A very tardy catch up blog...

Okay so I'm totally stealing this idea from my friend LB who stole it from her friend, but that's where the best ideas come from right? (other people) So I'm a huge, giant slacker and have a ridiculous amount of stuff to blog about and so will be putting it in bullet format for hopefully easy purusing. I apologize for the extremley lengthy post that follows:

OUR TRIP TO THE MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE

The mother's group of our ward took a little trip to the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science. I can't even begin to describe to you the fun that was had by all parties. I think we stayed for over 3 hours, which for my boys is saying a lot! They loved it so much, and really only got to explore a 1/4 of the place, we got a family pass for the year. Here are just a few of my favorite pics...and if you're interested in viewing them all, I'll post a slide show further down. This first picture is of Drew, of course.

And here is my boy Nate. aka The Ham

Here is Nate with one of his all time favorite pals in the whole wide world...(And they're moving away in the next week and our mother's group, date night swap, and play group will not be the same!) It would have been picture perfect if we could have gotten X in the pic too. The other thing that I love about this picture is Nate's eyebrows...they just so remind me of countless photos of my Mom doing the same thing. "But dear, if you raise your eyebrows and smile it will slenderize your face."

Here are just a few of our monkeys at play.

It's too late and I can't think of any witty or play on word comments for this picture...so here are the older boys playing in the human sized spider web.



And last but not least, Drew riding into the sunset. (Can you tell I'm a little too tired to be posting?)

DREW'S FIRST BIRTHDAY

On August 3rd, Drew turned 1 year! We didn't actually celebrate on the 3rd, but the 4th, so hopefully he won't ever find out and feel giped, but we figured a day late and having your father there was better than on the day but no dad. This first picture is of, da da da dah...The birthday boy!



Stuffing the face with cake pic's:



Opening presents with mom. (rather Nate opening presents for Drew while Mom tried to referee)


I love this sequence of pictures because it shows kind of the progression of the night in regards to Drew's new birthday toy. Drew has it to himself, and loves it.


Nate has wiggled his way past the "mom brigade" and has entered the playing field.


Drew no longer has possesion of his toy, but is rather, forced to watch his older brother figure out how it works before him.


SUMMER POOL PARTY

We had such a good time at our friend's house celebrating multiple birthdays in their family. The boys absolutely LOVED the pool and this was the first time Nate took the initiative to jump from the side of the pool and then later slide down the slide into the water. Ever since this day, he has been getting more and more brave and trying new things...We're so proud of him! And of course Drew loved splashing and laughing and lounging in his floatie...We have the greatest kids. Here is a slide show of that wonderful day...Thanks again to the Z family!

DREW'S FIRST HAIR CUT

You will have noticed in the pool party pic's that Drew's hair has been growing in, well just growing in one location really, the center of his head. His mohawk was getting to be untameable, and Eddie didn't like when I did it on purpose (Use what you've got right? well he didn't really suscribe to that theory)so we cut it off. Here is his before:


And after:


I know it doesn't look like much came off but here it all is:


OUR FIRST FAMILY VACATION

Don't be confused, we've travelled and camped and played as a family with other family memebers, but we've never taken a trip with just our little family. So we decided after a stressful week that we were going to go down to Sea World for the weekend. The highlight of the trip for me was when we got to see my good friends from school in VA, D and J, that Friday night we drove down. They have the sweetest boy E and it was so much fun to see them as a married couple in their own place and to hear about how they found each other. I loved getting to catch up and just wished they lived closer to us. It felt like no time had passed. Here we are for a group shot before we left for our scary, scary hotel room in the ghetto of San Antonio.


We got to our hotel around 1:30 in the morning and managed to get into our room with only one trip. Drew should have gotten the best sleep out of all of us cause he had his plack n' play to himself but I think maybe all of us in one room and more importantly the rest of us in one tiny bed, kept him awake. Man he was grumpy and tired the next day. But then again so were we all! Here are the boys excited (or as much as you can be with a few hours of rocky sleep) and unaware of what tortures awaited them:


We managed to get in a family shot before the awful day began:


What made it so awful you ask? (If you didn't ask I'm gonna tell you anyways...)IT WAS SOOOOOOOO HOT! And having quickly packed the day before I didn't remember to pack our swim suits. I figured we would bring them but probably not need them, so when I discovered that morning that I didn't have them packed I didn't worry...Until about 10:30 am when we were already covered in sweat and were watching the thousands of prepared people walking around in their suits enjoying the shows that splashed them and the water park that was attached to the park. Nathan was NOT interested in watching any of the shows and proceeded to throw the worst temper tantrums a two year old can muster, which mom's of two year olds know is pretty darn bad. We finally gave in and took Nate's shirt off and let him run around the little water park with the other properly attired children. We did finally get Nate to stop crying and shouting and yelling long enough to show him the animal show where he could pet the dogs and horse and ducks, etc. I think Drew kept his paci in the whole day:


I do have to say that once we let Nate run around half naked and soaked he perked up a bit:


Here is Nate totally loving the after show experience of petting the animals...I think the horse was his favorite:


Here is Eddie and Nate getting ready to feed the Koi fish and other assorted animals in the lagoon:


While Eddie and Nate were busy having fun, this is what Drew and I were doing...trying to get Drew to sleep:


Well needless to say, I did eventually get the boy asleep, as well as Nate...right as we were leaving the park. But they actually stayed asleep as we transfered them into their car seats:


NATE'S FIRST FATHER/SON BOY SCOUT CAMPOUT

Eddie came home from a mutual activity one night excited about a Boy Scout campout that he wanted to take Nathan too. It was a combined activity with the Boy Scouts and the ? AA Baseball team locally here in Dallas. The "plan" was to put Nate down for a late nap and Eddie and he would leave for the baseball stadium around 8pm. (Trying to get there after the game was over because lets just suffice it to say that Nate and loud arenas do not generally mix well) Once there, set up "camp" out on the field and enjoy the many festivities planned for the night: a swimming pool, movies on the big screen all night long, carnival'esque games, junk food, etc. I don't want to say "I told you so" so I won't, but I will say "I warned you." ;) Sure enough as Eddie and Nate were leaving I said, "good luck and I'll see you soon." And I don't think it was more than 15 minutes later than Eddie called ready to bring Nate home. They had gotten to the stadium and the game wasn't over yet and Nathan felt betrayed. Here Dad had been telling him they were going "camping" and he took him to a baseball game. He was crushed. So Eddie brought him home and they "camped" out on the front floor of our family room...It was wonderful till about 12am when Nate wouldn't stop talking so Eddie could go to sleep. ;) Around 12:30 Eddie came back into our room and announced the camp out was over. Nate was asleep in his room and Eddie was asleep in ours. Lol. But I did get some really cute pic's of the set up:



Okay so that completes the longest blog post known to man...If you've made it through that and are reading this, I'm amazed and would like to apologize that you just lost about an hour of your time.