Tough Guy!!!

Todd has been doing the P90X workout program every morning. It is crazy hard and he sweats so so much! The other day, he was wearing a bandana to keep the sweat out of his eyes and Miles wanted to wear one too!! He wore it all day and night for 48 hours straight! He put it on Monday morning, wore it during his nap, all night while he slept and all day Tuesday and to bed again!! What a goofball!! We had to take some pictures at breakfast on Tuesday to document his silliness!!!

We went to visit Janelle and Ella last weekend and bring them dinner.  They were recently fully licensed to foster children from CPS and this weekend they jumped right in with a weekend of respite care with a beautiful little three month old girl!  My littles had a blast with Ella on her swingset and pink Mustang!

Load it up!!!

 Laney paused her play briefly to check on little Baby D.  She was such a good baby the whole time that we were there!  It was a great night!

Hard at Work!!

Todd spent all weekend working hard in the yard.  He dug up all of the railroad ties that form one of the retaining walls in our backyard.  The brothers jumped on a chace to use their toy chainsaw and leaf blowers to help Daddy achieve his goals!

 Todd found a snake, which he picked up and showed a very interested Miles.  Gross.

An Afternoon at the Zoo!!!

On Wednesday afternoon, I took the kids to the zoo once the brothers woke up.  We got there at about 3:45 which left us about an hour and 15 minutes to visit all our animal friends!  As we walked in, we were passing hordes of people that were leaving the zoo for the day, so we had literally no crowds to battle as we wagon-rode our way around!  This is the second trip in the last few weeks that the kids and I have made all by ourselves.  I love the zoo with my friends and their kids, but it has also been so fun to go on our own and just dialogue with each other the whole time!!

We started out at the monkey house, as always.  Sam got really scared several times ago, so Laney told him the whole way in the car that she would hold his hand when we saw the monkeys.  And she did. 

We have been watching this little baby chimp grow up over the past few months.  I have always been totally cuted out by it, but this trip it kind of gave me a Lord of the Rings Smeagol vibe. 

The kids loved the baby monkey!!

 We got the camera out again when we got to the kangaroo statue.  We couldn't convince Miles to leave his snack and the wagon behind for a picture!

We got on the train at 5:00 on the dot, so we really got an extra 15 minutes of zoo time out of the deal!!  So glad that we have a zoo pass so that afternoons like this can happen!!!

Happy Belated Birthday to Bobbis!!!

My mom's birthday was a long time ago.  A whole month, but we had to celebrate her birthday a while after because of lots of crazy schedules.  These pictures are from the real day when we went to visit her at work and bring her her birthday cookies!  She was already being well celebrated by all of her friends at work!  Balloons, Fruit bouquets, and the best carrot cake I have ever tasted! 

We had my mom's birthday party with our family a couple weekends ago at her house!  Lots of fun!

Laney can not go anywhere without her craft box (thanks to Nae Nae who re-purposed this box still full of markers, crayons and colored pencils from when Aunt Jenn was a little girl!!)  She packs a bag everywhere we go so that she never has to be without the ability to draw a picture of cut out some crafts.

Miles and his beloved Uncle Jack!

This is a very exciting picture to post because since the taking of this shot, Caitlin and Johnny have gotten ENGAGED!!!!!

YAY!!!  We are so so excited!  We love Johnny and can't wait for him to become an official member of the family THIS June!!!!  My sister is going to be such a beautiful bride and such an amazing wife!!

 The birthday girl and all her grandkids!

 And a shot of her regular kids.

My mom got a second batch of birthday cookies.  Well deserved for having to wait so long to be celebrated!

All the kids cutta-cutta'd Jessica's delicious fruit pizza in to my mom so that she could blow out her candle.

 My sweet smiley boy!

We love our family so much!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

I had lots of fun stuff planned for our St. Patrick's Day celebrating! But first,  I had my Spin class at the Y in the morning, then I got a little hi-jacked into an impromptu orientation of the weightroom, and then my kids were desperate to play in the Spin room once I finally got to get them out of the Kid Zone.  Laney really wanted me to turn on the music so that she could pretend like she was the teacher.  Ever since I started teaching at the Y, she loves to pretend like she is teaching "RowBics."  At home, she says, "Okay, guys! Time for exercise.  March it on the right!!"  I love it!  They were having tons of fun checking out the Spin bikes and dancing to my awesome Cycle Playlist.  I kept checking - didn't they want to head home and start all of our fun activities.  Finally, I just gave up and did some break dancing with Laney on a yoga mat.  It was hilarious and so much fun!!! 

So after our marathon morning at the Y, we had to squeeze all of our St. Pat stuff into the afternoon after naps and still clean up and get ready for Small Group.  Luckily our sweet small group doesn't mind glitter all over the floor and a toy room that didn't quite get picked up!!!

Miles woke up before Sam Bones, so we got started without him.  We made a rainbow cake that was so fun to put together.  We will probably make it again even if we don't have the very meaningful St. Patrick's Day to celebrate!  We divided our cake batter into 6 bowls and colored each one a color of the spectrum!  ROY G BV!!

Then we poured half of each bowl into our first round pan in order of the spectrum.  We poured the other pan in reverse order.  It was so pretty!

Laney was super excited about pouring the batter out, because it meant that she got to lick the spoon!

 Miles was so wounded that I took his yellow batter from him.  He didn't care that he could lick his spoon.  All he wanted was to keep stirring and stirring and stirring.  Poor guy!


 Ready to bake!!

Then we made some "gold coins" for the end of our rainbow.  We made peanut butter cashew butter  cracker sandwiches.  (Laney is allergic to p.b.) Then we dipped them in melted butterscotch chips.  Holy Moly, those things were good!

 

 Pre-butterscotch chip dipping.

 Sam got up and we made some leprechaun hats.  I told the kids that leprechauns hunt for gold at the end of a rainbow and Laney got a little nervous about our "gold coins."  I had to reassure her a little that we weren't going to be raided by any little men dressed in green.  She was also comforted by the picture of the friendly leprechaun on the box of her favorite special cereal!

Everyone helped put our Skittles rainbow on the cake.  It is possible that more skittles made it in their tummies than onto the cake.

 So pretty!!!

Then, it was time for Small Group!!  The beautiful weather made it such a fun night.  We sat on the patio to discuss Ephesians while the kids bounced and played like crazy!!

 Crazy smooshy bounce house faces!!!