Someone Had a Birthday!

Someone just turned four. He spent the morning carrying our old broken steamer around to show us how strong he is now that he is a big kid who is four. Indeed, we were very impressed. 

 Remember this from another birthday? It's too small now. 

 A picture of Mr. Z blowing out the candles on his fourth birthday, so many moons ago. Check out his sweet threads. 1982 FTW!

More pictures of birthday festivities to come. 

Itinerary

Monkey is home from school for the summer, and Mrs. Z and Monkey took a big shopping trip yesterday to  stock up on birthday party supplies. Mr. Z was talking to Monkey when we returned, asking him where we had been and what we had done. Monkey told him we had lunch at 'Chick-will-A' and that we had been to Target. I asked him what other store we had been to, and he said, "Goodwill!" I said, "That's not the name of the store. What's the other store name?" He answered, "Badwill?"

(It was Meijer.)

Baseball Game

While everyone was in town for Great Grandma M's funeral, we took the chance to do some family things together. Aunt B, Grandma and Grandpa T and RHCR joined the Monkey and his keepers for a baseball game. You can look at the evidence and decide for yourself whether we had a good time or not. ;)

                                      

Great Grandma M

At the beginning of May, Great Grandma M passed away. She was 93 years old and lived a very happy, full life. Over Spring Break Monkey and Mrs. Z went down to see her and had a lovely visit, which is when these photos were taken. In May we visited again. We were all able to say good bye and she was surrounded by family in her last weeks. Monkey handled the funeral quite well - he especially enjoyed playing with his cousin and second cousins and aunts and uncles and Grandma and Grandpa T. Even now, weeks later, he will turn to us and say, "I'm really sad that Grandma M died. It makes me so sad about that."

Easter Part I

Yes, we realize that it is now the end of May. Please to be quiet and enjoy the picture show. 

Somewhere in there, we dressed up and went to church. Another exciting post for you to anticipate!

Monkey's New Trick

Without any warning, he surprised us all (especially his teacher) with this:


To celebrate his new skill, he got to pick a special treat. He elected to go downtown to the candy store that we visited with Aunt B at Christmas time for some gummy bears(and pet the carriage horses, of course.)

The last few days, he's been writing it backwards. Is that a lefty trick we haven't seen before?

Joker

Monkey has been very interested in 'jokes' lately. Are they tricks? Are they funny? Do you say them? It's so complicated.

Tonight, we were treated to his first ever joke. It changes a little bit every time, but it goes like this:

M: Ding Dong!
Us: Who is it?
M: It's Batman!
Us: Batman who?
M: Batman Auggie! (or, alternately, August Henry!)

This is, as you can imagine, hilarious.