Bowling

I don't know what has gotten into Jeffrey this week, but he has be CONSTANTLY nagging me to take him bowling.  Just randomly one day he started to ask for it and then it turned into an obsession where it was all he could think about day and night.  Finally this last Monday I was driving the kids home after picking up Ben at school and he had completely broken down sobbing because he wanted to go bowling soooooo bad.  Even though we had plans to go to a Dayton Dragon's baseball game later that night I had to give in because the poor kid was just breaking my heart.....and my ear drums. :)  So right then and there I decided I would take the kids bowling...by myself.  Let's just say it was interesting trying to keep them from breaking the rules like no climbing on the thing that holds the balls, and not crossing the line at the edge of the lane, etc...etc... By the end of an hour I was pretty frazzled, but the kids LOVED it and I had to carry Jeffrey out because he didn't want to leave.  At least we had the bowling alley all to ourselves though since it was 4:00 in the afternoon on a Monday.    It tried to snap a few photos of them as they bowled, between trying to keep them from breaking all the rules and injuring themselves.

Ben got pretty good at perfecting his form.

And when he wasn't doing that, he was trying to pull an "Uncle Jerris."  See video below picture for reference. :)

Jeffrey was one happy boy.  He was so excited to finally go bowling and thought he was an expert!  By the end his favorite move was the "twist and throw."

It took Megan a bit longer to be able to actually get the ball down the lane without it stalling and actually going in the reverse direction.  The poor guys working there had to come get her ball no less than 8 times I'm sure.

You can tell how slow the ball was going considering she was already turned and on her way back before it even went two feet.

And THIS is why you don't cross the line.....

Jeffrey Turns 5!

Our Jeffrey turned 5 this month and what do you think he asked for for his birthday this year?  Yet ANOTHER spider man party.  I tried so hard to get him to agree to an angry birds party, but no, he wanted it to be exactly the same as last year, with a spider man pinata and a spider man birthday cake and a spider-man car for his present.  So what do you do when those great big brown eyes look at you like that with a request?  Do it of course!  And we did, we had THE EXACT SAME party as last year, just with new people.  Hey, at least I got to re-use some of the decorations right?

                                                       The EXACT same pinata.

The EXACT same (type of ) present. (exact same shirt as last year too btw)

EXACT same (type of) cake.  Only this year I waited to the last minute and the only cake I could find with the right colors already had power rangers on it, so it was a Spider-man/Power Rangers cake.  Even better right? 

What's a birthday without having to constantly yell at your brother to not blow out your candle during the song?

All in all it was a very happy birthday for the sweetest most lovable 5 year old by there ever was whom we love EXACT-ly the way he is. :)

Fathers and Sons Camp-out

This was the first year Brian was able to take the boys to our church's annual Fathers and Sons camp-out.  Unfortunately they were only able to be there for about 12 hours total.  Just long enough to play with the camp fire the night before and eat breakfast the next morning and come home.  They loved every second and couldn't wait to tell me all about how they got to play with sticks in the fire and sleep (if that's what you can call laying down on slanted hard ground with dogs barking all night and trains constantly running near by) in a tent.  A couple of days later I heard from some of the other boys at church that Brian had lost Ben for a good 25 minutes or so when he wandered off into another camping area.  Everything turned out okay and Ben had to carry a walkie-talkie with him the rest of the time to make sure Brian could find him if they got separated again.  Anyway, here are some pictures of my boys having a good time. :)

The sleeping couldn't have been that bad because when they got back I had a hard time getting the boys to agree to sleep indoors again.  Every day after that for about a week the boys kept insisting that we needed to go to the store and buy a tent like the one they slept in at the camp out.  At first we tried to appease them by just letting them sleep on an air mattress on our covered deck at night.

Unfortunately that didn't appease them for very long and we ended up going out and buying a tent a few days later.  :)  I don't have a picture of the new tent yet, but we did set it up in the backyard and slept out there as a family one night (okay so maybe my grass allergies got the better of me and I caved and went back inside at about 2am).  

The Return Of An Old Friend

We were faked out by the weather a couple of weeks ago thinking it might just be warm enough to return our old friend "pool" to it's proper state at the new house.  The kids could not wait, Brian had put it on the calendar and they counted the days until Daddy would set up the pool again.  We were nervous, because we didn't know if it would fit on the only level spot of our yard we could find.  Last year at our rental house we had to move the pool 3 different times, each time we thought it was on a flat surface only to realize too late that it was on a slight slope and every time someone would lean against that side a couple of gallons would just fall out of the pool.  Luckily it looks like we may have found the perfect spot this year.  The kids were so excited about the pool that they couldn't wait until it was all the way full to put their swimsuits on and play in it.

I've Really Gotta Stop Doing This

I've really gotta stop doing this thing where I wait forever to update my blog and then I just do a HUGE dump all at once....one day I will, but today is not that day!  Here are some of the happenings of the last few months.

Around (or maybe even on) Thanksgiving, our good friends the Helis's sponsored a carriage ride around their neighborhood with these beautiful horses and invited their friends to hop on and go caroling.

Here are all the kids all set to go.

Jeffrey holding the song book. (He wouldn't let that thing go! Or get off after we were done either.)

Afterwards the Helis's had some hot apple cider and homemade doughnuts for everyone, they were DELICIOUS!

Jeffrey and Megan thoroughly enjoyed their porch swing outside before it was finally time to go.

Thanks again Helis family!

Here is just a random photo of me reading The Hunger Games and not feeling well.  Thank goodness we not only have a Doctor Daddy, but a Doctor Ben too!

Apparently there's a reason my linen closet is always messy and unorganized.

Jeffrey's favorite thing to do these days is take self portraits of himself with the camera.  These are just a very select FEW of the probably hundreds I've deleted, but he's too cute not to have them shared on here.

Last month Mommy got a new hair color and Jeffrey couldn't resist getting into the shot. :) I'll share a photo with that cutie any day!

We've been slowly weaning Megan off her naps lately because she tends to not fall asleep until 11:30pm on days she takes one, but every once in a while she just has to catch up still.

In March we got a much anticipated visit from Grandma Osborne!  Here she is watching videos with the kids on the computer. 

Here's our little Cindy Brady all dressed and ready to go to church with the sticker book she got from Grandma.

She's got the lisp and everything, seirously cute!

With Grandma here, Mommy and Daddy got to go out to dinner for their 7th Anniversary Date.

Grandma stayed with us at the house for a few days and then we all headed off to an indoor waterpark/hotel called The Great Wolf Lodge for a 3 day 2 night stay.  It was sure nice having an extra set of eyes to watch these kids in such a large crowded area and we had so much fun!

Jeffrey was always the hardest to tear away from the water, these little guppies were in heaven!

These Lilly Pads were Ben's favorite, he really was quite good at them!

As if swimming all day long wasn't excercise enough, we decided we needed to run all around the hotel to play their Magic Quest game.  The kids had a blast....when their wands worked... :)  It was nice to have something to do while we recovered from our over-soggy skin and chlorine contaminated eyes!

Jeffrey admiring his loot of coins from the arcade.

On the last night of our stay the kids took turns recording their part in a fun video we made for Great Grandma and Grandad's 50th anniversary in their super cool cabin room.

When we finally got back home the kids weren't used to just "hanging out" anymore and decided that they wanted to make a video of their own.  Of course batman and spider man were involved and Mommy and Daddy got to play "Two Face" and "The Joker."  This picture was taken during the final bows and credits....we may have to post the actual video/movie in a future post.

Spring was really beautiful here, the whole week that we had it before it turned into what felt like summer!  It's finally starting to cool off again and feel like a normal spring, but all of the blooming is done and it's just green now.

Of course during spring we have Easter!  Here are a few shots of our fairly uneventful Easter.

We finally discovered how useful the blow dryers were this year, Ben spent more time blow drying than he did actual dying of the Easter eggs, and of course Jeffrey couldn't miss out on the fun either, but he got his fair share of dying in first.

Mommy's been dieting again so she didn't want very much candy in the house so a special request was made of the Easter Bunny to forgo a lot of the candy and replace it with things like the ever popular "sticky hands" and "champagne poppers."  I think the kids enjoyed them as much as the candy this year.  Of course they still got some jelly beans and a reese's peanutbutter egg each.  And never one to forget a tradation, the Easter bunny remembered Daddy's infamous chocolate bunny.

And of course we can't forget how fun it is to eat the eggs after we find them. :)