Monday Mayhem - What a weekend!

We had an INTERESTING weekend, to say the least. Nothing really went as planned. We started out with an impromptu date night on Friday - rock climbing again, which was AWESOME. Big thanks to Leanne for watching the kids so we could get away. Saturday morning I had a long run, which was miserable and shorter than I would have liked. Then we went boating/camping with our neighbors. This is where it got interesting of course.

Summer doesn't like boat rides. No idea how this happened, I swear she can't be our kid. We talked about it towards the end of the week (That we were going on a boat, that she liked boats, and that she WOULD NOT CRY). She still cried of course. Something about a little 2.5 year old saying "No thank you! I want out" as we're motoring away from the dock is hilarious. Once we got out of the marina, she was happy enough looking at birds and such. But the minute we started speeding up, she hid her little face and cried. Between this and the whole diva thing, I swear she can't be mine. Except that I was there when she was born!
Garrett, on the other hand, was on cloud nine the whole time. Boating, camping and Xander = Garrett's most favorite things. I find it endlessly awesome that these boys are best friends.


We arrived and everyone set up camp . . .
While they worked, I took the kids to play in the water. Really, really tough job let me tell you.

During the day, it was FABULOUS. Everyone was so happy playing together.

And when we were done playing the water we came to camp for some leisure time.
Summer played in X and Logan's doggie tent.
And did girlie things with Miss Jess.
Meanwhile, the boys alternated between eating and playing (as demonstrated by G and Logan)

When the sun went down, the bugs started coming out and that's when things got a little less fun. We got eaten alive, but I don't think we realized the EXTENT until today.

The boys getting ready for an evening boat ride (Summer and I stayed at camp in hopes of getting her to fall asleep. What a joke on me that turned out to be).


Afterward, it was smores by the fire. My family is so crazy. This picture sums them up perfectly - Brad is humoring me, Summer is being a goof ball, and Garrett is acting like a mini-teenager. Gotta love them!


Up to this point, things were fun. Bed time is where it started to get out of control. Garrett went to sleep, but Summer refused to. At 11pm, after various attempts and efforts to get her to sleep, we finally gave in and just took her back home. I remember going though this with Garrett and knowing he would fall asleep . . . with Summer, I really don't know that she would have. She was totally exhausted and on her way to staying up all night long. In the end, we didn't miss out on that much-Brad went back to stay with Garrett and the Shumans, and as soon as everyone was awake they came home due to the bugs.

Sunday was AWESOME. Brad took a nap after they got back. I put away the gear in less than 20 minutes--I love this new organized thing, it was so easy to clean up and put things away. I took the kids and our new little neighbor to fly kites, and then we headed to the playground in our community for a little while.



Then, as if that wasn't enough fun for one weekend, we had an impromptu movie date with our little neighbors Brady and Gracie. They were all engrossed by The Ant Bully--it was actually pretty cute!

After an evening picnic outside, the kids went to bed and I went next door to squish on my neighbor's new baby girl. She is quite possibly the cutest little baby girl I have seen in ohhh, 2.5 years, I could just eat her up. So that was fun. Unfortunately Summer then had to go and be up half the night again. Lets hope this isn't a habit.

Happy Monday--I'm quite glad its almost over!

Random convo

Trying to get Summer dressed this morning and pulled out a pair of plain underwear for her. She looks at them and then looks at me. "No, no, no, KITTY UNDERWEAR." She loves her Hello Kitty Underwear. "I get it," she declares. Well, okay then. As I'm putting them on, she says "So pretty." Again, WHERE does she get this from?? Certainly not me!

Monday Mayhem - Nana and Pawpaw's Visit

Yes, I realize its Tuesday. Better late than never. We had a really, really fun weekend with Brad's granparents. They arrived Friday and left today. Garrett was off school Friday - Monday, so it was the PERFECT time for a visit! The boys started off the long weekend with a trip to the boat show on Thursday and had a great time. On Friday I went in to the office (Brad was home and we took advantage) before picking up Nana and Pawpaw at the airport.

We played outside a lot . . .
G is his hat (And Allison, he told Nana and Pawpaw all about how you bought him this hat when Neela ate the hat that they sent, lol!)
Summer in G's hat . . .
Summer being, well, Summer.
G and Nana playing soccer
Garrett wrote his name and drew a picture of Nana, Daddy, Mommy and Garrett.

We watched "How To Train Your Dragon" . . . Like me, Nana thought it was cute. The adult males were not impressed. Go figure. Kids loved it of course.We played with playdough.

We went to Classics By the Bay at Homestead Bayfront Park. Old cars make the men in this family go ga-ga. :-)
Summer was crabby and refused the photo op. I think pawpaw made a sour face because Summer was being so fussy (you can't see her but she's laying in front of them crying!)

Garrett had a "Campout with all his animals". He took this picture of his camping buddies all by himself the following morning.Garrett and Pawpaw had a jam session.
We went strawberry picking. The kids had SO MUCH FUN.

"Dis one?? I get it!" Silly Summie. Amazingly, she didn't eat any while we were picking.


And no trip to Knauss Berry is complete without climbing the tree.

Our haul.I gave a first-run try at making freezer jam without pectin. Its more of a fruit spread, as its runnier than jelly, but I prefer that to using pectin. Less is definitely more. We'll see how the kids like it and how well it keeps. We tried two recipes:
4 c strawberries + 1/2 cup sugar. Mash, blend, freeze
4 c strawberries + 1/2 cup honey. Mash, blend, freeze.
So far, the honey recipe has been the bigger hit. This morning they had it on their waffles instead of syrup, so that is a check in the win column for sure! We're making very good use of the chest freezer we bought with our Ch
Afterward we had a mini-picnic of sticky buns and milkshakes. YUM!

And we finished off the day with ice cream at Scoops. The kids were on cloud nine. Summer finally decided to cooperate and pose with Nana, sweetest picture ever!

Other fun stuff . . .
I'm hovering at the 100 mile mark for running so far this year. As of Sunday, I was at 99.92 miles. SO CLOSE! Did 10.25 on Saturday and a 2.6 miler on Sunday, so taking a few days off to recover. And I finally figured out how to sync my Garmin with Facebook using Daily Mile, so looking forward to utelizing that tool.
We have new neighbors that moved in earlier this month, and they are super sweet. On top of that, the neighbors on the other side are having a baby tomorrow. I'm totally going to get to love on a baby without the work :-)

How odd

This is a strange feeling . . . we have family coming in tomorrow and I do not need to run around today like a chicken with my head cut off cleaning. Very weird. As previously mentioned, I am the WORST HOUSEKEEPER ever. I hate cleaning. I'd rather play with my kids. I'd rather run. I'd rather do almost ANYTHING than clean a bathroom. Its very bizarre to have less junk to worry about. After a month of using this Motivated Moms planner I've mentioned in several posts, the big clutter messes in my house are greatly reduced. Every now and then I find a project that needs tackling, but over all, its amazing how little big stuff needs to be done anymore. Its just nice. Less stress is always a good thing!

Enough on that. Boys are at the boat show today. So of course, there will be no pictures to share. Still can't believe Brad failed to take pictures of the monster trucks. Oh, wait, I take that back-Brad has sent me ONE picture from his phone from the boat show. Of the $919,000 boat he claims Garrett would like to bring home. Really not sure who the bigger dreamer is out of the two of them. No matter, I love them both anyway :-)

Valentines Day Fun

It may be a more or less pointless holiday, but we sure had fun with it this year.

Silly Garrett landed yogurt on his shirt, which had to be cleaned off, thus the huge wet spot. Of course. Because I don't have that many pictures of them together. Going to have to get better about that. Grandma Compton sent the bears, which they LOVE because they make this cute little kissing noise.

We made a LOT of sweet treats in the past week. Cookies, Molded Wilton Chocolates, and cake balls for Garrett's school. Kids had loads of fun.


With the Wilton molds, I got a kit for $4.99 on clearance. At first I tried to actually do them as pictured (painting the details into the mold) but apparently I'm not that talented, so I let Garrett go to town and do them himself. He had fun, and they turned out looking cooler than the ones I did myself.


Cake Balls and goody bags for Garrett's school

The goody bags were fun to do--I tore out pages from our old coloring books and managed to both declutter a bit AND re-up some things that would otherwise have headed to the recycle bin.

We worked on our valentines for school all week. Garrett insisted on writing his name on about half of them before it got old (and he got tired of trying to fit his name on all of them-not enough space for his crazy handwriting). He also wrote half of his friends names too. He did insist on assembling EVERY SINGLE ONE all by himself though (tearing it, taping in the tattoo, folding and putting on the heart sticker.

I took a canvas, covered it in some cork board, Oklahoma State fabric, and ribbon to make Brad a fun little place to stick notes/pictures/etc at work. The kids made little cards for him that then got tacked to it. Garrett's was too cute for words-he wrote everything (Happy V-day and his name) all by himself, and made a picture of himself with daddy. He's getting SO BIG! Summer had to pose with the board, of course, because she's silly.



Brad wouldn't clue me in on our plans for Valentines day evening. Turns out he bought a fondue pot. So we spent 2 hours eating cheese fondue, a main course, and then dessert. YUM. Very good, but WAY too much food. He got super creative with the dessert though:

Garrett ended up with tons of candy (of course) from school, so we're reusing the Pumpkin Fairy idea from Halloween. Garrett selected 10 pieces to keep, and the rest went in a bag to give to the Valentines Fairy. In exchange, she is leaving him a book and an awesome Bumble Bee track I bought super cheap at Christmas time.

On top of the V-day prep this past weekend, we had a crazy busy weekend. Brad took Garrett to see Monster Jam along with a bunch of our neighbors. Garrett had a blast, but Brad got a parenting FAIL for not taking a single picture for me. I took one for the team and missed out to stay home with Summer and the neighbor's infant since her hubby was out of town. The best part was apparently not the actual monster trucks, however, but the remote control ones they saw during the "Party In the Pits". Silly boys!

Brad and I also went rock climbing this weekend for the first time in forever, as an "active" date day. The kids went and hung out with the Shumans while we went and climbed 30 foot walls for a few hours. Thanks to my mom for the awesome birthday present of rock climbing club for the semester! We followed it up with burgers from 5 Guys, so I get a healthy eating FAIL, but you know what, I don't even care. It was so yummy, and on the rare occasion we go there as a family, Summer and I split a burger. So I enjoyed having one all to myself :-)

More fun planned for this very short week. Brad is taking Thursday and Friday off. Thursday after school he and Garrett are going to the boat show. On Friday Garrett is off school and Brad's grandparents are coming for a short visit, which of course Garrett stoked about. Fun, fun, fun.