Yikes, 2 weeks went by?

Crazy how fast time goes! We've had a nice couple weeks. Lots of rain, which has been much needed. There's nothing like hearing the rain at night :o). We've had a lot of inside play time and the kids have gotten a little creative in their play. Here's a picture of what they were doing today:

We also implemented a gold star reward program a few weeks ago and it has been such a success. Reggie has been very good about getting dressed in the morning, helping me with the laundry/dishes and cleaning up his room! I got up one morning and he was already dressed, had picked up his room and the living room and had put the dishes away (too bad they were dirty!!!). When he gets 10 stars, he gets a surprise toy. Ainsley participates, but isn't as into it. She doesn't seem to mind helping just for the sake of doing it.

Last week we had teacher conferences at Reggie's pre-school. It was great to get some feedback on how he is at school. He is definitely ready for Kindergarten, but we need to work a bit more on sounds and reading retention. It was interesting to see his self portrait at the beginning of the year (looked similar to a snowman with eyes) vs. now (he had arms/legs/hands/hair). He has grown leaps and bounds in his art ability :o).
We had some extra time since he didn't have school, so we hit the bike trail and went for a ride. I thought it would be fun to throw rocks in the overflow drainage area that has only had water in it twice since we've been here. Reggie wanted so bad to get to the other side and there was a big branch in the water and he thought he would try to walk out on it. I turned my head for one second and he fell off it. Thankfully, it was only calf deep, but his pants and shoe got soaked. Last year that would have sent him into a crying fit, but he laughed about it. And then, he took his socks and shoes off and waded to the other side. He got full of mud and didn't even care. I was smiling the whole time, wondering who this little boy was! Ainsley wanted to follow Reggie, but she put her feet in the water and decided it wasn't for her. She managed to get plenty dirty, just throwing rocks and sitting in the dirt. We had a nice fast ride home (last year I couldn't pedal slow enough and I was constantly waiting for him), even venturing off the trail to ride up and down a hill :o).
We had Ainsley's gymnastics class this morning. She has been doing so great and I'm amazed at all of the things she'll try and that she can actually do. It is really fun to watch her!

Reggie's baseball has been quite the committment. His team practices twice a week and this Sat. they had a practice baseball game. It was during Ainsley's nap, so Ryan took Reggie and he did great. Doesn't he look good in his uniform, cup and all?!

Ainsley loves it when I tell her stories about babies and a couple days ago, I was telling her about how she was born and then Reggie came over and wanted to hear about how he was born. Of course Ainsley was asking about Grandma baby and Daddy baby and I had to explain to her that I couldn't tell those stories because I wasn't there! Anyway, Reggie somehow remembered that we had video of him and he wanted to watch some of it. I put it on and Ainsley was in heaven!!! After about 10 minutes, she wanted to watch herself. Yikes! We haven't transferred her videos to DVD's and I didn't even remember taking much. So, last night, Ryan and I got out the movie camera and were watching fun family videos. We found some of her, but I think our next project will be sorting that out (we made the mistake of using 2 different cameras, partly because we couldn't find the power cord to one of them. Ryan found it a month ago in my car glove box....hmmm). We have not done as good of a job capturing video of her and we need to be better about that. Movie night this week was watching baby Reggie and baby Ainsley.