little man

We're getting to Kindergarten updates... I promise!  Just want to keep things in order so here are some of the latest antics from my little man...

Andrew is getting to be such a good artist.  I am so impressed with his drawings lately.  The other night we ate at IHOP and he just went to town on this picture of the ship from "Pirate" Ice Age and all the characters.

I blurred out the words since it was on a menu and hard to see!  Look at these details!  Those of you who have seen the movie can appreciate it, especially the weird elephant thing, he even drew his trunk! And the tiger on all fours.  So cute!

This is just precious to me.  He brought this home from day care.  He told me who all these characters from the movie were, and then when I pointed to the one at the bottom he said, "that's me!"  Of course!  Ha!  I love how Gia is swinging on a trapeze and Marty is flying (like in the movie) and the sea lion even has a clown like thing around his neck!

I've often said I could write a book about Andrew's sayings.  He cracks us up constantly with the things he comes up with.  I have a few more funnies to add to the long list:

• Lately at meal times he's been saying that his tummy is telling him certain things.  For example the other night he said "My tummy's mad cause it doesn't want mac and cheese it only wants snacks!"  Ha! I died laughing.

• After a time out when daddy went to talk to him, he said "Daddy, I changed my attitude."

•  He is obsessed with several shows, his latest one being Doc McStuffins (yeah, I'm pretty sure most of his kindergarten peers are watching things like Batman and superhero shows... not Andrew!  Ha!)  Anyway, he gets so thrilled when I DVR new shows for him.  He'll come running over to me and say "THANK YOU MAMA!  Thank you for recording new Doc McStuffins" (or Wonder Pets, or Jake and the Neverland Pirates...fill in the blank!)  It cracks me up how thankful he is for such a minor thing.  I'm wondering where my hugs and thanks are for cooking him dinner or taking him to Legoland??  HA!

His favorite food is grapes- he is obsessed with them.  He seriously could sit down and eat about 100 of them at a time.  The other day he found a tiny grape in his bowl and he said "Awwwww, a baby one!" And he insisted on having it's picture taken.

•  This was our bedtime conversation the other night.  I was trying to snuggle with him and have a nice talk because he had been kind of naughty and I had raised my voice to him several times and I just wanted to calmly explain.

Me:  Andrew, can you please try to be nicer to your sister?

Andrew: (yawns, pulls hearing aids out and turns over) "I'm tired."

That was the end of that!

•  The other day he looked up at me and said "Kerigan looks beautiful."  He was so serious and being so sweet.

These two are just two peas in a pod lately.  Kerigan is getting more "fun" to play with.  She loves to open her arms and come to Andrew and they hug and then Andrew will fall backwards.  

(these are blurry from my phone because they would not stop moving!)

She just squeals and giggles and he loves that!  

So he keeps doing it!  

They have started to "wrestle" and Kerigan thinks her brother is so funny and she just loves him to pieces!  She follows him around the house constantly (even when he's in time out!  Ha!)

It is so fun for me to watch them interact and see how much they love each other.  Andrew is such a good big brother.

Even in the shopping cart at Sams!  Soooo sweet!

He is always doing funny things to make us laugh.  This particular day he was shoving stuffed animals inside his clothes!  ha!

One night after his bath he got his jammies on and told me to "go away," which is usually never a good sign!  Pretty soon he comes running out of his room like this!  He seriously cracks me up.  Pretty much all the time.

We went to meet the teacher night at Andrew's school a couple of days before school started.  Andrew was so excited to meet his teacher and see his classroom.  He kept looking all around and finding neat things.  He was in awe.  His favorite thing was finding the Lorax stuffed toy she had in her class library (more to come on this later!!)  He found his locker and cubby and table spot.  He could not wait to go back!

He has a really nice teacher, Mrs. Rosburg.

Funniest story of the night.  He wasn't real thrilled about me having my camera and taking pictures (when usually he is!)  But when we went in the nurses office (because he has to stop there before and after school to get his FM system hooked up for his hearing aids), he spotted this giant Minion from Despicable Me.  He was up on the bed in 2 seconds flat, arranging himself to pose for a picture.  He goes "Take a picture!"  I was dying laughing, the nurse cracked up too and said "Well, that's a first!"  Ha!

And here is our big boy on open house night outside his school.  He is so proud and we are beyond proud of him.  As the saying goes, "You've come a long way, baby!"

Just for fun- 

Andrew at daddy's football game, 7 months old (right before his first open heart surgery).

Kansas City {Legoland}

After our lunch and exploring the dinosaurs, we headed back over to Legoland to complete our adventure at Crown Center for the day.

I had heard mixed reviews about it and I wasn't sure if we should go, but I am so glad we did.  It was really fun and I think it was worth the price (we got the combined tickets- aquarium and Legoland for small discount).  I tried to get them ahead of time online (which would have saved us not much money but waiting in line once we arrived), but this trip was spontaneous so all the times were taken that we wanted to go.  So we just got there early close to when they opened and got in the shortest line, then bought tickets for both.  You didn't have to use them at the same time, which is why we came back to Legoland several hours later and didn't have to wait since we had the ticket already.

There were legos everywhere!!

Andrew fit right in with his Lego shirt!  Ha!

They had a fun little ride where you could go around and shoot at the bad guys!

They had small displays of all kinds of things made of legos- so neat!

My favorite was the Emerald City and Munchkin land!  

Everywhere you went they just had these big play areas with huge legos, smaller ones, etc.  All kinds for all ages.

They had a huge kid play area with slides and tunnels, etc (like McDonalds playland, but bigger) and once he went in there I thought he'd never come out.  I could not get him to stop for a picture.  Once I finally convinced him to come out, he found his new favorite area!

It was so funny, as I was watching him in the play area, I was thinking I wish he would enjoy doing something like this, but I didn't think he would!  I was so wrong!  He and daddy built a couple of cars and raced them!

This was probably Andrew's favorite part of Legoland!

He'd get so excited, go get his car and bring it back and do it all over again!

While he and daddy played, my girl and I got a snack!  Even the signs were made of legos- so cute!

She fell asleep playing with her hair (this is how she goes to sleep for every nap and every night- I love it!)

And of course daddy had just as much fun as Andrew!  Ha!

Having fun building his car with daddy

There really was so much to see and do- we stayed there for several hours and had a great time.

The other ride they had was Merlin's bicycle and you pedaled and went up in the air (similar to the Dumbo ride at Disney).

Andrew loved it!

He also stopped to build some things while we were waiting in line for the movie to start- yes they had a movie too!

Here was the ticket taker!

It was a 4D movie, where your seats moved a little bit and you got splashed a few times.  It was fun, even Kerigan was mesmerized!

Just lots of neat lego displays

There was a little kiddie area for Kerigan and she loved it!

She and Andrew even went down the slide together!  She had a blast!  After Legoland we headed back home and stopped for dinner along the way.

It was so fun taking this little mini vacation together as a family.  Now that the routine of school has started, I enjoy looking back on these memories and will look forward to when we can go back.  I'll be posting about Andrew's first days of school soon!

Kansas City {Crown Center}

The next morning we got up, had breakfast at the hotel and headed to Crown Center for a fun day!

We started at Sea Life aquarium, which they just built.  It was really neat- the kids liked it a lot.  When we were here in March the aquarium and Legoland were being built so we knew we wanted to come back sometime!  We are so lucky it's just a 3 hour drive.  KC is such a fun place to visit!

Andrew loved the rays. :)

This was so neat- 3 of them lined up like this!

Andrew could have sat here and watched them all day.

They had a neat submarine play area that we were disappointed to see was under construction. :(  Andrew was disappointed but not for long!

He could not wait to go see the dinosaur exhibit!  We walked across the street and he stood by this sign and insisted on a picture!  Ha!

First we ate at Fritz's- a fun train restaurant where the train delivers your food.  We loved it last time and Andrew just thinks it is so fun!

He loved sitting here and watching the train zoom by!

Hmmm, too many choices!

I have to comment on Andrew's shirt- I did not order this special for this trip!  (I'm not that crazy!  Ha!) For his 5th birthday I ordered him a Kung Fu Panda shirt like this with a 5 on it.  Well, this one came instead!  It happened to have legos on it.  I emailed the person who made it and it was a mistake- she had mixed it up with another order so she just said to keep this one and she sent the Kung Fu one also.  I stuck it in his closet and sort of forgot about it (because really, there aren't many places to wear a shirt like this without looking a little odd!  Ha!)  But Legoland wasn't one of them!  He fit right in...and we got tons of compliments!  Ha!

The kids had a blast at the Dinosaur exhibit!  You may remember when we came over spring break they had an animal exhibit here.  It is so neat that they do this and it is free to get in!

I love how everything is hands on and makes the kids really explore.  Kerigan even loved it!

We got quite a few compliments on her little outfit too (but mostly her shoes!) :)  Craig hates them because they are not good walking shoes!  Men!  Ha!  We don't care if they are functional- we just like the cuteness!

A dino cave!

His favorite- the T-Rex.  I love how he put his arm around it!  Ha!

Neat volcano!

I was playing with Kerigan and looked over at these two coloring!

Craig was all into his picture of his dinosaur with spikes!  Ha!

This was a little area with pieces of tires to play in!  There were "fossils" hidden under it.  So neat!

Best we could do family picture in front of Crown Center.  We had the best time enjoying our last days of freedom before the fall routine begins!

Legoland coming up!!