Day with Grandparents

A few Saturdays ago we all headed down to my grandmother's house to spend the day in the country. 

It was a little warm but we were just glad there was none of the predicted rain.

Baby A found the dinner bell really quickly and had a blast ringing it. 

Then Levi joined in too. 

Baby A LOVES dogs. In fact LOVES is probably an understatement.

 She would talk to Sweet Pea and Sue in a high pitched voice. 

The swing is always a hit! 

This was taken last year on the same swing. 

Look how much they have changed! 

I didn't get pictures of my boys on the swing because they were off catching lizards. The  "lizards" we have at our house are actually skinks but these at her house were most certainly lizards and they creeped my out more (if that's even possible).  

Just look at them. They don't care that they are standing in a ditch filled with brush were snakes could be hiding. They just want to catch the lizards. I have to walk away saying a prayer that they will be ok. It's worked so far! 

After lunch my boys were begging to go explore the woods. I remember doing this as a kid and it was always so much fun. 

So exploring is what we did. 

This picture (above) says it all. These boys are ready to go and are not waiting on the rest of us. 

Apparently we were too slow. LOL! 

She may be sassy but she is most certainly a country girl! 

My Nanny Joann and Ralph live on about 177 acres of mostly wooded land. 

It's like heaven for my kids. 

We stopped at the old barn and took a few pictures.

This one (above) was from last year.  

My boys always go to this one field that use to be a pasture and now is filled with trees. They think these are the best climbing trees. They would know, they've climbed many trees. 

Levi and Baby A wanted to climb trees too but they aren't quite big enough to do so. Tim can't tell them no though so he set them on a lower tree limb (never letting go of them though) 

I think my boys would have walked and walked and walked those woods until dark came but it was HOT and HUMID so we headed back to the house. 

I LOVE this picture of Baby A and Tim walking back to the house. She is such a daddy's girl!

In no time she was tired of walking and begging Tim to carry her. 

We brought the guns but since it was so hot we didn't get any of them out except the bb guns. Levi helped Uncle Tim shoot the bb gun a few times. 

Sweet girl! 

When we got back to the house, the kids explored around the house some and Scooter found the muscadine vine. 

So the kids got some bags and a bowl and started picking them.

I am pretty sure they swiped every last muscadine on that vine. 

We let Sue out for a little bit (Baby A was in heaven) and she sat under the fig tree watching the kids pick the muscadines. 

Scooter also talked Ralph into picking a few pears from their pear tree. We took home 3 or 4 pears and made pear applesauce in the crockpot. YUMMY! 

Tim got brave and made Muscadine jelly. 

We had such a great time and we all slept really good that night. 

A Reason To Celebrate

A few Friday nights ago we had no plans and decided that it was time to celebrate.. Why???? Because Tim got a new job!!!! YES!! We are so excited that he won't be traveling anymore and his new job is SO CLOSE to our home. God is so good and just put all the pieces together and then laid it in our laps. It was NOTHING we did and we give God all the glory for this HUGE blessing! 

We also celebrated Father's Day then so it was one big fun night filled with so much joy! 

We grilled out Tim's favorite meal.... hamburgers! The weather so incredibly nice so we ate outside. The kids LOVE when we eat outside.

Then for dessert we roasted marshmallows and had s'mores. 

My boys are pros around a campfire and definitely know how to roast the perfect marshmallow. this year Baby A really got into it. She needed help of course but her daddy was happy to teach her. 

I LOVE this picture... pure sweetness! 

I'm SO proud of Tim and how hard he works to provide for us and for me to stay at home. He is a treasure that I thank God for every single day. It is going to be so awesome having him home and not traveling all the time. God is so GREAT! 

It's safe to say she enjoyed her s'more!

The next morning we woke up and headed to the zoo early. We got there right as they opened and headed first thing to see the stingrays. The kids have been wanting Tim to see the stingrays since they went the last time. We were first in line for tickets to the exhibit and had a great time petting them (I didn't touch them but the other 4 did). 

We made it all the way through the zoo without  any injuries however Rascal was worn out. He usually keeps up pretty good walking through the zoo but this time he was dragging. Tim helped him out some with a ride on his shoulders. 

Such a sweet daddy son picture! 

We always love family nights together and this time is was great to celebrate Tim as a father and his new job! 

Halloween Family Night

This year my boys asked if we could have a Halloween themed family night again. My intentions were to decorate like I did last year but this little girl got sick. 

I know she doesn't look like she's sick but this was the 3rd day of her running a fever and complaining of her throat hurting. We went to the doctor early Friday morning and found out it was just a virus that had to run it's course. 

I went to checkout and realized I had forgotten my wallet at home!! So that meant no buying Halloween decorations and going straight home (on a very low tank of gas). 

I had all the stuff in the house to make cupcakes so I whipped up these little guys......... Homemade chocolate coffee cupcakes with vanilla cream cheese icing and a marshmallow mummy on top. The boys were very impressed and I think that made up for the lack of decorations :)

We had chili dogs for dinner that night (and it was a cold rainy night...perfect for chili) and cupcakes for dessert. 

After dessert it was time to decorate pumpkins!! 

Ok so the plan was for the boys to paint their pumpkins and Baby A to glue tissue paper on hers. A toddler + Paint = a giant mess!!

That plan went out the window after Baby A was done gluing tissue paper on hers and the boys were still painting. So she grabbed a paint brush right off her brothers paint plate and helped herself to painting her pumpkin. Once I saw the sneaky girl's move, I didn't have the heart   energy to tell her no! 

Then once Baby A was in bed the boys played a hilarious game of Twister. Seriously I wish you could hear the laughter in this picture. 

It was a super fun night and I am so glad that the boys look forward to it so much!

Random with some pictures

~ May is incredibly busy! Like so busy, I am ready for it to be June so I can breathe again. Just looking at my packed schedule makes me overwhelmed and needing a break.

~ Remember when I wrote about Rascal being over the top wild? We thought it was his Singulair but he has been off it a week now and there is some improvement but not enough. Now, Rascal has been complaining about not hearing good. I took him to the doctor last week and he had an ear infection. I thought the antibiotic would clear up the problem and help with his hearing but nope. A week later he is still complaining of not hearing good. So now I am thinking he needs to go to the E.N.T. and that maybe just maybe this could explain his behaviour lately. Fingers crossed for an answer soon.

~ Scooter's 9th birthday falls on Memorial day this year. We are having his friends party this week and I have a TON to get ready before Saturday gets here. He wanted a Mario theme and I am going to have to try and some how be an artist for some of the decorations. I suck at drawing so I hope this goes over well. Can you believe that I went to several party stores and there were NO Mario decorations. Sure they had Mario party favors but no decorations. It wasn't that they were out of them, they just didn't sell them. What is with that??

~ Friday night was a Family Night and we had a blast. We decided it had been too long since our last family night and that maybe some one on one attention with the kids would help with some behaviour issues. We had homemade pizza for dinner in the living room (eating in the living room is a treat), while watching Tooth Fairy 2 and then we had banana splits for dessert. I let the boys spray the whip cream and they thought that was the best.

(Baby A made it more challenging for the boys by rolling around on the twister mat.)

After the movie was over we played a few rounds of Twister and Guess Who. You should know..... I rock at Guess Who. Both boys fight over who gets to be on my team because I ALWAYS win. Tim might hate playing this game because of that!

~ We dog-sitted this past weekend. Sadie is getting so old and I kinda worried that the kids might hurt her since they are a bit rough and she is sooo old and moody. However the kids paid very little attention to her and Sadie just laid in the floor watching them most of the weekend. Most of the time we forgot she was even here. I told the boys that if they cleaned their room to "mom's liking" that they could have Sadie sleep with them that night. I don't think they have ever cleaned their room so good and so fast ever before. So we let Sadie sleep in their room and she found their bean bag was her favorite spot.

 I checked on her after the boys fell asleep and they had gotten out of bed and covered her up with one of their blankets.... it was so cute! Oh and Sadie and Henry weren't friends at all, here's proof:

~ I am cooking steaks in the crock pot today. This may seem very odd but I had to get them cooked today, it is pouring rain today so I couldn't grill them (not that I would have any clue how to grill them), and I have a lot of other things to make today so I didn't want to add to my list of things to cook. In the crock pot I could just put them in there in forget about them. It may seem weird but I may also end up with the best steaks ever (we are making steak fajitas tomorrow night). We will see......

~ Look at our garden!!!!!

   (3 weeks ago, tomatoes on right... pepper and squash on left)

(this weekend...this was taken on the other side of the garden so the pictures are flipped. Tomatoes on left....pepper and squash on right)

Our okra (it's in the very top right corner in the pic above...you can't see it, it's too small and dying)  isn't going to make it but everything else is growing by leaps and bounds. We have blooms on the peppers and tomatoes and the squash is doing awesome as well.

(this isn't a good picture of the whole thing since there are so many weeds around it, it's hard to tell what is actually the pumpkin plant)

I think I posted about throwing our 3 rotten Halloween pumpkins back in the woods and now we have a MASSIVE pumpkins plant. In all seriousness the plant is at least 3 feet in diameter at the base.  It started blooming this week so we may have pumpkins soon. I have not done any research on them so it may be that they need more sun but since it is doing so awesome we are leaving it. Who knows if we will have pumpkins at the right time of the year but it is fun to watch it grow.

Here are a few random pictures from my phone this week:

~I told you it has been scrapbook central around here.....

~We helped my friend out by taking her son to school last week and as a thank you she made us cupcakes. Baby A loves cupcakes!She wanted one for dinner and I told her to eat everything on her plate and then she could have one. She ate it all, then yelled "Momma Cupcake!"

~That same friend was recently given a Chinese Water Dragon. She told me about it while we were scrap booking but I had no clue how big this thing actually was (my rough guesstimate is he is at least 2 feet long!). His name is Lenny......

They feed him frozen mice and it's safe to safe my boys (and hers too of course) think this is the coolest pet ever. Now Scooter wants one for his birthday. I have to admit.... I love giving my kids things that they really would love for their birthdays but if something like this took residence at our house, I think I would move out. I just can't do it!

~ Henry loves to lay in the new sod we laid back in March. It is filled with crickets (not sure why) and he lays there relaxing and torturing the crickets. :)

He can be just as bad as our kids at stealing our seat when we get up.

~Baby A is SO GIRLY! She requested that she take her purse with her to get the boys from school the other day. While searching for her purse she found her sunglasses. This is how she walked out the door to go get the boys.....

I LOVE IT!!!

~She has discovered that she can stick her play cups in the blinds and then yells "TA DA"! She is so proud of herself :)

~My sweet little girl is growing up so fast. We tried out a headband the other day. She looked so cute but so grown up too. Thanks goodness they don't stay in her hair long because I am not sure I can handle her looking so grown up.

~She loves loves loves ice cream and licks the bowl clean after she eats it all. Too darn cute!

~Scooter helped me grate cheese the other day for our pizza. I hate grating cheese. It never fails I will always grate my finger or my fingernail so this is one task I gladly let the boys help out on.

 ~ Baby A found the rocking horse this week. She spotted it upstairs and had to have it downstairs. We didn't think this horse would make it through the days of Rascal dragging it around the sidewalk by a leash. Baby A is a lot more gentle with it so maybe it will make it through her days of rocking on it.

 ~ I realize my pictures are mostly of Baby A. Since it is just me and her most of the day together it's easy to get pictures of her. Hopefully once summer break gets here in 2 weeks, I will have posts filled with pictures of all three of my cuties!

OK enough randomness for today. I am off to bake bread and hopefully get some birthday decorations made.


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