Wordless Wednesday - Just Being Goofy

Then and Now

My good friend since age 4, Sara, had her first baby just 4 days after Elliott was born. The boys sure have changed in a year.

 

At the playground recently we got the boys to pose in the same spot as they did around this time last year. (Disregard the clothing on the "now" picture -- it was a beautiful morning so we just loaded the boys up in whatever they were wearing and headed out)

Trouble

My mom and dad brought these t-shirts back from New Orleans for the boys a few months back. This pretty much sums up my life with these three!!!!

And after about 35 attempts at a picture these are the best I got. Which makes the shirts even more accurate.

Flour Play

This seemed like a great idea at the time. And the boys loved it.

What I didn't anticipate was how hard it would be to clean up...even outside. I swept up what I could then sprayed down the driveway FOREVER. I picked up clumps of wet flour and dried hard flour. Scrubbed out a rain book that someone filled with flour. And ultimately it took WEEKS, and several rain storms for all the flour to work it's way out of the nooks and crannies of our aggregate driveway.

Never again....but it was fun while it lasted :)

A Wesley Picture Update

For a while Wes had a habit of coming out of his room about 20 minutes after we put him to bed. On this particular night I was sitting at the kitchen table working on something. I heard him come out of his room but was determined to just ignore him to see if he would get bored and go back in. Instead he climbed up on the couch and went to sleep.

I like to go to the full service gas stations - ha! He was so excited to help .

Wes is an excellent barista. He and X are OBSESSED with my mom's Keurig. They like to organize the little K cups and make coffee for everyone. 

I just like taking pictures of him sleeping apparently. And we are starting to formulate a plan for getting rid of the bink-bink. He's soooo attached for sleeping though that I know it's gonna be a struggle.

We went to family bingo night at church. This piece of pizza was about the size of Wes' head. 

He enjoyed playing bingo for about 5 minutes. Then he just wanted to open and close all the little doors on the bingo card. 

 Sleeping again! Love how he's just snuggled right up in there with daddy. 

Silly boy decided to eat a PB&J snack sitting in a basket of laundry that was waiting to be folded. 

This one CRACKS.ME.UP! He's "Fireman Sam". Looks like a chip n dale dancer to me.

 Sassy boy in a Cozy Coupe.

Sweet boy in a Cozy Coupe.

Little stinker using the Cozy Coupe to get to the garage keypad.

Wesley insisted of delivering his pizza to his plate at the table himself.

I'm amazed at how he's picked up on the bike riding thing so well!

Good thing Wes remembers who his favorite person is :)

Good to the Last Drop

Wesley and I had a little ice cream date one night back in July when Xavier was staying with Grandma. I love spending one on one time with my boys. Wes was a delight. And this boy LOVES him some ice cream!!

Guess I should have waited until AFTER the ice cream to give him a bath - ha!

MOPS Mania

The poor blog has suffered another stint of neglect. Maybe in my gut I'm just not into it anymore. But then I get spurts when I am. And it's the boy's baby book of sorts so there's some mommy guilt thrown into the mix. But most of the time lately I'm too tired to post and too lazy to download my pictures in a timely manor. Although when I get going, I do enjoy it and like the writing outlet. Hmmmm....

Oh the struggles of my life :)

Anyway, one of the main reasons the blog has taken a back seat since August is that I joined the Steering Team of my MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group this year. AND ITS BEEN MORE WORK THAN I WAS LEAD TO BELIEVE. I am the MOPPETS Coordinator for the year which means that I'm in charge of organizing things for 125 kids  that are cared for at our 2x month meetings. This includes securing 20+ caregivers, assigning kids to childcare rooms (which is extra challenging this year because our church is in the midst of a renovation/expansion), creating cirriculum and activities for each room to keep kids going for 2 hours, and a list of other stuff. Oh, and I still have my 3 kids to take care of all day.

Needless to say this has given way to some LATE nights for me quite often in the past 2 months. My main working hours for this gig have been 7pm-12am because that's when I can get my biggest chunk of alone time. I'm loving it, but it's been a lot. We've had 2 meetings so far and things are quite busy, but going well. And I'm meeting some great new people in the process. I really feel God is calling me that it's my time to serve other mothers through this MOPS ministry and I'm trying to step up to that challenge.

So, I'm going to attempt another massive round of catch-up (AGAIN) because there has been quite a bit of other stuff (AGAIN) going on around here too that I want to document before I forget (AGAIN).

Today

Today my older boys slept in for the first time in weeks....6:30am. And it was awesome. That should give you a little insight into my life lately :)

Today I let them eat chocolate chip muffins in my bed while we read books so I could stay put just a little longer.

Today Wesley asked me to break his leg open so he could see what's inside of it.

Today we visited a good friend and got an electric guitar performance from a 7 year old.

Today Xavier and I went to preschool orientation. He was shy. And he brought Puppy Toto with us. But I know he's gonna have a great year

Today Wesley threw my huge new rug into a bathtub full of water.

Today Elliott stood at the window and cried when our neighbor (who babysat for orientation) walked back home.

Today X and W held hands and walked across the Target parking lot singing "I wanna be just like Jesus. I wanna be just like Him!"

Today all three kids went into COMPLETE meltdown at bathtime.

Today I realized there is no sippy cup on the market that NEVER leaks. Seriously, what do my kids do to those things???

Today I finally got my book for bible study that we are supposed to discuss the 1st chapter of  tomorrow

Today I saw our old house. And it felt like it was much longer than just 3 years ago since we lived there.

Today I tried to make some phone calls. One of the hardest things to do these days. 

Today Elliott figured out it's really fun to pull out almost an entire box of sandwich bags one by one.

Today I bribed the boys with Slushies so they would be good at the store.

Today I tried so hard to praise my kids for doing good things.

Today X used a jumprope for a firehouse and an elbow pad for a mask as he was "Fireman Sam".

Today had its ups.

Today had its downs.

Today was just another day.

How to Get a Popular Playground All to Yourself

You go there at 5:30am on a Saturday morning!!!!

A few weekends ago X and W got up at 4:45am. I don't even remember why now, but I do know that they were wired, and I wasn't thrilled. So, instead of having their wildness wake up Elliott too, I decided to take them to the playground at 5:30am. We were the only ones there, needless to say :) In retrospect it was actually nice. The weather had been so hot during the day that we hadn't gone outside much. But at 5:30am it was still quite pleasant out and the boys could run around and be loud to their heart's content. Plus it was very easy to keep track of them with noone there!

Pretending to be in jail. 

The park does back up to a neighborhood and there was a lady out watering her flowers. She got to listen to this song about 100 times....loudly! The boys call this saucer, and all tire swings a "bounc-ee-oli".  I have no idea where they come up with this stuff.

Training Wes

This boy....who's wearing underwear on his head....is now wearing underwear on his booty!! That's right, Wes has been pottytraining the last 2 weeks. He's doing really well too. You wave an M&M in his face and this kid will do just about anything for you :) He looks adorable in his little underoos. And even better is the fact that we now have one less child in diapers. YeeHaw!!!!

 

As a side note, Xavier has been hearing me say  "we are training Wes to go potty like a big boy today". So, yesterday as we were all getting in the car to go out I see Xavier strap Wes into a regular seatbelt in the back seat of the van (when Wes is supposed to be in his carseat in the middle of the van). I asked X what he was doing and he replied "We are training Wes to sit in the back seat today."  Well played X, well played!