I have become a fan of the author Jonathan Friesen. He's local. He went to my church. He wrote a book called Jerk, CA. And I am totally impressed. I added his blog as a link...I'm sure he has more fans than me so I don't think he'll mind me advertising this book...or him. I am hoping he'll make an appearance at my school and inspire my students to write and write for life. We'll see!
http://jonathanfriesen.typepad.com/

MEA weekend and i got to spend lots of time with my little buddy...on Friday, we went to Gleason's gym, a gymnastics club that has open gym for "pre-schoolers" every Friday morning. I have never seen Owen have soo much fun for a whole hour and a half. Running, jumping, trampoline-ing, bouncing, climbing...workingup a sweat and loving every miunute of it. I will let the pictures tell the story until I have time to write some captions.

Owen met his cousins on top of a folded mat that acted as a slide for them. They hung out up there and we tried to take pictures...Christmas pictures? We'll see if any turned out. :-)

Momma was happy to see Owen happy! This is one of the few times he let me hold him...he squirmed his way out of my arms so he could go...

play with cousins,

climb and hang (here's the pomel horse),

RUN,...

Run some more on the big, long trampoline,...

Get ready to jump,...

AND JUMP!,...

He's been practicing for a few weeks how to jump off furniture and off of curbs. He gets his two feet in the air and gets everything moving forward, and take off! Here he gets to land on a huge, soft mat in a foam-block pit.

He's telling me he got stuck in there...so let's go climb something else!

We found a few more things to climb and another big mat to jump on...

and even after cousins went home, we stayed and played and found some new kids to jump on...I mean, jump with! :-)

What fun it is to see your boy full of smiles!

Grampa Phil was here to visit! We had so much fun and Owen wanted to tell him everything! One thing about Grampa Phil...he may not admit looking for things to help with, but if you don't ask him to help, he'll look for something to fix! While he was here, Grampa Phil found where our water shut-offs were, re-programmed our water softener, and painted the new dresser for our baby girl's room...
doesn't it look great??? In the time he was here, he also fixed a bunch of stuff at the duplex, "cleaned" gramma mimi's garage, and "looked" at her lawn mower. He also squeezed in a Badger game on TV and a few good meals followed by a great night's sleep.
Thank you Grampa for all you do! We love you and Owen has so much to tell you...see you in two weeks!