the Difference Between Girls & Boys

I know Michael is acutely aware of the differences between girls and boys. But there's one thing that I don't think has quite clicked for him: Girls don't really prefer shoot & fight & "smack that bad guy" games.

I think Aunt Karen came to appreciate her sweet granddaughters much more after being around Michael for a week.

"Hey!" Michael yells, looking at Karen, "Hey...hey, uh, hey...."

At this point, I prompt him, "Michael, her name is Aunt Karen."

"Hey, Aunt Karen, watch this!" At this moment, Michael could be holding anything from a pillow, to a lego, or a piece of lint, and as soon as Karen looks over Michael throws it up in the air and starts batting it like the "bad guy" it is.

Or he'd hand her a toy, "Let's fight!"

"Umm, no, Michael, I don't really want to fight with it right now," Aunt Karen replies. I'm sure Michael couldn't understand why she wouldn't want to play such a fascinating game with him.

I'm glad I had a break from these games for a while. The week after Karen went home, I went to Utah for a weekend trip (kid free)! I stayed at Grandma's house, and played with my 3-year-old niece, Emily. It was fun to curl her long blonde hair on Sunday morning (something I wish I could do more often). While I was doing my own hair in the bathroom, Emily came in and picked up two of my bobbypins from the counter and immediately started naming them.

"This one's the mommy," pointing to the one bobbypin, "and this one's the daddy." Then she proceeded to walk those hairpins around the sink and into their homes.

I stood in awe. Michael would have never done that.

It was nice to come home and see my three-year-old again. I'm good at getting him partially dressed (as many of my pictures prove). This picture was taken the day I got home from Utah. While sitting at the computer, Michael pulled out some pennies to play with, and guess what? He immediately named one of them.

"This one's the daddy...."

Oh wait, I don't want to steer you wrong. That's not really how that sentence ended. One penny was set aside and he called it "the daddy....warrior" and the rest of the pennies began a deep, cutting battle with one another protecting that daddy warrior penny. Yup, that's my boy.

Boys and girls are different. Very different indeed.

Snoqualmie Falls

We had a visitor all last week-Richard's Aunt Karen! It was nice to have two cars, and to get out and do something out-of-the-ordinary everyday. We also played lots of Mexican Train Dominoes and ate a lot of sugar everyday. Oy! 

Our first days adventures included a drive to Snoqualmie. We visited Snoqualmie Falls, which was incredible. I didn't realize such a powerful waterfall was just down the street from Richard's work. It was breath-taking. 

After the falls, we drove to downtown Snoqualmie and walked down a path with rusty parked trains. We read some of the information posted along the trail about these old trains and laughed at it's many spelling mistakes.

After trains, we stopped by Richard's work and had lunch with him and then looked at his desk. Very exciting stuff indeed. Richard has already adorned his desk with a couple of Transformers.

The final stop of the day was a trip to Theo Chocolate Factory. We went on the tour, ate lots of samples, and looked hot with our hair nets on. Michael hated having it on his head, and was quite thrilled with all of the information he was learning about cocoa beans. Can't you tell? Sorry for the fuzzy I-Phone pictures. There wasn't a lot of light, and I was trying to sneak this picture of Karen intently listening to our tour guide. Karen learned one thing--90% cocoa chocolate bars are not her favorite thing to sample. I should've gotten a picture of her face when she took a bite of that! 

United States of America

This is kind of an old video. This has been a fun puzzle to do with Michael. He's proud to say he lives in Washington and that Philip lives in Utah.