this is why we live here

We used to have to pay 8 dollars a kid to visit a petting zoo.  We used to have to plan ahead and travel pretty far to find some baby animals.  We used to be surrounded by 24 other kids begging for 50 cents to purchase the gross goat feeding chips just to stick one hand into a cage.  Not anymore, welcome to quiet small town living.  

This weekend, out good friends/ neighbors/ babysitter and their 2 kids, invited us to tag along to one of our many neighboring farms.  These little sheep were 1 week old.  A. got to feed them while K. stood by watching and taking in all in to his quiet reserved brain.  The family who owns the farm also have a 6 year old little girl.  That little sweet girl took A. under her wing and taught the kids how to get eggs out of the chicken coop, hang upside down on the play set, pet a bunny, and how to hold the little lambs.  

Here is K.'s version of the story...

baaaaaa

"bak ey bal" on a farm...

"Dee Trato" on a farm... Could this day get any better?

oh it can, a dump truck.

Here is my future prediction for K: I think he may be a farmer.  It would suit his quiet yet active lifestyle ie. the animals won't bother him like his sister, he can play in dirt, he can drive a tractor, and he can give his mother all the vegetable and eggs that she wants.  Deal... I think so


.

toys toys toys

Guess what is happening at our house!! That's right, 2 years ago, our little guy graced our presence the day before his daddy's birthday.  That means we get to celebrate 2 birthdays.  Or, according to his father,it means that the adult birthday now gets overshadowed.    

 I can't imagine why he thinks that.  What 32 year old does not want a cake in a dump truck.  hehe

Despite the intro, I actually wanted to focus on toys rather than birthdays.  For K.'s birthday, we got him this...

 B. and his brother spent over an hour hanging this master hot wheels wall track.  I'm not sure how long was hanging and how long was playing, but the kiddo's are pretty happy with it.  K. can't even reach the top yet he stands at the bottom and watches the cars zoom past and fly out the bottom.  At night, he puts his cars under a blanket to say "night night"  He is pretty grateful.

He also got this.  He calls it a man hat.  I don't know why except that he is usually wearing a purple bonnet or a pink thunder hat so maybe his father invoked gender identification and told him to dress like a man.  He now runs around the house hammering and sawing everything in sight.

 In addition to multiple small dump trucks and a true genuine German double decker bus, he inherited a John Deere tractor from our family friends. He has yet to figure out how to push the pedal and move, but his sister sure has.  He likes to sit on his "ta ter"  and smile. Again, pretty grateful

But, as grateful as he is for all of these big things, I think the best gift was from the cashier at the True Value in our small town.  She gave him a wooden paint stick.  According to B., he was holding onto the large stakes needed to block off our backyard for our new fence coming in a few weeks.  The cashier apparently judged his parenting and quickly traded it for a small paint stirrer.  Said paint stirrer acted as a screw driver, a hammer, a magic wand, a saw, a drum, and my favorite, the car launcher.  Much like the really fancy one hanging in his room now.  He and his cohorts, A. and B., played with it for an hour at least before it broke in half and began to look like the backyard stake.

Happy Birthday, K. I hope you enjoy all of your presents.  Next year, you are getting only a paint stick.