Birthdays!

The boys have decided that they love birthdays! Because there is cake involved, of course! The morning of Mandy's birthday I worked with the boys on saying "Happy Birthday!" when they see Aunt Mandy. They picked it up so well and shouted it to her as she was walking up our sidewalk. :) They were also wearing their "My Aunt ROCKS!" shirts that she gave them at Christmas-because she does ROCK!

We had a great time eating lunch and catching up with the family. Then it was time for birthday cake!


Quickly followed by presents, which the boys had a hard time understanding were not for them! They even wanted to rip open Aunt Mandy's cards.

Grandma decided it had been way too long since they had taken a picture with the boys, so the paparazzi got out their cameras!





We hope you had a great birthday Aunt Mandy! We love you a ton!! Sorry for the bad cold we gave you a few days later. Here's a funny picture to make you laugh! :)

Conversations with Toddlers

Toddlers say the funniest things. Sometimes I wish I had the video camera at my fingertips to document them. Here are a few of the funny conversations that I can remember from the last few weeks:

We were driving home from story hour and were stuck behind a school bus,
I say, "This bus is stinky!"
Collin says, "Bus poo-poo, Mommy?"

Brendan picks up his rolling Handy Manny backpack and says, "bye, bye Mommy." I said, "where are you going?" He says "chicken and dip." Which is their word for Mc Donalds! Nice, that makes me feel so good, considering I had just made them cheese tortellini and they didn't eat any of it!

I was getting ready to go out to dinner with some girlfriends, so I said "Mommy's going to put some make-up on." Collin says, "me make-up too." And he and Brenny follow me to the bathroom. I give Collin a powder brush and Brendan my eyelash curler. Brendan picks up the eyelash curler and says, "Camel walking", as he imitates it walking, and "Camel sleeping", etc. He has such a good imagination.

We were reading a book and one of the pages was torn. I said "Who tore the book?" Collin says, "Collin tore it, sorry Mommy." Too cute. (Although most of our books that aren't hard pages have a page ripped.) Ugh.

And since a post wouldn't be complete without a few pictures. Here are a couple of pictures of the boys washing their red wagon. They helped Mike wash our SUV and they wanted to keep washing, so we put them to work!


And for more fun, a video of the process:

Christmas Cheer

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and has started a great New Year! We had the best Christmas. The boys are at such a fun age, the pure joy that they had was infectious. :)

We spent Christmas Eve at my parent's house, with them and my sisters. We stayed the night and had a great time! That morning before we left we let the boys opening their stockings at home (I know, before Santa even came :))


We opened the family presents that night- here are a few pictures from that:
More stockings from Grandma:

Teamwork:

Collin:

Brendan:

O
Oh the trouble they can get into with these stools Aunt Mandy gave them!

Aunt Shelley gave them a double-sized easel which is perfect for my aspiring artists:

Happy Faces

And then there was Christmas morning-Santa's gift. The boys left cookies and milk for Santa, but he didn't finish them so they did that morning - it was the first thing they spotted! Then the presents...


Christmas Day we headed over to Mike's aunt's house for his family celebration. As always, it was a full house! We had a blast and filled the car up (again) with way too many toys.




We had a very nice New Year's as well, but I didn't take any pictures! We are sad as our 2-week vacation with Mike home is coming to an end - now back to reality. :)

Merry Christmas!

We would like to wish all of our friends and family a very Merry Christmas!!! I hope everyone stays safe and happy. Here are a few of our photos over the last couple of weeks.

We saw Santa! They were very excited about the idea of him but once they learned they had to sit on his lap, they weren't too excited! At least they didn't cry.



They also got to help us put up the Christmas tree a few weeks ago.
Brendan really wasn't too excited about it. He just wanted to play with his toys.

Collin was a lot of help!

Here they are helping Daddy:

And a finished one of the tree:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Outdoor paradise

The outdoor playset is finished!!! Well mostly, there are a few minor things that still need to be done, but it is usable. This was a huge project that started back in June/July!! Many thanks to Grandpa & Grandma, Aunt Shelley and Pete and Joel for the picking up process. But a special THANK YOU goes to Grandpa who did all of the sanding/staining and rebuilding of new pieces. We are so grateful for all of you and want to send you a HUGE thank you!!

If you remember, this is what it looked like when we acquired it from the last owners:

Here is the progress made over the last two weeks:





The boys played while we worked:

And finally the boys are able to play!! They are IN LOVE with it!





I am so happy with how it turned out and I'm looking forward to many, many years of enjoyment it will provide our kiddos!

It's been awhile...

I can't believe it's been a month since I've posted last. The holiday season is always so busy and life just zooms on by. I want to back track a little bit to the week of Thanksgiving so that I have it recorded for my "virtual scrapbook."

The week of Thanksgiving was wonderful. Mike was off of work the entire week so we got in lots of family time. On Monday we took the boys to the Fort Worth Zoo. This was our first time, as we usually go to the Dallas Zoo. It was *infinitely* better than Dallas Zoo! We were so happy to see that the animals were in a more natural environment, it felt cleaner and there were more animals. The boys had a blast. Their favorite animal, by far, were the monkeys. Won't you know I didn't even get any pictures of the monkeys! I guess we were too busy watching the boys be so excited.
Here are a few pictures of "our" wild animals (Brendan in red and Collin in grey):


And a few of the real wild animals:



It was an exhausting day, as you can see:

We also visited the trains at Northpark that week, which was also a huge hit. We had a great Thanksgiving with both of our families. Overall it was one of the best weeks of the year so far. We have a lot to be thankful for!