Vampire!

We picked our carrots from the garden this evening. Jack took a liking to them, and before we knew it, he had eaten pretty much all that we picked! Lol

We did manage to catch his silly side when he grabbed some carrots and did this...

"Look! Vampire!"

Oh, this kid! :)

Friday Five

The boys had an ophthalmology appointment this week. While Shawn's eyes are doing fine (he can see some pretty small writing - sheesh!), Jason's eyes need a bit more support to help strengthen the muscles in one of his eyes. The doctor recommended he now wear his glasses all the time instead of "when needed" like he was doing before.

This did cause some distress for the boy. It has been a while since he wore his glasses full time before, so he was quite worried about what other kids would think of him in specks. I was relieved to hear that the kids thought his glasses were "cool", although there was one kid who said he looked "weird." Thankfully, Jay was able to brush that off and has adjusted back to wearing his glasses.

Now if I could only get used to it again! 

~~~

We found a tomato worm, which means we had to bring him in to see what he does. "Squirt", as he's been named, is enjoying eating yet another of my tomatoes. The boys are amazed that he's so big and eats so much. Lol. 

They'll be so sad when "Squirt" has to meet his demise. Yuck.

~~~

Shawn took his picture retakes this week. I had him wear the exact same shirt as he did the first time, Fingers crossed that it comes out just as cute but with his eyes open!

~~~

Jack tried on his Halloween costume today. I think it is going to be a hit because he looks super cute! Bonus is that he LOVES it!

The other two are going to be just as cute in their costumes. Can't wait!

~~~

The boys' teacher is musically inclined (she plays the piccolo in an orchestra), and this week she had a bunch of musical instruments for the kids to play. Shawn was in heaven!

Shawn likes to rock! Yeah! Playing his guitar!

The boy definitely loves his music, too. :)

We are just so pleased about all of the happy things that are going on in the boys' class this year!

Summer Bucket List 2015 - How We Did

Well, even if school was our end of summer, the official end of summer came on Monday with Labor Day. As much as we wanted to deny it, summer has come and gone. Boo.

As our official goodbye, I thought it would be nice to go back to our bucket list and see how we did. You know, for a lazy summer of only doing small trips/things here and there, we managed to do 30 things from our list! How amazing is that?! I honestly think that this was the most productive summer we've had yet. :)

Without further ado, here is our list with notes on what we did.

Summer Bucket List 2015

*Shawn wants to pick fruit (from our own garden!), see animals, and eat at a restaurant (we managed to go out a few times even)

*Jason wants to learn to write in handwriting, go to Toys R Us again (He didn't get TRU, but he did get Target toy aisle visits instead), and buy cars (now to create the perfect display for the cars he chose)

*Jack wants to play

Plant a garden (So. Much. Fun!)

Santa Paula agricultural museum

Sub Zero ice cream made with nitrogen

Lemonade stand

Have a water balloon fight (This was pretty funny to watch. Note to self: Work with the boys on their aim. lol)

Make a family tree (We started working on our family tree and had lots of talks about relatives and their stories.)

Do experiments (This was the summer for science, especially for Shawn!)

Make Popsicles (Fun, but not the hit that I thought they'd be. Bummer)

Have a scavenger hunt
Raise butterflies and let them go (We LOVED this and did it twice. Now we are raising Monarch caterpillars outside.)

Visit a Firehouse

Paint something (Jack loves to paint. He managed to paint a number of water color pictures this summer)

Donate something to the needy (Many of our baby things have now gone on to other homes)

Record ourselves reading our favorite book

Swim (our wading pool was a HUGE success this year!)

Go to the beach

Make butter in a jar

Go on a boat

Go on a picnic

Do some crafts (The big one we did was for Father's Day. We managed to some small crafts here and there, too. I am going to be so sad when they don't want to do crafts any more.)

Create a family tradition (Mom's theater is our new family tradition--they have asked for more "movie" days since then.)

Watch a movie at the movie theater

Have a sleepover in the living room
Go camping
Play in the backyard (So much playing in the backyard this year!)
See an animal we've never seen (We definitely saw lots of fun animals at the Aquarium of the Pacific)
Do a random-act-of-kindness

Go to the park
Go to a museum (The Discovery Cube museum was a hit, too!)
Go on a nature hike
Lie in the backyard and look at the stars

See fireworks (Love watching the fireworks out on our front yard)

Go to the zoo (We did this just before school let out)
Go see the jets at the airport
Visit friends (We didn't do this as much as we may have liked, but we did see friends.)

Go to the fair (Fair food was a hit this year!)

Take the train
Take family pictures (Yay!)

Go to the zoo at the local college
Go to an aquarium (We had a great, although hot, time at Aquarium of the Pacific.)
Go to a water/amusement park (Knott's Berry Farm!)
Cook something for a meal with mommy and daddy
Create a back yard slip and slide
Learn to skip rocks
Read a chapter book together (We read one of those choose your own ending books because I thought it would be really fun. lol. They didn't see it as as much fun as I thought they would.)
Do a special project with mommy and daddy (We made our planters for the garden as our special project.)
Catch a frog

The Fruits and Veggies of Our Labor!

Today was a momentous day. We finally got to see the fruit (and veggies) of our gardening labor! We finally got to pick some of what we planted!

Shawn picked some green beans.

Filling up the tub with his haul!

Then he set to watering the tomato plants while Jason had his turn.

Jay got right to work picking beans, too!

He was pretty proud of all the beans he picked, too!

Just look at all of them! They were tasty, too!

Go us! We may be city folks, but we didn't too bad as gardeners, if I do say so myself! :)

Friday Five

Week two of school is over for the boys. This week brought intense heat, and I think that both of them got a tan that made them several shades darker from their recess time outside. The good news is that they go to an indoor, air conditioned school. That's definitely a plus when it is so hot out!

~~~

Our little garden continues to grow. We now have beans that have started, our pumpkin plants have flowered (everywhere--I may have overestimated how many to plant!), and out tomatoes continue to plump up and grow. The carrots are coming right along, too!

Our strawberries have become a favorite of Carl the squirrel. He likes to go over and take a bite out each and every one. I guess they aren't to his liking, though, because he leaves the rest.

~~~

Jack has become quite the daddy's boy and follows him everywhere. He has even gotten to the point of wailing uncontrollably when he notices that daddy is gone. It doesn't even matter how far he's gone or how long he's been gone. "Oh noooooooo! Daddy is going pppppoooootttyyyyy!" he wails before he dissolves into a puddle of tears. lol. It's pretty funny and annoying all rolled into one. ;)

~~~

Shawn totally rocked his first spelling test of second grade. He had 20 words and got them all right! Way to go, Shawn!!!

~~~

Jason called me in to the bedroom a little bit ago to have me look at what he was doing. "Watch this mom. I am an excellent fainter. Watch!"

He proceeded to collapse melodramatically to the bed. The act was complete with his hand to his head. "See? Did you see it? I am AWESOME at fainting!"

I laughed a little before I agreed. He is most excellent at fainting. :)

Butterfly Love

The one thing Jason wanted from raising butterflies was to be able to hold one. With the last batch of butterflies, he finally got his wish!

He was so, so excited!

Mostly Wordless Wednesday

We have monarch caterpillars!!!

The triplets were found in our outside milkweed plant this afternoon, and we are super excited!

Swimming Cuties!

More shots from our pool time!

Love our handsome boys!

Summer Bucket List - Going to the Fair!

On Friday we headed out to our local fair.

One of the first things we did was to head over to the to see the animals. We started with the small rabbits and hens. (The consensus was that the roosters are very loud.) Then we went to see the livestock. It was the day they were auctioning off the animals, so the area was pretty busy with 4H kids and such. We read about all of the animals and marveled at their ribbons. We also heard a pig protesting being moved back to his pen. (The consensus was that pigs that do not want to be moved are louder than the roosters.)

Jack was quite taken with the animals.

Shawn, who is always excited to eat out, was happy to find something to eat. We had a typical fair lunch of burritos, pizza, and sodas. (Jack was happy to have his typical lunch he has at home. He is not excited to eat out.)

A little love while eating lunch.

More lunch fun.

Next, we headed off to the carnival area.

We played lots of games!

They tried to throw rings on the coke bottles.

Both concentrated so hard!

Jack went on a few rides.

Flying on the bumble bee ride was a hit.

Jack nearly got his hand devoured by a dinosaur on this ride!

Although somewhat concerned that the kid would just jump in the water,
Jack got on the bumper boats. He loved it!

Meanwhile, the big boys were playing ping pong games.

If you look closely, you can see Shawn's white ping pong
in the middle of the lower sign. He actually got the ball into the colored cup
and won the large prize! He was kind enough to split the prize with Jay, though, and
instead got two smaller prizes rather than one large one.

Jack wanted a shot at the ping pong balls, too.

They won Minion toys!

At some point, daddy and Jay sneaked off to go have some ice cream.

He ate this whole thing by himself!

Shawn and I sneaked off to go play a few more ping pong games, too. :)

The weather was beautiful, and most importantly, it was nice and quiet. Hardly anyone was there the entire time we were there. It was lovely, and we all had a great time!

Friday Five

Summer is nearing an end. We are trying to fit in the last bit of fun before school starts for the boys on Wednesday. None of us are ready!

~~~

We went to the fair today. Fun times!

~~~

While we were at Knott's this week, one of the employees, dressed as a western woman, told Jason hello as he walked by. Jason stopped and said, "Well, howdy, Miss." before walking away.

He totally charmed her (and his mom and grandma). LOL. It was a really cute moment.

~~~

Jack has started to find "beds" for his beloved, Mike Wazowski, to use at night. Tonight he used an emptied Lego bucket. Mike and his bucket bed are now proudly resting right next to Jack's head. It's pretty sweet.

~~~

Of all the boys, I think Shawn loves the pool the most. He is also the one who is most hesitant about it.

Generally, the routine is that the boys go out to swim in the pool, and then I bring them in one by one to get them bathed. Lately, that has left Shawn outside with daddy the longest, which has meant he's been able to get into the pool with daddy by himself.

He loves it his special time in the pool. :) He's even trying hard to learn how to swim!

Wordy Wednesday

Yesterday, we headed off for a day trip to Knott's Berry Farm. 

We spent some time in the arcade...

Jack and Shawn were bowling fiends on the Skee ball machine.

The boys played games and pooled their tickets. Jason was very determined to pick just the right prize.

He settled on a bug.
In fact, they all settled on bugs.
We are now the proud owners of the world's most expensive plastic bugs. :)

We headed to a few shows. This was a Snoopy on Ice show. Jack LOVED it!

He clapped and cheered the whole way through!

Enjoying the show.

We went on a few rides...

Jack is a wild man when it comes to rides.
He would do it all!

We drove some cars.
Jack could not be bothered to smile when there were horns to honk!

The horns were popular!

We looked in all the stores...

We found a Snoopy statue in this one!

Jason and grandma coming out of the gun shop.
Jay was most annoyed that they were replicas.
Who is this kid? lol

We went into a gem/rock/fossil shop. The shopkeeper was so neat.
She gave the boys a sample and asked them to try to figure out what it
was. They were SO excited to find she had given them fossilized dino poop!
When they told her what they found, she gave them all pet rocks as a prize. :)

They all spent some time in jail...

"Let me out, mom!" 

"Help!"

"I'm not strong enough to bend the bars!"

How cute are they?

They found a few friends...

Hanging out on the porch...

Jack thought they were a little strange.

Shawn tried his hand at watering the horses (or "horsez" as the sign read)...

Look at those muscles!

We went to Johnny Rockets for dinner...

Jay was a fan of their mini hamburgers.

Shawn was just happy to eat at a restaurant again.
He had the grilled cheese and thought it was yummy.

Jack ordered a salad, but he didn't eat it. It had funny lettuce
(spring mix instead of his usual iceberg lettuce) so it was a no go. :(

It's just as well, though, because soon enough he was fast asleep on the bench beside me. (A power nap of 15 minutes was all it took to give him energy for the rest of the night.)

The kid wore himself out running around everywhere.

After dinner we did a bit more strolling around and looked in a few more stores. Jay found himself a woman, too!

He only had eyes for her. He barely even looked
at the brunette sitting next to her. ;-)

Our last stop was at the rock bin. They all got themselves a bag of rocks. It was funny to see how they selected their rocks, too. Jack got a bunch of shiny black ones before he lost interest. (lol) Jason very carefully selected his rocks, making sure to get a bunch of different types of rocks. He was pretty picky about what he'd allow into his bag. Shawn went straight to the pyrite. He was all about the gold!

Some random kid photo bombed our picture.
Shawn didn't get into this shot, but he's actually to Jason's right.

We didn't leave the park until just before 10. That is a LATE night for our crew!

They've all said that yesterday was a fun day. Jason is even talking about how we need to go back soon. lol!