BANZAI!!!

It has been crazy-humid and hot here lately (I know it's July in CT, What AM I thinking?!) so Tucker and I headed out Saturday amongst our other errands to get a water slide. We went to Walmart and Toys r us and alas, no water slides plus a major detour for a 20 inch water pipe break that caused a 15 ft sinkhole in the road , thankfully at 1 am because this is a major road; It ended up being closed through the weekend and opened again last night around 7). So we came home and went on-line and found an awesome water slide on eBay express (no surprise there, I am the eBay QUEEN after all!!). It came today and Michael attempted to get it going so Tucker could try it out after swim lessons tonight (and then he had a bath so he was a little water-logged). Anyway, I think we got it going enough so Tucker could play a little but Michael was trying to also cook chicken on the grill and I was making Mac & cheese and peas for dinner. Michael will work more on it on Thursday, his day off. Here Michael is blowing up the "inflatable body board" that came with it and Tucker is directing...To be continued



I also wanted to mention the exciting news that I actually own a coffee table in my living room! For as long as I can remember, or at least as long as Tucker's been alive, the coffee table has been sort of a plethora (always like to use that word when I can) of toy parts, books, crayons, etc. Well, Eileen (my mother-in-law) cleaned off when she was here yesterday. I don't think I've seen it cleaned off since we got it when we got the house in 2000! Coincidentally, or maybe not, Eileen and Louie (Michael's grandfather who died in 2001, gave us the table!

Tucker started summer school Monday and was happy to see a couple of familiar faces in his class. He's been having a hard time mastering the sight words and demonstrating confidence in what he does know; he's always concerned that he will give the wrong answer. We continue to read to him every night and try to encourage him to read out loud to us. His writing has come along through the year and his best subject seems to be math; he's always counting EVERYTHING and we just read a book last night called "One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab" where you count the number of feet/legs to count to one hundred (for example, 100 could be 10 crabs or 5 crabs and 25 people-crabs have 10 legs, including their claws and people have two legs). It's a really great book!

I will update with some pictures of the water slide once Michael gets it working better. By the way, the reason the title of this post is Banzai is because the name of the water slide is "Banzai something, something water slide".