Fun Family Visit and a Short Vacay

I'm going to stop apologizing for not blogging in a while.  It doesn't seem that I'm going to get any better about it anytime soon!  I hope that the few friends and family that read this will hang with me anyway.  :)

Phil's dad and stepmom were here a few weeks ago and we all really enjoyed their visit.  The boys looovved hanging with their Nana and Papa Swoop and Phil and I really enjoyed seeing them, too!  We had a little mini happy hour every night and Phil's dad helped us with a few projects around the house, which was so nice!  Charlene is so great with the boys and it was really nice to have someone to help out with holding and feeding Reid and playing with J and E.  We went on a fun double date one night to a yummy Thai restaurant (which has really great food but not the best atmosphere... but Phil's choice won out on this one)...  :)

We all drove over the mountain to the "big" city one day.  Here's R sleeping so sweetly in the car.  For about 35 minutes.  Then he fussed the rest of the way because he could see Nana and wanted her to pick him up!  :)

We packed everyone into our minivan and J loved having some company in the back seat.

And we can't forget our E...

We popped over to the mall for a little bit and then went to the splash park, which we thought would be a big hit with the boys.  Not so much!  It was right about naptime and the water was really cold.  That combo did not make for super happy boys.

Emmett still managed to soak himself, though. 

The next night we had a little bonfire in our fire pit to burn some of the extra wood from a project Phil and his dad worked on.  I also burned my diaries from high school (ahhhhhh... that felt good)  :)  and we finally got rid of our Christmas trees from the past two years.  They'd been hanging out behind our fence.  I know... classy.  The boys loved watching Phil cut up the wood and they especially loved the s'mores we ate later. 

I thought they looked so cute hanging onto the fence watching Daddy.

Nana and the boys had lots of snuggle time on the couch.  I always love this time right before bed when they're all clean from baths and super snuggly.  I'm glad Nana got to experience it!  :)

Here's Chris hard at work painting the big project that he and Phil worked on.  They made a banquette for our breakfast area!  It is my favorite thing in our house now.  Look at all of that hidden storage!  They did such a great job on it... it totally looks like it has always been there.  I was very impressed!  I can't believe we didn't think of doing it sooner!

The boys loved their Lightning McQueen coloring books that Nana bought for them.

Look at these cute best buddies snuggling on our bed and watching a few minutes of Cars.  They are so precious.
 

The night before Chris and Charlene left we set the timer on our camera and took a family picture.  I thought it came out surprisingly well, except for being blurry for some reason.  And we were totally giggling about Phil's dad's pose.  He set the timer and ran back to be in the pic and didn't have enough time to sit down.

I love this cute video of Reid talking to Charlene.  They were best buddies while she was here!  He was talking so loud in reality, but with all of the background noise in our house you can't hear him very well. 

Thanks so much for coming, Chris and Charlene!  We sure enjoyed spending time with you guys!

The weekend after C and C left Phil flew a jet down to an air show in Redding, CA.  I loaded up the boys and all of our gear and drove down for one night.  I wanted to record a few things about the trip just for posterity.  It was fun to get out of town as a family for a little bit, but we quickly remembered how crazy it can get.

We met Phil at the air show right before the F-18 demonstration flight.  We were eating lunch in the VIP tent when the jet took off and he did a very loud afterburner climb right in front of the tent.  As you can imagine, our little sensitive J, who hates loud noises, was NOT happy!  It was really loud and he started crying.  I took him out of the tent so that we could watch the jet while he plugged his ears and he calmed down and seemed to maybe even enjoy it a little bit.  At one point he looked up at me and said (with his fingers still in his ears), "Mommy, can you wipe my teardrops?"  Oh, I wanted to eat him up right there.  Phil stayed in the tent with Reid, who was also a little upset at the noise, and Emmett came out and watched with J and me.  All was good then, until we thought the demo was over and went back into the tent to leave and the jet flew directly overhead, really low, with afterburners.  It was SO loud and even scared me to death!!  You can just imagine the scene that ensued.  I think a curse word might have come out of my mouth (luckily you couldn't hear it!) and all three boys were crying!  We just had to laugh as we tried to calm everyone down.  Needless to say, we left right after that... we did NOT want to stay to see the Thunderbirds fly!

Reid actually took a decent nap when we got to the hotel, but for some reason he did not want to sleep at night in the pack and play.  He was up off and on the whole night.  Emmett was up several times, too.  We think he might have night terrors.  They don't happen too much at home, but there have been a few times over the past few months where he wakes up at night just screaming and almost nothing calms him down.  It usually takes about 20 min or so for him to settle down, but then he goes right back to sleep.  We find that it usually happens if he goes to bed really late for some reason and/or isn't in his bed at home.  Anyway, Phil took Reid for a drive around 5 A.M. since he wasn't wanting to sleep and we wanted J and E to be able to sleep a little longer.  We were all really tired that next day, but the boys did really well in stores and restaurants.  There was a really nice pool at the hotel and J and E had a blast playing in it.  J still talks about it!  So like I said, it was fun to get out of town and spend some time together as a family, but it was a bit crazy at times. I don't think we'll be staying in one hotel room together again anytime soon!  :)

A Few Things

A few weeks ago on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon we went up to the lake near our house.  The water was pretty cold, but the boys had a ball playing in it.  We ordered lunch and had a picnic on the shore and just enjoyed being together.

Jackson is getting really good at hitting a baseball with a bat.  Granted, the bat is larger than usual size and the ball is plastic, but we still think he does a great job!  He absolutely loves going out back when Phil gets home from work and letting Daddy pitch the ball to him.  We are definitely gearing up for t-ball next spring!

My mom sent the boys some cute dinosaur water bottles the other day and I thought it was a good opportunity to catch a little of Emmett's speech on video.  He is just talking up a storm!  We can't believe how one day a few weeks ago everything just clicked and he started spewing out all of the words he's saved up over the past two years.  :) 

J and E love to play "Guess Which Hand?" with Phil.  They just think it is hysterical.  And we think it's hysterical that now J and E will walk up to us with something big sticking out of their fist and say, "Guess which hand?"  It's so cute that they can't even tell (or don't even care) that we can totally see which hand the thing is in!

We had a wonderful visit with Nana and Papa Swoop (Phil's dad and stepmom) this past week.  Here's a sneak peek into a big project (that turned out absolutely awesomely) that Phil and his dad worked on...

The boys just LOVED hanging with N and PS.  Reid was in love with Nana for sure (and I think the feeling was mutual).  :)  More to come on their visit soon.  The boys and I are off this morning to visit Phil at an air show in California.  Here's hoping they sleep well in the hotel room tonight!

First Day of School

Today was Jackson's first day of 4-year-old preschool.  This year he goes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8:30-11:30.  A few of his good friends from his class last year switched to another school this year that meets every day of the week and I debated for a while about sending him there instead.  I really didn't want to send him every day, but I thought maybe I should follow the other moms and send him with his friends.  I was proud of myself, though, for sticking to my guns and doing what I thought was best for J and our family and not following the crowd, like I usually do!  I love his little church school and it is perfect for what I want him to be doing right now.  He has a new teacher this year and seems to like her so far.  Today when I dropped him off he walked right in and said hi to her and then said, "After we get home I can go in the backyard and hit balls with Daddy and then I can get a home run like [Curious] George!"  Phil has today off from work and told J that they would play baseball when he got home from school and J was very excited to share this news with his teacher.  J is very friendly right now and will talk to anyone and sometimes talk their ear off.  :)  Here's my big boy right before we left for school.  It's much hotter this year than it was last year on the first day of school!  I just love him so much...

6 Month Reid

He's a big-un!  Well, I don't know how big he actually is (we're about a month behind on check-ups), but everyone comments on his huge thighs and knees.  And he's eating like a horse.  He loves baby food, as long as it is at least a little bit sweet and contains apples or bananas in some way.  I actually can't believe how much he eats sometimes.  He loves to take a bite and then stick his fingers in his mouth and suck on them before taking another bite.  So cute!  Here's a video... (and please excuse the mess in the background and our broken sliding glass window that randomly burst one day while Phil and the boys were eating lunch)...

Untitled from Heather G on Vimeo.

He started crawling a few weeks before his six-month birthday and is now all over the place.  This is totally fine and makes him really happy... the only problem is that he's still spitting up a lot and he often ends up leaving a snail trail wherever he goes from crawling through his spit-up.  Yes, it really is gross.  I almost can't keep up with how much he does it!  Luckily he usually just spits up on the hardwood floor and (other than having to sometime scrape it out of the cracks with a knife) it's not too hard to clean up.  Was that TMI?  I really do try to keep the floors clean of spit-up!  For anyone else who had a bad spitter... when does the spitting end??  I was hoping it would stop when we started solids, but no such luck.  Here's a crawling video...

He is just the happiest baby all of the time!  The only time he ever gets too upset (and even then it's not that bad) is when he's hungry.  He's always so smiley!

He ate these two whole jars of food (with some rice cereal added) in one sitting!

In Reid's case it really is true what they say about him wanting to keep up with his brothers.  I can't believe how quickly he learned how to crawl and how he seems eager to do other things, too.  He was on his knees holding on to the side of the crib the other morning when I went to get him, and I actually saw him trying to climb up onto the fireplace the other day.  He started out like this and then I scooped him up...

And here he is already getting into the big boy toys!

I wonder if this means he'll walk early, too.  I hope so, because I'd much rather have a walker than a crawler!  The sooner they get up off of the gross, dirty ground, the better in my book!  :)

Reid really loves watching his brothers and just recently started laughing at the things they do.  Jackson thinks this is the coolest thing and loves to make Reid laugh.  This was such a cute moment last night...

Catching Up... Again

After Jackson's special request a few weeks ago, we went to feed the ducks down at the lake.  Phil was flying nights so he was able to come with us.  Only we didn't so much feed the "ducks" as we did the geese and mainly the gross seagulls.  But no matter... the boys enjoyed it anyway.  The birds were all very tame and got close to us without being nasty, thankfully.  Phil was even getting the seagulls to do tricks for their food... he would throw the bread up in the air and they would catch it mid-flight.  Pretty cool. 

Our squadron had a First Friday get-together at our baseball team's last Friday night game for the season.  It was really fun and made me wish we had gone to more games.  Hopefully they'll be back next summer.  Here's Reid and I enjoying the game after Phil and I participated in a little push-up competition out on the field between innings.  He let me win (gentleman that he is).  :)

My friend Michelle and I took a two-night alone trip to San Francisco a few weekends ago.  Aaaahhh... it was so great to be without kiddos for two days and fun to be in a "land of plenty" for a change.  :) It is hard to live in such a small town all the time, but we are really thankful to be within 6 driving hours of several cool big cities.  And we feel like if we lived in a bigger city all the time we wouldn't take nearly as many fun little trips as we do.  Living without a lot of fun stores and restaurants and things to do really makes you appreciate them!  Here we are at our first stop for lunch with our Mexican tomato-y beers (they have some special name, but I can't think of it right now).
 

My Aunt Wendy and Uncle Steve (and their three daughters) live in an amazing house up on a hill in Oakland.  We were so thankful to be able to spend some time with them and stay one night at their place.  We spent our second night in downtown San Francisco, but I didn't take any other pictures after this one!  Having too much fun, I guess. 

 

Jackson and Emmett's days have been filled with the standard bike-riding, getting soaked with the hose outside, painting and cutting paper for about 3.7 seconds, reading the occasional book, playing a few computer games, chasing each other around the house, wrestling, building train tracks, eating snacks, and playing with friends.  One of the reasons I haven't been blogging as much is because the boys have been really stir-crazy lately and I'm having to help them find things to do a lot more than I used to.  It is really frustrating sometimes because they have SO many toys and books and the weather has been beautiful outside, but nothing seems to hold their attention for very long.  Jackson is almost worse about it than Emmett, which I think is weird.  He starts preschool again in a few weeks, so hopefully that will help.  Emmett plays really well by himself when J is not around, so I think J's school will be good for E, too.  

These boys love to be sans-clothing.  Maybe we shouldn't let them run around without clothes as much as we do (at our house, only, of course!), but I figure we're bundled up so much for most of the year that we'd better let our skin breathe and enjoy the warm air while we have it!  Here are some pics of naked and semi-naked trampoline fun the other night...

 

The one thing that the boys love, love to do that will keep them busy for a while is play out in the driveway with all of their riding toys and ride their bikes up and down the street.  Of course, this is the hardest for me because I have to be out front with them, too, and can't get much of anything done.  But they love it, so we try to do it for a while at least once a day.  

Reid loves being outside, too!  My big boy is 6 months old now!  I have a post in the works of all that he's doing now.

I've been making some crazy changes in my house again, too.  We are at the three-year mark in this house, and for the past ten years this is the point at which we have moved to a new place.  So I'm getting the moving itch again and trying to stifle it by repainting my house and rearranging some things.  I think it's working.  :)

We participated in our neighborhood garage sale a few weekends ago and sold a bunch of furniture and random decoration-stuff that we've (I've) had for a while.  We made over $600!  One of the things we sold that made me happiest was that awful pleather couch that we had in our family room.  It was actually one of the first things to go... for the asking price, too!  And we had at least 10 more people ask about it throughout the day.  Go figure.  We should have priced it higher!  Anyway, we used the money we made to buy a new couch.  It's actually a sofa/chaise combo from Ikea.  (I'm having a love-affair with Ikea right now.  He just came into my life a few months ago and I love him.  The closest one to us is in Portland, but between there, Orlando, and San Francisco, I've managed to visit him quite a bit these past few months.)  ANYWAY yes, the sofa is white.  And yes, I realize I have three boys.  And yes, it already has a few marks on it.  And yes, I know I'm usually really OCD about things.  But I really love it and I think I'm being pretty relaxed about it so far.  AND it is slipcovered, AND the slipcovers are machine washable, AND I can buy a whole new slipcover for $50 if I need to, AND I plan on getting a darker slipcover at some point.  But the white was cheapest for now and I have to save up for another color.  :)  Here are my little bruisers checking it out.  Oh, how they love to wrestle...

It's longer than our pleather couch was and has more seating, but somehow it looks like it takes up a lot less space than the other one did.  It's more clean-lined and lower to the ground, and I think that makes a big difference.  And the white really brightens up the room.  Enough about the couch already, Heather... sheesh!  :)