Stylin' Miles

Miles picked out his own outfit today. Well, he picked out his favorite shirt and he picked out his new favorite shorts. Add in his Thomas sunglasses and elephant earphones and you have one stylin' little guy.

More camping pics

My parents just sent me some of the pictures they got from our camping trips. Here are some from the Polar Caves, Quincy and I going through one cave:

My niece Madison and Miles going into another cave:

So here are some pics of Miles fishing with my Dad. Casting (he calls it throwing):

Winding:

And Grandpa takes a turn:

Still recovering.

Not many posts this week, if you really want a picture of something that represents this week in our family, I can post a picture of our piles of laundry, half unpacked suitcases, dirty sheets and towels, cranky kids, and, well, I think you get the picture. We have been home for almost 4 days and we are still tired and trying to get settled back into our routine. Mike has been going into school several days starting to get things ready for band camp, which starts a week from Monday. My oh my did summer go fast this year.

Camping trip

The kids and I returned home early this morning, after a fun filled week camping with my parents. They now have a beautiful camper in a nice seasonal campground. The boys loved it. We lounged/played around the campsite, visited with family, went down to the beach and lake, and took a couple of day trips. Miles and Quincy love being outside, so they were beyond happy being at the campground all week.

Miles got brave and went into the lake up past his waist, but had more fun spraying people with the water shooter: then most of the time at the beach was spent playing in the sand. Quincy wanted nothing to do with the water, but was quite happy on the beach playing with toys.

Miles helped my Mom with gardening. Miles went out kayaking with me and my Mom. Here he is checking out the paddle. He took it in the water and tried paddling it in the lake, without the kayak... Miles got a fishing pole from my Dad. He literally was doing happy dances around the campsite singing "I got my own fishing pole!" and "I'm going to go real fishing!". He went out fishing with my Mom and Dad. (I think my Mom was mostly there to take pictures!)

He helped my Dad build the campfire several nights, his job was getting the firewood.

On Saturday we went up into the mountains to a place called The Polar Caves, which is a series of glacially formed caves (mostly fairly narrow) on a mountain. So Miles got to go hiking and he got to climb through caves. We went with my parents and my brother's family. Miles and my niece Maddie had a ball going through the caves. I wore Quincy in a front carrier and we went through most of the caves, which Quincy loved. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera in the car, so no pictures of the caves.

On Sunday we went out in my brothers boat for a day on the lake. Quincy was too thrilled with the life jacket and decided to be fussy most of the trip.

All in all, an enjoyable week. It was a great getaway. Of course, Miles is now saying he doesn't want to sleep in a tent anymore. Now he says he will only camp in a camper. Hmmmm. I think he was a bit spoiled by my parents big 'ol camper.

Heading out

The boys and I are getting ready to leave in the next hour or so. We are heading up to spend time with my parents in NH for the week. We are planning to spend the week with them camping in their camper, so I don't think I will be getting online much, if at all. Mike has classes, so he is not able to join us, but we'll sure be thinking of him and missing him. Hopefully I'll have lots of good pictures and stories to post when we get home.

Blueberry picking

Miles finally joined me for some blueberry picking. As I expected, he loved it and wanted to eat more than he put in the bucket. But some did make it into his bucket.

Here he is heading out to the car, excited to have his very own bucket.

Picking some - notice the two lonely berries in his bucket:

And eating some:

Quincy singing

Quincy found the microphone and his singing voice today. And I do believe he liked his singing voice, since he kept singing into the microphone for quite a while:

Monkey bag

Miles' sleeping bag is a bit unusual, it is a big monkey head. The sleeping bag itself fits in the monkey mouth, which zips up to store and carry it in there. The big monkey head is the pillow and he sleeps with his head in the monkey mouth. An all-in-one very fun sleeping bag. Well, Miles decided that he could fit in the monkey mouth. Then he tried.
And he almost fit, but we couldn't zip it up very far.

Backyard camping

Miles and I camped out in the backyard last night. We have a little pop-tent that we set up yesterday during the day and played in a bit. Mike had class last night, so we waited up until he got home, then headed outside. It was way after Miles normal bedtime, and it was darker out, so I thought he would fall asleep fairly easy. Boy was I wrong! We did some fun camp-type stuff, then it was story time and lights out. But he was all giddy and excited. I was ready to fall asleep waaay before him. I kept drifting off only to be woken up by little fingers pinching my nose or tickling my arms. Finally he went to sleep, and I was asleep moments later. I wholly expected him not to last the night, but he did. He got me up once for a potty trip, then right back into the tent and back to sleep until 6 this morning. I forgot my camera when we first went out for the night, but grabbed it on the potty break. Miles was less than eager for pictures this morning when he woke up.

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July to everyone! We went out to the fireworks last night at our local ballpark. Some friends got a skybox for the night to celebrate their anniversary/birthday, and invited us to join them. It was a great night, although I think Quincy watched more of the baseball game than Miles did. Miles got out to see the last out of the game, he spent the rest of the time inside eating peanuts & chips and chasing balloons around. He was scared of the fireworks when watching them outside, so we watched from inside. It was a nice evening visiting with friends, watching the game and firworks.

Museum

Yesterday we went to the Museum of Natural History. It was a fantastic day. It was the first time Miles has been to a museum, so we weren't sure how he would do, or how it would go with a 3 year old in a museum. Well, he loved it. I have never seen him so excited for anything. We started telling him about it a week ago. Throughout the week we read him his Curious George book that has George going to a museum, we showed him the website of the museum, etc. Just about everyday, a few times a day he asked if it was time to go to the museum.



Well yesterday morning came and he was excited, but not excited enough to eat breakfast. He always eats breakfast and loves it, not yesterday, yesterday morning he decided to have a meltdown over breakfast. So that, along with a few other minor things, caused us to get a bit later start than planned. But we got out and got to the train station without further problems. As expected, Miles was super excited to see the trains and take a train. He had his nose pressed to the window nearly the entire ride! Quincy also seemed to like seeing the trains.


We ate a little picnic lunch on the steps of the museum. Then my cousin, Frank, joined us for a little bit. (My cousins Frank and Rachel both live right in the city.) Rachel joined us a little later, she found us inside the museum. Thank you guys for coming to see us and see the museum with us, it was great to see you again! Miles was very happy to share the museum with Frank and Rachel, and kept pulling them from exhibit to exhibit to see things.

I don't think I have ever heard Miles say "Wow!" so many times! For the first hour it seems just about every large animal he saw caused him to say "Wow!" During that first hour or so he also was randomly dancing around, in what seemed like a happy dance. He was just so excited and happy he seemed to be bursting at the seams. It was so wonderful to see. We saw dinosaurs, mammoths, african animals, ocean animals, bugs, gems, walked through caves and tunnels, and so much more. Miles and Mike saw an Imax movie on dinosaurs. Just a full day. This museum is set up so well for kids.



In this little video clip Miles is showing us how a T-rex walks. He kept doing this walk over and over while we were in the dinosaur room. He also was roaring like a T-rex while he did the walk, unfortunately he didn't roar when I was getting this clip. (He calls a T-rex a sharp-tooth, from the movie The Land Before Time.)



At the end of the day Miles picked out this from the museum shop, and has played with it non-stop since then. (except meals and bedtime, which he tried.) When we asked him what his favorite part of the day was he said: "Buying this dinosaur."
He was laying down on the train seats on the ride back, popping up to see things occasionally. He was alseep before we drove out of the parking garage. Quincy was not far behind him.