The Loop

So we took Luca to Franklin Park today to ride bikes, play in the water and run around the park. After a crazy thunderstorm last night, the weather cooled down a bit and the humidity disappeared to it was a pleasant day to be riding. Here are the boys going around the loop...

The loop includes a bunch of exercise stations so the boys stopped riding at random stations to get their cardio, strength and stretching in. Here they are practicing their hip circles!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1DDcRlqqIQ

Happy Memorial Day

This Memorial Day, as we headed over toward our old neighborhood for lunch, we passed a field filled with thousands of American flags. It was so cool that we had to stop over and check it out after we ate. The flags were put up on the corner of Renner and 95th Street and we were among many people walking through them and remembering the people who have served our country. Chris really liked walking among the flags and by my estimation, there were probably about 2,500 flags in this location. It was super cool and as we were leaving, there was a veteran who had served in World War 2 at the invasion of Normandy. If Chris wasn't with us, we probably would have stayed and listened to him, but anyway we heard him telling a younger couple about getting the call that the invasion was happening and what it was like to land at Omaha beach. Here are a few more pics from our visit...

While we were on that side of town, we ran by our old house to check on things and make sure it was still in one piece. We visited with our neighbor, Dave, and walked around a little bit. We have an offer on the house so I had to take a picture of the sign in the front yard...

Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?

Tristan and Christopher stole the cookie from the cookie jar. Four cookies... each, to be precise! You always have to be suspicious when two little boys, ages five and three, go off into another room and all you hear is silence. The boys finished dinner before the grown-ups did and so we let them go into the playroom while we had some adult conversation. Christopher had helped me bake chocolate chip cookies earlier in the day and he knew we were having them for dessert. Several times, they came into the dining room asking to have cookies. "You can have them when we are all done eating. Please do not ask again," was my response. Fair enough, they must have been thinking... because they did not ask again. The next time they came into talk to us, Chris had chocolate on his mouth and Tristan was chewing something. Funny, because the cookies had still been in the fridge when last we saw them. Now, when we entered the kitchen, the plate of cookies had magically appeared on the counter and the refrigerator was wide open! And about half of said cookies had magically disappeared! I sent Chris to his room (myself, trying hard not to laugh at the situation) and questioned him about how many cookies he took. "Oh not too many, Mommy, about four or five." Mary and Dan then told us that Tristan said he ate four as well. At least they were honest about that. Oh my! Needless to say, the adults took care of the rest of the cookies while the boys burned off the sugar for the next couple hours.

Loose Park Spray Park

It is hot here in Kansas City this Memorial Day weekend so we needed to find a way to cool off. After spending the morning making pancakes for breakfast and then cookies and pasta salad for our dinner with the Eakins tonight, we made our way over to Loose Park to enjoy their spray park! It was super fun for Chris and we are so thankful to be back in a more urban area with all its busy and exciting parks and playgrounds. Here he is enjoying the water...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flq-w4B_40E

For most of our visit, he was pretending that he was at a car wash. The occasional water spray that we got on us felt good too! This weekend we have been exploring our new neighborhood. I guess I should say re-exploring as we used to live downtown. Now, however, we are getting to see things from a parental point of view. Yesterday after hockey, we went over to Brookside to visit their farmers market and some of their stores. There is a great toy/science store and even better is Reading Reptile, possibly the coolest children's bookstore ever! I even signed up for a race tomorrow simply because it starts about 5 minutes from our house. We are really enjoying our new hood! 

Shaving

Christopher is fascinated with how Brian shaves. Check out this video of our little man attempting his first shave with Daddy's new shaving brush...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b0HkvfudRM

Rest Time

Here is what rest time looked like today at the Woglom residence. After a long and fun morning of playing with Maddie, Chris went to his room for quiet time. I don't even require that he sleep anymore, I just ask that he stays in his room and plays for about and hour and then he can come out. After I heard some noises for a while, it became suspiciously quiet. When I peaked in, here is what I saw...

Nothing like hardwood floors for a comfortable bed! I suppose he was quiet enough to sleep anywhere. My other "kid" was also suspiciously out of sight, even when the landscapers came to mow. I peaked into the playroom where she usually likes to lay under Christopher's little table and here is what I saw on her end...

Kasey has officially taken over the bean bag chair! It was a peaceful rest time for all.

Funny faces

LUMC picnic

Today was the LUMC end of the year picnic at Black Hoof Park and boy did we have a good time! First off, this is a park that was very close to our old house and I will miss it tremendously now that we have moved. We still have lots of friends that live nearby though so it is a good excuse to get out there. Anyway, all of Christopher's teachers were there. Here is a picture with him and Miss Bev, his assistant on Thursdays...

His teachers were truly wonderful this year and they all had fun today at the picnic. Here is Miss Debbie playing with Chris and Olivia. So cute!

It was truly amazing to see all of the wonderful families we have come to know so well from LUMC. Besides Olivia, Chris got to play with Lahna and Liam, Kenyon, Lia, Jefferson, Emma, Chloe, and Luca among others. Many of our former neighbors go to LUMC too so it was fun to catch up with them as well. On top of all that, today was the last day of school for the kids in Olathe and I saw three of the kids I taught in kindergarten at Manchester Park when I was pregnant with Christopher. They are so big now! Especially the boys and I realized they will all be in 5th grade next year. Holy cow! The picnic made me realize why we will be staying at LUMC next year--it is a wonderful community of really nice, caring families and we couldn't be happier to be a part of it all!

Last Day of School

Today was Christopher's last day of CDO at LUMC. (Sniffle, sniffle!) It has been a wonderful year with all of his new friends and teachers and we are sad to see it end. Wednesday will be the school picnic so we will get to see everyone again. We have been so lucky to have such wonderful, caring teachers for our little boy and we thank them with all our hearts! Here is Chris with Miss Debbie (left) and Miss Michele. (Miss Bev, his assistant on Thursdays is not pictured).

Happy Birthday Daddy

Today we celebrated Daddy's birthday with some of his favorite things... pizza and cake! Christopher helped me make the cake yesterday and even got to lick the spoon and a little bit of the bowl. And of course he was very excited to eat the cake too! Here it is before we served it to Daddy...

Then we sang to Daddy too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrdFTNo2gCg

And here he is finally getting to enjoy his, I mean Daddy's, cake...

As you can see, Henry the engine joined us for cake as well. Unfortunately for him, Chris did not give him any to eat. Finally, here is the card that Chris made for Daddy. Until recently, drawing and coloring have not been his favorite activities. But you can see that he is getting better now!

Daddy's got some big ears, according to his son!

Goings on

Where to start? The Rangers and Devils are playing each other in the conference finals (so you can imagine what our house is like right now), we have moved into our new house, we sold our old house, Mommy went on a trip to Chicago, and school is just about over for our buds. Geesh! So much to talk about! I don't have a ton of pictures, but I will share what I've got. We've been busy meeting many different friends at many different parks and open gyms so here is what that is looking like. Major bonus of the new house=we are about 7 minutes away from Franklin Park (see blog entry from July 23rd, 2011) which is fabulous! We met Nico there last week and the water was turned on so Chris was in heaven...

We also fed the ducks with Luca last week at Antioch Park and went to open gym at Elite with him. Here are the "brothers" having fun together as usual...

While I was away in Chicago, Chris and Daddy were invited to Luca's family birthday party. We are so lucky that these boys are such good friends. Since they are both onlies, they have truly become like brothers to each other! Here they are having yummy cupcakes in celebration of Luca turning 4...

I was sorry to miss the party but I had some important things to attend to, namely Chrissie's new babies, Conor and Riley! I got to help out my dear friend from high school as she took care of her little babies and her almost-2-year-old son, Bennett. She is an incredible mom and it was fun to feed, burp, and hold the little guys... and then give them back! :) Here are some pics of the Chen-Pariso clan...

And I forgot to mention one important event... Chris is taking the first nap he's taken in his bed in over 3 weeks. Hence my ability to get a blog entry written!

Family pictures

For the first time ever, we got family pictures done by J. Smith Innovations Photography, a local husband and wife photography team. They did such a fabulous job and on Saturday, Brian and I went to their studio to pick out our favorites and decide what prints we want to get. Below is a link to a slideshow of our favorites. If you are asked for a password, type in "wogfam." Enjoy!

http://jsmithinnovations.zenfolio.com/p624329539/slideshow

Athletic feats

In the last week, we have been very busy moving and getting settled into our new house here in Kansas. In the meantime, we have to keep Chris on as normal a schedule as possible and since he's been spending a lot of time in the car driving back and forth between houses with me, I have been looking for every opportunity to get him moving and running around. This past Friday (day after moving day) we took Chris to open gym at Elite Gymnastics, where he has been taking lessons. His teacher, Miss Ally, was there and Chris tried showing off some of his moves to her! Here he is on the bars...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=105Ojb2_ot8

It is very possible that he did that forward flip over the bar about 35 times in a row! Then today we returned to hockey where Chris was showing some of his dribbling skills. This is quite possibly the slowest breakaway in the history of breakaways but Christopher's concentration is admirable!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyUde5Czrmg