A weekend at the good old Poconos

TJ with his best buddies, Catherine and Elizabeth. "Aren't I the cutest kid?" You, too, Uncle Jamie!
Tadpoles, tadpoles, and more tadpoles!!!!!
Grandma Janice and Pops at the family reunion. 
The bathing beauties!
The "big" weekend discovery...a snake in the yard!

"I pledge allegiance to the flag"

Happy Memorial Day 2008

TJ loves to explore and "check things out."

New York Yankees and American flags!

Gram and apple pie (and corn too!)

It took two days...

...to turn a baby blue room into a yellow sports room! The renovation is not completely done yet. I'll upload new pictures in the next couple of days, when all the missing stuff will arrive (yes, there is going to be more). Luckily, TJ loves his big boy room, which you can see on the following video. He went to the shore this weekend and I took the chance to paint the room with my friend Anja while he was canoeing (he fell in the water and got rescued by Pops). I hope I can get pictures from that event. 

After taking all the furniture out of the room and taping windows, doors and ceiling, we got started. Bob the Builder and me. We were on a mission!

Well, first we enjoyed having so much space in the little room and trained our jumping skills! Thumbs up, T-Man! 

Off he goes - check out his facial expressions, it says everything! Life is good when you got an unused mattress.

Then we covered the carpet with old sheets (we got really into this renovation thing).

After a while, TJ got tired and a big boy like him needs a nap in a big boys bed, of course. So Mommy and Daddy's bed seemed big enough. On the next picture I told TJ to close his eyes and to pretend to sleep - he tried, but he couldn't get the smile out of his face. 

"I think I like having my nap here."
My equipment.
After his nap, Tj, I mean Bob, helped me putting the primer on the wall. He had no idea how cool it would be in the end.

First day of renovation was over and my pants were ruined, but it was worth it!

Oh and I still got some paint on my fingers.

Thumbs up for the yellow TJ!

Sometimes you have to have a little fun, even if that what you are doing is not fun at all. 

After some hours and a second coat of yellow and a little more white on the ceiling, we were done! Yeehaw! The following pictures were taken before I put all the books, clothes and toys back in the room. There is still decoration missing which I ordered online and I have to put the picture frames up on the wall. So I'm going to do a panorama video next week!

Happy super late Mother's Day Lisa!

Yesterday TJ painted a picture for his mommy and said: That's for my mom it can make her happy. It's still drying (we used a lot of heart-red fingerpaint). And this nice card is from the big brother himself. If you look close enough you can see his signature. Oh and try to find the spider (it's blue).

Sorry for posting so late! The past couple of days have been full of adventures and biggie events for TJ. We went o ChuckE Cheese (oh how I "love" that place), TJ rode a pony, had soccer and a picnic. Here are some pictures of him from last week. The following text is written by Judy - and thanks for the pictures Simone!

TJ had a sleep-over on Saturday night at the Millers of Springfield. He and his cousins, Catherine and Elizabeth love playing together (and eating ice cream cones!). On Sunday he went to church to hear Gram give a tribute to Nannie for Mother's Day and then drove to Aunt Karin and Aunt Angela's house (with Molly too!) for a delicious brunch....you should have seen TJ eat the shrimp and chocolate cream pie! We all had a wonderful day even though we missed having Nannie with us. We all watched "A Baby Story" and saw little Lisa Karin Clearwater make her appearance. Now, she is ready to walk! All of the cousins...Catherine, Lindsay, Elizabeth, Gabe, Lauren, Gillian, and Lisa are looking forward to the arrival of TJ's baby sister, Alexandra! Who knows...maybe she'll make it home for Lisa C's first birthday party! TJ had a great time at the party...he is definitely a party animal (now how did THAT happen?).

Two of my German friends visited me last week which was good for TJ - he had a new baseball buddy! Oh and as you all know TJ can run super fast! Here's a picture of him being like Forrest Gump without his prosthesis.

Yes, we went to ChuckE and yes, we actually met him! That was crazy, dude! The picture shows (besides TJ and that huge weird mouse) Erica and Sidney, the 4-year-old twins and their nanny Erika. We hang out with them a lot and they love TJ...

...my guess is it's because of his stylin', new, fancy, player in da hood, Adidas shoes. Aren't they cool?

TJ enjoys some bubblegum ice cream at the Woodbridge park.

The pink girl is Erica and the purple girl is Sidney. They look exactly the same and I can only tell who is who by their different shirts (obviously at least one of them is not so good at playing with the camera).

And in motion picture!

And here comes David Beckham.. I mean TJ Miller! Last year he was one of the trouble shooters at soccer class who couldn't focus on the instructor (maybe because he was the youngest and smallest in that class by far). Now things have changed and he is one of the leaders in his group. He listens to the instructor and does cool stuff with his ball. I'm impressed.

Well, sometimes...
...airplanes are more important than kicking a ball...
...but most of the time, TJ is on the soccer mission!
Here a nice shot with his buddy Spencer, the instructor.

And here is TJ in action!

A typical breakfast with TJ

When TJ woke up this morning he asked for chocolate, ice cream and TV in the living room. Too good to be true, so we decided to rather have water melon...oh and his can contains V8 vegetable juice - not coke. 

A biggie day

So I guess today TJ figured out that sometimes a white lie helps to get out of trouble. He got a beautiful little flower for Mother's Day at preschool today and put it on the porch so it could soak up the sun. TJ and Gram wanted to leave for Special Person Night and TJ was sitting in the porch calling for Gram to help him put his sneakers on. When Gram went there, he had dirt all over him and on the floor. So Judy asked him what had happened and he said: Louie did it. Gram was not too sure about that and asked again. TJ said: I didn't do it, Flou Flou did it. Poor innocent cat. Well, at least he helped to clean up the mess.

Today was Special Person Night at preschool and Car Cruise Night on Main Street. So there was a lot to do for TJ and here are the pictures taken today. 

TJ and his big preschool love Claire. The teachers say their connection is very special and that their sense of humor is mature for their age. He just loves his Claire (and his Bea, too, of course). 
Gram and TJ tried to call Mommy and Daddy in Kazakhstan and wondered why nobody picked up the phone.
He could have had a fire truck, he could have had a scary spider, but no...
...he just wanted a yellow flower. What a happy kid.
TJ and me with the Savings Bank cow. TJ thought he was kind of cool.
After Special Person Night we went, of course, to 'What's the scoop?'. TJ got a big Superman ice cream cone...
...and liked it as you can see...
...Gram enjoyed her ice cream as well. Afterwards it was time for a bath and he fell asleep pretty fast.