New friends, old friends, sandboxes, and rain barrels

This week has been full of meeting new friends and reacquainting with old. Miles and I spent last weekend in Indianapolis hanging out with my college friends. It was so much fun. Miles loved all of his honorary aunties and his new best friends.

Here are two photos of Miles with his new best friends, Roman and Jack. It's funny how we can have three boys so close in age that look so different. They are all within four months of each other.

As far as reacquaintances with old friends, Miles has been dishing out hugs like it's going out of style to the members of our household. For Dustin and I - get the real thing - head on shoulders and all. We love it! However the animals get a bit of a different type of affection. Usually the cats get a little smiling boy coming at them - squealing no less - who then flops his head on their bellies (they're usually right at his height - lying on a chair). Needless to say the cats do NOT handle this well. However, Cooper has been a real trooper. I've included a video of Miles trying to cuddle with Cooper. This could easily go on for five or more minutes, but this will give you an idea of their love hate relationship. Notice how Cooper won't leave the room - even when the door is open. :)

Here are two photos of Miles in his sandbox that he got for his birthday from us. His favorite thing to do right now is have us fill the bucket with sand, and then he dumps it on himself. (And even eats a little of it.)

And now for a video from his long-ago birthday. I was downloading the video of Miles with Cooper when I found this and realized that I forgot to download it. Which symbol did he choose??? Just to remind everyone - a pencil means he will be scholarly, money means wealthy, and a string means he will have a long life. I was going to also include the video of him eating his cake - an American tradition, but it was like 10 minutes long.

This photo is purely for my parents' benefit. These are the barrels that they acquired and stored for us so that we could build our sweet rain collection system. The overflow pipe that you see on the left runs straight into the fish pond when we get a lot of rain - which is the combination of today and yesterday. The last few days have really put it to the test.

This is a picture of Miles watching me take a photo of the rain barrel system this morning through the sliding door. It must have been pretty exciting. :)