Guest star on the Retta Show

Xander was a guest star on this week's Retta Show.

Retta was Xander's classmate in kindergarten and has been recording a cooking show called the Retta Show which has episodes on YouTube. Retta's family joined the same CSA we did and so they decided to make a show about butternut squash. It's very cute.

Pirates!

Pirates!
Originally uploaded by TinaRed

Clifford and Retta came over for a play date. We were invited to be guest stars on the Retta show!

First Day of School

First Day of School
Originally uploaded by TinaRed

Waiting for the gates to open up for Xander's first day of first grade. Duncan also started his first day of Pre-K.

Anju's Wedding and Rishi

We went on yet another trip this summer. This time to Chicago for 2 reasons: 1) my sister Anju was getting married to Van, a guy she's known since high school; 2) Ranju and Rohit had their new baby boy, Rishi.

Anju and Van had their wedding at Amma and Appa's house and a beautiful reception at the Chicago Botanical Gardens. Xander was SO infatuated with Anju: he would hang on her all the time. This picture is one of the wedding pictures, but we managed to convince the boys to stand aside so the photographer could get the shot.

There are some more pictures of Anju's wedding here.

Rishi is pretty cute. I can't quite tell who he looks like more, but he's soft and cuddly and fairly even tempered, even at three weeks old.

Duncan rides his 2-wheeler

Here is a small video of Duncan riding his bicycle. We just took the training wheels off last week, but we were out of town for most of this, so this is effectively his third day of riding. Look at him go!


I apologize for the poor quality of this video, I took it with my phone.

Successful fishing trip

We visited Grandma and Grandpa in Montana last week, where we did so many fun things: fishing, archery, go karting, minigolfing, playing at a water park, camping in the backyard, throwing rocks in the Yellowstone river, playing Wii, watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, and much more.

Here's the fishing story:

We went out to the private lake where Grandpa's cabin used to be in Nye, MT where Grandpa's friend Bob took us in his boat to catch some fish. We hooked a trout every five minutes and caught our limit (6) in 30 minutes! Xander caught 2 all by himself, from casting to pulling it into the boat. And of course the one that got away was "almost as big as the boat!"

Duncan on two wheels

Duncan has mastered the balance of riding a Razor scooter, so we had removed one of his training wheels to help him get the feel of balancing on his bicycle. He was doing so well that he asked me to take off the other wheel. With a little push, he was off.

In other news, Xander is now a Yellow Belt in Kuk Sool Won.

T-Rex at Peter Pan Golf

On my last day of sabbatical, I decided to take the boys miniature golfing at Peter Pan Golf. We ate lunch at P. Terry's (great hamburgers) down the street, and then golfed 18 holes. It was scorching hot, and we didn't keep score, but we still managed to have a great time. The boys look forward to going back!

The T-Rex is in guarding the second hole.

Bowling

Last Monday, I took the boys bowling. Xander had bowled before, but Duncan has only played Wii bowling (which he rocks at).

Xander did well, but Duncan had trouble because the 6 pound ball is 1/5th his weight! Duncan much prefers the Wii version. ;)