Blue & Gold Dinner

Yesterday was the long-awaited Blue and Gold Dinner for Cub Scouts.  The theme this year was the Wild West and the whole family got in on preparations.

My contribution was Wanted Posters for each of the boys.  Here is Tyler's poster:

Dan has discovered a hidden talent... prop making!!  He designed and made the wooden structure they are standing in front of.  I'm told it is the entrance to a corral.  

Dan also made the stocks (I think that is what it is called??).  Too bad it won't actually hold a kid... that could have come in handy!

Tyler and his friend Luca.

There were 6 Tigers in Tyler's den.  His scout leader was awesome and is becoming the pack leader next year so we're looking forward to a great year!  I hope to look back on this picture in 4 years and see some of these kids in the Webelo's II picture before moving on to Boy Scouts.

Here is the whole pack... or as many as we could get in one room at one time!

Tyler is now a Wolf and is looking forward to many more years of adventures.

Wheels, Laces & Nails

It has been a while since I've posted... I didn't think it was a whole month, but I see I have yet to post in April.  Oops!  There are 4 main reasons for my lack of posts:

1.  I'm trying to plan less activities so there is less to share.  I want the boys to know how to entertain themselves and enjoy our home.  We'll see how I do long-term.

2.  Photoshop takes longer to prepare pictures for posting.

3.  Blogger stopped supporting our browser so I had to update the browser which took me some time to actually sit down and do.

4.  Our laptop got REALLY slow.  It couldn't have anything to do with the 10,000 pictures I just moved to an external drive.  I wish I was exaggerating!!

Hopefully I've addressed a couple of my roadblocks so I can get back to documenting our adventures.

It is important to mark some important milestones that happened this month.

First, Tyler taught himself to ride a two-wheeler without training wheels on Monday, April 16th.   I have to admit that I didn't think it would ever happen.  I spent 4 nights running behind Tyler during that stretch of nice weather in March and I'm telling you that he got WORSE each night.  On the 16th I was reading on the back porch when I spotted Tyler putting on his helmet and taking his bike out to the driveway.  I knew he's stop if I looked at him so I kept my head in my book, but watched out of the corner of my eye.  Tyler practiced pushing himself and balancing.  Before I knew it, he was riding across the driveway.  I couldn't believe it... all that running behind him and he goes and teaches himself?  Really?  I don't even get to take credit for teaching him how to ride his bike??  He's doing really well.  Every nice day he is outside riding in circle and doing trick like standing while riding.  I guess we're going to have to break down and get the kid a decent sized bike!!

Second, on Wednesday April 18th, Tyler learned to tie his shoes all by himself.  Phew!  I was starting to worry he'd go to college with velcro on his sneakers!

Lastly, I came downstairs this past Saturday morning to find Tyler clipping his own toe nails.  Now that is a job I thought I'd have to do for a long time, but I guess Tyler has decided it is time to take care of himself.  

My baby is growing up.