Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Overstimulation

Overstimulation. Every parents' nightmare. We've had it since the minute the kids woke up Sunday morning. Easter baskets! Toys! Candy! Eggs! A new church! A new nursery. An hour and a half of screaming. Well, I am hoping for the nursery workers' sakes that there were a few breaks in there somewhere!
The boys loved their baskets, as did Matthew and Kathryn. And even Mike got a basket from the Easter bunny this year! Chocolate and peanut butter truffles and a little model John Deere tractor. Could life get much better for him???
On Easter night the boys went home with my parents. It was the first night ever that the boys spent the night away from me. I almost cried saying goodbye, but I reminded myself it was only for 24 hours and they go there all of the time and sleep when I'm there, so why would it be any different? But I have to confess (and Tiff, take my word for it...) that once they were gone, I was a different person that night! No babies...no chaos...no noise....no sippy cups and diapers and pj's that are hard to get over a child's cast when the child won't sit still for one second.....it was like this whole new world had opened up to me! Mike and I laid down on the bed to watch a movie together.....and guess what? Our room was bombarded by the 13 and 8 year olds!!! It was as though they were just craving our attention for once without the boys. So, so much for a romantic evening. But still, it was a great break and although I missed the boys terribly, it was a good step for me.

Then today it was off to the Zoo. It was so much fun! And we totally lucked out on the weather....no rain. Not until 8 minutes after we got in the car to head home. On the way up though, with 7 people and a double stroller and a cooler in our huge SUV, we decided that we were short on room and need to buy a bus! Or something a little bit larger!!! Oh well, we'll just have to manage. Anyway, here we are at the zoo.

Grandma and the boys eating a good healthy snack of Mini Teddy Grahams

Isn't this so cute???

Zachary and I at the petting zoo
All of us
Kathryn and Tyler just chillin'

Lunch please! The boys basically went the entire day without a nap or anything! Which is pretty amazing considering they still take 3 hour naps! But, when we were on the exit out......

.....this is what happened. 10 minutes of sleepy time. Mike had to get a picture of us in front of the mountain goat because the goat was snoozing too!!!
After that, we headed down to the OHSU tram. We got onto that death trap (I hate heights) and managed to make it up to the top without dying. We wandered around for a bit and actually got this photo. Can you believe it??? All 6 of us looking at the camera. I'm not sure how grandma managed to do it. This will probably never happen again, so, this will likely be the picture you'll see on our Christmas cards for years to come.

After riding back down the death trap Tram, we went to the Old Spaghetti Factory and met grandpa for dinner. We were all exhausted but everyone was pretty hungry and did amazingly well! But we got there before it opened so we took a walk along the river.


We had a fantastic, overstimulating day. The boys were in bed by 7:15pm!

Friday, March 21, 2008

Lego my Eggo

Today was Easter Egg dying day! And Lego building day. Here are some photos of the events:
The 13 yr. old was smiling away until I said 'group photo' and you'd have thought I wanted to pull his teeth with my bare hands or something! But that's okay - I was just excited that this event wasn't 'too lame' to take part in.




This is Tyler's favorite new thing to do while in his high chair. I'm not sure what he's trying to say here...'You're all annoying...be quiet!' Or 'seriously people, I am so ignoring you!'. Either way, it makes me laugh every time so I had to get a photo. Where do kids learn these things?

Then the boys decided to build. Zach and Tyler just love Matthew and love building with him. Well, I should say 'tearing down whatever Matthew is trying to build'.

Here you can see the black cast that went on a few weeks ago. The black is for Michael, obviously. I thought the blue was so pretty, but no. We had to have a SWAT cast. Go figure.


Wednesday, March 19, 2008

A Birthday and A Half

Today was my mom's birthday. Happy birthday grandma! It is also the boys' half birthday. 18 months old today. Where has the time gone? It seems so long ago that they were born, and now they are practically little men! Anyway, we went to dinner tonight and I was able to snap a few photos before I got tired of people looking at me like I was crazy.

Thanks to their father, the boys love chips and salsa!
More salsa, please!
Grandma opening presents
Uncle Matt
Who knew a straw could be so much fun!

Friday, March 7, 2008

Yummy!

Tonight was pudding night! I made french vanilla pudding for the boys. Much less messy than chocolate!


Tyler was cracking me up. He was putting the end of the spoon in his mouth and was dishing up pudding on the spoon, but then obviously he couldn't get the pudding into his mouth! It was adorable.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Haircuts? Yes, please.

Tyler and Zachary desperately need haircuts. I mean, desperately. The good news is, they're getting haircuts Monday afternoon. Take a look at this snazzy hair! This is 'post-nap' hair. As soon as I opened the door to their room, I laughed hysterically and had to run for the camera. This photo doesn't really even do justice to what happened to his hair during those few napping hours.
And then there's Tyler. If one was looking at him from behind, one might think he was a 'her'! Yes, blond hair and beautiful curls. Lots of them. Let me tell ya, its shaggy though! They're going to look like completely different toddlers after haircuts this time!
And in other news....I am excited that the garage sale season has begun. It seems that I have become somewhat addicted to garage sale-ing! Lucky for me, my friend Tiff, also a stay-at-home mom, seems to have become addicted as well. We went two days in a row this weekend! We're going to have a ton of fun this spring and summer with the 3 boys, looking for those 'precious items that I just can't live without!' We didn't buy too much this weekend, but today I did get a few fun things. I got a Sesame Street Elmo inflatable ring for the pool (and for indoor play as you will see below) and a vacuum that is so cute!


The inflatable ring has many uses, as you will see. Pillow, hoop to climb through, a flotation device even out of water. Zachary wore it around his waist for a good portion of the evening. Too funny.