Barefoot Fun

Before we get to the slew of photos I have for you, a couple of quick reminders/updates!

1. Don't forget to enter yourself in the giveaways I have going this week! You have until 10pm tomorrow to enter to win treats from my Etsy Shop and to enter to win a jumbo pack of Huggies Pull-Ups.

2. Yesterday I set a rather lofty goal here. By this morning I wanted to have 3 more walkers lined up for Team Three Cuties and I wanted to be at 50% of my fund-raising goal for next month's March for Babies. I did reach my walker goal, thanks to some friends stepping up, but I missed my fund-raising goal by a long shot. Thank you though to those of you who donated yesterday - I'm now $80 closer than I was at this time yesterday morning. If you'd like to walk, there's definitely still room on our team and we'd love to have you. If you've been thinking of donating, please do so! Babies are being born too early as you're reading this blog. Click here for info on walking or donating.

Alright, on to the fun pictures! We've had some gorgeous weather the last few days and I mean GORGEOUS! I even let the boys play outside barefoot a couple of times.

Tyler

Chase - a favorite activity is just walking on the bricks. Who needs toys when you have bricks?

Jackson, who learned the hard way that playing in shorts can be hazardous to your knees.

Tyler, checking out the Lilac buds

Tyler in the foreground and Chase in the background.

They thought these little flowers looked like grapes - I told them not to eat them.

Ahhhh spring, welcome back!

Spring Has Sprung!

The signs of spring are all around us finally! The other day we played outside for hours and it was wonderful. We ate popsicles and played with bubbles!

Chase

Ty

Jackson

Tyler sharing with Chase

The flowers that Tyler helped me plant last fall are even up and blooming now! Here's "farmer Ty" standing proudly next to the first flowers to pop open!

Today is room make-over day here. Tonight we're hoping to switch the boys to their toddler beds, but first we're transforming their room from  a baby room to a toddler room! The big reveal will happen on Monday morning, or Sunday if I'm too excited and can't wait. Oh, it may even happen tomorrow. We'll just have to see. Fingers crossed that the boys do well in beds! We haven't had any climbing out of cribs since nap time on Tuesday, thanks to some serious pep talks and threats of blanket removal. 

Pool Time

This past weekend it was finally warm enough to bring out the baby pool! Last year the boys didn't quite know what to think of the pool. Not much happened... Remember this from last summer? (Actually this is almost a year ago exactly! May 30, 2008)


This year the boys were a bit hesitant at first, but Tyler finally took the "plunge" and stepped in first.


Before we knew it all kinds of fun was being had! Jackson's favorite thing to do is to jump up and down in place several times followed by falling backwards onto his rear end. I think it looks like it hurts but he finds it hilarious!




A little while into pool time I told Nick we should make the Little Tikes slide end in the pool. He didn't think that was a good idea so we went back to watching the boys play. About 5 minutes later Tyler got out of the pool, pointed at the slide and then pointed at the pool. I swear that's a true story! The kid is a dare devil :)




Yesterday while the boys were playing in the pool I worked in my garden at the front of the house. When I left the water was nice and clean and when I came back it looked like this...


Apparently the pool was too close to some dirt this time!

**Yes, those are the same bathing suits as last year! Gotta love that BabyGap stuff runs big! The suits were big on the boys last summer, but perfect this summer!

Fun in the Sun!

We've been having terrible, rainy, dreary weather most of the week. It's gross. Yesterday I went into the basement to discover water gushing in through one of the corner walls and a small river running through the basement. Thankfully our basement is not finished, so nothing got ruined. Even better is I figured out what the problem was (after dashing out into the pouring rain a couple of times) and my quickly becoming handy husband was able to fix it last night. We've had even more rain today and I'm proud to say there is no new water in our basement! Hooray!

Anyway, all this rain had me reminiscing about the GORGEOUS weather we had just last week...

Last Thursday I met my sister and my friend Wendy and her son William at Deanna Rose Farmstead for some fun. The boys had a great time as always! We spent some considerable time at the little playground within the farmstead. I'm pretty sure the boys would have stayed on these "horses" all day if I'd let them!

Jackson is in gray, Tyler in blue and Chase in orange

Wendy had brought her stroller for William to sit in, but William didn't want to sit in it - he wanted to run around. The boys were fascinated by this single stroller and it's steering wheel! As soon as one boy jumped out the other two were trying to climb in.


Pray this terrible weather moves out by the end of the weekend! The March for Babies is on Sunday and we want nice weather!

Serious Spring Cuteness

The boys seem to be entering a phase where they actually enjoy having their picture taken. They even will giggle and say "cheese"! The other day I grabbed my camera to try to catch pictures of them blowing on dandelions and every time I tried to put my camera back they would all yell "more, more!" until I took the camera back outside and took more pictures of them. As a result, I snapped 104 pictures in about 30 minutes. Yikes! Don't worry, I'm not going to show them all to you - only some of the best :)

Speaking of pictures, I'm seriously considering buying a Digital SLR camera. Those of you that are hard core about your picture taking - what camera do you have and why do you love it? (I'm leaning towards the Canon Rebel.)

Jackson in Green, Tyler in Stripes and Chase in Brown

Random Bits of Life

It's been a fun filled few days here and there's still more fun to come! I could have broken each "event" into it's own blog post but then you would have been hearing about this stuff still late into next week. Instead this blog will contain a mini (emphasis on mini) blog about each of 3 "events".

Forward Facing!

This week, at just shy of 20 months old, we finally switched the boys car seats to the forward facing position. Legally speaking we could have switched them when they turned 1 as they were all over 20 pounds by then, but after reading up on some research and watching a frightening YouTube Clip that shows crash tests for kids who are RF vs those who are FF we decided to keep them RF a bit longer than "the norm".

It's been a cramped 20 months for Nick and myself, as in order to fit the three seats, rear facing in the back of our Jeep we had to have our own seats pulled almost as far forward as they could go. This wasn't as big of a deal to me as it was to my 6'3" husband. Now that the seats are forward facing our Jeep seems huge and I'm not as desperate to get a mini-van (although don't get me wrong, if someone offered me one I'd take it)!

The boys are loving their new view! They are so mesmerized by all that is going on around them that they forget to eat whatever snack I just handed them. I also hear "Ba!" (Bus) and "Cah!" (Car) a lot from the back seat.



Mr. Potato Head

Yesterday morning I noticed the Mr. Potato Head set in one of our closets. The boys hadn't had the chance to play with it yet, so I decided to give it a shot. First lesson of Mr. Potato Head play: only keep it out for short amounts of time and then place the set up out of reach. The pieces were EVERYWHERE last night!



Picnic on the Deck

I love this warmer weather and the freedom to eat on the deck that comes with it! Yesterday I was impressed with how quickly the boys were eating their PB&J sandwiches. That is until I noticed this...