I can't believe how big this kid is getting. Here he is today after a haircut. One of his favorite papa & son activities is a trip to the barber shop. He loves hanging out there, playing with the Hot Wheels car collection they have. He loves watching papa get a cut. He loves getting up in the chair and getting his own cut. And he LOVES the lollipops. He agreed to putting on these cute longjohns I got him for sleeping in because I told him they were like the ones that papa often wears to bed.

And here he is picking out books for bedtime (and checking out the clock) in his little "book nook".

Arrrrrrrgh!!!!

Yesterday, Manny & Ariel left for a jaunt to the nearby playground, with plans to "hunt wolves", a current favorite game around here. When they returned a while later, I found that in addition to wolves, they'd also hunted (and raced) sharks AND they'd become pirates. An important part of playing pirates is having appropriate pirate names, of course. Manny chose "Captain Mingy Mongo" as his moniker and Ariel became the incomparable "Dread Pirate Mrs. Shelburg".

This morning at breakfast, Ariel asked me what my pirate name was then declared he'd give me one. He stared thoughtfully out the window for a few moments before deciding, "it's Tree."

So there you have it, Familia Flores, a family of pirates. Captain Mingy Mongo at the helm, the Dread Pirate Mrs. Shelburg in charge of sharks and the ever-useful Tree making toast in the galley. Arrrrrrrgh!!!!

Current Ariel-isms

Ariel recently named this large, white stuffed cat "Mrs. Shelburg" and we have absolutely no idea where he might have come up with that. Any ideas? (The cat was mine from when I was maybe 7ish and I had named it "Shasta Bianca"...)

I found these:

Glasses that stack up when wet and dry because they have little nubbins on them:

http://qrky.co/oMpBu6

And the kid pictured in the video in the previous post still likes wine.

An oldie but a goodie...

I think he's about 9 months old here... I recommend viewing first with your sound off.

trying again

Time has passed quickly again and here it is a year plus since that last, earnest declaration. We are two houses removed from the one we were in then. It's been three weeks since our last move and I hope that this is the last one for a while. Ariel turned 4 a few weeks ago and we calculated that this is his 6th home so far... We'd like those stats to change!

Our new home is downtown and has a great walking life. Just today I walked out my front door and saw someone I knew and stopped to chat for a bit. We are enjoying as much of summer as we can between responsibilities, jobs and other boring things. It feels so fleeting, however. Summer took a while to get started this year, but now seems to be whizzing past. The pool we join for summer is already closed because most of their lifeguards are college-aged and have to return to school. There's a nip in the air some nights and yesterday evening I went out for a walk with Ariel wearing boots and a jean jacket!

Speaking of back to school, Ariel is probably headed for a couple days a week at a great little preschool that we can walk to. I guess I should get on that, as it's only a few weeks from starting. I'll tell you more about it soon. In the meantime, we are going on as many outings, lake picnics, barbecues and swimming expeditions as we can. We gotta open up a bunch more boxes, but we'll get to those eventually. And saturday we celebrate six years since we got married!

A few pictures from our summer:

digging in the sand at Great Grandma Mary's beach, Madeline Island, WI

riding the ferry to Madeline Island

pleased with himself! (one of his favorite outfits this summer)

throwing rocks at Taughannock Park, Seneca Lake, Ithaca, NY

So my plan is to get more pictures and more posts up, probably backtracking a little along the way. I'd love to share our doings more regularly and look forward to seeing more than one page to my now five-year-old blog!