Toot Toot Chugga Chugga....BIG RED CAR!

Once upon a time, there was a 2 year old who was the master of tantruming during the dinner preparation time.....and once upon a time, there was a mother who had finally had enough of taped Sesame Street episodes. One evening, that mother said "HERE. Watch this....you might like it....", as she put on the very first viewing of The Wiggles. Once upon a time, there was a 5 year old who, on that same evening, said "WHAT is THIS?!?!?!" And so the love of The Wiggles was born.

The love...it is a love like non-other. Seriously. Anyone ever seen Colin dance to "my Wiggles"?! Anyone ever seen the 3 big girls dance along with the Wiggles, singing each note perfectly? It's not often that all 4 children LOVE something, the SAME thing....

So when I happened upon the knowledge that The Wiggles were coming to Chicago, immediately we thought "We HAVE to go." However, the site that *I* found listed the tickets for such a large pricetag that I said to the girls: "Well, Ava can either go to kindergarten at NHCS this year or all 6 of us can go to the Wiggles concert." Ava's response? "I can wait a year to go to school, mom!"

Andy later stumbled upon an early sale, bringing the tickets down to a very reasonable price....and we determined that we'd surprise the children! We, and almost everyone who knows us, kept that secret for almost the entire summer! Way to go, everyone!

What a fun surprise it was! They knew we were doing SOMETHING....and guesses included: Door County, Grammy's, Grandma's, Minneapolis and Omro.
I had purchased iron-on decals of the beloved singers and tee shirts and then wrapped them up. When they opened the bag, they were instructed NOT to yell it out, so not to spoil the surprise for slower openers. To see the surprise, click HERE.

Below: Colin looking down in awe at his shirt...."Toot toot, Mommy!", Jayna excited for the show and then all 6 of us at the Rosemont Theater.
Bottom row: there was a sign that you could photograph the kids by and Colin was so mesmerized, it was difficult to get him to LOOK at our camera!

The show was AMAZING. We all say we'd go again, for sure.
The Wiggles are amazing...even if you don't care for them, you've got to hand it to them...any one that "old" (Jeff is 57!) that can dance and sing without huffing and puffing is pretty amazing. And, they have songs with WONDERFUL messages--messages about eating healthy food, being a friend, getting active to get strong...Amazing.

In case you ARE a Wiggle fan, you're probably saying "That's not Murray!" Murray had to miss this show, but Rico filled in for him. Rico had an amazing singing voice...but he couldn't play Murray's guitar! :)

You might also be wondering about the children's thoughts and reactions:
Ellie: "I'm so excited, I just want to scream and explode!"
Jayna: "I think I'm going to die...." and then she wrote me a note late Saturday night that said "Now THAT was fun, Mom!"
Ava: "I just can't wait!"
and Colin: "My Wiggles. My Wiggles. Mine."
He sat mesmerized/shocked for 1/2 of the show and then he really got into it, singing and dancing in the aisles! We had great seats; on an aisle for easy kid dancing access!

And, ANDY filled up our entire camera's memory card with photos and videos of the fun!
Here is a list of videos that you might want to watch...all of them have the kids dancing at some point, so you can really see if they enjoyed the show!

Big Red Car
Big Red Car...part 2
Rock A Bye Your Bear
Polka song
5 Little Joeys Jumping On The Bed
Shimmy Shake
Get Strong

And in other weekend news, we did spend 24 hours in Chicago. Of course, we drove by N. Kennicott a couple of times ("I can't believe they still have the basketball hoop that *I* used to play with!"), we shopped at Ikea on Saturday afternoon (Of all times, right?! Crowded!), we got Barnaby's pizza to go (how can you pass up the Arlington Height's Barnaby's?!), stocked up on Trader Joe items, and introduced the children to Portillos. They loved it so much that we ate there Friday night AND Saturday night! A great end to summer!

Back To School 2010!

They don't look excited or anything do they?!
Today is the 1st day of school! I heard children talking at 5:50am today, so I believe it was a short night, with all the excitement about the upcoming school year!

Over the past few weeks, though, there has been a HUGE concern amongst the 2 big girls:
WHERE would we take 1st day of school pictures? "Mom...we ALWAYS take them by your Black Eyed Susans at the old house!" (There was a small part of me that thought of driving back to the old house JUST to keep tradition!) Maybe next year, girls....we're trying to transplant some Black Eyed Susans...this year, the huge geraniums will have to suffice!

School children with Dad and Mom:

4th grade Ellie.

2nd grade Jayna.

And....sniff sniff.....KINDERGARTENER Ava!!!
She actually went for a short day last week, to the Teddy Bear Party--the left photo below shows Ava ready to go to school with her pink bear! She was very excited....and I did try to tell her it wouldn't hurt to keep her home 1 more year.... ;)

And what would our morning be like without Comical Colin? He was all over the picture taking...here are a couple of his humorous poses:

Thankfully, Colin will be napping while Ava is gone in the afternoon. He would be lost without his beloved "GaGa"!

Here are the girls once we got to school: Ava by her cubby and Ellie and Jayna at their desks.

Happy School Year, Everyone!

HaPpY BiRtHdAy.....JaYnA!!!!!

It is quite simple....JAYNA is a JOY to our family!
Today, she turned 8!!!! What a great day it was, despite crazy weather....lots of rain, clouds and wind for the OUTSIDE picnic party!!! (More on that later!)
Jayna has been celebrating since the 1st day of summer "Mom! It's my birthday season!" I don't think she stopped beaming all day today! She even got a phone call from her soon to be 2nd grade teacher! Mrs. Koeller was working on the class calendar and realized that TODAY was Jayna's birthday! That was really neat!

Of course, the traditional "wake up" pics...Colin, Ellie, Andy and I got together at 7am to go wake Jayna up. As we opened her door, I heard Ava say "THEY ARE COMING!" Of course, it was one of the many times we sang Happy Birthday to Jayna today!

We let Jayna open 1 gift (Ava's)...she was elated to get rings and an American Girl book. Colin's gift (glittery ball) was not wrapped, but he carried the ball to her, said "Happy Birthday Jayna" and then tried to take the ball away saying "MINE!"

The Cake Fairy came through again:
1 triple layer strawberry cake
13 strawberry cupcakes (for the party!)
1 strawberry pie...for the birthday girl who dislikes cake!

The girls helped me make fruit-kabobs. YUM YUM...they went over amazingly well; I think these will be a staple for parties and treats!

And, Jayna had a party!

We invited all of the girls going into 2nd grade and 1 special friend from church. Only 1 couldn't make the party! It was fun to be together, and then really fun for the new student at NHCS this year to meet her girl classmates before school starts!

Of course, we've been watching the weather all week--most everything was to be outside.
As of yesterday, all of the weather reports indicated "HOT, HUMID, SUNNY, PATCHY CLOUDS." Hmmmm.....it sure was dark all morning....and then we started hearing thunder....
And then the rain came. I had taken Jayna to the library and as I was driving in the rain, I kept hearing her say "Oh no. Oh NO! This is not good!" We prayed about the weather and I assured her that we had a few hours before we HAD to be outside for the party.

At home, though, Ellie was filling water balloons and setting up an obstacle course with Andy. It started raining and Andy was indicating "this is not good" to Ellie
and she said "DAD! God can change the weather!"

It was still raining hard enough to overflow our gutters when the girls arrived, but they were happy just to be together. They started out with the "let's see Jayna's room" activity and then we had them make sun visors (we were supposed to be under heat advisory with hot sun remember?!). The girls each made a stepping stone, and we had LOADS of outside fun with water games, relay races, an obstacle course and just plain "playing fun" on the trampoline, swingset, and some even climbed one of our trees! (We have wonderful pictures of all of this, but aren't really sure about putting so many photos of girls in their bathing suits on the public blog!)

The cake/pie eating at the party:

The party was a huge success--it wasn't overly hot and sunny,
but at least we could play the games outside!!!

After everyone left, we started our family party.....and started with the kids' gifts and cards:

and moved to the gifts that came in the mail and from us to Jayna. She loves everything; a huge thank you to everyone who showered her with gifts! In the photos below, you'll see Jayna holding a green notebook. She's in 2nd grade now, and now she has a notebook similar to Ellie's...these are "mom/daughter" notebooks. It is so fun; the girls write to me about something happy/sad/hard etc and put the notebook under my pillow. Then, I write back to them and put it under their pillow! A fun tradition.

Aunt Megan was once again creative--Jayna now owns 8 "dollar rings"!
And Aunt Rebekah was very generous....Jayna had gotten hooked on one of her DS games this summer. When Grandma went to look for it at the store, it's no longer available! Rebekah decided she wanted to GIVE Jayna her game. Jayna was thrilled...and touched!

Finally, it was dinnertime and we were all exhausted. We asked Jayna WHERE she'd like to go for dinner and she picked....WENDY'S. (There is a story here, of course....)

Jayna was born around 12:14am on August 13th and I had gone almost 24 hrs with no food; I was very hungry. The hospital cafeteria was closed, so Andy went to WENDY'S for me...in the middle of the night. 1st he went to the Neenah Wendy's...they didn't have late hours, so he had to drive all the way to the Wendy's on the SE side of Appleton. (Jayna knew nothing of this story...)

Today, as we pulled into Wendy's, I said "WEIRD! I had Wendy's the night Jayna was born!" and then we realized that the Neenah Wendy's had just closed (for good!)! She really wanted Wendy's and we ended up on the SE side of Appleton again...8 years later to the day.
Weird huh?!

Finally, Grandma tucked a little DVD into Jayna's box for everyone....click HERE to check out this little video clip to see if it was a hit with our little guy...

What a wonderful day....a day celebrating the birth of Jayna!

Vroom....vroom....vroom!

Is the above collage cute or what?
When we just had girls, I always said "I'd love to have a boy...because I really want one of those cool race car toddler beds!"

This spring, my mom found one for us and just this past weekend, we brought it to our house to make the big switch from crib to big boy bed. Andy had all the car wash stuff out for a "car (bed) wash" and as he turned his back to grab the camera, suddenly all 4 kids were hard at work, getting Colin's new bed ready!

The switch went amazingly well...as long as we didn't call it a BED. If we talked about it as a CAR, Colin was happy....call it a BED, he was hysterical. (This was huge...this is the babe that used his crib bumpers until he was 22 months old!)

The switch went well, but none of us could handle the car. What a bummer. The car had been played with outside and had the worst smell we could ever imagine. Not so bad on first glance, but after being in Colin's room for 12 hours last night, the room just reeked. We tried a few things today and then decided that we'd start our search for another carbed. I listed the bed on Craigslist and within 1 hour, someone called to pick it up tonight, for the price that we had paid!

For now.....Colin is sleeping in Ava's "sleigh" bed. Too bad he doesn't know what a sleigh is.... :)
What a big boy! Now....we just have to get the crib out of his room!

Reunions Galore....

July was a month of visiting many...
We started off in IL for the annual 4th of July celebration.
We then spent a weekend in WI for Andy's extended family reuion.
Finally, we rounded out the month in MN to see all of my family, including my Grandpa, visiting from Nebraska! Such fun times, much laughter, and time that went too fast!

Below: the group from the WI reunion....missing many people this year, but we still had a wonderful time. It was quite the feat trying to explain to the children "who" the other children were...."No, they are not your cousins...they are Daddy's cousins children..." :)
All in all, the children all got along well, we all pitched in to make meals,
and much relaxation was enjoyed by all!

The 4 Glynn kids....

Above, you will see Colin guarding his rocks that he found...he was very into his rocks. Line them up, make them into a big circle, line them up again and so forth. Now we find ourselves taking home rocks from each trip....

And....in WI, Cousin Paula brought her stash of Wiggles toys....Colin was in HEAVEN:

Guess what Colin is getting for Christmas?!?!?!

And, of course....Comical Colin was sighted....many times!
(Don't you love what happens to a boy's hair when you sunscreen his head?!?!?)

There was much swimming to be done, many boat rides to be had....lots of fun in the sun! Colin didn't appreciate the boat rides as much as other people, but his dislike of the windy boat provided time for him to fall asleep!

We enjoyed a fire one of the nights, complete with yummy s'mores, and while the grown up grown ups were on a kid free boat ride, it started POURING rain. All of us kids figured WE were the smart ones, inside from the rain! After, we spotted the most beautiful double rainbow!

Exactly 1 week later, we found ourselves back in the van for another 5 hour trip...this time to Spamtown, USA....aka: Austin, MN! We did get a big family photo taken,
but to my knowledge, the proofs aren't ready yet.
Stay tuned....
all the grandkids in their Spam shirts...you surely won't want to miss it! :)

There was much fun to be had at Grammie and Grampy's house....playing with cousins, swimming, good conversation, and frequenting Katie's past.

There was MUCH yummy food....

And Comical Colin was sighted AGAIN!

The children were swimming almost the entire time we were there and were sad to leave on Sunday....but oh, so tired when our van started the long trip home!

THEN....1 week later, Grammie, Grampy, and Great Grandpa came to Neenah to visit us! Great Grandpa had never seen where we lived and while they visited, Colin and the girls entertained him, we all went swimming at the Omro pool, and we dined at Luigis....(of course!). We also celebrated Grammie's birthday with a quick baking of her favorite...carrot cake!

We're done tripping for awhile....and it feels good. This morning, no one was rushing to pack last minute things, no one was crabby in the van, being restrained for too long.... so what did we do? Well, we can't just sit around you know....we completely moved all the childrens' rooms around and then spent the afternoon swimming in Omro (again!)! Summertime fun continues!