June 14 = Picnic Day

Today Liam and I entertained ourselves while Zachary did a lot of school work and went to the gym.  We first headed to the library- I have an unhealthy obsession with the Tudor dynasty.  I was always fascinated by the story of Henry VIII's wives so when I saw the show "The Tudors" on Netflix I had to watch.  I watched the entire series way faster than I'd like to admit because Zachary was on his first deployment and it helped pass the time.  Then, recently, I came across a book series by Philippa Gregory starting with The Constant Princess about poor Katherine of Aragon.  I read that one in Jacksonville and then started The Other Boleyn Girl but didn't finish before we moved.  One of the first things I did when we moved to Annapolis was get a library card so I could finish the book.  I finished it yesterday and now I have to see the movie!  I love watching movies after I've read the book.  I say all of this because our first errand today was to go to the library to get the third book in the series, The Boleyn Inheritance, which mentions Jane Seymour and then focuses on his next two wives.  Then we went to Target- my favorite place.  We got hot tamales, mike & ikes, swedish fish, twizzlers and twizzler bits, granola bars and fruit snacks for goodie bags for Fathers' Day.  Then we went to Michael's- another favorite of mine- to get scrapbook paper to make these:

 I'd love to take credit for the idea myself but I found it on Pinterest.  I'm also going to make a "Happy Fathers' Day" banner- also courtesy of Pinterest.  I haven't put the letters on the ties yet but here are the various ties that I'm using:

 I just realized the music notes are upside down.  It's fine.  Moving on.  I made two of each pattern in case you're looking at them and thinking there aren't enough to spell out "Happy Fathers' Day."

So when we got home Liam was way past ready for a nap so I fed him a quick lunch and laid him down and as I was working on all of this Zachary got home from the gym.  So I told him not to look and finished his goodie bags real quick and gave them to him a day early- we never ever wait until the appropriate day to give gifts.  

When Liam woke up from his nap we headed downstairs with a picnic blanket, a bag full of toys, hamburgers, chips, ketchup, cheese, plates, forks and a can-do attitude and Zachary grilled hamburgers while I attempted to entertain Liam.

 The first picture makes it seem as though he is cooperating but as the second picture shows it wasn't long before he wanted to do something different.  I'm pretty excited that I captured him signing "I want."  He always wants something.  If we could get him to sign what exactly it is that he wants we'd have it made.  And the third picture shows our view from the picnic blanket.  If you look closely you can see the water through the trees- it was so pretty outside- the perfect day for a cookout/picnic.

Liam ate 3/4ths of a full hamburger and all of his macaroni and cheese.  He is his daddy's son- loves that mac 'n' cheese.

After we finished eating we started going through some boxes that were thrown together right before we moved.  Liam was not a fan of this boring work so we didn't last long in the garage.  We brought him upstairs so he could play and he kept bringing Zachary various articles of clothing to put on him.  This is completely off topic from the rest of this post but I had to share because he thought it was so funny to put all of these clothes on and one of his favorite things is making others laugh and he sure succeeded.

And one last set of pictures... last year for Valentine's Day I took pictures of Liam holding the letters spelling out "dad."  Last year it was much, much easier because Liam had no interest in the letters- he just let them rest against him and was really cute for the pictures.  This year I had to take about 20 pictures of each to get one that was acceptable for the frame.

Here's the difference a year makes: