OK, so it’s been official for a while now, but we finally worked in the actual party now that school and baseball are over.  (Ed. Note: Not that you can tell from what he’s wearing…)

M&D did a nice job on the party and I especially liked my tasty and well decorated cake!

First we went to see the Seawolves play, and I got to be the bat boy.

The home place umpire was very nice.  We were on a first name basis after a short while.  The Seawolves won that game!

After that, I had my game – and we won, too!  Here I am pitching:

I pitched the first inning on 6 pitches, when I made two plays to first and got one strikeout!  Go Yankees!

I’m old enough to blow out my candles now!  Daddy makes the fire and…

PSssssshhhhhhpbpbpbpb!

I put the fire out!  Like a fireman!

(Ed. Note: Andrew actually performed a fairly moisture-free extinguishing of his candle…)

(Ed. Note: The picture speaks for itself, doesn’t it?)

I got my new bed today, and what’s more, I got to put it together myself – with some help from Daddy of course!

You have to be very careful.  It won’t sleep right if everything isn’t lined up.

Watch me put in the screws and use Daddy’s electric screwdriver!

All this work is making me thirsty!

Finally, it was all done!

I’m all ready to sleep in it!

Today we were riding around the lake and we saw this cool brush rig fire truck – and the firemen to go with it!  So they invited me to sit up in the truck… but I wasn’t quite sure I was ready for that much responsibility.  It is an awfully big steering wheel!

I preferred to have Daddy hold me for the rest of the tour.

Mommy brought home some fancy Japanese peach-creme filled rice cake thingys.  They have this awesome squishy feel to them – kinda like play-doh and kinda like jell-o.  And they’re covered with rice flour.  Just to make them more fun to play with while you eat. I want to go to Japan, now.

Oh, and Ben liked them, too.  (We ate the whole box.)

We went for a hike out to the marsh with some friends.  The marsh is very large.

Because of the drought, the marsh is very dry – you can walk right out into it and the dirt is not wet like it normally would be.  And the plants are mostly dry and dead. We did find a cool clearing a ways in to walk around in.  Here, we found that a little ways below the nice soft dirt is a layer of clay.

We had a good time playing in the dirt, playing with the cattails, and running all over the place!

Daddy took us to the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County.  They have some really fun stuff there!

Like this railroad car that you can sit in – and watch a train drive all around the museum on the screen.

Then there’s the wall where you can write with light pens.

And doodling with light bars.  You stick the colored light bars in a hole – and they light up!  Like magic!

Then there was the puppet theater, complete with a multi-colored light board.

And there was a giant Thomas Train track that you could climb under and come up right in the middle.  Need I say more?

Then there was the doctor’s office.

And at the dentist’s office, you could use the X-ray camera to take pictures of the patient.  Here Andrew is X-raying his hands!

This cool thing would suck these yarn-ball-things through the pipes and you could watch them race around, and change their paths by flipping some switches.

And that was just the inside!

Outside they had a giant Ornithopter!

Andrew was really digging it.

And, of course, giant tires to climb on.

We had a great time!

Daddy let me get my own cart on our last trip to Trader Joe’s.

I got to push it and put stuff in it and everything.  Daddy said I did a good job because I didn’t run into anything!