This ones for you mom

So I know my mom checks my blog everyday and hopes for an update :)  I haven't been in the mood to blog lately so I haven't.  I am also not in the mood to upload any pictures so I am not at least not now, but here are a few of the things that have been happening around here lately. 

We celebrated the twins birthday this last weekend with a golf themed party, we all had fun with that. 

I had to make cupcakes for Lillians 90th birthday party, they turned out beautiful but sadly I didn't get a picture of them

Monday I picked something up off the floor in the office and a black widow was on it and I freaked out and scared the boys and had to kill this huge spider.  I managed to kill it but couldn't stand to pick it up off the floor so out came the vacuum.  I have to be honest here I have been totally freaked out since, I feel like there are spiders everywhere right now :(

I took the boys to Pottery Barn Kids to story time, they seemed to have a good time, Ashton sat and listened to the stories, Noah listen for a few minutes but then he was off playing with all the other fun toys around that store.

I had to make a new rule around here, the boys have been fighting pretty bad over toys lately so to solve the problem I now take away any toy that is being fought over and it gets put in timeout.  Of course it makes them both mad but they seem to move on, at least till the next toy.

Ashton asked Jason if he has a mom and dad and what they look like, so we had a talk about how they are dead and they are in heaven.  We showed the boys their picture that is in the living room and Ashton was full of questions, like how they died and why that happened.  It was kind of fun to listen to Jason explain all of this to the boys. 

Tuesday night after we got the yard mowed (after taking a 3 week break from mowing, the lawn was really really long) Jason showed Ashton how to ride a bike with no training wheels, He did AWESOME he totally got it.  Of course he is a little wobbly and whenever he would look to see if we were watching he would lose his balance, but for his first time with no training wheels I was so impressed.

I have the family room almost all painted I love the new color, it is a grey beige color.  I really wanted to go with a grey but with our tan couch it didn't look awesome so this is the perfect balance of grey and beige.  I have one wall left to go but it is the wall with the TV mounted on it so until we get the new TV stand it will have to wait.  I also need to get the stencil ordered to make my accent wall, I am pretty excited about it I hope it turns out as cool as I think it will. 

Along with the painting in the family room is new decor, it has always just been thrown together so I am excited for the direction I want to take it with lots of color, grey, yellow, blue, orange, green.  Now comes the fun part to find the cute decorating stuff.

I decorated for Halloween this week, I know it is a little early but I was ready for a change and I didn't want to wait so I didn't.  I got both the boys Halloween costumes ordered and they arrived, they are going to be the cutest pirates, I am also considering being a pirate also, we will see.

Last week we went to the Children's Museum with the Jones family it was so much fun we had lunch at Gateway then went to the museum, it was nice it was pretty empty with most kids still in school for the day. 

I have started planning for the boys party in November, we are doing a pirate theme and I am pretty excited about it, I have the invites done and some signs made I am trying to slowly get things bought and done, seeings as we have three birthdays in November.

Well I think that is all that has been going on over here for now.

summer fun list

So I guess that summer is now over I have to take the summer fun list down.  We didn't do to bad with completeling the list, we missed a lot of things I really wanted to do but the summer just seemed to go by before I knew it. 

State Fair

So it is that time of the year again when the state fair comes to town.  We were trying to decide what to do with the boys today and then I remembered that the fair was going on so I suggested that we went.  The last couple of years we have gone on the last weekend and it was never as much fun.  Most of the animals were gone and a lot of the vendors seemed to be gone and so this year I wanted to go earlier. 

One of my favorite things about the fair is the food.  I love to have awesome (horrible for you fair food)  we got there and needed to eat lunch right away.  We walked most of the fair before we decided on what we wanted to eat, Hot dog, soda, pulled pork plate, nachos, chips, and cinnamon almonds.  It was all delicious, after lunch we checked out the animals, the Lego booths.   

Then they saw the rides and that was all they wanted to do, I bought a couple of tickets, but then I decided to get some more and let them have some fun.  They rode the train, cars, helicopters, did a fun house, and a slide thing just to name a few.  They didn't much together they each wanted to do what they wanted when they wanted.  So we split up and let them do what they wanted. 

We ended our fair experience with some shaved ice and then headed home.   Noah kept saying he wanted a drink not a shaved ice so I sent Jason to get him something to drink (he got a lemonade and polished the whole thing off in one drink, he is a guzzler that one) while I stayed in line for a shaved ice.  Of course once Noah got his drink he also wanted a shaved ice, so he had to share with me, I was out of cash and was not going to get anymore.  Overall we had a great time and I am already looking forward to next year to do it all over again.

Noah decided he needed to take some pictures, this one actually was so awful :)

Just look at that face he is no longer my baby, there is no trace of baby left in him, he is all little boy.  I have no idea when this happened I swear it happened over night.  He is getting better with me taking pictures when he sees the camera now he will say cheese, and at least smile so I am so thrilled with that right now.

No outing would be complete without me wanting a family picture, this was the best I got before Jason said enough, so I guess it will have to do.

Bear Lake

So we went to Bear Lake over labor day weekend again like we did last year, we stayed at Ideal Beach which is a resort right on the lake.  The resort was awesome, we could walk out our door and a couple feet away we were on the beach and in the lake, there was also a huge lawn area to play games, two pools we could play in, and an awesome park on the beach that the boys spent a ton of time playing on.  Our condo left a lot to be desired, it was straight out of the 70's and it was a tight fit for the 10 of us to even sit and eat dinner or anything. 
The view from our balcony

We got there Friday afternoon and got checked in and settled and then went on a little walk to see what there was to do around the resort.  The boys immediately saw the playground and we spent quite a bit of time there.  There was a merry-go-round, i haven't seen one of those for years, Noah loved it, he would hang on want to go faster and faster.  I was actually getting sick watching them go around and around, but the boys were having fun so I just stopped watching!  We went out and had pizza for dinner that night, I thought it was pretty good, the pizza was huge it was crazy.

Saturday we spent most of the day out on the beach.  Ashton was really excited to go and play in the sand.  We got set up and just played in the sand and the water, until it was time to go in for Noah to have a nap and have some lunch.   The adult boys decided to play a game of 500 in the lawn, and I thought it was so funny how Ashton was trying to be a part of what they were doing.  He even had to take his shirt off just like all the big boys.

When Noah woke up we went back to the beach but it was a little windy and the water was to choppy to play in so we headed to the playground to play instead.  It was really nice to be so close to our condo when we wanted to go inside or anything it was a couple min walk. 

After dinner we played croquet and had some homemade ice cream, we tried to find some bear lake raspberries and mom wasn't able to find any fresh.  We ended up getting a 25lb bucket of frozen raspberries I guess the season this year was really short and there weren't many berries to sell. 

Aaron and Leland left Sunday morning, Aaron was anxious to get moved into his new place so they left so he could get going on that.  The rest of us just hung out for the day. 

I kept trying to get Ash and Noah to go the beach but they weren't having any of that they wanted the pool.  So we went to the pool, let me say I am spoiled with the pools we have here, where there is a huge wading area that is pretty shallow that they can play in, this was a normal pool with only a little area that was 3 ft.  The big attraction was the slide, they would slide down into our arms then do it again, and again, I could only take that for so long.  After the pool Noah wanted to play on the playground, I tried to convince him to get dressed first but he was not having that so I let him play in his wet swimming suit, while Ashton went back to the condo with grandpa to get dressed before he came back to play.  Noah didn't really get off the merry -go-round that whole time, we were there for over an hour.  I am still amazed at what a little dare devil that child is. 

After dinner we went mini golfing Jason and I didn't golf, after the last couple of experiences with the boys, we have discovered that we can't golf if they are with us, it truly takes two people to keep them contained and going like they need to.  I am still amazed at how cold it gets the minute the sun goes down, you defiantly need a jacket to keep warm.

Monday morning check out was at 10am (seriously the earliest check out I have ever heard of and I think I have done my fair share of traveling) so we had to be up and going pretty quickly.  Mom decided she wasn't ready to go home yet so she took Ashton and Noah with her and we had Tyson and Josh with us and we parted ways.  We got home and I was able to get unpacked and got the car washed by the time mom and Myron got there with Ashton and Noah.  We had a great weekend, and hope we can continue it as a tradition with a few tweaks for next year to make it even better.

1st day of Pre School

Ashton has been patiently waiting for pre school to start for a while now.  He started asking about pre school again about a month ago.  I guess the novelty of summer had worn off for him, and quite frankly it had for me too.  Don't get me wrong we have had a great summer and done some fun things but I was ready for our lives to be back on a predictable schedule. 

We switched pre schools this year, we had done Miss Gail last year and he loved that but she doesn't do anything different for older children it is just the same thing every year and I didn't want Ash to get bored or anything.  I had heard good things about Miss Beth at Buddy Bin so I decided that is what we were going to do.  It is a little farther away but still really close. 

There was an open house last night to go and meet the teacher I didn't want to take Noah with us, this was suppose to be all about Ashton, so I sent Jason with Ashton, seeings how I am going to be the one to take him all the time, I wanted Jason to at least meet the teacher and see where he was going to be on a regular basis.  Ash seemed pretty excited last night, at least until he said he didn't want to go to the new pre school he wanted to go to Miss Gails, I explained how we were going to go to a new pre school and he was going to have just as much fun.  I sent the camera along with Jason and told him he had to take some pictures.  I am so happy that he took the camera and kept the eye rolling to a minimum, he took some pretty cute pics too!

This morning I got up early so I could be ready to go and make breakfast for the boys and have them ready.  Imagine my shock when they both slept until after 8am, they are both always awake around 7 or 7:30, so we did have to rush a little at the end to be out the door, I have to remember we have a 5-10 min drive now, not a 2 min walk up the hill. 

Ashton was so excited and ready to go and I was so excited for him.  The only down side of today was that I knew Noah was going to throw a fit.  I was dropping Ash off at Buddy Bin, a place I have taken the boys on a few occasions to be babysat, and I knew he was going to want to go to.  Sure enough he was so heartbroken, he was so mad.  He screamed and carried on for quite a while before he calmed down.  I ended up taking Noah to Target we walked around and looked at toys and I let him pick out a $1 prize which totally made him happy, we went to a couple more stores just to look and ended up wasting the 2 hours and went to get Ashton. 


I had to take some pictures to remember what he looked like today.  I am thrilled that he cooperates for pictures now, but on the other hand he is in this stage where when I pull out the camera he says cheese and does this fake smile, I hate the fake smile.  It is a little hard to pull a real smile from him.  I guess it is a faze that will go away like all the other ones he has been through.

Ashton seemed to have a good time and he learned two new signs, for please and thank you,  I am hoping that this is going to be as much fun for him as it was last year.

Bikes

So for my birthday I was trying to decide what I wanted and Jason was letting me pick what I wanted.  On a whim one day while I was at Target I went over by the bikes and saw that they had mountain bikes on sale for a great price and they were pretty cute so I decided that I might like that for my present.  It took over a month for us to finally get it ( don't worry I got a rain check for the bike so I could get the sale price).  While we were at the store getting my bike we noticed this box with a childs bike in it for a really really good price so we decided to get it for Ashton.  It was orange his favorite color, and it was such a great price we got it for him. 

Since I got my bike I wanted Jason to get one to so we could all go on some bike rides. Jason finally found a bike he liked and got it this last weekend.  Since then Ashton has been all excited about riding his bike.  The only sad thing is he doesn't like his new bike.  The training wheels on it make it wobble a little too much so he likes he other bike better.  We just need to get some new training wheels for it.  Poor kid when he took his helmet off he was so sweaty, so I let him ride around on the driveway without it on so he could cool off a little bit. 

Noah being Noah has to get in on the action too so if big brother is riding in the road then he is going to be riding in the road too.  The downside, the hill he can't peddle up them so at least one parent has to push him up the hill so he can peddle down. 

So the boys spent most of the day Saturday riding bikes and again on sunday and everyday since then.  The down side to all of this is where we live, it isn't the best for riding bikes, the streets are not flat and it makes it hard to learn and get comfortable.  Tonight we actually went and found a parking lot that was flat and empty that we could ride around in.  They had a blast and I can't wait till we get a bike wagon thing to put Noah in and we can all go on a ride.