Summertime Fun

Emmett loves to put on hats.  This one is his favorite.

The boys also love when Phil mows the grass.  It was a nice, warm evening the other night so we were all outside while Phil was mowing and the boys were following him all over the yard.  They sure love their Dad.

After walking in all of that freshly-mowed grass, the boys had some green, green feet.  They absolutely love going barefoot and their feet get so dirty, but they take a bath every night so I guess it doesn't matter that much.  Aren't these a perfect example of summertime fun little boy feet?

Phil just woke up and was sitting on the couch with Jackson without a shirt on.  Jackson turned to him and said, "Dad, you have a hairy t-shirt."  :)

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!  :)