10 Things We Did on Memorial Day Weekend

1. Jonathan and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary, which was last Tuesday. After the boys went to bed, we went out for dinner at what is probably our favorite restaurant in town, then met some friends downtown for a treasure hunt. Yes, a treasure hunt. With clues, and a map, and counting paces, and pirates. And running. Too much running. We didn't win, but we beat a number of the whipper snapper college student teams, and then we watched Goonies, which was supposed to start at midnight but actually started later after prizes and things and OH MY GOD WE WERE SO TIRED. But good tired.

Here's Jonathan, at the theater, posing with for a quick photo with Jack Black. No action shots of the treasure hunt, because of all the running.

2. We slept in while the boys watched a movie - 3 days in a row. Usually this is a special treat reserved for Sundays, but did I mention about the movie-that-started-after-midnight? Yeah. No one got dressed before 9 all weekend, and 10 was not unusual. As a family that usually is out the door before 8, this is a big deal for us. Here they are today sometime after we clothed them:

3. We picked up half a pig worth of frozen pork from the meat locker on Saturday. We had ordered it from Windsor Family Farm a while back, and even went to visit the farm when my mom was here back in April. The boys had a blast that weekend. There were pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, rabbits... and a trampoline.
If you're in the Bay Area, I highly recommend you check it out. And if you're not, I still recommend finding a local farm to buy meat from (or vegetables, or cheese, or whatever): see what a quick search on Local Harvest shows in your neck of the woods.

Baby roosters, by the way? Hilarious. Not really big enough for either the feathers or the attitude they walk around with.

I'm not sure the boys get the connection between these pigs and the meat, but... we'll get there.

4. On Saturday, we grownups went to sleep the earliest we can remember - I think we were both in bed around 8, and frankly, I wasn't functioning all that well before that, even after napping with Graham in the afternoon. Putting recycling in the trash, trash in the recycling - it was madness. Did I mention the midnight movie?

5. We took the boys to see a movie on Sunday - Chimpanzee. It was... okay. A little more death and violence than I expected, but the boys were okay with it.

6. After nearly 2 years in our new house, we finally had a fire in the fireplace. And the living room kind of smells like wood smoke now. Yes, the flue works, but the fire didn't take on the first try and there was a lot of kindling involved.

7. We went to a baseball game. The San Jose Giants minor league team, known (at least at our house) for their giant orange gorilla mascot, Gigante. This is supposed to be the 3 guys watching the game, but Finn's cotton candy bag decided to grab a piece of the action.

And like last summer, there were plenty of inflatables.

We left early, but not before sampling some ice cream, churros, and lemonade - in addition to the cotton candy.

8. We made muffins. Finn would want me to tell you: he can crack an egg into a bowl without breaking the yolk.

9. We did yardwork. Jonathan dug up what's probably the biggest bamboo root I've ever seen. I weeded 'til I could hardly stand. The menfolk transplanted Finn's pumpkin plant from indoors to outdoors. And Finn and Graham picked our pea plants completely clean of snowpeas. And ate them all out in the yard. I think I snagged two.

10. And tonight - Mad Men!

Skinned Knees

The weather has been quite pleasant here lately (well, I guess that isn't such a surprise, sorry) and the boys have been wearing a fair amount of shorts and t-shirts. Scrapes and scabs aplenty! This is actually less "costly" for Finn than wearing pants, since he tends to rip holes in the knees with regularity, which costs us money and time for patches or new pants. That or he can look like a little hobo who wears rags for clothes. It happens. Finn is now 4 1/2 years old, as of the 13th. We're now getting him a little involved in organized activities, which has its pluses and minuses. The minuses are that things cost money and we have to drive him there! But so far he's done a version of soccer with strong parent participation, and tonight was his first swimming lesson in a long time. (We'd done some water-babies type stuff in the past, but it had been a LONG time.) He did great! The only problem from his perspective was that it was only 30 minutes.
He's very proud of his new swimsuit that says "Totally Jawsome" with a shark's mouth. Graham and Finn are really getting along pretty well these days, and while they do play pretty rough, they make each other laugh a lot. Graham can apparently laugh even while getting manhandled as I tell Finn to leave his brother alone. At some point the laughter turns to tears, of course! In this orange (the official color of Fortney Boys, LLC) photo, I think they are both being mice. Graham is "Super Mouse" while Finn is "Flash Mouse."

Obviously here they are "Batman" and "Tiny Batman."  The warm weather has brought out the backyard hammock as well. While last year they were good about not playing on it, this year, not so much. If you turn the volume up to 11 you can hear them giggling. I took the movie from our bedroom window.

Why is this here? We have a lot of snails and slugs in our yard. This one is only about 2 inches. The much rarer banana slugs (never seen in our yard, yet) are more like 6-8 inches.

Growing up, and Christmas

Firstly, let's debut the new size chart! Since our last update, both boys have had birthdays. Graham has always been a little behind in height and head size, but has sometimes been a bit heavier. But now it appears the young version of Finn is ahead in all categories. What this means for the future, I don't know. Finn is undeniably a big guy--a 95th percentile type of kid.

Well, the holiday season is over, and the Fortney Family has survived, and enjoyed it! We spent 12 days in the Midwest, split between Minnesota and Iowa. The weather was relatively balmy (mid 30s), and there was no snow on the ground. So that was a little unusual. Grandparents were hugged, cousins were riled up, and raviolis were consumed.

Before we left, Santa was smart enough to come (I guess he got the letter!), and the boys got their very own 2003-era Fujitsu laptop, amongst other things, like color-changing matchbox cars. They are quite excited. (Actually, the computer just broke, but Katie is going to "share" her Mac with them for awhile until we find a resolution.)

Both boys were excellent on the plane ride out. Traveling with them is just getting easier and easier. Graham was especially interested in having his very own bag of potato chips (they bought us nearly an hour), as well as checking out the in-flight tunes.

Last year at my parents' house I spent a good 2 hours making Finn a hollowed out snow cave that he spent about 10 seconds in. This year I spent about 20 minutes raking leaves to make the ultimate leaf pile, and the boys loved it. Mostly they would get running starts and try to go right through it, with limited success.



After the trip down to Iowa (Katie may have pictures?) we spent a few hours at the Mall of America, before we caught our plane out of town. You have never lived until you've played mini golf with a 2-year-old and a 4-year old. At least 5 times, Graham had very short "My do it!" temper tantrums when we tried to help him. He was laying face down on the green carpets. Finn only did a full wind-up whack once (the 2nd hole). And no one got hit in the face, so it was pretty successful. We also rode on quite a few rides at the gigantic indoor amusement park, which is not longer called Camp Snoopy. Oh, and we ate at the Rainforest Cafe. Yay!