Big Fun at the State Fair

What a fun (and exhausting!) day we’ve had today! This morning was cool and breezy, so we packed a diaper bag full of snacks, loaded the boys into the car and headed down to spend the day at the California State Fair. This year the theme is “Hollywood,” and there are a bunch of different flats and backdrops that you can play in/around and take your picture with. (This is the part where I should both warn you and apologize for the fact that this is going to be a very long and image-heavy blog today!). Mitch had gotten the boys dressed this morning, and although I initially groaned when I saw they were both wearing extremely similar orange shirts, it ended up being SUCH a great thing, and I could instantly find both of them whenever they started to wander. It did prompt one especially lame vendor to yell out at me that he’d give us a discount for having twins…um, we don’t, thanks.



The "Twins" (and their big feet!)


I just love this picture


We started out in the kids’ carnival area, and Sawyer kept telling me that he wanted to ride almost every little kiddy ride, but we decided to skip it for the time being, and headed instead to the free petting zoo area. The petting zoo was SO cool (and stinky, naturally). There were all kinds of animals – the usual goats, sheep, and chickens, but there were also deer, llamas and even little miniature kangaroos! Sawyer happily pet a baby goat, but once he saw one of the deer trying to eat the whole back off of Mitch’s shirt, he got a little nervous and wasn’t all that into the animals anymore. We did wander through the livestock barns though, and Sutton was pretty impressed with the baby pigs.




Eyeing the deer that just ate his Daddy's shirt



How the boys spent the rest of their time in the petting zoo



Sawyer digging in a giant play bin of corn


Sutton peeking over at some exotic fuzzy chickens


Making animal tracks in the sand with Mommy


This is the "ride" he wanted to go on the most!

Since Sutton hadn’t had a morning nap before we left, we wanted to hit up all the cool kids stuff first in case he pooped out and turned into Mr. Cranky Pants, so we headed over to “The Farm.” We wandered around and collected stamps in our farm passports (which we then turned in to the rewards center for a nice healthy snack of carrots, an apple and an orange). Sawyer spun the Kaiser prize wheel and won himself a squeezy orange stress toy (which Sutton promptly tried to eat). We stopped at a bunch of the little displays at the back of the fair, checked out at all kinds of bugs, saw some waterfalls and a snake in homage to Indiana Jones, and posed by some of the cheesy Hollywood backdrops. Sawyer attempted to do the Smokey the Bear fire safety school, but he lost his patience and didn’t really care about how or why a fireman might use an axe. Luckily for him, they gave him his Smokey the Bear bandana prize anyway. Really, I think all he wanted to do was ride the fire engine anyway.


Checking out a python...he was almost as freaked out as I was



Sitting near the waterfalls waiting for the other boys


The old fashioned fire engine was a big hit


Signs said "Keep Off," but Mr. Fireman said it was okay :)


Peeking out of Spongebob's Pineapple House



Sutton about to get eaten by a triceratops in Jurrasic Park


We didn’t go through any of the exhibit buildings, with the exception of the “Bats, Rats, & Cats” (fur and feathers) room. They liked to look at all of the fuzzy animals, but Sutton got the most enjoyment out of trying to take a piece of food from the feeding dish of practically every rabbit cage in the room. Sawyer quickly discovered that he could open all of the rabbit cages, and he thought that was the most hysterical thing ever. Yikes! I had to gently remind him in front of a dozen people that just because we CAN do something, it doesn’t mean that we’re ALLOWED to. I could just picture the giant liberation spree as he would run around the room freeing all of the caged animals. Luckily he was distracted by the kittens, so I didn’t have to worry about the rabbits for too long. All-in-all we managed to keep the kids happy with snacks and ice cream long enough for us to get a pretty full day in before the kids were completely wasted, and we wrapped it up and headed home for naptime.


Sutton having a staring contest with the White Rabbit


The boys checking out some brand new baby quail


Sawyer living out his dream of "I ride a motorcycle when I get big" at the police booth, lights flashing and all. He also got fingerprinted for free, which was nice, but Sutton didn't have the patience.

'Sgusting Messes

From time to time I like to change things up a bit, so tonight I decided to let Mitch write the family blog for once. Besides, I have NO idea how the kids got this way...I just got to see the amazingly filthy aftermath when Mitch passed me a camera full of these wonderfully messy pictures. Enjoy...

Today the kids discovered the other side of the house. The side that is all dirt. This will be future RV parking, but for now it is over 600sq feet of dirt, dirt, and more dirt. Sutton started the mess by finding the empty swimming pool and proceeding to put handfulls of dirt in it. He then climed in and had a good old time dumping more handfuls of dirt all over himself. By this time all I could do was to get the camera and watch. Sawyer joined in a few minutes later with his scoop tractor. I guess now it's time to build the fence!


This pool was clean a few minutes ago. So was this kid.



A large group of honking geese flew directly overhead about 20-25 feet off the ground.



Joining in the fun with my scoop tractor.


I'm having fun daddy!


Bath time!

Yum, Yum, Strawberries!

Yesterday I mentioned to Mitch that Holly and I might go take the kids strawberry picking next week, and he was intrigued and wanted to go check the place out with the kids too. So this morning we packed up the kids and went to High Hand Nursery in Loomis to pick some strawberries. I'd never been to this place before, and I'm really glad that I had a chance to go there and check it out. The nursery is absolutely gorgeous (some day when the boys don't need all that grass to play football on, those lovely winding pathways will be in my backyard too!), and before we even picked any berries the boys had fun running around all the paths and looking at all the different kinds of flowers and water features.

In the back of the nursery they have a good sized area where they let the kids pick little buckets of strawberries for free. There was no one there when we got there (although there were quite a few people there by the time we left), and there were plenty of strawberries to be had. Sawyer got the hang of picking the berries rather quickly, and he'd pick one or two, put them in his basket and then eat them. Two more in the bucket and then time to eat again, over and over again. Once Sutton realized there were strawberries growing on the plants, he pretty much just decided to eat his way down the row, ripe or not, green stuff and all. The kid was definitely in his element! Later on we stopped to look at the nursery's impressive koi pond, and all the fish gathered right underneath where the boys were looking down on them just a short distance away...and then one HUGE fish jumped out of the water and got really close to Sawyer's face and splashed him a little bit. He jumped back about a mile and was pretty much leery of any more koi for the rest of the time we were there. It was actually pretty hysterical to watch. We all had some really nice family-time there, so two thumbs up to Holly for mentioning it to me, and now it's time to plan another day to go back there!

Friday & Saturday

Aside from running a few different errands, we have mostly been having a relatively low-key past couple of days, and it has been really nice to just hang out and spend some time with the boys. On Friday we skipped our usual Panera breakfast since we're no longer attending gymnastics (did I mention that before? Sawyer is pretty much burnt out on gym right now.), and instead we had Hattie and Holly over to our house for a save-your-cash-and-make-your-own-muffins-and-iced-tea party. It was actually a really nice change not to have to rush out anywhere, and we enjoyed sitting around the yard and the house and letting the kids run wild.



Hattie testing out the new slide


Sawyer playing doctor


"Rawrrr!" Sawyer the shark and Hattie the giraffe


Swing time with Mommy

This morning Mitch took Sawyer to get a haircut. We decided to keep it longer, but just to trim it and clean it up a bit. I was worried that Sawyer would come home with some wacky haircut, but Mitch did a good job of telling them how to cut it, and he didn't even go for the spikey option (which is adorable, but requires me to chase my child for a minimum of 10 exra minutes every morning with hair gel to get it looking like it's supposed to). They took a Jeep ride together, which is one of Sawyer's most favorite things to do, and went to the car wash, which he always begs to go to, but usually spends the first few minutes of it telling you how scary it is. He came home very proud of his new hair style, and I managed to capture a few cute pictures of it before he went outside to "go working with Daddy." I learned today that if you tell him to say "Wackadoodle" instead of "Cheese," he will start laughing his head off, and then you can actually get some natural looking smiles out of him for a change. Oh, but don't expect that he won't spend the next three hours yelling "WACKADOODLE!" to any and everyone in Walmart. Oops...ha ha!


The new 'do


"Wackadoodle!!!"


Break Time from Workin' Hard


He sure loves his Daddy XOXO

Things to Make You Popular

Sawyer and Sutton had SUCH a great time at Traci's house today. This afternoon they received a visit from The Busy Bus, a convereted 40' long city bus that now houses an entire tumbling center for preschoolers. This thing was seriously SO super awesome, and when I went to pick Sawyer up, he was completely exhausted from running around for a couple of hours inside this thing. He said "Mommy, bus reallllly fun and...[wiping his sweaty hair off of his forehead] realllllly toasty!" He climbed up to the top of the rock wall all by himself and then promptly announced that he needed to come home and draw a picture of himself climbing a rock wall. Actually, his drawing DOES kind of look like a rock wall, amazingly. I'm sure that since I had to pay $15 a kid for them to go on it today, it's probably too expensive to rent for his next birthday party, but it sure sounds like a cool idea. Traci said that Sutton took awhile to warm up to the idea, but once he did, he couldn't get enough of jumping on the trampoline.

Interior of the Busy Bus

Picture from the Busy Bus website just to show it's huge purple-ness...no, there weren't flags and/or wheelchairs at Traci's house today :P

Sawyer at the top of the rock wall

Crashing out in the ball pit

We've been outside playing on our new swingset every night until it's almost dark, and the boys are definitely loving their new play structure and fort. It's getting to be a struggle to get them off of it and into the house for bath time! It will be even nicer once Sutton's bucket swing that I ordered comes in, because he LOVES to swing, but he doesn't really want to have to hang on while he's doing it, meaning that it's really only safe for him to swing on your lap right now. I have to admit that he makes me incredibly nervous when he's on the platform of the playhouse right now. It's open on too many sides, and he just doesn't really "get it" that he can just fall right off of it, so I'm constantly running from one side to the other in case I have to catch him. Despite my paranoia, the boys are having a really great time though, and we've become incredibly popular with all of the neighbor kids as well. Tonight we had Blake and Jordan from down the street over for awhile to play...it's starting to seem like I'm never going to get an evening alone outside with my family without other kids begging to come over and play. I guess we do have a pretty fun backyard though, so I should just get used to it!

Sutton showing off his sliding skills

This kiddo loves to swing!

Helping Daddy with the finishing touches

Swinging will always make Sutton flash his happy smile

We've had some really pretty sunsets lately

Christmas in August

Christmas 2008 is coming in just 141 days, 3 hours, 22 Minutes and 4 Seconds...and I am already DONE shopping for the boys. I've also finished shopping for 8 days of Hanukkah presents for each of them, as well as new Lightning McQueen stockings and the goodies to fill them. Truly, it's been a worry of mine that with two crazy boys underfoot I was never going to get all of my holiday shopping done this year. When you add up how many presents I have to buy between the boys dual Christmas/Hanukkah and all the rest of my and Mitch's families it's crazy (and a little overwhelming!). We decided in January that we should start holiday shopping right away so that we could spread the cost out over the months, and in hopes that it would give us more time to find some really cool things at good sales and deals. I never actually thought that I would be done with the boys in August though! I still have a zillion family members to shop for, but at least I can relax a little bit and switch my focus to shopping more for the adults and less for the kids right during the holiday crunch time. Oh, and we still want to get them a really cool bigger present from the Jolly Old Guy in Red, but clearly we still have lots of time for that.

But, even better than the fact that the boy's shopping is mostly done is this - I've spent less than $50 out-of-pocket on all of their presents (and they're getting some cool stuff too!)! I've gotten lucky and stumbled across some really incredible deals, but over the past couple of years I've also gotten pretty good at locating awesome sales and super discounts. So, I thought I'd blog about the best-of-the-best deals that I thought some of you might want to know about too (come on, you ALL know how you pester me to tell you how and where I find such crazy deals!). The blog is called "Bargain Hunting Mama," and a link can be found in that nifty little box at the top of this page (or go to www.bargainhuntingmama.blogspot.com). Hopefully you'll enjoy my little obsession, erm, hobby (and save yourself some pennies too!)!

Thank You Grandma!

Mitch and Erik got most of the swing set built today, and it looks awesome (thanks again for helping, Erik!)! The boys and the next door neighbor boy, Nathan, already started to break it in this evening. They really seem to love it, and I'm sure they're going to enjoy it for a very long time. I really want to say a heartfelt thank you on behalf of all of us to Grandma Carol (and late Great Grandma Claire) for pitching in to help us buy this for the little munchkins. It most definitely makes our backyard feel more complete, and the boys are going to have many adventures playing in their clubhouse.

The boys had a long day of being cooped up indoors, but we had cousin Stella and Hattie here to help keep them occupied. Sawyer really wanted to go out there and help Daddy and "Aiwick," and he kept asking every five minutes if he could go outside, but all-in-all he did really well with repeatedly being told "not yet, sweetie." S&S both had strange naps today since we were all off schedule from last night (Sawyer went down at 4:30 and Sutton slept in the morning and then again for about 45 miuntes at 6:00), so we just now got Sawyer to bed at almost 9:30 after watching a little Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. I'm thouroughly exhausted (and still have work to do tonight!), so here's a couple of pictures to do the talking for me. It was hard to get a good shot since the sun was setting right behind the swingset, but I think the grin on Sawyer's face still says it all.

Visit From Papa

Today Papa Ron and Pete came down for a visit, so I took the boys down to my parents' house while Mitch started to do a little work on the swingset. Sutton had a nice early morning nap, so I was fairly certain that he wasn't going to cause me any problems for the rest of the afternoon. Sawyer, I hoped, would sleep in the car on the way down. No such luck, unfortunately. Sutton pooped the minute we got onto the freeway, so aside from stinking up the car for the rest of us, he was also hollering out every few minutes to let me know he'd done so...which in turn kept waking up Sawyer every time he was alllllmost asleep. He kept yelling out at him "Shhh, brother. Keep quiet!" Since baby brother still has no idea what's actually going on, there was no nap to be had for the big guy.

We got there, walked into the backyard where Papa and Pete were standing with my mom, and Sutton took one look over at people he didn't recognize and immediately dropped to the ground grabbing onto my legs and crying his eyes out. Off to a good start. Sawyer also didn't really want much to do with them until they sat down at the table together for awhile, then he really warmed back up to them and had lots of "Papa, look at me...look at this..." moments with him. Papa brought us a bunch of blackberries that he picked down by the river, so I might attempt to make a cobbler tomorrow with Lesley's famous recipe (that I've never attempted, I might add) if I can get the boys to nap well enough.

Mitch came down and joined us right around the time we fired up the barbecue, and we all had a nice dinner. It hasn't really even been that long since my family all got together last, but it always feels nice to sit down with everyone and chat. We ended the evening with some strawberry shortcake and stomach aches. Well, actually it ended with me trying to wrestle Sawyer into bed because, although he was exhausted, he still mustered up enough energy to get into a hysterical crying fit over the necessity of watching "one Monkey George" before he actually went to bed. Strawberry shortcake sounds like a nicer ending though ;)

Tomorrow we're going to attempt the major phase of building on this monstrous swingset. Erik is coming up to help, and I think that Jessi and Stella are going to come hang out too while the guys work. It's always nicer to hang out in the house with both kids when I have company and another grown up to talk to, so that'll be nice (hint, hint, Holly should bring Hattie and come too :P). Hopefully we'll get a good chunk of the work done if not finished. I don't know though...there's A LOT of work to be done. The bucket swing I ordered still won't be in for another 7-10 days, so Sutton will still have to wait awhile to swing anyway. I know that both of the boys are going to absolutely love it though, so it will all be worth it in the end.



Sutton being attacked by the Tickle Monster


Sawyer (is actually on time-out here)


Mr. Blue Eyes


Sawyer loves his new hat


This kid loves to pose for the camera. I should take him to Picture People.


Sawyer giving a kiss to Stella Bella


I absolutely adore this little girl