Slip N' Slide

Oliver got a slip n' slide for his birthday from Cohen & Easton so as soon as his party was over he wanted to set it up.  Shockingly, Tom set it up in the yard knowing full well it would wreak havoc on his grass.  They LOVED it and played on it for a long time.  When they finally called it quits, Tom picked it up and was very distressed  to see a 2 x 40 ft strip of grass completely matted and mangled.  I knew that would be the last of the slip n' slide.  He let it dry out and the next day gently raked it back up and fertilized it hoping it would come back.  Later that day, Oliver, the charmer, talked our neighbor "Mr. Jim" into putting the slip n'slide over in his grass.  Mr. Jim loves kids and can't seem to say no so of course he let the kids come over to his house and set it up.  I have to admit, it looked pretty fun and I had to restrain myself from putting on my swim gear and heading over to  the neighbor's house.  I don't mind embarrassing myself, but that would have been a little over the top :)

Oliver's 6th Birthday!

Oliver had his 6th birthday party on Saturday, August 31.  He invited a bunch of kids from his PreK class and all but one were able to come.  We took them all out on tube rides and they absolutely loved it.  I wasn't sure how brave some of them would be, but they all wanted to go as fast as possible and kept giving us a thumbs up to signal us to go faster.  Oliver had a great time.  After everyone left he said "Mom, that was the best birthday ever."  Made me feel pretty good.  I got a few messages from some of the moms thanking us for having their boys over and that their boys talked the whole rest of the day that it was the best birthday party they had ever been to.  I don't think a bunch of 5 and 6 year olds are that hard to please when you have water, sand and a boat!

Berk & Oliver's 1st Day of School

If you look really closely, you'll see Oliver blew a huge snot bubble.  Nice touch.  That's classic.

Berkeley & Oliver had their first day of 2nd grade & Kindergarten on Thursday, August 29.  Oliver was super excited and kept asking when it was going to start so on the first day he woke up bright and early, rarin' to go.  Berkeley was the perkiest I have ever seen her on the 1st day of school.  Partly because her partner in crime, Oliver, would finally be accompanying her, but also because she got a great teacher and she discovered she knew 8 or 9 kids in her class so it wasn't going to be so uncertain and traumatic for her.  It was a huge relief for us not to drag her kicking and screaming onto the bus.  Everyone was all smiles as they sat on the bus waving to us as it drove away.

Oliver's 6th birthday was the very next day, so Finley and I brought cupcakes for his class as a special treat.  When we got there the kids were just finishing up with recess and as they lined up and came into the class room, Finley shouted "Olyer" and ran to him and gave him a huge hug.  He insisted she sit by him as they ate cupcakes.  It was really sweet.  I think she feels a bit lost without them for 7 hours during the day.  So do I.  It's entirely too quiet around here!

MV Days

We went to our local carnival in June and had a great time once again.  The kids went on every ride possible and Berk convinced me to go on a ride that I thought was going to be the death of me.  It was a total rattle trap and one of the scariest rides I've ever been on.  I thought we were going to fly out of it and I hated every second of it while pretending to love it so I didn't freak her out since she was being really brave.  Not sure if it was due to my old age or just since having kids, but I did NOT enjoy one second of it!!!

We ate some food, got faces painted (not sure why Oliver chose the creepy one that he did) and rode the ponies.  The highlight of the day was when the kids played a game involving winning a fish   Little did we know that EVERYONE was a winner.  Oh boy!  Hooray for us!  3 more fish after our horrible luck with Berkeley's fish she got for Christmas years ago from Uncle Chris & Aunt Laura!  I was so excited about it, I made sure Cohen & Easton went home with some fish of their own so that they could experience the true joys of fish ownership as well :)  Berkeley named hers "Goldie", Oliver named his "Oliver Eye-Brawl Potts" after his fave Skylander and Fin went with "Sandy".  My prediction was that they'd last for about 2 weeks.  Apparently I grossly overestimated my "fishing abilities" because 2 days later, Berkeley's fish died.  Yes, you read that right, 2 DAYS!  Oliver was the one who not so subtly or compassionately broke the news to her when she was at my parent's house.  The second we walked in the door to pick her up he said "Berk, your fish died."  She looked at me and asked if it was true and I said yes.  She started silently crying and huge alligator tears started falling on her legs as she hung her head.  I had no idea she'd be so upset after only 2 days of having Goldie and I told Oliver next time to be a little more compassionate and gentle about issues regarding death.  He didn't really seem to get it.  The very next morning his fish, Oliver Eye-Brawl Potts" was floating lifeless in the bowl when we woke up.  Berkeley said kind of gleefully, "Oliver, your fish is dead."  He said, "It is?"  He asked what to do with it and I said "Usually you just flush them down the toilet."  He liked that idea and asked if he could be the one to do it so I let him.  Quite a different reaction between the two of them!  So, 2 down, 1 to go.  Poor little Sandy was all alone.  Not for long!  The next morning she too, had passed away.  Fin wasn't too distraught...just a little pouty lip and then we said our goodbyes to Sandy as she swirled down into oblivion.  I was secretly rejoicing that I no longer had 3 fish to care for and caught myself singing "Another one bites the dust" for the rest of the day.

The other day we went over to Cohen & Easton's house and my 2 girls noticed they still had their fish.  They said "Mom, are those the fish from MV Days?"  I said "Uh, yeah, I think so".  Laura said "Those stupid things are still alive and they get so excited every morning when I come downstairs to feed them." When they brought their fish home, Chris had gone out and bought some filters for their bowl to filter all of the chlorine/chemicals out of the water to make them last longer.  The girls looked accusingly at me and asked why ours died after 2 days.  I made some lame excuse about chlorine in our water and not having "fancy" filters and then something distracted them so I was off the hook.  Next year, when we bring home more fish, I will pass on those life saving filters once again.  You see, fish are the last things I want to fret about...I get excited every morning when my 3 children wake up alive and well.  If I can keep them alive, then that's good enough for me.  As for the filters, well, a sucker is born every day :)

An Afternoon at the Nail Salon

Berkeley had been asking for over a year to go get her nails done again at the nail salon.  So, because she had such a great 1st grade year and got Student of the Month I took her.  She was so excited and the little ladies in the salon were cracking up at how happy she was because she never stopped smiling the whole time she was there.  She asked what color I was going to get and I told her I'd let her choose mine again (knowing full well it would be something totally out of my comfort zone).  As you can see, she chose some kind of purple/sparkle concoction with some sort of fancy application on top.  Mine was a very flamboyant sparkly blue number that screamed "look at me".  It was a little flashy and over the top, and I knew I was in trouble when I had 18-25 year old girls coming up to me in the grocery store to ooh and awe over my nails.  I felt a little silly being a middle aged, 36 year old with such loud nails.  It kind of made me feel like those older moms who try a little too hard to be hip and young, but I swallowed my pride and thanked them for their compliments and explained that my 7 yr old picked it out.  They all thought she had great taste!  Needless to say, I'm usually a little more conservative, but it was great fun and we'll definitely do it again!  I'll even let her pick my color again!  Oh, the things we do for our kids!

T-Ball

Tom & Mr. Scotty

Campbell

Oliver finally got to play t-ball this year!  Last year he broke his arm a week before it started so he couldn't play. He had a great time and for  the most part we had beautiful weather for practices and games.  We discovered that his friend Addy was on his team and that was the icing on the cake.  Unfortunately, his team name was "Tyneez" which bummed him out cause he wanted them to be called "Skylander Giants".  At any rate, they had a fun season and we learned that he has a pretty strong throwing arm.  Mr. Scotty worked with him and gave him some helpful pointers and equipment to use and it really helped.  On the first practice the kids were each paired up with a team mate and they had to practice throwing the ball back and forth and catching it.  Well, Oliver had had a bit too much practice and perhaps too many helpful tips and ended up throwing the ball to his team mate who missed and got a bloody nose.  We felt SO bad.  It was a total accident.  He didn't mean to do it and he felt awful.  We teased him that he was already a legend in his league for the first blood shed of the season.

Oh, I almost forgot...we played many baseball games after dinner early in the summer.  The 1st time it was my turn up to bat Tom kind of smirked and said "Oh boy, here we go, mom's up".   I asked him if he thought I was a good baseball player and he very gently told me "not so much."  He didn't have much faith that I'd hit the ball since I'm not really a "natural" athlete.  So, he pitched it to me and I hit it out of the park (our yard isn't huge, but it went over the fence into the neighbor's yard.)  The kids went nuts and I screamed "Home run!" as I began to run the bases.  I was perhaps a little too exuberant in my celebratory dance/run around the bases as I made my way to home base and I accidentally tooted twice!  I was pretty embarrassed, but nobody heard me due to all the commotion.  I thought I'd be honest and admit my moment of weakness since Oliver loves anything having to do with flatulence or any noisy bodily function.  When I told them all that I had tooted as I was running the bases due to my excitement they fell on the ground laughing hysterically.  They thought it was the funniest thing they had ever heard!  Oliver wanted me to hit another homer so I would toot again, and Berk wanted me to hit it into the neighbors yard again so she could trespass onto forbidden territory (oh great, hopefully that's not gonna be an issue in the future).  Anyway, I'm not proud of it and, yes, it was embarrassing, but I'm always one who loves to make fun of myself.  Life is too short to take yourself too seriously all the time and besides, I give myself lots of embarrassing material to work with, so why not?

Oliver's PreK Graduation

Addy

Ms. Suzy & Oliver

Ms. Lori & Oliver

Oliver had a great PreK year.  He had the same amazing teachers that Berkeley had and he thrived.  The year flew by, of course and graduation was here before we knew it.  It felt like we were just at Berk's PreK graduation and couldn't believe this was our 2nd baby already graduating too.  So weird.

He had his first little crush on a little girl named Addy.  Her mom came up to me one day and asked if I was Oliver's mom.  She told me that Addy had a huge crush on Oliver and talked about him all the time.  She told her grandma that "He wears these really cool shirts with lots of buttons and he is super fast and chases me at recess and I can never catch him cause he's so fast." Apparently they also played soccer and hula hoops during recess and they had little crushes on each other and I had no idea.  They ended up being on the same t-ball team and they were both super excited about that!  She came over one day and they wanted to eat microwave popcorn while they watched a movie.  When the popcorn was done I brought the bag and 2 little bowls over to the couch and Oliver insisted that they didn't want bowls...they wanted to eat it out of the bag.  So, they sat there, watching the movie, dipping their little hands into the bag of popcorn just like they would have at a real theater.  It was pretty amusing to watch.

Some of the funny "Oliver-isms" from the year include:

One night during bed time prayers he prayed: "Dear Jesus, thank you for this day.  Thank you for our house and our beds.  Thank you for wi-fi..."

As he brought in some flowers that Tom had cut in the yard he came running into the house and exclaimed, "Here's some flowers, Mom!  They were free from the app store!"

One of my favorites was when he learned about how when Ahab was the king of Israel, he prayed to an idol called Baal and it made God angry.  One night Oliver was in bed and he said "Mom, if there was ever a statue of me I would NOT worship it.  I would only worship God.  I might think it was really cool and I would probably like to look at it a little bit, but I definitely wouldn't worship it." 

I can't believe this little character is going to be 6 yrs old and in Kindergarten.  We're proud of you Oliver.  You have such a sweet spirit and a tender heart.  You are a big, strong boy and you will be such a leader in your new school!  Great job...we can't wait to see what the next year holds!