Monkey

There truly is not enough space on any blog to document all of stories that Vaughn shares about monkey. Monkey is his stuffed animal who's name is monkey. It kind of reminds me as a little kid as my stuffed animal was a horse that I name horsey. So I guess that we are not the most creative when it comes to naming stuffed animals.

One would think that monkey is an average monkey nothing too fancy but if they heard of all the adventures and life stories of monkey they would be impressed. He has 18 brothers and sisters and has traveled all over the world. Pretty much anything that happens in our family monkey has done it but always one upping the situation.

The other night at Auntie Cole's rehearsal dinner I took Vaughn to the bathroom. As we were washing our hands he told me "Mom when I get home I going to make a card for monkey." I was about to say that's nice of you Vaughn for him to blurt out "Cause his Mom and Dad died." Now I know that this is not really funny but in the context of how it came out I bursted out laughing which I quickly covered my face to pretend that I was crying over this sudden news.

Oh Vaughn, really our family would be so boring without him. I have been told since then that Monkey's Mom and Dad really didn't die, they were just on vacation. He has quite the imagination...

HeeHaa

As I have said many times our Vaughn adds a level of amusement to our daily lives. Something that he has been answering questions with a lot lately is "heehaa". To a question as "How many times did you jump on the trampoline Vaughn?" would be answered with a grin from ear to ear and a LOUD "HeeHaa" that then is proceeded in him giggling. I think sometimes he does it just to make himself laugh. Not sure what it is all about but it's something that he's been doing almost all summer so I'm jotting it down here to not forget.

New ear tubes

A few months back I started to notice that Vaughn didn't seem like he could hear again. He had been talking much louder than normal and would sometimes respond to a question with a more than normally weird response. When we took him to his Kindergarten screening he failed his hearing test. So off we were to the ENT which tested his hearing again and again he failed it.

The doctor wanted to a wait a few months but we insisted that we go earlier than later. After all when a child is asking "When are we going to the doctors to get my ears fixed?" You would rather go sooner. One day I was talking to him, turned to get something from the pantry and he said to me "Mommy, when you talk to me can you wook at me?" Seriously, was he starting to read lips. According to the ENT most likely subconsciously he probably was. So thankfully he got us on his schedule a month out.

A few days before surgery we talked to Vaughn about him getting surgery on his ears so that he could hear better. He didn't seem afraid at all but did say that Monkey had to get his ears fixed too as Monkey couldn't hear either and that he would have to wear his Spiderman outfit so that he could be tough during surgery.

We thought that was more than fair so Monkey came with, which the night before Vaughn informed us that he would get his ears fixed first and Monkey was second. I just thought that was too cute. We also let him wear his Spiderman outfit but brought Spiderman PJ's just in case. Vaughn has fine with changing into his PJ's. I will say that all the nurses that Spiderman was pretty cute :)

Vaughn did great with the mask for his funny juice as they called it. He had quite a longer recovery time this time around which made me a little nervous but when he got to back to recovery he was happy to see us. Bjorn asked him if he could hear him talk better and he said "You loud Daddy." I guess that is one way of saying yes. The rest of the day Vaughn was good to go running around and happy as could be.

One would think that I was the one going in for surgery

Vaughn thought that I looked pretty silly in all of that stuff

No training wheels for this kid....

What Vaughn has added to our family is really quite hard to put into words. His cute smile, his sweet words, his oh so lovely temper and just his really crazy whacky ways don't even skim the top of who this kid is. One thing about Vaughn is he is just plain clumsy. Some of the things that he will run straight into really begins to make one think. It actually made me think that he had vision issues. Seriously, he will run into the same thing a gazillion times and you just sit there and wonder "What the heck is wrong with this kid?". I took him to the eye doctor only for the doctor to run every test on him possible to say "20/20, perfect depth perception and no color blind issues....I guess he's just a little clumsy." The saying "two left feet" might have been termed just for Vaughn. Now, please don't judge me in thinking that I am a bad Mom for saying all of this, not until you have spent at least a day with him :)

However, on this night he surprised us all as he took off on Torin's bike with maybe only trying a few times. He has never really rode a bike with training wheels, as he never really had any interest in riding a bike. He was content with his scooter last summer or his little toy motorcycle so when he got on this bike and rode off with very little ease we had some hope restored of what might become of Vaughn "Mr. Two Left Feet" Larson....I'm just kidding :)

Getting steady with Daddy's help.....

and off he goes riding away.....

We are so proud of this little guy!!!

Feeding Time

Vaughn is the classic older brother wanting to help with all the details of Bercan, well except for poopy diapers. He does have some boundaries. I had made Berc his breakfast and Vaughn asked if he could feed him. "For real Mommy, not pertend." I figured what the heck why not. If he makes a mess it will just blend into the rest of the house these days. And well I'm happy to report that Vaughn did a FABULOUS job feeding him, for real not "pertend", as he calls it. The best part about these pictures is how wide Vaughn's mouth is when he is feeding Bercan. I noticed it the first couple of times and then of course had to snap a picture of it...

Yes, this Vaughn a.k.a Spiderman. I got the costume at a garage sale for $1. I promise you he wears it more than any other piece of clothing that he has :)

Too cute for words these crazy little boys

Berc at Baseball

The other night we were at baseball and Bercan was just too cute staring out at his big brother playing baseball. This little guy really is quite lucky for the older brothers that he has as the love between them is just too sweet. It can get bitter to when one is not getting their way but the sweet for sure rids any bitterness when you see pics of this little man :)

Always such big smiles....

Crazy little look while he is literally trying to crawl up my leg

I just love this picture of him watching his big brother...

Papa Dick Smiling Down

Torin is by far our most cautious child. From the time that he was little he would see his friends going down slides and going on swings. They would say "Torin come play with us" and he would reply very politely "No thank you". It just wasn't his thing and as much as we wanted him to be at least a little more daring it just wasn't him.

There are times that we will push him to try new things but for the most part we just let it go. Last 4th of July we pushed him to go tubing as it was a tube that seated two people so Bjorn went with him. This past year we were out at our friends lake and when asked if he wanted to go tubing he said "nope". After all, he was fishing. Really, there is nothing more important than fishing to Torin.

Well this year the kids started trying waterskiing. There were 2 boys that were trying and one got up and the other one kept trying. Then a girl tried it and after she attempted and didn't get up, Torin said "I'll try". We really couldn't believe that he was going to try. We hadn't even asked him if he wanted to.

So our friends Nick and Andy helped him get into position and told him what to do. Sit back, knees to your chest and let the boat pull you. His first try he got up, went about 20 feet and fell. Both Bjorn and I couldn't believe that he actually got up on his very first try. We both looked at each other like "seriously?". We were SO proud of him. I told him that Papa Dick was so proud of him as my Dad (Papa Dick) was one of the most patience men I knew when it came to teaching us skiing. So I said try it one more time for Papa Dick and he said "Okay Mom, one more time, for Papa Dick."

Well he tried again, got up and went half way around the lake. He was pretty proud of himself too. It's always amazing to me what this kid can do. I'm so interested to see what he will do with athletics as he gets older. Hopefully something, as he obviously has some natural abilities that he got from his Daddy.

Here are a few pictures to enjoy!

A little push from behind and front and he's off...

Vaughn of course asked if he could try.

Second time trying up of his first time skiing, good form for his first time..

There he goes! We were SO proud!!!

The logic of #1 and #2...according to Torin

The other day we were driving in the van when Torin asked why people call going pee #1 and going poop #2. Yes, this is the substance of what most of our conversations are about. If you don't have more than one boy in your family you may just not understand. If you do have more than one boy in your family, well then, you completely understand this.

As soon as he asked the question the light bulb must have gone off as he quickly answered his own question saying "OH, I know why. Because if you are going poop the pee always comes out first." And that is the logic of #1 and #2 to my eldest son :)

Vaughn's 4th Birthday

After hearing that Torin wanted a hunting party you can only imagine what Vaughn wanted, a hunting and fishing party. Well that just wasn't ideal for a 4 year olds birthday so I just decided that at 4 I still get to have a little more control in the planning. We were going to have it at a beach where the kids could swim, play in the sand and just have fun BUT I tried this last year and got stuck with pretty much our neighborhood in my house on a rainy day. Maybe it was that I was 7 months pregnant that it ended up being too much for me but it did teach me to have a back up plan.

Thus in the invitation I literally had a plan A and a plan B. Thankfully, I did this as it did end up raining and plan B was put into action. This consisted of going to McDonald's having dinner, playing on in the playground structure, eating cake and opening presents. Vaughn had a great time and was a happy little 4 year old.

He of course had to have a Spiderman birthday cake. He picked out the cake pan from Michael's which Mommy had a coupon for so we got it for a whopping $4. That's just about as good as a garage sale price :) I got a little smarter this year too with the frosting. I ordered it from our local grocery store and for way more frosting than what we needed I only paid $8 but the colors were perfect. The cake turned out awesome but I have to give credit to Bjorn on this one as well since he helped draw all the lines of spider man which was probably the hardest part!

Here are a couple of pictures from his party...

Vaughn and his friend Levi digging into the cake...

Vaughny's friends as he says at"Don Donald's"

Vaughny and his spiderman cake....which he was

super excited about how it turned out.

Most cake pans I am not a super big fan of but this one is actually one that turned out the best. It was fun to see Vaughn's face once it was all done. He was so happy to have a Spiderman cake!

Bercan Crawling the stairs

It's official we need to get out the gates for stairs. Although as I am typing this we still haven't and the video posted here was taken about a week ago. I think with number 3 we are just not on top of things the way we used to be :)

The other week Bercan got to the stairs and we just stood there to see what he would do. Well he did what we thought he would do and climbed them :) I think the thing that is crazy for us is how much sooner Berc is doing things than his brothers did. Sitting up, crawling and now going up the stairs. I'm serious when I say that I pray that he doesn't walk until he is a year. Here is the big man making his way up the stairs....

Salesman in the works

With Torin's baseball team there of course came a fundraiser. I remember doing girl scout cookies and an occasional fundraiser for school but I feel like between the two boys we get something about fundraisers every month. I was about to just turn it and say that we didn't have time to do it until I read that Torin could get something out of it.

It was a coupon card to different businesses in the area and it was only for $20. Torin received cash for each card that he sold. I didn't tell him that he would get anything from it but said that this was something that he had to do to help the baseball fields and the team that he plays on. A large portion did go to the maintenance of the fields, helping improve the dugouts along with equipment throughout the association.

Torin did not want to do this at first. He had to wear his uniform and literally I dragged him to the first house and explained the details of the card. The second house Torin managed to say that the card was "twenty bucks". We walked up to the third house Torin grabbed the card from my hand and told me "I got this one Mom" and he did. He repeated all of the details that he had heard me say to the last two houses and sold it. Along with another 15 cards to make a total of 18 cards for the night. It was just too cute to see him in his uniform, stating all the details, looking them in the eye and thanking them for the sale. There were of course a few houses that didn't buy the card and it didn't phase him a bit. Oh well he would say and on to the next house he would go.

In the end he sold so many cards that he earned $165. When we explained to him that he earned that much money he was so excited. He couldn't believe that he had done so well but you could tell just how proud of himself that he was. We told him that he had really impressed us too. He's thinking through all of the things that he is going to do with the money....

Baseball....finally

Torin has been asking every summer since we first tried t-ball when he was going to be able to do coach pitch. It's tiring to keep hearing him ask this but at the same time Torin has been able to hit a ball since he was 3 with someone pitching it to him so I guess I have to try and see it from his perspective.

The coach pitch for the youth association of White Bear is 7 so I thought finally this summer he would be able to. I went to register him for it and it said that he needed to be 7 by April 30, 2010. I was dreading another summer of him complaining about it so I registered him anyways. My thought was that if they saw his birthday was past the cut off that maybe they would call me and I could explain that he really would be able to participate. Well they never called and we were registered and ready to go.

Torin was so excited about coach pitch, in his mind this was REAL baseball. I'm sure two summers of waiting to a kid probably feels like eternity. We went to the first practice and Torin is by the far the smallest kid on the team. There is one other kid that is small too but most of the kids are either 7 almost turning 8 or are 8 years old.

Torin has done great over the season. He's only struck out a few times and has really gotten good at the catching when he is on base and seeing where the play is going to happen. It's been fun to see him improve through the season.

One of the best things for Torin is when his team wins a game. It's not just because they won but because we celebrate the victory with a trip to cup and cone. This is something that my Dad used to do for me when I was in little league. If we won we got to go to The Kiltie Drive in. As a kid I thought this was the BEST place on Earth. So it was really a special treat to me. I think this is the same for our kids. Celebrating a win over ice cream on a summer night....what else really compares :)

Here are a few pictures of Torin and his team...

First game of the season, first time up to bat and he nails it...

Playing second base and warming up inbetween innings

Sliding into home base for this first run in for the season

Torin is in the front row, second in from the right.

I just love this little boy in a uniform :) Too cute!

Torin's 7th birthday party

I decided that this was year that we would let Tor ask 5 friends to his birthday and that we would take them to a waterpark, a movie or something else. I thought that at 7, a few other 7 year olds would be something we could handle and would be fun to do something besides just a party at the house. Assuming that he would pick a waterpark Torin completely surprised us by asking if he could have a hunting party and that he wanted to invite Jack and Brock. Jack and Brock are two boys that he went to daycare with almost two years ago. I wasn't really sure what a hunting party entailed or what he thought it entailed and I was surprised that he wanted only two friends invited to this party. This is so Torin any time that we think that he is going to be impressed with something or be excited by having something different he throws us by surprise. Bjorn and I started thinking about taking them to an archery place but couldn't really find anything that would make sense for 7 year olds.

I reached out to a VERY creative friend of mine who helped me with the ideas of the party. I used to be creative and would love to do things unique and fun. Now with three boys, working full time and volunteering I go for what is quick, easy and cheap :) My friends suggestions were face painting, a treasure hunt and a relay race of dressing up in "army" clothes. To do this we needed to convince Torin that he needed to invite more than 2 friends. We had talked about inviting the neighborhood boys since there are only 3 that are in his age range. Torin wasn't too keen on this idea. I think it's because it wasn't HIS idea. Literally, two days after we talked about this we were driving behind one of our neighbors to swimming lessons when Torin said "Mom, look Collin is in front of us. Did you invite him to my party? I sure hope that he can come." Seriously, I guess he is just one of those people that it has to be HIS idea in order for it to work :)

The night started off with some pizza and lemonade ($20), followed by me painting their faces in camouflage ($13 for the face paint), treasure hunt to find their nerf guns ($23), which they used for "target practice" on our sliding glass doors with a painted target and animals that Daddy had drawn ($5 for the window markers), a relay race of adult army clothes (free) and lastly a camouflage birthday cake made by Mommy ($10). This is by FAR the cheapest birthday I have ever put on for either of the boys but when we tucked him into bed that night he thanked us both for the most awesomest birthday party that he has EVER had. That my friends made the night priceless!

Here are a few pics of the cake and boys. I wish that I would have gotten pictures or video of them in the relay race of army clothes because really it was quite the sight. I've been trying to be better about living in the moment versus behind a camera. If you know me, you know that this is hard for me to do but it's been a little fun too :)

Jaiden, Connor, Collin, Tor, Jack, Brock and Vaugh (aka Siperman)

All the boys thought the camouflage cake was super cool. I guess I can still be a little creative...