Cousin Week

We were blessed to have Aaron's whole family in town for a whole week this month. Zeke was thrilled to have all of his cousins around, and the 4 older ones were almost inseparable all week long. We were excited to meet our newest niece and have a lot of interactions to get to know all of our nieces and nephew a lot better.

The kids played and played and played some more. They had pool parties in Grandma's backyard.

We went to the lake.

Went to a birthday party.

Played at Grandma's house, had a sleepover, went to Cascade Springs, and went to church together.

Zeke really enjoyed himself. It's funny to me that by the end of the week he was starting to talk like his cousins a little bit, and some of their favorite phrases are now part of his speech. It was wonderful to have the time to really play together and catch up on the little details that we miss while we are scattered.

Things We're Learning

As it is back-to-school season, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about all of the learning that is going on around here, even though we aren't in school. At least not yet - Zeke is on a waiting list for an awesome preschool, and hopefully there will be a spot for him soon.

Zeke is learning his alphabet, and starting to understand that letters make words. We are working on letter and number recognition (not specifically reading yet), but he has started to ask 'What's this word?' occasionally. He also loves to sing and has spent this week memorizing the songs played on Nora's new toy smartphone and singing storybook. Learning to catch with Grandma is a two-for-one in the learning department; he's learning physical skills and grammar at the same time as we talk about 'caught' being the right way to say 'catched'. (English is tricky, eh?)

Another thing Zeke does all the time that cracks me up is compare things. He is all the time saying 'This is like....' or 'I am like....'. Some recent favorites are 'I am like a car wash' as we were washing his hair in the bathtub and 'I'm like the dragon' as he tries to fly by jumping around.

Nora is learning and growing so fast these days. Her walking skills get better daily, and this week she has also started standing up from sitting without pulling up on something. She claps her hands (lots of fun in the bathtub) and she is showing that she knows more than her hands are coordinated to do, like playing with her puzzles or trying to put the lid back on my water bottle.

Nora is also showing signs that those first words are on the horizon as she babbles sounds that sometimes sound remarkably like phrases. She loves to look at pictures of kids (preferably herself and Zeke, but really any kids will do) and gets excited when the blog/camera/cellphone shows pictures and rather upset when the pictures go away. She loves books and it just melts my heart when she comes toddling over to me, book in hand, to sit on my lap and read.

A Sweet Little Party

I've thought back to last August a lot this month. It's hard to believe that it's been a full year since we were getting ready for (and enduring waiting for) a brand new baby. And now we have already had her first birthday party!

We had a fun gathering at home with grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles, and Utah cousins. Thanks to everyone for giving such perfect gifts; Nora loves them all!

She got books (one of her favorite things).

The toy smartphone was the hit of the party. I took it out of the box after we opened all the gifts and the adults enjoyed it as much as the kids.

She also got cute clothes from her Grandmas.

One little candle for our sweet little girl. I had told Zeke earlier in the day that Nora probably would need him to help her blow out her candle, so that's what he did after we sang. But he waited a few seconds to see if she would do it herself, which I thought was really sweet.

Cute little ladybug cake.

And tasty too!

Nora also performed for her party guests by showing off her latest trick - taking several steps in a row. (This video is more present-grabbing than stepping.)

Evening at the Lake

While Aaron's siblings were all in town we decided to have a night at the lake.

Mom and Dad packed a picnic, and the brothers and older grandkids took turns cranking the homemade ice cream.

Nora splashed in the salt-water puddles from the ice cream bucket and had a great time...that is, until she splashed herself in the face. After that, the fun was all over.

After dinner we went out on the boat. Zeke has been before but it's been a long time. I was quite pleased that he made no complaints about putting on a life jacket. Nora, on the other hand, hated her life jacket. Between that and being super tired, she cried for most of her short boat ride. I think she would have really enjoyed it if she had been able to ignore her life jacket. (And probably would have gone to sleep in the boat!)

After a few minutes we came back to the shore to drop Nora off with her aunts and grandma and then went back out for a quieter ride with Zeke. Aaron is superman for rowing the boat all by himself while I held Nora and then for going fast and far according to Zeke's requests.

After our boating turn, we came back to the pavilion to catch up with Nora, who was working her way to fast asleep in Grandma's arms.

It was a great night of family and the great outdoors. So glad we put together this last-minute trip!

Planes at Night

We went to our second night fly last month. We skipped last year because we didn't have a night fly plane anymore, and because I was ~35 weeks pregnant and couldn't imagine being awake past 10pm. We still don't have a night fly plane (yet), but we should have one next year.

Aaron took the plane-in-progress with us and worked on it while we waited for it to get dark.

We also had a BBQ dinner and spent all night trying to stop Nora from eating rocks.

We also learned a valuable lesson - don't take anything to a potluck that you are not willing to bring back home uneaten. We were specifically asked to bring watermelon instead of the cake we were planning on. Not only did we get stuck with the whole darn melon, Aaron didn't get his sour cream cake!

It's so pretty to watch the sun set behind the airplanes.

We also brought glow sticks for the kids. I put the bracelets around their upper arms and it worked super well at helping me keep track of where they were. We found a glow sword for Zeke and he loved it. Nora loved it too, so we probably should have bought two of them!

Reunion-ing

Zeke had the time of his life at the 'big' Loertscher reunion (descendants of Aaron's grandparents) last weekend. He spent most of the time with a cousin and second cousin his age and they had loads of fun. They ate outside together, played swords, played water games, played on the slide, climbed big tires, rode the big swing, played in the sand, flew a virtual starship, and of course rode the Little Loertscher train. It was fun to watch the kids when the train was ready to run - as soon as that engine starts, all kids who can possibly squeeze themselves into the cars come running from all corners of the yard.

(swing fun made possible by Heather, who helped them up and then pushed the swing)

Lunch in the train while it was parked on the patio.

Nora cruised the furniture, crawled around the patio, discovered that she loves Fritos, and made lots of new friends just by giving smiles and generally being adorable. She also has a cousin and second cousin her age and they played together as much as 1 year olds do. She didn't get to ride the train but she tried out a parked train car.

Aaron and I didn't do much besides chat with a few people, watch/chase Nora, and Aaron played a couple of games of rummy. I love that the kids have the chance to get to know their second cousins and great aunts and uncles.