What we've been up to...

Some random tidbits of our live these past few months...

Heading to church this past weekend...actually early - well NOT late - for once, so we had time to snap a picture! {Colton (6 months), Weston (26 months), Jackson (4)}

Weston is in the midst of the terrible twos but honestly, when its one on one, he's the best child.  He listens & obey, and doesn't whine.  It makes me wonder if his disobedience and whininess is his way of getting attention from me when its all three boys?  His smile is contagious and full of mischief.

Jackson goes to school on Fridays so its just me and the little boys.  Its such a treat to watch Westie be the big brother and not be overshadowed by Jackson.  I try to do lots of fun stuff on Fridays so he gets some special things that are just for him (and Colt, who is just along for the ride).

BFF Alisha & her family were in town last weekend for the Clemson game.  We got to spend Friday together and these two little buddies would totally be BFFs.  They had the best time playing together, and Alisha & I loved catching up.  She is expecting baby girl in less than 4 weeks!!

On October 3, Ben turned 34.  Yes, he is 1 year about from being halfway to 40.  Yikes!  The boys and I made him a red velvet "Stars Wars" cake.  The canyon in the middle of the cake was totally planned, absolutely not due to impatience on waiting the cake to cool before removing it from the pan.

His daddy has taught him to bring me flowers; its is the sweetest thing in the world.  He is teaching Westie to do the same!

Jackson goes to Awanna's on Wednesday nights and its been so rewarding watching him memorize bible verses and really kinda get it when we talk about morals and whats right and wrong and how to treat others.  He loves to rock his Cubbies vest, the first week he wore it everywhere -- preschool, yard-saling, playdates, you name it.

I unfroze my gym membership, and kicked my own butt last week at the gym.  After 30 minutes on the elliptical and running one 12-minute mile, I was beat.  But it felt so good to work out.  My goal is at least twice a week to get back in the swing of things.

With the amazing weather the past few weekends, we've had lots of lazy Saturdays on the back deck.  Colty loves snuggling in the air chair.

Boys love boxes!  These three boxes entertained my crew for an hour.

Westie came and jumped in the shower with me one morning, and stayed in once I got out and played forever.  (Sorry water conservationists).  Both of my big boys love "big boy showers" and I've got them trained to get in together and Jackson washes Westie's hair and makes sure he washes his parts.  He even helps wipe his eyes when they get soapy.  I love watching them help each other.

We have been to SO many birthday parties this fall.  I think that half of J's class has had parties this fall.  Most recently, it was a horse party at a local farm and he loved riding the pony and climbing on the pasture fence.

These three really do enjoy each other.  Of course they always fight over who gets to kiss on Colton, and who gets to hold his hand, but there are worse things they could be fighting over.  Who ever knew I'd love being a mommy to three little boys as much as I truly love it?

Jackson busted his chin open on the deck steps this past Sunday.  Ben raced him to Doctor's Care with 5 minutes to spare before they closed, hoping to avoid the ER.  They couldn't sedate or restrain him for stitches in their office so they ended up at the ER anyways.  Turns out they glued the laceration rather than giving him stitches.
{No pictures since it was such drama!!!}

Mom & Bruce came to play one afternoon, and the boys had a blast.  Earlier that morning, Weston had pulled out an entire roll of aluminum foil so rather than try to re-roll it I just made the boys into robots.  Cheap entertainment!

Colton will be 6 months old on Oct. 27 and he is FINALLy sleeping thru the night in his own crib (most of the time...)  He gives me 9 straight hours of zzz's as of this week and it has been glorious!  Of course, if he wakes up to feed during the night, I just bring him back to our bed and enjoy the snuggles.  He started veggies at 5 months and has been a fan so far.  This boy likes to eat, he wants to be with us at the table and reaches for our food whenever he gets a chance.  He's sitting up, too, and trying to grab everything in sight.  This honeymoon is almost over, I can tell already.

Of course, during my first sewing project in months (Halloween costumes), my sewing machine conks out.  Even though its 2 years old, it was still warrantied so I exchanged and upgraded to an embroidery machine.  Still learning what its all about but my first project was embroidering a hoody for Westie.

I plan to try to keep my blog better updated, so at least I can document this crazy little season of life we are in right now.  However, its easier said than done!!

Family of 5 - will camp!

We ventured to the mountains a couple weekends ago for our first family camping trip in over 3 years.  Last time we went, it was just Ben & I, with sweet little 16 month old Jackson & Bella.  Now, it was Ben & I and our 3 sons, and poor Bella got left at home.

Let me just say that we had a blast.  The weather was gorgeous, the campsite was perfect and the kids were really good sports.  No one got hurt, no one got poison ivy and the kids slept really well both nights.  Not much more that we could ask for!

After spending the better half of the day loading up the truck, we headed up to Table Rock State Park with what looked like a month's worth of crap.  {The only thing that took longer than loading up all that gear and unloading it}  

The kids had the best time jumping from air mattress to air mattress in the "back room" of our tent.  The "front room" served as a mudroom to house all of our bags, shoes, diaper stash, etc.  3 kids sure do require quite a bit of stuff.  And they loved the campfire treats :)

The real highlight of the trip was the mega-swing that Ben & Kyle constructed.  Reliving their childhood, they managed to rig up our air-chair into a pretty amazing swing.  The highlight was definitely when we were packing up and they couldn't get the rope down from the tree....so Ben decided to scale the tree like a koala bear.  Here's proof:

Saturday we hung out at the state park, the guys fished while Abby & I let the kids play on the shore of the lake & at the playground.  We ended our afternoon with a paddle boat outing, which I throughly enjoyed, considering I sat on the back while Ben got to paddle our little crew around the lake.  Despite his complaining, I think he had fun too :)

We spent the rest of the weekend eating, exploring and entertaining.  These kiddos do so well together and that makes it so much easier for us to enjoy our weekend!  We can't wait to go back in the Spring!

Reflection

This quote from C.S. Lewis has been on my heart today:

"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is mean by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far to easily pleased."

Where am I settling?

Labor Day 2013

We made a long overdue trip down to Georgia to visit Ben's parents over Labor Day.  We always have the best time every time we go down there.  There is never a shortage of fun things to do.

The drive itself wasn't exactly a pleasure.  6 hours in the car with 3 kiddos is never really fun, and even with a DVD player, iPad and audio books, the drive was bearable at best.  I instituted the "Prize Bell" incentive system, where both Jackson & Weston each got 2 clothespins with their pictures on them clipped to the visor.  They lose a clothespin if they yelled, kicked, argued, touched the DVD player, etc.  The Prize Bell would 'go off' {as in me saying "ding-ding-ding"} every 45 minutes or so and if they had at least 1 clothespin still up, they'd get a prize.  This little trick worked wonders and really gave them something to anticipate.  

Once we made it to Brunswick, we stayed pretty busy!  After watching the Wolfpack win their season opener on Saturday, we went on in the boat and both big boys had a blast tubing.  We were so proud of Weston for wanting to give it a try.

The high-light of the entire day, though, was riding in the back of the Ben's truck from the dock back to the house.  Pure joy!

The next day, we headed to Jekyll Island to squeeze in some beach time.  Both Jackson and Weston LOVED playing in the ocean.  Colton got his feet in the sand for the first time and was his usual chill self!

Weston was clearly worn out!

On Monday, we spent the morning hanging out on St. Simons.  It was beautiful weather and just enough of a breeze.  

Monday night, we hit up the best little hole-in-the-wall seafood place nearby Brunswick.  We have eaten there once and this time it did not disappoint.  And these 3 were big fans too!

We had a fantastic trip to Georgia and always leave saying "We should go down there more often!"  

First Day of School (2013-2014)

While the boys started back preschool several weeks ago, my reluctant-to-blog self never posted.  So here's the overdue run-down.

Jackson started 4K and was over the moon excited to finally be the "big kids" at school.  He was eager to be in Mrs. Kim's class and could hardly wait.  He came home from school on day 1 explaining to me that "R-E-D spells red, Mom.  Say R...E....D....that's how you spell red." I was thrilled about his enthusiasm since it has been like pulling teeth the get him to tell me what he learned at school in the past.

Weston's first day of school went pretty much like every other day of the past year has gone.  He cried when he realized that I was leaving him at school, but within 30 seconds, the tears were dry and he was having a ball.  Due to his extremely late birthday, we opted to keep him back so that he'd be one of the older ones in his grade rather than the youngest.  {The grade-level cutoff is September 1 and having a mid-August birthday made him one of the youngest}  So this year, Weston's in 1K, and has the same teachers & classroom, just new classmates :)  Despite his initial clinginess, he had a great first day and was very puzzled during circle time when the counting stopped at 5 (instead of 20) and the songs were shortened for the newbies.

And sweet little Colton is looking forward to having his Mommy all to himself a few days a week.  

August Randoms

A little snippit of our August fun...

Colton's first ear infection...love our pediatrician and so thankful for the super-fast same day appointments they offer.

A poster at the pedi's office....so true!

One of our many trips to Costco.  Bravely rolling three deep :)

Colton's 2nd doctor's appointment within 2 weeks...this time: thrush (thank you amoxicillian)

A text I received from Weston's teacher last week.  Guilty as charged.

Poor Colton...he falls victim to Jackson's costume obsession.  But is such a good sport.

And here is Jackson's mullet.  He is in dire need of a haircut but we just keep putting it off.  At least we can laugh about it for the time being :)

Guess who has ditched his training wheels??  We are so proud of our big boy!  Still a little apprehensive but doing great!

Sweet friends at the pool.  Jackson is thisclose to swimming independently (he swims underwater for about 8 feet).  He loves the diving board and can do a front flip off of it.  Weston has improved 200% in the water and jumps off the diving board in his puddle jumper and is much more confident and comfortable than he was a month ago.

Weston is slightly obsessed with "Mickey Mousey".  He let me push him around Costco with his buddy since Jackson was at school and there was an empty seat beside him.  Surprisingly, no meltdown when we left Mickey at the register!

Weston's 2nd Birthday

I still can't get my head around the fact that Westie turned two last week.  How did that happen?

We have seriously made August a month-long celebration for sweet West.  His actual birthday was on August 17 and we kicked off the day with a trip to Waffle House for breakfast.

After breakfast - or technically "brunch", although I don't think WH makes the distinction - Ben took the big boys to see Planes with Kyle & Emmerson.  It was Weston's first movie-theater experience; other than a dirty diaper, 2 self-declared intermissions and loads of popcorn and bootlegged M&Ms, I think it went fairly well.

After dinner, we feasted on birthday cake and let Weston open his presents.

This past weekend, we had Weston's party.  We had a joint party with our neighbor Carson, who turned two a week earlier than Westie did.  We could not have asked for better weather...mid-80s, breezy and sunshine.  Per West's request, we had a Mickey Mouse party, and Poppy & Gigi were kind enough to rent us a bounce house for his party.  And Uncle Mikey & Aunt Jenn came in town that weekend too, so that was a real treat!

Being crafty, I couldn't possibly let a party slip by without at least a little bit of Pinterest inspiration.

Everyone wore the Mickey party hats, which turned out pretty cute :)

 Weston's mackin' on all the girlies :)

We caught Westie red-handed (literally) swiping some icing. 

After a day full of fun, friends & family, we had a relaxing evening.  Sunday, Mike & Jenn came to church with us before heading back to Raleigh.

Thanks to everyone for helping us celebrate sweet Weston's birthday!