One Great Weekend

Finally! We had a weekend where nobody was sick, we didn't have too much planned, but at the same time we weren't cooped up. Perfect!

About two months ago we started a reward chart for Tyler. If he earned 12 stickers by eating dinner without complaining, he would get to go to the Monster Truck Thunder Slam with his friend Liam. You wouldn't think that 12 stickers is a lot over 2 months unless you've been to our house around 6:00pm. Unfortunately the incredibly shrinking Tyler is a bit picky at dinner. He finally earned his last sticker the night before the show. Last week after a particularly difficult dinner, Tyler told me what his choices for dinner were. I responded by telling him he would get to choose when he got a job and earned his own money. He then looked at me really seriously and I thought for sure he was going to tell me he was getting a job, but instead he said "well, I'm going to make a wish on a ladybug, then I'm going to leave him alone and it is going to come true!" So there! Ha!

Tyler did earn his reward so Tyler, Liam and the daddy's headed down to the arena. Here are the boys waiting for the show to begin.

I'm told it was a very good show with races and free style. Tyler liked the free style (whatever that is...)

Doesn't it look interesting?

I love this picture. It is totally blurry, but check out the body language. They were obviously having a great time.

Awesome! It tipped over!

Tyler insisted on taking a few of his own pictures...

Unfortunately I made a very rookie mistake. I thought it would be a good idea to buy each boy a monster truck for after the show. I picked out two "Monster Mutts." They were both dogs, but different breeds. This was the beginning of the end. Why didn't I buy two of the same truck? At 11pm Tyler and Dan came home and Ty was sobbing. It seems that Liam got the brown truck and Tyler wanted it. He cried all the way home. He was distraught and it was really late so I reminded him that he still has some Christmas money and if he really wanted that truck he could buy it with his own money. I finally got him in to bed and told him that I missed him while he was gone. I knew he was going to be ok when he said very calmly "I didn't miss you a bit! I was so distracted by the monster trucks that I didn't think of you at all." He was so serious. I told him that made me very happy because that meant he had a great time.

So, off to Target we went today...

And now Ty has two Monster Mutts. I hope the lesson isn't that money fixes everything. On the way to the store we talked about problems having different solutions and to think about this the next time he gets upset. We'll see...

We also went sledding today and Ryan joined us. I decided that we could walk to the park. Unfortunately my neighbors did a good of a job of shoveling their side walks so I couldn't pull the boys most of the way. And Ryan is very heavy!! We did make it to the park... barely.

It was a beautiful day. Poor Ryan was having a tough time with the sun.

If you look close you can see the tears. Poor kid.

Tyler got very daring. He went down the hill sitting up, laying down, on his tummy, backwards... I was impressed.

I did take Ryan down the hill once. As I was walking back up the hill I decided to wave the white flag. I called Dan on the cell to come pick us up in the car... yes, I am a wimp. It is a pretty sad state of affairs when you can see your house from the hill, but you know you can't make it home.

While we waited, Tyler went down a couple more times. All by himself. Yay!

We had another Ryan first today. We were all hanging out in our pajamas this morning and I asked Ryan for a kiss. Much to my surprise, he turned and gave me an open mouth kiss on the cheek. Woo Hoo! Later he gave Dan one too. Love you Ry Ry!