Evan is 4!

Sorry we haven't updated in awhile, I hope there are still some people out there who check this every now and then. We are doing well overall. Busy with all the normal stuff people do, work, clean, play etc......well, and maybe some not so normal stuff like we've gotten into canning, but we're good.

This picture is taken by Evan. It's from Christmas time. His cousin Paige was taking pictures, and it wasn't long before Evan wanted to as well, and shortly after that they were taking pictures of each other.....too cute!

This picture needs a story to explain a bit. One day about a week before this picture was taken, Evan came up to Stephan and asked him for some paper. Their conversation went like this:

Evan "Dad, I need some paper"
Stephan "ok, here you go" (hands him one piece of paper)
Evan "no, I just need lots"
Stephan "Are you going to color lots of paper?"
Evan "no"
Stephan "are you going to stamp lots of paper?"
Evan "Nope"
Stephan "What are you going to do with lots of paper?"
Evan "I just need to dip it"
Stephan "I don't like where this is going"

Stephan had a good idea of what Evan was thinking and went to the bathroom, there he found the sink drain plugged and the sink full of water with a glue bottle floating in it. Thankfully Evan isn't very good at getting his glue bottle open on his own yet, so not much glue was in the water.

Stephan "were you going to make paper mache?"
Evan "yes"

Cue conversation about how we can make paper mache, but he needs to ask mom and dad for help and the bathroom is not the appropriate place to do paper mache.

Stephan "what were you going to put the paper mache on?"
Evan didn't have an answer for this one, he hadn't gotten that far in his plans yet.

I should add that Evan had watched Curious George that morning, and George had made paper mache.

Stephan's wearing gloves in this picture, not because of the mess, but because he's allergic to latex. Evan's a lucky boy to have him as a Dad!

One of my favorite parts of this video is when Evan suggests it's a good idea to have Paggy Sue clean of the mess on his hands. He liked doing the paper mache in the end, but wasn't a fan of the mess, he did ok with some reassurance that in this case making such a mess was ok. He did fling his hands around twice while doing it to try and shake the glue off of them like a wet dog, he was quickly told that is NOT ok.





One of the few pictures lately when Evan actually looked at the camera for me and smiled.



He was pretending to be a caterpillar.

This is Evan's and his best friend Averi when we went to Bentleyville together this year. Evan doesn't get too play with Averi too often really, but she sure holds a special place in his heart. He's alway happy to see her, and in heaven when they're playing, tears are usually shed when we have to leave. Averi was the ONLY person Evan wanted to invite to his birthday party. He even said "I think we should just have a small party" when suggesting it.



Evan wanted a Dora party for his birthday. He chose a chocolate Dora cake "with plastic decorations of Dora that we won't eat", (ended up being stickers with a backing). He also wanted "pineapple pizza", and chose colors of red, purple, green and blue.

This is one of the only desent pictures we caught of Evan on his birthday, you'll see why in the video below.

Despite the animosity towards the pictures, Evan had a lot of fun at his party. He was very appreciative of all of his gifts, and has been using them ever since. He really was trying to grasp the concept of birthdays this year, asking quesitons like "why do we just have to have birthday parties?". He didn't understand why he was getting this celebration for himself. I told him that his birthday was the day he came out of my tummy and joined us in the world, and that we are very happy God gave him to us, and so we celebrate that day. I hope you have many more birthdays to celebrate with us Evan!

Some videos of Evan playing








4yr old stats : Evan is 42 1/4 inches tall, and about 33lbs.

video's explanations

So blogger isn't letting me switch from html to compose on the post below, so I can't explain through that post, so captions will be up here. The first video is of Evan on our new trampoline. We got it to help the boy learn how to jump. At the time, he was really living up to the "white boys can't jump" saying. It's amazing how far he's come already though. In just 5 days, he's already got a pretty good 2 footed jump going, and this is shown in the second video. He was setting up those cushions while I was unaware and vaccuming. It took me awhile to remember to grab the camera, so his legs were getting tired, but you can still see some really good jumps in there. We're so excited.

The next video is from our "Day out with Thomas". Thomas the tank engine came to duluth, and we went to go take a ride on him. This video is of Evan meeting Sir Topham hat. He's already starting to figure out that this characters aren't quite right. He was asking me what was on him later in the evening.

The next video is from the train ride. Evan ever so politely asked the magician to do his rope trick again, and he was kind enough to say yes.

Next, we have fishing at my mom and John's house with Uncle Mark. We caught is first fish caugth that day on video.

After fishing, we have a rocket launch. This launch has a back story. We recently started doing a "star chart" with Evan. Things that he does without being asked such as feeding maggie, or helping pick up his toys etc, earn him a star. We're also giving stars for dry night times. Evan earned 30 stars to get a rocket kit from Hobby town with dad. Then they built this one together. Stephan said he did all the work with the epoxies and glues, but Evan did most of the assembly. The kit they picked together has 2 rockets. While working on the second rocket Evan said "It looks kinda small dad" Stephan replied, "yep, it is small". Evan then asked "how are we going to get in it?"

Videos

summer time!

Well, it's been a long time since we updated so I apologize in advance if this post get's a little long.

There has been a lot of stuff going on around our household lately. Some things that have happened are:

I worked on the Gorny Brother's Pelican Lake Boat.

Looks pretty good after, but it did take a bit of effort, here are some before/in-progress pics.

I also had a fun time making a new boat cover for this boat.

Speaking of sewing I've been getting some more jobs to do, here's a picture of a tablecloth I made earlier this year.

On the Evan side of things we've been very entertained. His imagination seems to be quite wild. You should see what he's named things.

Here's Bucket - the bucket. He's a good friend.

Gorilla - the gorilla.

Teddies - the teddy bears (we actually have 3 of these)

Zack - well wait here, Becky and I actually named this one zack, more Becky than me, I was calling him a zax and she called him zack to Evan, I guess the name stuck.

So maybe that doesn't quite showcase the imaginative things very well, but this picture of Horton eating a bowl of cereal might.

The full reasoning behind this particular example of animal care taking is as quoted by Evan, "I can't eat that elephant food!" All zookeepers please note that Captain Crunch is obviously Pachyderm food.

On some other things he's quite imaginative. To the untrained eye what is pictured below may be construed as a piece of 1 inch foam that was used to pad a spool of thread for shipping.

To Evan this wondrous device looks like this.

I say this because just the other day I was sitting down in the living room for a minute and I happened to be in the perfect position to watch Evan at work. He came into the living room and grabbed the piece of foam. He wrapped it around his waist and proceeded to run full speed into the wall. I bet the impact was greatly reduced for his waist, but the head, arms and feet on the other hand took the full brunt. I'm anxiously awaiting the next revision of Evans body armor endeavor.

We've also been enjoying the wonderful things Evan comes up with for sayings. Listen closely about what a fireman can do in this video.

Honestly I've tried to remember some of the things that he says but they don't have the same appeal when I repeat them. Not too long ago he was sitting down reading a book to teddy and said, "D-O-N-T, that means Seven!" We're very proud of the letter recognition, reading will come a little later though.

This next picture deserves a bit of background to fully appreciate the genius. Every night for quite some time now we lay Evan down around 8:30PM. At around 10:00 Becky and I wind up going to bed. Usually at this time we find the little man lying on the floor really close to the door. I don't know why he does this but he climbs out of his bed and falls asleep on the floor. We have been hoping that he'll just decide that his warm and comfy bed is a great place to fall asleep, but alas he hasn't yet. Now depending on the night he may actually get pretty cold lying on the floor. To me that would dictate that I stay in bed with the covers. To Evan, well -

What kind of parents would we be if we didn't take pictures to show other people instead of picking up the child and placing him in his bed immediately. (to clarify, he did get moved to his bed, just after this picture was taken)

Evan did spend a couple of days with Grandma and Grandpa Gorny recently and I'm fairly certain he may have been spoiled a wee bit. I was talking to him today and I mentioned Grandma and Grandpa Gorny and he immediately offered up a response of "Let's go swimming!!".

There has been a lot of other things happening lately but I think I'll try to cover those at a later date. It's been a great summer and I hope you guys are enjoying yours as much as we are enjoying ours.

Spring

Well, sort of. It snowed and the temperatures dropped from 60 to 32 during the day here during the past week, but none the less, spring has arrived. With it has come the chores of cleaning up after our beloved dog, uncovering roses to see what we find, cleaning rain gutters, raking the lawn and the like. The nice thing about winter is that when spring comes we actually enjoy these chores to a certain degree because it's nice outside, and I'm not wearing my snow pants any longer. We've also been taking some bike rides (Evan LOVES the bike trailer), and enjoying some walks in the sun light.

Did you know that the first Saturday of the month, Home Depot has a free project for you to do with your kids? We went for the first time this month. The project was a planter box. Evan had some interest in it.

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But mostly, he just wanted to eat popcorn, visit with friends and check things out.

Something ate my roses this year. I'm usually worried I'll find just plain dead, or moldy, or very sickly roses that will need nursing back to health, but this surprised me. One of the rose bushes was GONE entirely. No evidence it ever was there remained. No roots, nada. This bush was loose in the ground as I uncovered it. It was my best grower/bloomer.

THis is what the root ball looked like when I lifted the bush, there was NO resistance, something ate it through. I don't know what, and I'm not sure how to combat them yet, but I'm going to learn.

Online readers, meet the star of Maggies worst nightmares. This Sharp Shinned Hawk tried to eat her last week. Lucky for her, she was on the right side of our dining room window. Not so lucky for him.

When I first went to check on him, he had blood in his beak and left eye, he was panting with is head on the ground. Things didn't look good. I came inside and Stephan asked how he looked and if he needed to take care of it. I said I didn't know, but didn't think it looked good and asked him to check. He came back inside saying the bird had perked up and "it's a hawk". Wow, ok, I wasn't sure what it was, but I wasn't thinking hawk. It's about this time that Evan suddenly took off running to his room and said "we have to get some supplies to rescue the birdie" He came back with his multi purpose jump rope, and said "I'm ready to rescue the birdie", and asked to go outside and help. A short time later, he started calling "Diego, Diego" Stephan took these pictures, called and emailed to the raptor center in Minneapolis, who initially thought this may have been a rare form of falcon, and sent someone out to pick him up. He had tried to fly a couple of times, but didn't make it past 3ft off the ground. The man who came told us his species, said he was about 6yrs old, thought he would do well in rehab, and took him on a ride to get patched up.

I sincerely hope this fella comes back and has friends who will eat whatever ate my roses, and hopefully leave my chihuahua alone.

For me

Once again, this post is primarily for me. I just want to write a couple things down that Evan's said lately that I want to remember.

4 days ago, Evan and I went for a walk on our road. Evan told me how the road was muddy of on the side. I saw some deer tracks in the mud, and pointed them out to him and was talking about them with him. He said we needed to make foot prints, so the two of us started making foot prints in the mud. After a couple of minutes, Evan looks at me and says "I need a picture of mommy, stick your face in there (looking at me and pointing at the mud)".

It's girl scout cookie time again, and I bought some cookies that were corn sryup free for Evan. The cookies had words like 'build, courage, and lead' on them. Stephan was looking at one of the cookies Evan was eating and said "lead (like in pencil sounding), who would put lead on a cookie". I looked at Stephan and said "no hun, it's lead (like in leadership)" we both laughed and Stephan said "oooooh, that makes a lot more sence". The next day, Stephan and Evan went to get groceries at our local grocery store, and the girl scouts had a table set up out front selling cookies. Evan walked up to them and said "I would like some lead (like in pencil sounding) cookies please".

When Evan was asked "what are you doing" recently, his reply was "I think you know"

I take a fair amount of hot baths in the winter because I just plain get cold, I turn blue cold, and I use the hot baths to warm up again. Evan wanted a bath last week and said "I need a bath, I'm just freezing" he went on for awhile about how it was cold and he needed a hot bath. Stephan just said, "because that's what baths are for in this house, to warm up".

He still has his very caring personality, he brings me my slippers fairly often to try and keep my feet warm, he shares his food and toys with other kids, most days.

He's been a bear around bed time for about the past 3 months coming up with any excuse under the sun to avoid going to sleep and getting what he wants. We've made some improvement battling back with our own tactics such as moving the potty to his room at night, but this week he came up with a new one again. He wanted me to come specifically, so we were only sending Stephan, next thing you know Evan says "I have a booger in my nose". Why, because MOM's the one who takes care of the boogers in the nose (Evan's just learning how to blow his nose), there was no booger when I checked for him. He hates it when I do get them out too.

Update

It's a really long story, but basically the customer service at both the provider and insurance ends of things really was the worst I've ever encountered. A long line of miscommunications, information going to wrong people, my requests not getting to the right dept until 3 days before the surgery. ANYWAY, it all ends with the surgery was denied, and didn't happen as planned. We're working on the appeal process, and hopefully will have a need to schedule another trip to chicago.

Other than that, we had a great trip, met with some friends and family, went to a couple of children's museums. Lost our camera, so I don't have pictures to add at the moment, but we really did have a good trip. I have to add that I'm so proud of my Evan for how he did on the 8 hour one way drives. He didn't complain hardly at all. At the start of our trip, I told him he could pick out a 5$ movie for his DVD player if there were no fits while driving, not thinking it would really work, but very happy it did.

Anyway, I'll try to add more of our trip later, we should have some pictures on a phone hopefully.