Mom's Visit

My mom was here visiting the past three weeks... she just left on Monday.  It was totally wonderful having her here.  We didn't really do anything exciting, but it was just nice having her around every day.  The boys are totally smitten with her.  She played with them all the time and gave them (almost) anything they wanted.  :)  She's so great with them.  It's wonderful to see that even though they don't see her every day, they remember her and warm up to her right away.  And I was able to get a lot of planting done outside while my mom was entertaining the boys.  We were able to get out to lunch a few times and we went to dinner once by ourselves, which was nice.  It's so hard to live all the way across the country from my Mom - I love her so much.

We didn't take hardly any pictures while she was here!  I just got a few the other day when we went to lunch and a park downtown.  First we stopped at a nursery, though, so I could get a few more plants.  I've been plant crazy lately (that's for another post)!

Here Jackson is plugging his ears because the jets were flying overhead.  To be fair, this nursery is right by the base, so the jets were really loud!

At our Veteran's Park downtown there's a large grassy area that the boys love to run around in and this huge train engine on display.  Jackson loves that train.  

Emmett's new thing is pointing.  It's so totally cute!

Luckily, we got family pictures taken while my mom was here and our photographer was able to take several of my mom with the boys and with our whole family.  I can't wait to see them!

Thanks so much for coming to stay with us, Mom!  We love you to pieces!!!

Nutella... Yum!

Someone has inherited Mom's love of that chocolatey-hazelnutty goodness...

He didn't even eat the graham cracker!  He just licked all of the Nutella off.  :)

Movie

Phil and I took Jackson to see his first movie the other night.  We saw Toy Story 3.  My mom is here visiting so she was able to stay home with Emmett.  We weren't sure how Jackson would do at the theater, but we decided to give it a go anyway. We thought he might not like the loud sound or might be scared by the characters all large up on the screen, or maybe we'd have to leave halfway through because he would be bored.  He surprised us, though, and did pretty well - he wasn't scared at all and we made it through the whole movie.  He didn't sit still the whole time, though.  Some of the time he was playing with the bouncy seat or jumping up and down while holding on to the seat in front of him.  About halfway through he looked at me and said, "Jackson want popcorn!"  We don't know what made him think of popcorn at that moment... we don't eat it very often and no one around us in the theater had popcorn.  But sweet Daddy went and got him some popcorn and that kept him still and quiet for a while. And he did cry wolf about having to go potty twice.  Phil kindly took him both times and when they got back the second time Jackson ran up to me and announced, "I didn't have to go!"  All in all it was a decent experience, but Jackson wasn't that interested in it so we think we'll save the next movie for another couple of years.

Here he is looking all grown up in Daddy's truck on the way to the movie...

Camping

Our squadron had scheduled a camping trip last weekend, so Phil and I decided to rent an RV and have our first camping experience as a family of four.  It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun, also.

The first day was a bit of a sideshow - the boys were really tired from running around like crazy, but when naptime came they would not sleep.  We have quite the setup for sleep at home with blackout curtains and white noise machines and, while that leads to great sleep at home, it doesn't lend itself really well to great sleep away from home.  We didn't have an electrical hookup at the campsite so that we could plug in the white noise, and the air vents/skylights in the roof of the RV were like spotlights with the sun coming in at midday.  Anyway, after 45 minutes or so of trying to get the boys to sleep, we gave up and Phil took Jackson out on a boat and I walked around with Emmett.  I was quite grumpy because I was really tired, too, and was hoping to catch some Z's while the boys slept.  Later in the afternoon they were both completely exhausted and we all actually fell asleep for about 40 minutes (until Emmett woke us all up).  We put E to bed early that night, hoping and hoping he would be so tired that he would fall asleep easily.  As I was sitting outside of the RV listening to him fuss, one of our friends told us about the fan on the stovetop that is powered by the RV battery and creates excellent white noise for sleeping.  That totally did the trick!  My friend Lana popped into the RV and switched on the fan and we didn't hear from Emmett until (early) the next morning!  He even napped for about two hours the next day!  Hooray for battery-powered stove fans that last all night!  :)  

We were so busy eating, talking to friends, and chasing after the boys that I didn't really get many pictures. I didn't even get one of us in front of our rented "Cougar" RV.  We loved that the brand name of it was Cougar.  We did go out on our friends' boat for a few hours and I managed to get some pictures of that.  The boys liked when we were moving on the boat, but E hated the life jacket, and Jackson was constantly plugging his ears because he thought the radio was "real loud".  :)

This lake is the same one that we went to a few weekends ago when it was freezing outside.  The air temperature was really warm this time but the water was still frigid.  The lake is so clear and beautiful, though.  Phil jumped in with Emmett, but they both got out quickly!

Here's our friend, Klepto, wakesurfing.  He and Lana make it look so easy...

Hating the life jacket...

The boy absolutely loves cans.  This really helped distract him from the jacket.  

Here are a few other pictures of us around the camping area...

Jackson was collecting rocks to throw in the lake...

Oh, my goodness, he's actually looking at the camera and smiling on cue!!  

Did I mention this baby loves cans?  Empty, of course...

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the real reason we went camping at that lake was because the pilots had to do a day of water survival training.  There was a helicopter there that Jackson was so excited to see, and we got to watch the pilots get pulled out of the water by the helicopter.  It was Phil's first time to do that and he said it was really cool.  It was neat to watch, too.  The helicopter got really close to the water and we could feel the spray on shore.  I'm pretty sure this is Phil...

All in all it was a fun weekend!  Jackson's favorite parts were throwing rocks in the lake and eating marshmallows.  Emmett's favorite parts were wading (up to his chest) in the lake and running around everywhere.  I have never seen my boys so dirty in their lives, but they had fun!  Phil's and my favorite parts were probably just hanging with friends and going out on the boat.  That brought back fun memories of our time in Florida before kids.  Sorry it took me so long to post this. It took me a while to recover!  :)

Jackson's Birthday

I think a certain little boy had a pretty great day!  He was so excited about his birthday.  He kept talking about "Jackson's birthday" and birthday cake and opening presents.  It was all I could do to keep him from opening his presents until his party in the evening.  He shares a birthday with Rocky's son, Griffen (who turned 12), so we all got to go swimming in the early afternoon to celebrate Griffen's birthday.  Well, everyone went swimming except for me - the water was really cold and I didn't want to get in!  Phil managed to handle the boys pretty well by himself.  This was Emmett's first time swimming ever and Jackson hasn't been swimming in almost a year.

The boys loved the water.  Emmett, of course, was about to jump in all by himself right when we got there, but Jackson took a little longer to warm up.  Oh man, you should have witnessed the craziness that happened before he actually got in the water.  First, I had to convince him to put his water wings on.  He put up a little stink about that, but actually wasn't as upset about it as I thought he would be.  But then he went into the water a few steps and his swim trunks got wet.  Heaven forbid his swim trunks get wet!!  He started getting really upset that his "flight suit" was getting wet.  I think he was confusing flight suit and swim suit.  Maybe this gave him flashbacks to potty training, too, and not liking the feeling of his pants being wet.  I don't know.  Anyway, he kept yelling, "Flight suit all wet!  Get flight suit off!"  He was getting really upset, so I had him get out and I took off his "flight suit".  As soon as he was naked he made a beeline back for the pool, so I had to call him back and at least put a swim diaper on him so he didn't go into the pool naked.  Maybe we need to buy  him some Speedos.

After that, things were much better and he jumped right into the water with Phil.  He loved being in that pool once he got used to the water and even "swam" by himself with his water wings on!

Both boys were shivering and shaking from the water temp but didn't want to get out.  Finally, Phil and I had to make them get out and go warm up in the sun.  We ate lunch with our friends and then drove home and tried to keep the boys awake so they would nap at home.  We managed to somehow, but it was hard!  Emmett was pretty beat...

Then in the afternoon we invited a bunch of friends over for dinner.  We had 14 adults here, eight big kids, four little kids/toddlers, one almost-toddler, and one newborn.  Phil smoked some awesome chicken on his grill and we had some salads and cake.  We didn't have a theme or anything... we just decided at the last minute to have everyone over for dinner.  The kiddos all played outside with water balloons, the hose, a small pool, balls, and a slip n' slide almost the whole time.  I think they had a lot of fun!

Okay, don't laugh at the cake.  Thomas was a lot harder to draw on a cake than George was last year! I kind of ran out of steam.  

  
Happy Third Birthday, Jackson!!  We love you so much!!