Thursday, May 31, 2012

Mother's Day 2012

Mother's Day this year was lovely!  After church, we met some friends for lunch at a local restaurant.  It was lovely outside and we enjoyed our lunch on the patio.  
I had to include this first picture because of Peanut's face...look closely...he wants his mama...



 All better...mama's close now...


The children ate and then played while we talked and relaxed on the patio with friends.
What is neat is these same friends kept our big boys last year for us while we were in the hospital having Peanut.  They came to this same restaurant for Mother's Day last year so we all decided to start a tradition!


After lunch, we leisurely perused the shops and stopped to pet the kitty...





It was such a lovely day.  The weather was perfect, the company was perfect and I got to be with my family.
I'm so thankful to be a mom.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

4H


 The boys 4H Presentations were good.  Nicholas did a presentation on How To Build A Birdhouse(in which he built a beautiful birdhouse).  Matthew's presentation was on electromagnets.  He made a small electromagnet for a demonstration.





Now, the boys have played baseball in front of a lot of people, they have even played piano in front of a crowd, but they have never done a speech in front of anyone...particularly a room full of adults judging them.
Needless to say, they were very scared.
 



They both were very nervous and you could tell through their presentations.  They both spoke to quickly and had a hard time making eye contact....but...they did great!!!  We are so proud of them and know it is soooo hard to get up in front of people.  
They both won the blue ribbon in their division, so they have been invited to participate in the district competition.  We did require that they participate in the county level, but were o.k. if they stopped there.  The district competition interfered with a vacation we planned, but they both expressed so much interest in continuing on that we have moved the vacation so they can participate.  They have been revising their presentations and have been practicing, so I feel they will do well.  Even if they don't we are so proud of their effort!

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Let's just say he enjoyed the cake...A LOT!!!







After we cleaned up the mountain of chocolate off of his face, it was present time!
He received a lot of wonderful gifts...
Some handmade from mama..

But, his favorite gift by far has been this Thomas the Tank Engine toy.  Mom and Tracey bought it for him and he LOVES it.  He loves to dance to the Thomas song and push the train all over the house.


It was such a wonderful day!

Peanut's birthday celebration at home...

After we checked out of Great Wolf Lodge, we came home for a birthday celebration for Joseph..aka..Peanut.  We got pizza from our favorite local pizzeria, Brooklyn's to go.  We came home and all got in our jammies(we love to be in our jammies for pizza/movie nights).  Then we had pizza and afterwards some homemade chocolate cake for Peanut.
He had never had chocolate cake before so we knew he was in for a treat!

Here we are singing to him...



At first, he was very delicate with the frosting and would just take little bites of it...




But, then he started to get a bit more aggressive with it...



And then...well, you'll see in the next post!

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Great Wolf Lodge, continued...

Here are the boys all snuggled up in their bunks...




We took Peanut to the arcade in their as well.  First, mom and I had a dance off on one of these dancing arcade games-those are hard!  Then, Peanut rode the carousel and a car ride.




He loved the water but was shocked every time the fountains sprung up!






Great Wolf Lodge

We decided to take advantage of the great deals for homeschool week at Great Wolf Lodge and celebrate Peanut's birthday there.  Tracey and mom came up to celebrate his birthday, so we all stayed at the Lodge together.  We got a really neat room that had a cute bunk room for the kids complete with log walls and bear paintings on the walls.  We all had so much fun!



Tracey imitating their cat...


It never gets old, even after 15+ years, we still crack up at her doing it...My mom is dying laughing here...



At night, the kids get in their pjammies and head to the lobby for storytime...



More pics in the next post...

Thursday, May 10, 2012

My sweet baby Joseph is one year old now!!
I can't even believe it..my, how this year has flown by.
We had a wonderful party for him with some family....
I love you Joseph.  My sweet, loveable, precious Mother's Day gift.
God Grant Him Many Years!!

Contra Dance

We had such fun last weekend going to a contra dance with some good friends.  I had been wanting to go to one for years, but for some reason it never transpired.  Well, when we scheduled it with friends, it made it happen.  What fun we had!
We had a lesson first and then the dance began.  The boys were VERY nervous to dance with girls, especially since everyone there was older than them.  But, by the end of the evening, the boys were asking women to dance!   They loved it!!!
I loved that the dance had such a wide variety of people.  Everyone from senior citizens to young, hip college kids.  It was really neat.  All of us had such a great time and the boys have been asking constantly when the next family dance is scheduled.  Looks like this will become a regular family night out!