Graham turned two!

Our "baby" is two today!
We had a party on Sunday, with a high density of two year olds. There was also cake, wet sand, bikes, bubbles, and chalk. Oh, and singing!

I love how delighted he looks that everyone is singing to him. It was enough to temporarily win him over to agreeing that he was, in fact, turning two. Since then he's gone back to correcting us with "No. One... half."

This morning he opened birthday presents, and then brought muffins to day care for his school buddies.

He is getting a little more "two" these days, with bouts of stubbornness, temper tantrums, possessiveness, and all that good stuff. But most of the time he's the same sweet old Graham. We love you, buddy! Seriously, how great is this kid?

Minnesota Cousins

Katie and I got back from England and France late on Sunday. More on that nice trip later. This is about our trip to Iowa and Minnesota from a few weeks back. How the time flies! I was going to post about the whole trip, but that was impossible, so I'm focusing on Justin and Becky's kids, cousins Jamie, Wyatt, and Heidi. What, you didn't know about Heidi? She is new and small. See here:

Whereas Jamie and Wyatt looked like little clones of Justin when they were born, Heidi only looks 75% like Justin, so maybe Becky's genes are finally starting to exert themselves. My brother and sister and I look 90% like my Dad (tall and fair), and 10% like my Mom (small and dark), so the Fortney genes are tough to overcome.

It was great to see my parents again, and we managed to see a few of the high school friends, who have their own kids. But mostly the boys ran around with their cousins. We spent some time over at Justin and Becky's "acreage" in Wisconsin. The boys drove around Power Wheels and then we went on Justin's boat, too. Finn did most of the boat steering. I think Finn would have preferred to stay there for the next 15 years. We lack a boat and any Power Wheels, sadly.

I thought that this one, above, was a great one of Finn and Wyatt. Wyatt is only a month older.

Of course, I took some movies of them driving round. Graham got a kick out of riding around with Jamie (the oldest!) but wouldn't hop in with anyone else. Smart boy!

Car Driving 1 from Jonathan Fortney on Vimeo.

Next summer we may try for an even longer trip than 10 days. If we're going to spend the money on 4 plane tickets, we should get out money's worth! And the state fair will have to be on the list.

Dispatch from Grandma Week

Yesterday:
Finn: Why are the brakes making noise?
Gma: They must be wet.
Finn: How did they get wet? It's not wet out.
Gma: Must be the fog.
Finn: Fog doesn't get in brakes.
Gma: Yes, I believe it does.
[Graham taking my side and echoing "fog. Fog."]
Finn: Last time when you drove in Iowa the brakes made noise too.
Gma: Yes, they did! You have a good memory.
Finn: So maybe you're not such a good driver.

This morning, unsolicited, he volunteered that his mom and dad were both better drivers than me, especially his dad, who is always learning more about driving.


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Jonathan and I are currently in St. Ives, not far from Cambridge, vising Jeanna and Craig (Jonathan's sister and her husband). Today he gave a short talk at Cambridge, and tomorrow we take a train to London, and from there to Paris! Besides catching up on our sleeping, reading, TV watching, and eating of English foodstuffs (Wensleydale! Scones! Pasties!), we've also done some sightseeing and shopping. We're having a great time, more so thanks to updates like these from my mom. It's also neat that our rented Italian smart phone can use Google Voice to send text messages to my mom in California while I'm in England.
I'm sure we'll have plenty of pictures to bore you with soon. Until then...