love

Grandma and her babies. All the kids are smitten kittens with their grandma and love her to pieces. Even lunch was a fun event.

outside

We have been practically living outside lately. All day, everyday, outside. Even Lullaby loves to be out there, watching her brothers and dog. We started taking her walker out there too, which she seems to love.

This day we also traced Matix and Sakina with chalk... Fun right?

dress up

Poor Lullaby gets dressed up whether she wants to or not. The boys almost always give her a hat to wear when they are playing dress up. Thankfully she is a good sport and usually leaves the hat on and giggles at her brothers. Love her.

date night OUT

Paul and I got to use our Olive Garden gift cards to go out on a date!! Out. Without kids. I think I was starting to forget what that was like. :) It was so nice. We talked and giggled and kissed at the table. Just because we could. We ate ourselves into food comas and loved every minute.

Stacy stayed home with the kids. Thanks Stacy!

hard worker

One of the many reasons that I loved having grandma Stacy here...

She is a busy body, always helping and doing things she sees that need doing. She is so sweet and such a hard worker. One day the grass needed mowing, bad. Paul was still studying for his step tests and couldn't really help out much with chores, so Stacy took on the madness. Mind you, this was her "vacation". We love you grandma Stacy, you are so good to us. :)

the fortress

Paul got 2 playsets for free off of Craigslist. The only stipulation was that they wanted Paul to take them apart. So he rented a sawsall, easy peasy, done. Rather than putting them together the way they had been, he constructed a fortress. He turned one of the slides into a ramp/bridge between the towers. He put monkey bars, and as of today, rings hanging underneath the bridge. There is a balance beam in the yard leading up to it. There are three swings. There is an extra slide that goes into the bottom part of the tower (one day there will be sand in there) - that slide was another free craigslist find. Just the other day we went to Home Depot because Paul wanted to get the boys some buckets with ropes to pull things up to the top. The boys are pretty much in love with their daddy as it is, but this put him up on a pedestal soooo high, you wouldn't believe. :) Paul is SUCH a great dad. Here are some pictures of the ever evolving fortress:

Matix got really into this shoot... Silly guy. I love all the poses.

I am loving the boys having a yard to play in whenever they want. It is such a lifesaver. There have been many days that they just go outside and play ALL morning, come inside to eat and take a nap, then play outside ALL afternoon and as far into the evening as we let them. They are wild outside boys. Thank heavens I have somewhere for them to be free!

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day, and in our family we have a tradition of picking up trash. One bag of trash per member of our family. So this year, it was five bags. Lullaby was already sleeping, so I did her bag for her. :) We just walked around our neighborhood and cleaned it up a bit.

It always feels so good to do something like that. The boys got really into it and wanted to be the first to fill their bags.

Phil got here today too, so he got in on the trash collecting fun too. :) He will be staying here for the next 6 weeks for his peds rotation. The boys are especially excited to have another BOY to play with.

A little boy in the neighborhood asked what we were doing, and offered to join us. What a good thing, right? I asked if I could take his picture, and he thought that was silly, but I did it anyway.

The boys said, "Happy Earth Birthday!!" for this group shot. Silly boys. When we had to go inside for bath and bed, they both asked for more Earth Day and more picking up trash. I hope we have/can continue to instill in them the drive to want to keep this Earth beautiful and clean in anyway they can. Happy Earth Day!

Decorating

Grandma bought some Easter decorations for the yard. She and I thought it would be a simple task, but the boys took their decorating job very seriously.

They stuck their little egg sticks into the ground around the tree, then near the front steps, then near the tree again... and so on and so on for a looooooong time. :)

Then Matix decided he was going to draw with it, "Look mommy! Just like How To Train Your Dragon!" - one of his favorite movies.

grandma Stacy

While I was in Wisconsin, Stacy was here taking care of my boys. They had a great time and practically lived outside with her.  They told me all about their adventures the next day after I got back.  Then we took Grandma Stacy to see their purple slide park. Over the river…

And through the woods...

To the purple slide park we go…

The boys were excited, as usual and I only got a few pictures of them this day.  Mostly because I was preoccupied taking pictures of these two catching up and loving each other. It was so sweet to see. Do you think Grandma Stacy loves this baby? I would guess, yes, and I think it’s mutual. 

 

 

Lullaby even got to try out a slide and she loved it.  The pictures of her in motion, sliding, are pretty blurry, so here are the beginning and ending pictures. Still cute.