Yeah, it really is about the kids.

Yesterday I got up with the boys, we had a quick breakfast, then made for the Agriculture Museum at the experimental farm. We were there a little over two hours, but never made it off the play structure, which isn't all that usual.  It's a very nice structure.  There's several slides, a net-bridge, all kinds of ramps and steps and catwalks and such, all barn-themed, of course. The hit this time, though, was the silo, which happens to have hand and foot holds cut into one side so kids can climb up in the interior.  The boys moved in and basically didn't want to move out for much of the time we were there.  Although, to be fair, right now Daniel wants to do whatever James wants to do 90% of the time, no matter what it is James wants to do.  But James was sold on the silo being fun, so Daniel was too. They were pretending it was the tower from Paw Patrol for a lot of the time.  The cows in the barn were being very  loud, so they were pretendi...

Yesterday was James first day at his summer swimming camp .  We were both more than a little concerned about how well he would do with it because it requires a significant amount of independence and the regular message we had been getting from school (and what we observe ourselves, obviously) is that he's easily distracted, hears fine but doesn't listen well and generally has no problem doing whatever the heck he feels like doing when he feels like it, rather than working with someone else's schedule. Contrast that with what happened when he came home from his first day at camp yesterday.  He did great, the councillors said he did really well with paying attention and following direction and that he was swimming at an intermediate level.  More importantly, though, he absolutely loved  it.  I asked him if he had a good time at camp and he replied. "No, no!  I had an AWESOME time!  I love swimming camp thiiiiiiiis much." While holding his arms as w...

I'm not posting this on Facebook, as I frequently do the others.  If you're reading this, it's because you're snooping around on my blog, I suppose.  That's okay, but know that this blog ultimately isn't for you, it's for me.  I'm writing down all of this stuff because I think it's good for me.  And maybe someday it'll be good for the boys to read it, too. The reason I'm saying all of this is because this one isn't going to be easy for any of us and if you want to feel good and smile, go look at the other story I posted tonight Still I Fly .  It's just as real and will almost certainly make you smile. Really, if you aren't maybe a 30-year-old James, you probably want to skip this one.  It's a time-capsule for him because I can't tell him now what I really think and by the time I can ... that's a lot of years down the road. Go read Still I Fly .

This one's adorable. Recently Daniel has had a renewed interest in both Dusty Crophopper and  Planes: Fire and Rescue  the movie.  Around his birthday it was all he would talk about, but recently he'd found other things that were fun, too.  Something happened recently, though, and now he's back to Dusty and Fire and Rescue nearly all the time. For his birthday I found an orange Dusty that would float and could play in the bathtub with him.  It was the same size as the standard Hot Wheels 1:64 cars (which would make it, what, maybe 1:128? I don't know what the actual dimensions are for a Cessna, which is what I think Dusty is, but it's certainly bigger than a Corvette or whatever).  That was his absolute favourite at the time, he couldn't eat without it, he couldn't sleep without it, he couldn't go in the car without it, it was almost more important to him than his cars blanket. The relationship soured, though, when all that love resulted in ...