Summer right of passage

New trees in the back yard

Remember a number of posts ago showing me pulling a white pine tree stump from the ground? I pulled three and in their place I planted two sugar maples. Stupid white pines. These babies are going to grow and give us some wonderful shade one day. We've named the trees Payton and Parker. (God what parents will do.) We're going to try a snap a picture each July 4th (or thereabouts) of each boy with their tree. Here are the first pictures.

Hey, what the heck?

I don't know the whole story in these pictures, but what the heck is going on? Here is what I know. Kathleen and Parker are at Peddler's Village. Parker is eating a cup cake. He probably just licked the frosting off and was finished. Then he's feeding his face with ice cream. I'm pretty sure that if I was the one behind the camera here I would be getting an ear full.

UPDATE: A reader (er, Kathleen) explained to me that the cup cake was dropped, there was crying and blah blah blah an ice cream cone made the world all better. Sounds about right to me.

Our little gymnast

Parker loves his gymnastics class. He can run, tumble and climb. He is almost ready to do a flip around the high bar. He can't jump up and hoist himself into the position above yet. What he does is climb up the support posts and then shimmies out onto the bar.

We visited Cincinnati

The week after July 4th we traveled back to Cincinnati to visit our friends there. The drive was easy enough. We crossed the whole of two states; Pennsylvania and Ohio. Ohio's highways were much better than Pennsylvania's. Ten hours there, ten hours back.

Our first full day there was spent down at Newport on the Levee. This is in Kentucky just across the river from downtown Cincy. We visited the aquarium and saw the movie CARS 2. On Friday we went to the zoo. Payton stills loves seeing the animals. It was Parker's first visit to a zoo as well. We didn't take many pictures, but I did capture this parting shot as we left.
We enjoyed visiting with our former neighbors. We miss them a lot and visited with them as much as we could. Kathleen took a picture of Payton with Kaylee. I think Kaylee is 10 or 11 now. Below is a picture of the two of them from 5 years ago. Payton was just 1½ years old. They're older now, but really neither of them has changed at all.

Here's a picture becoming very common. Payton doesn't have a hand held gaming system, but he sure enjoys playing Angry Birds: RIO on my phone.

Soccer camp

Payton has spent his mornings this week in soccer camp. He didn't want to go at first, but after having been he had a great time. We've decided to sign him up for another week in August. Parker likes Payton playing too. While big brother is playing soccer, little brother plays on the playground. Below is a little video action. Payton has a blue-green penny on and is wearing read shorts.

First day at our new swim club

Today was our first day at our new swim club. We had joined a different club earlier in the year but we were not happy with it. We are very happy with Village 2 Swim & Tennis Club. The place has six pools. Different activities are done in each.

At our old club Payton needed to pass a swim test before being allowed in deep water. The same is true for our new club. The test is swimming approximately 50 meters and treading water for 2 minutes. He hadn't come very close to these requirements in swim lessons yet. I made a deal with him; do the distance and time at swim lessons or actually pass the test and he gets a new toy of his choice. I told Kathleen I think I made a pretty safe deal for this year. Boy was I wrong. Payton tried the test for the first time and passed with no problem. I don't think the toy was his greatest motivation though. He wanted to dive off the diving boards. Now by wearing his special ankle bracelet he can swim in any pool - except the dedicated lap pool.

Oh, and here is a nice picture of Parker from earlier in the day on a playground slide.