I Dressed Myself

Here are a few shots of Brady. He dressed himself after his bath. He put his pants on backwards. He looks so cute though, I can't tell him that he did that, he would be embarrassed and then get mad.It's one of those battles I let him win, it doesn't hurt anyone. He at least is dressing himself.

Mid April Snow---What the Heck??!!!

Here it is mid April in Alaksa and we are getting hit with more snow. We had 6 inches last Thursday, and now today Monday, we are suppose to get up to 7 more! I thougth it was suppose to be Spring! It is the wet, heavy kind, not fun to shovel. This is a different Spring than what we had last year. The snow was mostly gone by this time last year. I hope the weather changes and the snow stops and we get to see the green grass again. We are more than ready for Spring/Summer. Not to mention the kids get done with school in about 4 weeks!

Wrestling Superstar in the Making

Brett has been into wrestling big time, especially since we went to see it live in February. We got Wrestlemania for him last weekend. We all enjoyed watching it, it brought back a lot of memories of watching it with my sister before I met Bryan. Needless to say Brett has a ton of wrestlers, and the ring to go along with it. He likes to get the wrestling magazines too. Now that he can read, he actually reads the stories. So it doesn't surprise me with his latest purchase yesterday. He had to get the music that the wrestlers enter to. He is listening to that in these pictures. He is alot like me in a way, that it scares me. It is nice though, to see how much he has grown and the interests he has now compared to a few years ago. He claims he wants to be a professional wrestler one day. His Brother reminds him though that he could get hurt and need surgery or just plain bleed all over everything. That still hasn't changed Brett's mind as of yet.

The Day Finally Came

Well the day finally came when one of my boys cut their own hair. Brady is an adventurous person, like his Mom. He wanted to cut shapes out of paper, so figured what harm, he's done it before and I was doing laundry and tidying up. That way both of us were entertained. He finally got done about 30 minutes later and wanted a snack, so I went to clean up the mess on the kitchen table and noticed what I thought were pencil marks, wrong! They were pieces of hair, I asked him if he cut his hair and he told me no. I had him look at me and saw where he did it. It is in the front of his head smack in the middle. I had to keep from laughing too much, I didn't want to hurt his little feelings. I took him for a hair cut and it is more noticeable now then before the haircut. It will grow back, so no worries there, his hair grows fast. He was afraid to get his hair cut, he thought the barber would yell at him for doing it in the first place. You can't really notice it in his pictures too good, but it's the sort of bald patch on the first picture. I guesss he has watched me one too many times trim up my bangs.

Brady at Play

Here are few pics of Brady playing this afternoon. He decided to play on his computer that he got for Xmas. He is looking for things that interest him online, such as, Alaska Airs,(the plane that brought us here),garbage trucks, dogs, street sweepers and icarly. He has gotten into computer play. Then he decided to play airplane. Our house is the airplane, he peels the label off a single serve Sunny D bottle and uses that as his ticket. He hands it to me and I have to stamp it and tell him to have a good flight. The play activity isn't complete unless his blanket is with him.He is our thumbsucker, blanket boy, he takes after me in that department. It is nice to know that he uses his everyday life activities to have fun in play time. He, too has a good imagination.

Thoughts

I was having lunch with Brady earlier in the week, and was thinking, WOW, you have grown up!. It was nothing in particular that he did, we were sitting and talking and some of the things he comes out with surprise me. He sounds so grown up, he says,"Mamma I have to tell you something, I love you." It so cute when he comes out with that. Then when I check the mail he tells me to be sure to let him know if he got a card or box.He has been asking lately how I sleep, He says, "Mamma, how did you sleep last night." I tell him how I slept and ask him the same thing and he tells me how he slept. He has been telling me of his dreams, which he makes up at times, thanks to his brother. It is just so strange to think of him going to school again. I sign him up for kindergarten at the end of the month, can't believe my baby will be in school. The time has gone by so fast since he was born. He has come a long way from when he was born, starting out 10 weeks early. He has been an eating machine lately, especially fruits, he has been eating a ton of banana's as of late, not to mention grapes.He is going to get us all eating better, he likes to drink yogurt too. He is our health conscious one, Brett is getting there slowly.
Brett hasn't changed a whole lot since he was born. He looks pretty much the same as he did since he was about 3. Can't believe he will be in second grade and 8,(Brady will be 5). Brett is doing pretty good in school, he reads above his grade level, and does good in spelling too. He will be doing baseball again this year, Brady has no desire to play sports as of yet, so we will leave him for now.
It is geeting warmer here and the sun is melting the snow, the boys are excited so they can play outsdie and Brady wants to "just ride his bike already", his words. They want to go down to one of the lakes on base and throw stones to see if they will break the ice. We did that last year and they had a ball doing it, ahh the simple things in life. We are gearing up for a fun summer, can't wait.

Random Easter Photos

I was bored so I thought I would post a few more pictures from Easter. Brady got a bunny in a hand basket for Easter, so he decided to put the basket on his head, I thought he was really cute. After dinner Bryan taught Brett how to play chess. He needs to learn how for a belt loop for Cub Scouts. He actually took a big interest in the game, which impressed me, because it seems so hard. They played two games, the first one went fast and the second is more of a challenge for both. I have no desire to play chess, give me checkers!

Happy Easter

Wellt he Easter Bunny paid a visit to the Richmond Household. The boys were really patient with eating breakfast and showering before we looked for eggs and baskets. The Easter Bunny was clever this year. He hid eggs in the garage, bathroom, and in my purse, Brett's lunch box and backpack, plus other places in the house. This year we had no trouble finding them all. Each boy found 8. We were lucky when we boiled them that none of them cracked. I think that was a first for us.The boys got candy, and a stuffed bunny in a cloth basket. They had a good time. In one of the pictures Brady has a chocolate ring around his mouth from getting into a few pieces of candy. It's going to be a quiet day for us, we are going to have ham,potatoes and corn for dinner.

Decorating Eggs

The boys and I decorated eggs for the Easter Bunny to hide. We have a lot of fun doing it, and the boys actually listen while they are having fun. The eggs turned out pretty good. It reminds me of when I was younger and we would do eggs then too. This year the Easter Bunny needs to write down where he hid the eggs, last year he hid them so well, it took us about an hour to find the last one.

Brett's Picture

Here is a picture of Brett from our Sears outing. In the previous post I meant to put one of Brett but some how wound up with 2 of Brady instead. So to be fair, I wanted to do a picture of Brett.

Pictures

Here are some pictures of the boys taken at Sears yesterday. They called about 2 weeks ago to say that we won a drawing for a free 8x10 and 5x7. The boys did pretty good, they were a couple of hams while getting their pictures done.I didn't spend too much money on them. I can't believe it has been a year since we got them done last. The time has gone by fast.

Autograph Session

Today at the Yukon Club we had the privilege to see some Green Bay Packers. They were out here and Fort Wainwright to show their support to the Military. The arrived here at about 12:10 via Blackhawk, courtesy of Fort Wainwright. They ate dinner in the club and then came into the side room for an autograph session. Me being the dumb blond at times, forgot to take Bryan's Packer Helmet to get signed. It's not like we are short on Packer items in the Richmond household. So I did what any other cool Mom would do, I ripped out two check from the checkbook and gave them to Brett to get the autographs on, I felt so dumb. The players thought it was funny. Aaron Rodgers is a pretty cool guy, he chatted for about 5- 10 minutes. I naturally had my Packer jacket on, and he said cool jacket. I told him we are from Wisconsin and he asked where, he seemed to know where it was, not a lot of people do. It was truly an amazing experience. We saw about 8 players past and present, there were 4 Packer players, on retired, a major league baseball player and a retired New York Giant, and some else that I don't know, he was a football player too. All in all it was a fun afternoon. Brett really enjoyed himself, Brady was too young and bashful, and I just felt plain dumb. What a parent won't do for thier children. Wish I could post a pic, but Bryan has the digital in Japna, I had to use the old fashioned camera, film.

Japan

Bryan has been in Japan for about 2 days now. He likes it there so far. He said Kadena is huge. They have a big BX, which he and some fellow Eielsonites got lost in looking for what they needed. The commissary is nice size too, he didn't really know the prices of things, he didn't pay attention to that. He said they have a Burger King, Taco Bell, Popeye's, Subway and 2 count them 2 Chili's on base! That would be so cool to have Chili's right there. A bunch of them went out to dinner Saturday night, they kind of celebrated Bryan's birthday, complete with the wait staff singing Happy Birthday to him, which he wasn't thrilled with, but at least he had fun. While he was being wined and dined, yes he actually had a few beers, the boys and I were busting our humps clearing the ice out of the driveway. He will owe me a big one for that, which I collected on, by ordering a few of the Bearfoot bears that I collect.I am happy he was able to have a fun time being away from home on his birthday. When he gets back I will post some pictures that he took.

More Ice

Here are a few more pictures of the ice sculptures from the kid's side of the park.

2008 World Ice Championships

In Fairbanks they are holding the 2008 World Ice Championships. They have people come from all over the world to do ice sculpting. We had a great time looking at all the sculptures. The boys really had a ball in the kid's ice park. They had slides they could go down and other fun stuff for them to do. We plan on going again later in the day when it's dark so we can see them all lit up. We will plan on that after Bryan gets back from Japan. We will put the boys snowpants on next time, we didn't know they had so many slides and things for them to do, their little butt cheeks got a little cold going down the slides!