Mother's Day Fun in the Sun!

Mitch sent me a gorgeous bouquet of tulips



The boys made me picture frames at Traci's house



Sawyer made me this cute handprint flower card and drew a picture of me. I love that he tried really hard to trace the letters to sign his name all by himself :)


After having such a busy Saturday, I chose to spend Sunday in the laziest way possible - relaxing in the sun and playing in the backyard. We took a quick trip to Target and picked up a Slip-N-Slide for the boys and came home and set up our own mini water park in the backyard. We put out the fire hydrant sprinkler that Stella got Sutton for his birthday, blew up the mini pool, set out the Slip-N-Slide and hooked up the boys' water slide (which later ended up IN the pool with them). My water-loving boys were in heaven! The weather was a toasty 90 degrees, so it was a perfect contrast to all that chilly hose water!

Mitch was having just as much fun on the Slip-N-Slide as the boys were! He definitely made the biggest splash!

Daddy giving Sutton a push down the Slip-N-Slide.

Proof that I tried the water slide too! (I warned you all before that I may possibly be the palest person you'll ever meet LOL! I am quite a bit more tan now that I spent the whole day in the sun though - yay!)

Happy Birthday Papa Ron!

Today we drove about 365 miles round trip to visit Papa Ron at his house near Redding. He just celebrated his 77th birthday on Wednesday, so the boys and I made him some cute popsicle stick picture frames for his birthday present. The boys did really well on the drive, considering it was a long drive, and it was really hot today. It took us a little over 2 hours to get there and around 3 hours to come home since we were towing Papa's old fishing boat back to my parent's house. We had a nice time hanging out and visiting with Papa, his girlfriend, Pete, and her cockapoo puppy, Angel. Aunt Debby and cousin Kevin were there too since they had driven up yesterday and spent the night. The boys had a lot of fun playing in Papa's backyard, but they especially liked playing inside of the fishing boat. We're looking forward to some fun weekend fishing trips in our future!

Where there's water, you'll find Sutton! He's checking out the really cool birdbath that Papa made.

Sawyer had a blast spending time with Auntie Krissy today. He must have told us "I love Krista berry, berry much" about a thousand times on the drive home!

Gigi and Sawyer on a lizard hunt. Sawyer was kind of scared of the lizards (he takes after his Mama!), but Sutton thought that chasing the lizards and scaring them was lots of fun.

One of the little guys getting some sunshine on a cinder block

Papa opening his birthday present from all of us - a new digital camera and printer station

Sawyer in the driver's seat of the boat, all ready to go fishing!

Getting ready to load up the boat for the long drive home

Mother's Day Interview with Sawyer

My Mom

I really love it when my mom wears a mask and plays cars with me.

My mom likes to wear pink shirts.

My mom always tells me “I love you.”

The best thing she does is go to bed.

It makes her happy when I’m cute and I say “I love you.”

My mom loves to relax and settle down with a blankie and a bear…

I like it when she takes a nap with me.

The best thing she cooks is burgers!

When my mom shops she likes to buy cars for me.

My mom’s favorite household chore is going to work and clean the toys up.

My mom’s favorite TV show is Madagascar.

If she could go on a trip, she would go on a rollercoaster with me.

I love my mom because I love her the whole best.

Cupcake Cuteness

A couple of weeks ago I was visiting one of my favorite blogs, The Un-Gourmet, looking for ideas on what to make for dinner (you HAVE to check out her yummy recipes!), and I noticed that she was having a giveaway contest to celebrate her 100th blog post. The prize was one of the cupcake pillows from WhiMSy Love that I have been coveting for awhile now, so I took a chance and entered the drawing - and WON! Yay!!!

I got the pillow in the mail on Saturday afternoon, and as soon as Sawyer saw it his eyes lit up, and he immediately asked me "It's for me, Mommy?" I think he's been a little bummed since it seems like all the fun stuff we've gotten lately has been for Sutton since he just had his birthday. How could I say no to this happy face?

He has officially adopted the cupcake pillow as his own...I'm just glad he seems to like it as much as I do :)

Today, the cupcake is taking a VIP ride in his manly blue doll stroller.

"I will pretend to sleep, and you take a picture of me..."

I want to say a huge Thank You! to Kim at The UnGourmet and Nikki at WhiMSy Love for sending some adorable cupcake cheer to our house and for brightening up our rainy weekend! :)

Garage Sale Day

Mitch and I spent the past two weeks immersed in getting our stuff ready for Lincoln Crossing's 1st Annual Community Garage Sale, and we were really excited to get rid of some of our old stuff and make a little money in the process. The boys packed their overnight bags and headed down to spend the night with Gigi and Granddad so that we could work without four extra little hands "helping" us. Unfortunately, the weather didn't exactly cooperate with our plan. I had kept a close eye on the weather all week as rain predictions for Saturday morning went from 30% to 80% and back again. Despite the pouring rain on Friday night, KCRA's Mark Finan repeatedly told me (at both 5:00 and 11:00!) that the daylight hours on Saturday would remain dry, so we woke up before sunrise on Saturday morning to set up our stuff.

We joked all morning that we should have kept a tally sheet, because at least a dozen people made the comment "You're SO organized!" One neighbor lady who was just out for a walk had to stop and comment on how well organized she thought we were. After awhile we started the joke became about how messy and bad the other sales must look since ours really wasn't that impressive. People really seemed to appreciate that I wrote the sizes of all the clothing on its price tag though - it really keeps everything neater since people don't have to dig through everything to find sizes.

Around 9:00 it started sprinkling pretty heavily...

and by 10:00 we brought all of the soaking wet clothes inside and called it a day. I should mention that I have totally lost my faith in Mark Finan's forecast ;)

It was kind of disappointing to put all that effort into only 3 hours of sale, but we'll probably try it again sometime next month. In the end we managed to make $170 that we didn't have before, and we don't have to store our old water cooler in our garage anymore. That alone was worth it! Having to lay ALL of those clothes out in our living room to dry before being boxed up again was a gigantic pain in the butt though!

Meanwhile, back at Gigi and Granddad's house...

The boys were having some FUN in the rain of their own.

Time to wash off all that muddy rainwater in the clawfoot tub!

Now that all of those boxes of garage sale stuff have been cleared out of my bedroom, I've finally set up that sewing corner I've been dreaming about. It still needs a lot of work, but it's a start, and I'm soooo excited to have a space to work!

Monday

Yesterday was really windy here, so I was having a tough time convincing the boys to go outside, even though it was sunny. They usually love being outside, so after about an hour of trying unsuccessfully to push them out into the backyard I finally gave in to their pleas of "it's sooooo freezin' out here!" (it was like 70 degrees!) and let them stay indoors to play with the art supplies that Grandma and Grandpa had given Sutton for his birthday.

First we played with the vehicle lacing cards. Neither of the boys really understands the concept of lacing around the path yet, but they both loved putting the laces through random holes and pulling them through. Definitely a good motor skills activity, and they'll eventually get the hang of doing it the correct way. Sutton kept saying "I doing it! School bus!"

Then we played with the new double-sided markers (so cool!) and the vehicle and dinosaur stamp sets. The boys both love "doing stampers," and they especially liked the designs of the vehicle stamps, but since they are mounted only on flat foam they are a little difficult for them to handle correctly. They had much more success using the dinosaur stamps since they're mounted on wood blocks and have something more substantial to hold on to. The stamps were a definite hit - they played with them for almost an hour!

Sutton made a jungle safari picture with his new foam animal stickers

Sawyer and I dyed some pasta for necklaces. I've never done this before, and was worried that the food coloring would rub off the pasta, but it didn't - yay! Mix a couple of drops of liquid food coloring in a cup with a tablespoon or two of rubbing alcohol, add the pasta, stir well and then lay in a single layer on a paper plate for about 1/2 an hour to dry.

I had no idea how interested in this activity Sawyer would be! He threaded the beads and made a necklace, but he was much more interested in scooping up all the colored pasta with every spoon and small cup he could find. Eventually I put out a tray and just let him go to town doing whatever he wanted to with it (aside from eating it or getting it all over the floor!). He played with the pasta for over an hour too - it was definitely a good day for staying focused on our activites!



Eventually all my nicely sorted pasta was one big colorful rainbow pile on a cookie sheet filled with cups, spoons and a miniature tractor.

He thought it was soooo funny that he could hang his necklace from his ears! "Take a picture of me, Mom. It's so cutie."

Our very first ripe strawberry is ready to be picked!

The first tiny tentative taste. He was incredibly excited to be eating a strawberry from the garden since he's been checking on it several times a day to see if it was ready yet, but he still wasn't sure it was going to taste okay since it came from the garden and not the store.

Yup, it's good! Time to shove the rest of it in!

Sawyer dressed me up - pink headband, six dandelions in my hair and two pasta necklaces. I make this look good lol

Here you can see just how windy it was outside. This is the bubble maker that Stella got Sutton for his birthday, and it is AWESOME! Our yard was literally swirling with hundreds upon hundreds of bubbles dancing in the wind. Yes, I still love bubbles as much as my kids do :)

Sunday Funday

We started this morning off with a breakfast of some of the most delicious banana cake I've ever tasted. Seriously. I'm not usually all that into banana stuff, but this was definitely an exception. I posted the recipe over at MonkeyGeorge if anyone wants to try it. I'm pretty sure that the reason it's so awesome is because Sawyer "helped me" finish it last night by slathering about half a jar of vanilla frosting all over it...it's a complete sugar rush, but sooooo good!

This afternoon we went to Wacky Tacky for a 3rd birthday party for the boys' friend, Hannah. Wacky Tacky is a gigantic multi-level indoor play place, sort of like a McDonald's playground on tons of steroids. It was great because Sutton could navigate all the different areas by himself without needing too much assistance, and there was plenty of head room for me to stand up as I tagged along with him. They have an area set up with a bunch of brightly colored air cannons circling over a ball pit. The kids are to grab a basket down in the pit and collect the soft foam balls and then climb up to the next level to load and shoot their cannon (which gets shot back down into the pit again). It's all very cool and lots of fun! The boys are definitely the appropriate age to really enjoy this place, so I predict some mornings at Wacky Tacky in our future - especially once the summer heat hits us in a couple of months!

Sutton at the air guns - once he got over the fact that they're kind of loud, he LOVED it!

Mr. Itchy Trigger Finger - I couldn't reload the gun fast enough for him!

Hanging out with Daddy in the ball pit

The balloon clown made him a really lame hat, and he was very proud of it for about two minutes.

Waiting patiently for pizza, cake, and the highlight of the day - a tiny bit of orange soda!

We stopped at the park on our way home, hoping that the boys might burn off the rest of their sugar rush. It definitely worked - both of them were exhausted and went to bed nicely!

Saw was laughing at himself saying "I was just kidding you, Mom." I have no idea what he was supposed to be kidding me about, but apparently it was hysterical. :)

Doing manly work at the construction site

"I swinga yooou, Mommy"

Philosophizing about the differences between teeny rocks and pebbles