MAY
Owen's first Essay
Back before the end of the school year, Owen had a project due in class. He was supposed to select his favorite animal and make a diorama. Along with the diorama he had to write an essay all about his animal. We were quite surprised to find out that Owen's favorite animal is the Dolphin. Check out his sweet diorama:
Owen and mommy spent some time looking up all sorts of information about dolphins, and so I asked him what he remembered about them, and helped him organize his thoughts into an essay:
My five year old son was able to write a better thought out and better constructed essay than most of my high school students, not sure if I should be proud of the boy, or really disappointed in the High School generation.
Band Trip
I went with the Band to Sandusky, Ohio for a Band Festival. The band played well, but the most important thing about Sandusky is that there also happens to be the world's greatest amusement park there - Cedar Point. (No really, it is voted #1 every year.)
This is the Millennium Force - Pure Awesome
The Maverick is ridiculous.
The Raptor is one of the "feet dangling" rides
And there are 14 more big roller coasters! I had way too much fun, shocked all of the children by ridding on more roller coasters than any of them, and even brought the boy back a cowboy hat:
Memorial Day
Every Memorial Day the Marine Band does a free concert at Wolftrap, an outdoor concert hall/amphitheater. We pack our picnic and leave way early so that we can be first in line to get a good spot for the show. Then we enjoy the weather and pig out!
Let's play a game of find Chris and Owen!
Which of course meant that Owen needed to get involved:
Pirates
So it will probably be no surprise for you to find that our family loves pirates. There is swashbuckling, sailing, not bathing, and general all around awesomeness. So when we found out about a pirate ship doing trips around Baltimore Harbor, we were so there, here was our trusty ship coming in to port.
Mommy and Owen in their matching shirts! (Papa didn't get the memo that morning.)
One of the first things you had to do on the ship was dress like a pirate:
Don't forget the tattoos! (And these tattoos were serious business, they didn't come off for days!)
The pirate crew told stories:
We played games like "Pass the Shrunken Head,"
and dance around the ship.
We even had to fend off an attack by "Mad Dog" by using the water cannons.
Papa was very efficient at hitting Mad Dog with the cannon.
After our naval victory we took the Pirate Pledge,
Owen got a necklace and a cool skull ring.
Family photo! (With a pirate crew member photobomb!)
June
Last Day of School
Time continues to march on, and June saw the end of another school year. Owen's class made shirts and had a party.
And then they were on to First Grade!
To celebrate the last day of school, we went out to eat, the boy was making fish faces at his chicken.
Notice how the bow is now naked when leaving the restaurant. He drank all of his milk first, and in a miniature version of the "Gallon Challenge," he puked, everywhere...good times.
Of all of the things that Owen learned in School this year, I think this was the most important, at least I am probably the most proud that the Boy learned this:
The Great Dental Experience
Owen brushes his teeth every morning and every night. This is an important fact to know so that you don't think that we are really bad parents who neglect our child. At Owen's dentist appointment a year ago he freaked out when they tried to take x-rays, and he threw-up everywhere. (What can I say, the Boy is a puker.) So at his check-up 6 months ago they skipped the x-ray because they didn't want to have a repeat of pukefest. Well what they missed by not doing x-rays is that the boy had a small cavity in one of his teeth. Left untreated for 6 months, this little cavity spread its bacteria throughout the rest of his mouth, so that when he had x-rays (without puking!) we found out that pretty much every tooth had issues. We could either come in for weeks and weeks of out patient fillings, or go to the hospital, put the boy under, and do it all at once. Owen was a pretty good trooper about the whole thing, he played BeyBlades in the waiting room
Then they took him back, put the mask on, and in a couple of breaths he was out cold.
In the end they had to do 5 pulpotomies (baby-root canal) with 5 steel caps, and 5 other fillings. He did pretty well, but who wouldn't do well when they have their Teddy with them.
He didn't talk much for the next couple of days, but in the end he is now cavity free, and will be having his x-rays every 6 months, even if he pukes.
Summertime Activities
After the teeth episode, it was summertime with Papa. Mommy had two trips in June, one to San Francisco, the other to girls camp, and so Owen and Papa spent a lot of time together. One fun thing that happened is that my cousin Natalie, her husband Josh, and their kids came to visit and spend a day downtown. Owen was so excited to have people in town to play with that he decided to throw down some gang signs:
Hey buddy, why is your hair wet? It wouldn't have anything to do with that fountain would it?
Ridding the metro in the Cadillac of all strollers
The other great summer activity was our weekly bowling trips. Owen's shoes were velcro,which made him really happy, so happy he was doing a silly dance.
For dinner one day I told Owen he was in charge of making dinner. He actually took it in stride and went to the kitchen and started getting out the chicken nuggets and french fries. As you can see he was being very meticulous about placing the french fries:
With a little coaching instruction from Papa, Owen learned the dump method:
How do you know that Owen is a Renberg? Because he eats frozen french fries of course!
Owen turned the oven on, put the tray in the oven, and even set the timer.
Idaho
So in July we were a bit sneaky, and we flew to Boise unannounced to attend the 1st Renberg Family Reunion. I called my sister Carisa Saturday night to tell her we were coming in on Monday and that she couldn't tell anyone. (She had to make it through Sunday dinner without spilling the beans, not an easy task if you known anything about my sister.) Our flight came in pretty late, and so it was well past midnight when we arrived at my mothers house. My mom had left her garage door open, and I wanted to sneak in that way, but Carisa wouldn't let me, something about scaring mom to death or something. Instead we sent Owen up to the door to ring the doorbell. He had to ring twice before Grandma Nettie came to the door, but because her outside light was burned out, she couldn't tell who was standing outside, so she opened the door. (So, in addition to leaving her house unsecure by not closing her garage door, my mother also opened her door to complete strangers standing on her doorstep. Out here in Maryland, that is how people end up dead, yea for Idaho.) It took Grandma Nettie a minute to recognize Owen's voice when he said "Hi Grandma Nettie," and while it wasn't the first thing out of her mouth, she did lament that she had not cleaned her bathrooms.
The next 6 days were filled with lots of cousins, lots of fun, and lots of food!
We got to celebrate the 4th of July with my nieces and brother-in-law (Karen had to work) and their hole neighborhood: (In case you didn't notice, I have grown tired of commenting on every photo. Most of these are pretty self explanatory, and most of you reading this were probably there anyway!)
Uncle Kevin even let Owen steer the boat!
Picture of happy parents! (Who are happy because someone else is watching their child!)
But the kids had a blast!
At least Uncle Kevin looked as beat as me when he finished the obstacle course.
Headfirst down the giant slide, sure, why not...
This should be fun, want to guess how this is going to end?
Whiplash!!
Owen decided he needed to challenge the Alpha Male of the family.
This young pup needs a few more years yet!
The Reunion
One of the reasons for the trip to Idaho was a family reunion with the family on my dad's side. (If you try to have a family reunion on my mother's side the state makes you get a permit to have that many people gathered in one place.) As an only child, Owen was super excited to have other people to play with.
And the best part of all reunions is when the children play together, and by children I mean my cousin Scott and myself, and by play I mean compete in a wicked game of wiffleball. (Which was won by me!)
Utah
One of the best things that happened on the trip was that my father drove his SUV to Boise instead of choosing to fly. The reason why this was wonderful is that it allowed up to ride to Utah with him instead of having to rent a car. He took us to Heber City, where Beki's brother and sister picked us up and took us to Rangely. In the end this saved us $800, so that is good news! We had some time to kill at Grandpa Coin's house, so Owen helped him do some yardwork:
Colorado
Phase 2 of our travels took us to Beki's family for another week of fun. In anticipation of our arrival Grandma and Grandpa, or maybe it was really Aunt Kristina and Uncle Jake, had all of the ingredients for some homemade rootbeer. (Yes, they are making it in a pickle jar.)
It didn't take long for Owen to play his favorite pillow sumo wrestling game with grandpa
There were lots of trips to see the wildlife living in the mountains around Rangely. We saw deer, antelope, birds, a badger, and I am sure more that I don't remember. There was also lots of swimming - sometimes it was up at the lake, and sometimes it was at the rec center, but it didn't matter where, the boy wanted to be in the water.
Fishin'
The last time that Owen was at Grandma and Grandpa White's house they took Owen fishing. When he found out that he was going to their house this summer that was one of the first things that he asked about. So we took a day and drove up to a nice little lake to go fishing. Grandpa got us all set up with worms - and by us I mean me too, I tried to put the worm on the hook, but the squirminess was too disgusting for a city slicker such as myself.
The first fish I caught was a junk fish, but I still felt pretty proud of myself for actually catching something.
While the boy was catching Crawfish, Papa turned provider by pulling in a big fat rainbow trout. ME MAN! ME CATCH FISH! ME FEED FAMILY!
The weather turned a little bit stormy, and so the fish weren't biting. Jake decided that he was going to go check his secret fishing spot at the creek that feeds into the lake. When Owen heard "Secret Fishing Spot,"
he was not going to be left out, and insisted on going with him. While Beki was worried that something would happen to the boy being off on his own, I was worried that the Boy would catch lots of fish while I wasn't there to watch. It turned out that my fears were realized, and Owen caught his limit of 4 trout fishing at the secret fishing spot with Uncle Jake. In the end we caught enough fish, escaped from the largest cloud of mosquitoes I have ever seen, and made it home a-ok.
It was a couple of weeks early, but we couldn't be there with lots of family and not celebrate the boy's birthday.
Unfortunately our time had to end and it was time to say goodbye to Piper,
and Grandma and Grandpa,
And take one last picture:
The Rest of July
The Cake
With only a week between our return from Vacation and Owen's birthday the festivities were much scaled back than in years past. However the cake had some pretty high expectations to live up to. In case you have forgotten, this was the cake last year:
Well, as cool as Spiderman was last year, this year we are all about Star Wars, and so of course Owen wanted a Star Wars cake. Can you recognize this guy?
Ok, how about now?
Personally I think that the Spiderman cake was better, but the boy liked it just as much. (By the way, black frosting is hard, and the heat and humidity were melting the frosting as I was trying to work, it was a pain!)
One happy 6 year old
Remember the rootbeer from Rangely? The boy thought that needed to happen again!
Blow out the candles,
Grab a cupcake (This is the reason that I will always be making cupcake cakes)
And then eat!
Some of the gift highlights were a Thor Hammer (Technically it has a name - Mjolnir - but that is a mouthful for a 6 year old.)
Legos,
More Legos,
A shirt from Rangely that has become his favorite shirt,
And Star Wars movies from Mommy and Papa.
And not just one or two movies, all six of them, on BluRay. (Which we then watched in the next two days.)
Looking Good
One of the ladies in Mommy's lab got married at a fancy mansion, and so we went along - mostly for the food - but to also be supportive. (And eat the food.) It was hot outside, and the boy thought that he would melt:
But once the sun went down, Owen and the other children found some bugs to play with!
Until the music started, then there was dancing...
And more dancing, the boy is a dancing machine!
While Beki already posted about the first day of school, we did do a few things at the start of August. Like took a trip downtown to eat at a fancy French restaurant where Papa and Mommy ate snails and Papa got sick.
Made friends with a giant spider who builds webs outside our door at night.
Took a trip to the beach house to see our friends The Glasmann's and eat really good food that Papa's best friend Jayme couldn't eat because he was still stuck back in Oregon taking a final for school! Owen was in heaven again because there were children to play with!
This is a glowstick ball. The kids had a blast with that.
We made friends with the deer that like to come in our backyard and eat our plants.
Papa wrote, printed, copied, and bound 175 copies of his 312 page textbook for his class. (What fun...)
Bounce,
Ride the Carousel,
Overall it was a good summer. Now let's get back to School!
1 comment:
I sure enjoy this blog update!!
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