Playing with the Grandparents

The boys had a lot of fun getting spoiled rotten by their grandparents!

Fairfield State Park

We took Ty for a hike in Fairfield State Park which is about 30 minutes from my parents. We came out on Fairfield Lake which is covered in clam shells. Tyler loved throwing them back in the water.

On the Road Again...

Traveling with two children and two dogs was not as bad as I expected. The kids did really well on the trip. Tyler was exceptional. I would travel anywhere with him. Deke had a few bad moments, but overall not as bad as I expected. Joel thought he would be smart and create a barrier to keep the dogs in the very back of the van. As you can tell, that didn't work out. Before we even made it to Hwy 90 Java was in the backseat with the boys and when we stopped in Albert Lea to get dinner, I looked down and saw Manny on the floorboard in the backseat. Joel attempted it again for the trip back to Minnesota and yet again, both dogs were in the front seat before we knew it. It was a losing battle so we decided not to fight it. Tyler loved to make the big trucks honk and everytime we passed them, we would start moving our arms up and down in the honk signal. Most of them obliged us and gave us some great honks which made Tyler's day.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Ty at the Beach
Joel and Ty bird watching. My mom has birdfeeders everywhere and there were some pretty redbirds and bluejays

Ty and I at the Ft Worth Zoo on the train

Ty with the whole family playing soccer.

Ty on his Easter Egg Hunt

Deke with the Bluebonnets

Love that smile!

Ty with the Bluebonnets

Our Texas Trip is so much fun! The boys did really, really well on the car trip down. We only had one bad fussy moment from Deke and that only lasted about 30 minutes. He had a hard time getting comfortable enough to fall asleep. Tyler did way better than I ever expected him to. They've been having a blast running around outside and playing ball. Deke likes the flowers. The wildflowers down here are amazing. They have the bluebonnents (which is the TX state flower) and the Indian paintbrushes in blossom everywhere. You look out in a field and all you see is a field of blue and red. When we got into Oklahoma, the sun was coming up and the both boys woke up about that time. I was all excited to see leaves on the trees and Tyler piped up from the back seat. "You know what else is cool..the grass is green" He has been cracking us up this whole trip and really entertaining the grandparents. Grammy and I took him to the Fort Worth Zoo on Tuesday and on Weds we went to the beach with Joel's family. Joel's mom was covered up in a blanket at the beach and as you can see Tyler wasn't cold at all. He was splashing around and having an excellent time in the water. It was windy that day so if you got out of the water,you'd probably be cold, but other than that I didn't find it cold at all.

Easter was great. Joel's parents came up to my folks and we had a big Easter Egg hunt with just Ty hunting the eggs. He then managed to talk everybody into playing soccer with him. He can be quite convincing when he wants to be. Tonight Joel and I are off by ourselves for a romantic night in Nacogdoches where we went to school. I've got to go so I can get ready for dinner. I miss all my Minnesota friends and can't wait to get back home to see all ya'll again!

Soccer!

Ty had his soccer practice tonight. He has so much fun with it and its great to see him out there. He's one of the littlest ones, but he doesn't let that stop him. He fell down a lot during this game, but he was alright. At least that's what he told me when he told me all about the game. It was freezing cold again today so Deke and I had to sit in the car. It's just too cold to leave Deacon out there and he already has a runny nose so I didn't want to make it worse. Too bad we're going to miss the next few games, but we'll practice down in sunny Texas where it's actually warm enough to play outside.

Weekend Fun

This weekend, the Loos' came down for a visit. It was great to Kaia and Halle again. Halle's gotten so big and she's beautiful. I love her chubby cheeks!

I also took Tyler to see the very scary looking Easter Bunny. Obviously, Ty wasn't scared of him, but I don't think I would have went and sat on his lap. Good thing, he's the brave one. They also had some other fun kid stuff there so we walked through the mall and Tyler made the hat that he's wearing. It was a very fun-filled weekend.

Deacon's crawling!

It has finally happened. Deke took his first crawling steps today. He's been trying so hard for about a month now. I saw him get into position and I held my breath wondering if he was finally going to be able to do it and he did. He made it to his goal of a Harry Potter book that was lying on the floor. Of course, he hasn't crawled since so Joel hasn't got to see it yet. I'm really going to have to start doing a better job on the baby proofing. A few minutes after he crawled, Joel came home and I ran to tell him the good news. When we came back in the living room, Deke had managed to find a small ball of Tyler's and had the whole thing in his mouth. I caught him before anything bad could happen and it was a good wake-up call to me to really start making sure all small things are up and out of his way.

On Monday, I had the privilege of watching Connor again. He is such a delight to be around. So happy and easy-going. He just played while I finished cleaning some stuff up and then he went with me to watch Tyler play soccer. We got there a bit early so I let them play on the playground and let me just say I thought I was going to have an anxiety attack. Joel had Deke so I had to watch the other two and I was way outnumbered. Tyler and Connor both went zooming off in opposite directions so trying to keep my eye on both of them was not the easiest of tasks.

Tyler's soccer game went way better than I thought it would. He loved it and had so much fun. I thought he'd be all clingy, but not at all. He was right there in the middle of it all. His team is called the Red Dragons. I'm going to do my best to remember my camera next week so I can get pictures of it.