Looking back on the summer wedding

One of our favorite things about last summer was my sister's wedding.  I was the maid of honour and the twins were the ring bearers.  The day was absolutely perfect.  My sister looked beautiful, everything went off without a hitch.....we couldn't have asked for anything to go better.  She recently gave me a copy of the pictures the photographer took.  Wow....is all I can say.  Her wedding pictures turned out gorgeous and I am so so thankful for the great pictures of my boys and family.

Here's a little peak.

Our first family photo after the wedding.

Our little fam.....first time we've all been dressed up this fancy together :)  The boys first wedding :)

One of my fav pics.....4 generations.

 

Lot's of great memories with friends and family!

Being a ring bearer can be tiring :)

The wedding is something we talk about often in our house.  It's something the boys were proud to be part of and will remember for the rest of their lives.  A priceless moment for me though.....the boys helping their great grandma blow out the candles on her 90th birthday cake....priceless :)

Nashville...the home of country music.

Finally I've had a little bit of free time to work on some more posts from the summer. 

Next stop....Nashville......We were quite excited to get there :)

If you want to understand where country music comes from, you need to see downtown Nashville.  The honky tonk district is packed full of restaurants with musicians playing in each one.  Literally it’s like hundreds of country stars coming through the windows as you walk down the street. 

In order to be able to truly get as much background and information on a city that is new to us, Jason and I like to do the tours. 

 I find that you get some of the history, you find out and see the most notable sites in the city and you get a taste of what the city is really like.  We hopped on a little red trolly in Nashville to learn about some of the sites.  I was surprised there was so much to see.  The boys were super excited to get on and behaved fantastic for the 1.5 hours tour (especially Mathew because he slept 1.25 hours of it hahaha). 

We stopped by the tourist centre and had a great time trying out the instruments!

We enjoyed a quick lunch at BB King's.

We stayed up way past bedtime......but had a great time!

And you can't go to Nashville without getting a pair of cowboy boots.....or two in our case!

PD day

Two friday's ago, I took a day off of work to spend the PD day home with the boys.  Boy did the three of us have fun just hanging out.  We played board games until we were laughing so hard that we couldn't breathe.  We made an obstacle course in the basement, made a tent in their bunk beds and drew shapes on each other's cheeks with face paint.  The only downfall about the day......when the boys started climbing on the couch with face paint on...... :(  face paint on the cushions.....and yet lucky for me the covers just came off and I threw them through the wash.....and 1.5 hours later the couch was a little cleaner and we were still laughing about the triangle that jumped off Zach's face onto the couch!  Looking forward to our next PD day my boys!

Hahaha the second picture I couldnt' resist taking.  After they painted each other's faces they wanted to paint mine.....and I let them.....this is the view you have with two four year olds about to start painting your face :)

Silly

This is just so we all remember that sometimes you just can't help yourself from being silly!!

Hmmm

Some weeks seem longer then others, some days seem like they will never end and sometimes you just wish you could be lounging on the balcony on vacation again.....

And just relaxing!

Welcome Home

A few weeks ago Jason was away for work.  He often goes away so it's not out of the ordinary but usually he drives or fly's home so late we don't get to meet him.  This specific friday he landed at 5ish so we got to go up to explore the airport and watch his plane land.  The three of us were so excited to see him get off the plane.  It's kinda crazy that even when he goes away often, the welcome home part still fill's us with excitement!

Birthday Party

Eek I started this post weeks ago and I am finally getting back to it!  The boys birthday was almost a month ago now.....where did the month go? Have we really had 4 year olds for a month already??  I had wrote the post about birthday preparations but I can't explain just how great the actual party turned out.  I will admit I was a bit scared to have 16 4-5 year olds in my house at once with limited parental supervision....and yet they surprised me.  They listened sooo good.  They sat in a circle "criss cross applesause" while we watched the animals, they were patient and waited their turns to touch the animals, they all waited in line while we washed their hands before eating and they all sat like angels at the table for food and cake.  When the parents started to arrive they actually started to get a little crazy on me. 

Look at all the little angels sitting so good in a circle!! Ahh!!

All the kids went crazy over the animals.  There were snakes, lizards, frogs, rabbits etc.  They brought the animals out one at a time, talked about them, told the kids (and parents for that matter) some new facts about the animals and then anyone who wanted could touch and/or hold the animals.  I was shocked that it was the teeniest little girls who volunteered first to hold the gigantic snakes hahahaha.

 

Absolutely love this picture....especially since his mommy warned me before she left that he doesn't like any snakes or bugs etc.. He jumped up...volunteered and had a great time :)

Here is a picture of the fattest frog I have ever seen.  It made the kids laugh hysterically.  It was so cute to hear the entire basement filled with so much laughter!  Every time he hopped they laughed like maniacs! 

We also touched this tree frog.  He could actually grip on to your arm.  His feet were slimmy and it felt weird but it was neat.

The biggest hit for all the kids were the bunnies though.  When they came out Zach and Mattie quickly volunteered to be the first to hold them.

The whoopie cushions were also a hit.  I hope all the parents enjoyed them hahahaha :)

 



















My babies are 4.....I still can't believe it.  We are now into school life, new friends, new social activities.  Some days it seems like they are so old and then every once in awhile you still realize how tiny they are when they hop up on your lap for a cuddle!

Happy Birthday to my not so baby boys!

I'm ahead of the game

There I said it....I'm jinxing myself but really trully I am starting to get our christmas stuff organized.  Last night I even wrapped our christmas books.  Last year we searched through all our books and realized just how many we had.  In order to make sure there was an extra little christmas magic we wrapped them all up.....and yes I bought 4 more last year to make 24 in total.....and every evening before bed they get to choose one wrapped book for their bedtime story.

All wrapped up and awaiting December 1 !

 It's not a big thing, we would have read the books together anyways and yet it added a little more christmas magic to the season so I got it all ready again for this year!  This year I also got all our christmas movies out and I'm going to organize them so we actually watch them all as a family before christmas.  I'll divide them out so each weekend we will get a little christmas movie action too!

Practicing our names

Something we did for St Patricks day that they loved was to cut out shamrocks and print each letter of their name on one.  It was so quick and easy and they thought the game was so much fun to try and get them back into the right order.

The boys now know how to write their name and which order all the letters go in.  At school they are often writing their names but one of the things the teachers recommend is practicing their names.  They will write their name on anything we give them but I hate making them sit there and repeatedly write it.  Sooooo.....we have decided to incorporate name practicing into other crafts.  We bought these little foam pumpkins at the dollar store and we decorated all 20 of them :)  The boys would draw whatever pumpkin face they wanted on the front of the pumpkin and then write their name on the back.  We hung them up on the chair rail and the boys love running over to identify their pumpkins and their names on the back of them.

Does anyone have any other quick neat ideas for practicing name writing?

Simple Fun

What I really enjoy about every holiday now is how into it the boys get helping with decorations, baking and preparations.  I have realized that there are some really simple crafts that the boys absolutely love doing ....and that do not cost much to do.  This year we made Halloween spiders.  Everything was purchased at the dollar store so it only cost us 3 dollars total for the entire craft (and there are still supplies left over). 

We took foam balls and painted them black.

We left them dry overnight but a few hours would have sufficed.  To dry we placed them in Styrofoam cups so they wouldn't roll all over :)

The next day we took pipe cleaners and cut them in half to make it the length we wanted for legs.  The boys then counted out 8 pipe cleaners for each spider (we practiced counting and colour patterns during this)

The boys then bent the pipe cleaners in any way they wanted and then decided on the colour order for their spiders legs.  I used the glue gun to glue them on.

Then we added the googlie eyes.

Next step.....play with our spiders......they marched in lines....walked on our arms....played itsy bitsy spider etc.

 



















We then decided to hang the spiders up on a line.  We have been doing this lately for items and it's so easy and the boys love seeing their crafts.  For the spiders we just hung fishing line from two picture frame hooks that we already had on the walls.  Yay for not damaging the house and double yeah for having their crafts as part of our house decorations :)