and says "Dad, do you want to hear a story?". I say sure and she starts off with:

Once upon a time there was a boy named Sparkle and his friends who went outside to wash his house. It was a very dirty house and ...

The story went on about washing cars and such for about 2 minutes. I don't know where she comes up with this stuff but I think it is great.

Well, we went on our first Letterboxing expedition. We specificly went to the Snoqualim Falls letterbox. We actually found all of the the letterboxes. It was pretty fun. The last one was, by far, the most difficult to locate. We searched for about 20 minutes and finally found it. We had a good time with the kids and some friends from church (the Wells). I think we will be doing more of these as the kids get bigger. We are also interested in trying GeoCaching sometime in the near future, but we are going to have to borrow a GPS from a friend to try it. If we like that we may try and get a GPS for Christmas this year.

On the way home from the store with Kyler, Kyler saw a larger-than-normal backhoe and said, of course, "Daddy, big orange backhoe." I agreed and we continued on. Then he saw a small, yet still large yellow backhoe and said "a little yellow backhoe.....how cute". :)

This summer Kyler decided to potty train by himself. In other words, he was running to the bathroom, taking all his clothes and diaper off and going potty. It seemed great! So we went to pull-ups, had a few perfect days, then to training pants. Again, a few perfect days, but a lot of not perfect days, and very frustrated parents. Yesterday, after Kyler had his umpteenth accident, Kipp said, "That's it. You're a baby and you're going back to diapers". When I (Jenny) got home and found out about this, I thought it wasn't the right thing to do! None of the books suggested anything like this! Only gentle encouragement and positive reinforcement. But that night at dinner he said he had to go potty. So we said to go do it yourself. A few minutes he comes running out naked yelling that he went poop! Come see! Sure enough, he did. We put training pants on him and he was dry the rest of the day. Kipp chose the perfect strategy.

Today he went potty for me easily in the morning, and instead of training pants, he went for the Bob the Builder Big Boy Regular Underpants that we have been trying to bribe him with for the last 6 weeks. OK. So I told him he had to keep them clean. He went potty a couple of times at home, and also went poop at home in the potty! Then we went to Fred Meyer for groceries. I put him in Playland. After about 45 min I get a call for Jennifer Howard! I came running! I didn't know if he had already had an accident or needed to go. He was dry! We went to potty and he did it and stayed dry! The lady who works there told me, "Kyler came up to me and said, 'Pat, I am a big boy with big boy pants on. I go pee-pee and poop in the potty now.'" And he did. We are excited!!!

At dinner tonight, we were having spaghetti. I cut Ilea's up into smaller bites. She then says to me "Daddy, I love you more than a big, big, humongous noodle"? It's good to be a dad.

One reason we haven't been updating this blog very often is our ISP (attbi.com) would not allow www.blogger.com to upate the pages. I guess our new ISP (comcast.com) does allow this so I finally got this blogger working and update our page. This also made links to our past blogs possible so you should see those on this page somewhere.

Nice moment to remember today. The kids have really been into the Tarzan soundtrack. One of the songs is by the mother gorrila to Tarzan: You'll be in my heart, now and forever more, you'll be in my heart, don't you cry...." Kyler was snuggling in my arms and Ilea was at the table with us. The music came on and we all 3 sang. Kyler gets about 80%, and Ilea knows all the words, but doesn't do too good with melody. It was fantastic to sing the lullaby together.

Today Ilea, Kyler and Jen went for a walk up the hill. It was clear blue sky, but hazy further out, and you couldn't see Mt. Rainier at all. But you could see closer hills sillouted.

J: Ilea, where is the Mt?

I: maybe they moved it.

J: How? A truck isn't big enough.

I: Maybe they got a Moutain-sucker-upper and took it somewhere!

Kyler is really funny. He is big on pretending to be a big dog. He fetches, barks, and plays all as a dog.

Summer flew by. We started school for Ilea yesterday. She is in Jr. Kindergarten now, as opposed to Pre-Kindergarten. It is 4 afternoons a week, 1-3:30. I drive going, and Diane picks them up in the afternoon. It's working out great.