Aaron's surprise!

 Aaron loves airplanes!  Since he was a baby he has gone out to my parent's house which is only about a mile from our small local airport and seen the airplanes flying over their house all day long.  When he was smaller he used the sign for airplane.  For some reason it took me a while to realize that he had more than a passing interest in airplanes.  I guess I am so used to the kids seeing them at my parent's house and noticing them that I didn't realize how much he actually liked them.  One day though we were at my friend Amy's house and he found her son's airplanes.  Glen has a lot of airplanes, partly I think because his mom is a flight instructor for Hesston College, and he had chosen one of Glen's favorite airplanes to play with.  Glen was successful at trading him for one that had a broken tail though and Aaron couldn't have cared less.  He played with that airplane the entire time we were there.  That was when I realized how much he liked them, if they could hold his attention that long then this was definitely something that meant something to him.  After that it seemed obvious to me and I wondered how I could have missed it!  Since then he has received lots of airplane toys of his own and has the Disney Planes movie as well.  With his birthday coming up I wanted to do something special for him and got to thinking.  Luke was getting the birthday party he had been planing for a year already, so what was something special we could do with Aaron?  Back to my friend Amy, the flight instructor!  I set it up with her to go see the real airplanes at the Hesston College hanger out at the Newton Airport.  She even said we could go up in one if the weather was nice and Aaron was up for it!  

Today was the big day but the weather was foggy and I think it was just as well.  Aaron takes a long time to warm up to things and today was a good warm up for him.  He loved seeing the planes and getting to touch the outsides of them and see the flaps move etc.  When Amy offered to let him sit in one though that was a little too much for him and he started to cry.  I got him calmed down and convinced him that I wasn't going to make him get in, and then he let me pick him up and hold him so he could look at the instrument panels and watch Amy show him how the yoke could move the flaps to make the airplane go up or down or turn right or left while it was flying. 

After looking at the airplanes in the hanger we went in to Amy's office and played with some toy airplanes and watched a few videos of airplanes flying in the sky for a while, and then he wanted to see the airplanes in the hanger one more time before we went home.  

Here is a link to a video of him going into the hanger for the first time and seeing the airplanes!

http://youtu.be/9ENn1cBsJaQ

Aaron had a great time seeing the real airplanes up close!  Maybe when he gets bigger he will be ready to try sitting in them or even going for a ride, but for now I think this was just right for him and he really loved it!

My beautiful boys!

These pics were taken at my parent's farm on Feb 18.  It was so lovely outside and we were planing to have a birthday supper for Tim and Wes that evening and the boys just really needed some outdoor time so we promised to not get in Gammy's way and headed out early.  Luke had a bunch of things in his backpack that he was proud of and wanted to show me and both the boys played Frisbee and other fun things on the lawn.

Luke reading me his school books for practice.  He is getting really good at sounding out words!

Birthday Party 2014

Luke had been planning this year's birthday party since about a week after last year's birthday party.  He wanted to go bowling again!!!  This year was a little more complicated since he is now in school and has a whole classroom full of little friends plus the friends he has outside of school, plus this needed to be a joint party for Aaron too since we have a limited number of free weekends and a baby sister due to make and appearance very soon.  We told him he could invite a limited number of friends and we also invited a few friends for Aaron, though not as many since he is young enough to not have lots of friends that he absolutely needed to have be there.  Aaron invited Charlie, Xavier and Levi and unfortunately the cold season took out all but Charlie.  Luke invited Brody, Jack, Owen, and Kenion from school and Amare', Onnyka, Hope, Glen and Janessa from church etc.  Janessa, Owen and Kenion were missing from Luke's group, but I think all the kids had a great time playing together.  For the littlest ones this was a first time bowling but I think most of the bigger kids had gone at least once before, and some of the grownups got to bowl as well.  (-:

After bowling we had a quick party with cupcakes made by my friend Kara with airplanes on top of Aaron's and Luke's made into the shape of a T-rex! 

There were lots of presents to open and both the boys got some really cool toys, but on the way home Luke was already trying to figure out if his friends would give him more toys on Monday since that is actually his birthday.  (-;  Silly goose!

All the kids used bumpers for bowling and here is the score sheet for Aaron's group.  Aaron won the game with 91 points!  More than I ever get, that's for sure!

After the party we got a movie for the kids and made popcorn for supper at home.  Aaron decided to wear his new had from Charlie and Ben and Andrea the whole time!

It was definitely a good day.  They still have a few more birthday things coming up.  Luke is going to take treats to school tomorrow (today school was closed for low temps and snow) and they each got to choose a birthday cereal just like we did when I was a kid.  We got a second hand tablet for really cheap from a friend so now we can make it really kid proof with only kid appropriate things on it and let them play on it rather than on our own tablet, and since the party was more something that Luke wanted and was looking forward to I have a surprise for Aaron related to airplanes that is coming up later this week.  I will try to take and post lots of pics.  (-:

Christmas in Kansas (for 2013 but technically in January 2014).

Christmas this year was a little small feeling, well a lot small feeling, without Becca at home.  She decided to postpone her visit until the baby arrives which will be fun too, but even with Wes' girlfriend Hope there we definitely felt like we just weren't all there.  We had a good time and I think about half of the pictures we took are on other cameras so I only have some from the latter half of the day, but it was spent eating good food and enjoying good company.  

Becca sent a few things home for us to enjoy together including some special syrup that we used with our baked french toast in the morning and some sharp cheddar cheese that we had with crackers and alongside curried chickpeas and a some very sweet wine or delicious coffee or wassel as people choose.

Luke had just seen commercials for flashlight friends a few days before and had said he wanted them for Christmas but I hadn't told anyone because I thought it was probably too late, but Andrea must have had some kind of crazy intuition because she got both boys a flashlight friend for Christmas.  (-:

Luke also got something he wanted more than anything else for Christmas this year, a transformer.  Some of his friends at school have been bringing theirs to school to play with during recess so he had been begging me for one for some time.  It proved to be a difficult puzzle to solve so the guys took turns trying to make it go back and forth.

I don't remember what all the gifts were, I know we got Ben a gift certificate for the movie theater and Dad one for Amazon so he could get some audio Spanish books, and Charlie got some train tracks and cars to add to his set.  My personal favorite gift that we gave was the one for Wes though, because he had asked for clothes and I was able to get him 5 shirts for very little money at Old Navy during their after Christmas sale!  One of them said "local hero" on it which is perfect because he is definitely a hero to my boys.

Aaron also liked Becca's cheese, maybe a little too much....

playing games in the afternoon, we never finished the game because we decided to try a version that none of us had played for a very long time and it took too long to relearn, so the game was called on account of supper.  (-:

Maybe someday I will get a hold of the rest of the pics and add some more here, but with as busy as we are these days and a baby on the way I wouldn't hold my breath!