Day Out with Thomas

One Saturday we surprised the boys with a trip out to the Grapevine Railroad for "A Day Out with Thomas (the Train)".  Both of the boys love to play with trains and watch Thomas & Friends dvd's, so we knew they would love this.  

Petting zoo, complete with painted My Little Pony look-alike.  Poor horse!

Enjoying the bounce house

All my boys in red.  Made them easy to find in the crowd, I guess :)

Jake showing off his new tattoo

On the train!

Jake enjoyed the ride

Ryan, notsomuch.

In fact, we were lucky he had a game to play on the iPhone, otherwise it would have been a complete disaster!  He was not happy!

 Because it is impossible to wait in a huge line in 80 degree heat at the end of the day with two tired hungry boys, we opted for the shot with Thomas and 50 other people in the background.

  Jake loves mascots of any kind, so he was thrilled to meet Sir Topham Hat!

Look at that grin!

Spring Sing

Jacob and Ryan's preschool held an open house on the last day of March.  The boys presented us with a ton of super cute projects they had been working on for a few weeks.  They were so proud to show us all of their artwork and crafts!  We were rushed in Ryan's classroom because we had to get Jake to the church sanctuary for his performance, so I didn't get any photos of Ryan's teachers or class.  I have to try to remember to do that before the year is over!

Anyway, after visiting the classrooms we headed to the "Spring Sing" portion of the evening where all of the 3 year old and up classes performed songs!  Jacob was TOTALLY into it and I have video of him commanding the stage.  Stay tuned for that.  For a few weeks prior, Jake had been saying he wanted to be a rock star when he grows up, and we found out that he definitely is not afraid of an audience :)

Jacob with Mrs. Candice

Soccer (Hot)Shot

Jacob has loved playing sports with his daddy since he could walk, so we figured it was time to put him in some sort of semi-organized sport so he could get some exercise and social interaction.  We signed him up through the city with a program called Soccer Shots.  The kids meet every Saturday for 8 weeks and work on fundamentals of soccer.  

I didn't have any expectations for this going in.  I actually thought they would probably be doing silly exercises and playing with hula hoops instead of actually playing soccer, but I was pleasantly surprised when they started off right away having the kids dribble the soccer ball up and down the field.  I was even more surprised when they played a mini game at the end!  And Jake?  Well, he was in 3 year old sports heaven!

Heading out the door for his first day!

I asked him to give me his best "tough soccer player" face and this is what I got:

It then transformed to this:

And then to this:

And finally to this:

 I think we need to work on that face ;)

Running drills

"Squash the bug"

Jacob has such a compassionate heart.  Something was wrong with this little girl and he went to check on her.

Poor RyRy really wanted to play too!

Yellow team pointing to their goal!

Jake starts off behind

Gains some ground

And gains control of the ball!

GOAL!!!

The crowd goes wild!

Looking at us to make sure we saw what he did!

(This was actually his second goal.  I missed the first because I was trying to keep Ryan off the field)

Jumping for joy!

And they're off again!

Jacob's got his eye on that ball again

And he runs as fast as he can to get to it

Heading in for goal #3!

This was when he was about to go in for goal #4.  His coach suggests he kicks it to the girl in the blue shorts...

He kicks it in the net instead.  Oops!

Thirsty guy after scoring all of the goals in the game!

What we've discovered about our oldest boy:

• He is DETERMINED!
• He is COMPETITIVE!
• He does NOT like to pass the ball! (We'll work on that)
• He LOVES playing soccer!

ETA: We're proud of you Jacob!  4 goals in your very first game, and 3 the following week!