Boys, More Boys and a Girl

Friday was a day off for me and Rudy so we called our favorite people to see who wanted to get together. Vincie, Tyler, Noah and Sean were up for it, since it was the first day of Vincie's vacation, and Patti, Max and Lucy were a last minute addition since everyone was in good (for them) health.


We all met at the Aquarium. Tyler, Noah, Max and Rudy had a lot of fun looking at all the animals. It was very crowded with school groups so Lucy probably couldn't see too much from her stroller and Sean was just content to be pushed along.

We got to see some divers in the shark tank.

Max and Tyler got a chance to feed some of the birds. Neither was willing to let the bird eat out of their hand so we just put the food on the ledge.

After the aquarium, we walked to the children's garden next door. We can't wait to explore the gardens more since we have a season pass but it was fun to walk around, ride a few rides and check a few things out before heading home.

The train ride.

Climbing at the playground

Digging for dinosaur bones.
Playing the drums (see Lucy right there in the middle).

The boys all had a great time and Lucy easily held her own as the only girl. We had a lot of fun and hope to make these get togethers a regular event for the summer.

FFF- Crazy Hair

Last week after nap, Rudy's teachers decided to style his hair for the weekend. This is what he looked like when I stopped in his room to see him.

A Day Off

From the way Rudy reacted to not having to go to school (or us to work) this weekend, you would think we send him to school on Saturday and Sunday most weeks. He was very surprised on Saturday morning when he realized he wasn't going to school and we had a day off together, and then the same on Sunday. Of course, by Monday, he was convinced that we should have more days off and not go back to school or work on Tuesday. I would definitely agree with him!

Saturday was our busiest day - errands and cleaning.

Sunday we went to church in the morning and then prepared for our barbecue. We expected my whole family but got a call from Patti saying Lucy wasn't feeling well and they weren't going to make it. So it was a smaller party than usual but Rudy had fun showing off his biking skills to Bill, Renee and Dad and recruiting people to pitch the ball for him.

Monday we went to our town's parade. We had a brilliant idea to have Rudy ride his bike while we walked and it worked perfectly. He never got tired of it and had a blast riding into town. This is going to help us tire him out in the summer; we can walk to a playground, have him bike there, and between biking there and running around on the playground he will hopefully be exhausted by bedtime!

Speaking of exhausted, I took these pictures Sunday night when I went to check on Rudy before I went to bed. He slept almost 12 hours that night - what a welcome change! Thanks Bill, Renee and Dad for helping to tire him out!

Ch-Ch-Changes

If you remember, a year ago, Rudy had a very hard time riding a bike. He actually wasn't phased by it, but he would walk the bike as he straddled it and refused to pedal. Even on our vacation, with everyone circling him on bikes, he was perfectly happy to walk his bike. A few weeks ago at school, we had bike week. Before bringing Rudy's bike to school, we practiced some more at home with no success. So I offered his teacher an extra special gift for Teacher's Appreciation Week if she could get him to pedal his bike. Within one day, he was pedalling around the playground at school.
He now loves to ride his bike and is so proud of how well he pedals. Here is the proof.









And a little video for good measure.

FFF - Rock Star

What do rock stars wear when they bathe?

Their sunglasses, of course!

Rudy's Weekend Adventure

If you read the previous post, you know Paul and I had an exciting weekend. Well so did Rudy, He got to spend the weekend with Patti, Chris, Max, and Lucy. I'm not sure how Chris and Patti survived it but they seemed sane by the time we saw them on Saturday night. We all stayed over there Saturday and then came home Sunday morning. Thanks again, Chris and Patti, for watching Rudy.

Here are some silly pictures of the cousins this morning. Notice Max and Rudy have the same pajamas - that is a complete coincidence.

An Adventurous Weekend

This weekend Paul and I participated in an amazing activity in Philadelphia called City Chase. It is part Amazing Race (but only one day in one city) and part scavenger hunt. The goal was to complete 10 chasepoints (out of about 15 or 20 to choose from) and get to the finish line. We started the day with some warm up exercises and then were given the rules (mainly, only use foot transportation or SEPTA - no cars, cabs, bikes) and then we started with a scavenger hunt. We had to find 8 out of 10 items named in order to get our clues to start the actual race. Paul and I worked with Bill & Renee all day so we decided what we thought we could get and separated to collect items. Oh yeah, the other rule was you had to be within 50 feet of your partner at all times. In the interest of keeping this a family blog, I won't go into details about what all the items were, but they included finding out the temperature in Quebec City, showing a stain on your clothes, finding a coin from a year the Phillies won the World Series and finding a live animal ( we opted for worms for that one).

Once we collected our 8 items, we got our clue sheet and sat down to decipher it. We figured out where most of the points were, and called Dad to help us figure out the other ones. Then we plotted our route and where we wanted to start. Our first point came from going to Chinatown and writing down our animal for the year we were born. We actually went to one of the stores around, that did Chinese writing and asked them to do it for us. Then we had to take it to the volunteers waiting at the corner to get it approved.

I'm not sure I remember the exact order of all the tasks but next we went to a marine drill. First one partner had to carry another with a fireman carry up and back across the grass. Then one partner had to hold the other's feet (in a wheelbarrow position) while he/she did push ups. Then both partners had to crawl under a rope course and then run back over the ropes carrying weights over their head. Last the team had to do 50 push ups all together. It was grueling but fun. My body will be feeling it for weeks, I think.

(I pulled this picture from Renee's facebook page so that's why it is so small.)

Another task was at The Betsy Ross house where we had to answer 20 out of 25 questions correctly about the US Constitution (another time where Dad came to the rescue). Then we had to follow directions to fold a paper and cut out a star.

We had to translate a message written in Braille (not actually the raised dots but just written dots).

One partner had to do a drawing of a nude model.

We had to play strip bowling (you completed the task when either each partner had gotten a strike or you were both out of clothes).

We had to take a test from Kaplan test prep. There were 14 questions (extremely hard) and you had to get 9 right. But, when they graded your test, they didn't tell you which ones were wrong - very difficult! We took a lot of time at this and ended up just guessing different answers.

We had to play the old relay race game where you have a suitcase of clothes to put on, then run around in, then take off and let your partner wear them and run too.

We had to do some football drills - running, tossing a football, up and downs, rolling and jumping over your partner. Then walking to the top of the Art Museum steps to get a dog tag.

The last thing we did was we were given a list of 10 things and had to take pictures of 8 of them. The list was: a human pyramid of 6 people with one partner on top, a stranger kissing your partner, a green city chase arrow on your bodies somewhere, both partners holding an animal, a tastycake, a person running for office, both partners in Rocky's footsteps, the head of City Chase in front of the LOVE statue, and one partner in someone else's clothes and that person wearing your City Chase clothes. It was hard to find everything we needed but fun. Once we completed all of it we were done. The race officially ended at 4pm and we got out last point completed about 10 of 4. We didn't make it to the finish line in time to get an official time (that also stopped at 4pm) so that is our goal next year.

It was so much fun to do and we are already working on our strategy for next year!

FFF- Dos Primos

Last weekend Chris and Lucy came to visit. Here are pictures of Rudy and Lucy enjoying a book before bedtime. It's funny to see the same look on Lucy's face, when looking at Rudy, that Rudy usually has when looking at Max.

Bears

This video is one that I tried to post previously and had problems with so here it is again. We were taking a walk through a local park and Rudy was discussing why we needed to stay on the boardwalk to keep the bears (and other animals) away.

(Sorry it's sideways but I can't seem to rotate it!)

Sesame

Today turned out to be such a beautiful day so we headed off to Sesame Place for a few hours. Since Chris and Lucy were visiting us for the night, they joined us. Rudy and Lucy had a lot of fun going on the rides and we got to see an animal show.

Meeting Oscar... Rudy and Lucy were fascinated with him from afar - he pops in and out of his trashcan - but, as you can see, when we got closer, Lucy wouldn't look at Oscar. Rudy is patting her head, either in an effort to be comforting or to try to get her attention.
Rudy also insisted on pushing Lucy's stroller most of the time, which led to very slow progress anytime we were trying to get somewhere!

Lucy managed to climb almost all the way to the top of this.

Rudy, of course, climbed right up several times. He is such a monkey.

Our little daredevil. This is a kid's version of FreeFall. He and Paul went on it, however, they only went up and down once before the employees decided the ride needed some repairs and everyone had to get off. Rudy was laughing the whole time.

It was a nice day and fun for Rudy to get to spend some time with his little cousin. I am sure she enjoyed it since usually Rudy is so attached to Max, that Lucy gets very little attention from him.

FFF - Lemons

Recently, when we went out to dinner, Rudy decided to lick some lemons while we waited. I couldn't get a full face picture but these show the fun he was having as Paul and I said "ewww" and the faces he was making as he tasted the sour lemon.