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!