Alex

 Warrior Alex!  I wanted to post a few short stories about Alex lately, and this was a pretty current picture of his normal warrior stance.  Right now Dave and Al are "camping" in our backyard.  Alex goes to bed around 8:30 at it is still really light outside, so I think they'll stay up late playing in the tent, or Dave will be really bored in about 10 minutes (hope he got a book).  

  In all reality they'll probably last till 9 when they come inside to fall asleep in bed :)

  So, stories.  Alex is really into giving me hearts and saying he loves me... which I love.  Tonight I told him to stand up straight so I could get him dressed, instead he was hugging me.  When I told him again he said "but mom, I HEART you!"  Isn't that a tween saying?

   Also, in San Diego whenever we would see a black man in a service position, like bus driver, security, trash man, he would say loudly  "Thank you NORVILLE!"  Alex has a loud voice that is quite clear, so the man would always either smile or laugh or act like they were ignoring him.  He kept saying "Look mom, here comes Norville!"  Now, I don't know why, but for some reason Alex thinks that all black men in service positions are named Norville.  It was kind of embarassing but mostly Dave and I were just confused as to where he got this.  Crazy kid.

  Also, Dave told him he was cute and Alex finished with "as cute as can be!"  Too many grandparents around this one :)

San Diego!

If any of you have been around Alex the last couple of months, he probably told you about going to SAN DIEGO!  We told him a little too early, but the day finally came and we were off!

The first day we drove up to Liz and Ethan's church had saw their little girl Madeline Rae get blessed.  She is adorable (sorry the picture is far away) and it was SOOO fun, and completely surreal to see Liz again.  We lived together for my whole college experience, except the one semester I was married.  She is still the best hostess even with a newborn and her and Ethan have one cute little girl!
The rest of the trip was filled with SeaWorld, Wild Animal Park, the Zoo and of course beaches.  This top picture is after the dolphin show at seaworld, if you look at the hair and our shirts you'll see that we're totally soaked!  WE were in the "wet zone"  The below picture is Al feeding the Lorikeets...his highlight.
And the beach!  Does anyone know how to get fine sand out of swimsuits, blankets, towels, and hair?  I don't!  Lydia rolled in the sand like it was her favorite blanket..she even kissed it and licked it, YUCK!  And Alex enjoyed the water a little more, but got his fill of sand in the mouth and every other place.  I'm sad to say that I wasn't able to recreate his "perfect" sandcastle the whole trip...maybe papa can do that with him when he's older :)

We had lots of fun, happy to be back, and not too sunburnt.  Good trip

gymnastics

Alex had a gymnastics class this spring, and they ended with a little show for all the parents and grandparents.  I forgot to invite all the grandparents (oops!) so this blog is for you!

           Balance beam kicks, and flipping on Alex's favorite thing, the monkey bars!

Above is an action shot of Alex doing a summersault.  This took him about 6 weeks to learn, so Dave and I were cheering really loud here :)
And he got a ribbon and stamps on his score sheet...that made him proud too.
About a week earlier Alex told me that he didn't like gymnastics and we even left a little early before stickers and stamps (that's a big deal).  So we probably won't be doing it again any time soon.  I was amazed by how some little girls could do flips and jumps with little to no effort.  Alex would try and try and could hardly pull himself up on the monkey bars...I think he's got genetics against him on being a gymnastics star :)