Hello San Antonio

My little sister has lived in Texas, Virginia, and now back in Texas for years now, and I have not had the chance to go and visit her sweet family once. Thankfully she has come back to Utah several times, and we get to see them then, but going to see her in her own home turf was something I have wanted to do for too long. So when she announced her third baby was on its way, and that her kind husband had to leave her for a week for his job, she was near tears. She was sick and miserable from her pregnancy, and tackling two darling little girls alone all week was enough excuse for me to put the bug out that I wanted to go and help.

Well "helping" turned out to be a darn good excuse for my cute mom to come and go with me, even arranging to fly to Vegas to pick up me and the two boys that I could take, and having a week of fun, good food, lots of needed cousin time for Kaylee and Max as well as Allie and Mitch, and seeing a little bit of Texas. And as an extra bonus, we even got my darling little brother Kyler to come and see us for a few of those days too!

We got to be there on Valentines Day, and the day was FULL of love. My nieces were so excited to give my boys "valentines" first thing in the morning, and for the first time ever that I know of, they were eating candy before the 8:00 hour. The kids got to make heart shaped pancakes for breakfast, graham cracker LOVE houses in the afternoon, and we ate a heart shaped pizza from Papa Murphy's for dinner. (why don't we have a Papa Murphy's here??!!) The day could not have been more fun. We took a walk to a little park nearby their house, and we thoroughly enjoyed being together. It was such a perfect day, and although I would have loved being with my honey on the day of love, it was special to get to celebrate it with my sister and mom, both of who I look up to and love dearly...and four darling children who were excited to celebrate as much as they could. (aka: eating as much candy as they could stuff in their bellies without their moms caring!)
I took pictures of Kaylee and Max's finished houses, because you would NOT believe how much love and time they both put into their creations! I thought Jackson was the only perfectionist in my little family, but Max proved to be a close second. He took his time, as did Kaylee, and they were very proud of them all week long. Max desperately wanted to bring his home, until my smart sister asked if they could keep them at her house because she liked them so much, and that Max was welcome to come back and visit his house any time. (we're in trouble if he actually remembers that one day Aub!)
We left chilly weather in Las Vegas, so when we arrived to 70's in San Antonio, it was heaven! We took full advantage of walks, parks, and even the zoo. The weather was absolutely beautiful.
The day we picked to visit the zoo started out a lot chillier than we thought it was going to be, even raining for the first hour we were there. But as promised from the weatherman in San Antonio, the sun came out and shined and gave us a great day visiting the animals. Mitchell LOVED the zoo, which was no surprise since he's such an animal lover, but all the kids had a great time too.

There were too many pictures to choose from, and they were all my favorite. The beauiful Japanese garden area was outside the zoo and was amazing to walk through.










My sister had mistakenly told Max about this awesome craft that Kaylee loves to do the first day, and it nearly killed him that it was a few days later that they actually did it. The painted white pieces of bread with food coloring, and then toasted it and ate it. It made me wanna throw up myself, but Max absolutely loved it.

By the time my cute brother arrived, I think the kids were a little tired of entertaining themselves, definitely bored of us moms, and a very fun and energetic uncle was exactly what they needed! My poor brother. He was sweating within minutes of being attacked from all four of them. Thank goodness he's such a good sport.
We had a great day in downtown San Antonio, first going to a play based off the infamous book, "If You Give a Pig a Pancake." It was entertaining and all the kids enjoyed it. Mitch liked it for the most part too, unless they screamed loudly (mostly from excitement) and then he bawled. We visited another park, took a boat ride down the Riverwalk, and even walked through the Alamo. We didn't have more than one day downtown, but what we saw was amazing! I was shocked that all the kids lasted through all that, but they were great troopers. Note for the entire trip though: Mitch was the ONLY child who was willing to walk as much as we would let him! The rest of them fought over the stroller constantly, which was a bit painful in all aspects. Walking with a one year old that wants to go where he wants to go and at his own pace can be very waring on the nerves after awhile! But what a fun city! Wish we could have spent more time there, but it gives us more to look forward to on another trip.








We of course, HAD to eat Blue Belle ice cream every night we could. If you're not an ice cream lover, I'm pretty sure Blue Belle might change your mind. There's only one place here in Vegas that I know of that carries a few flavors, but in Texas, you have dozens of choices to pick from! It's good we were only there a week, because the two different flavors we picked were delish, and I would have went and picked out two more if I had the time. Some of us enjoyed every lick of it...literally.



This is the last picture that I have to post about the trip. If anyone knows our Mitchell, this is a popular position for his arm. He sucks on his arm as much as he needs, wants, doesn't need, yes, a little too much. Allie apparently thought it was funny or looked good or something. Funny girl.

Shoe Fettish

Is it possible to have a shoe fettish when you're only 18 months? Because I'm pretty sure someone has one. This cute boy is often fishing everyones shoes out of our shoe basket downstairs, and seeing how far he can get in them before he falls on his face in his "clown looking" shoes. It continues to crack me up. You would think he would learn that it's not as fun wearing others shoes, because he really can't walk in them very well, but it doesn't seem to matter. When friends come over, they are not exempt to the shoe thief. In fact, they are probably more tempting because he hasn't had the opportunity to wear them yet. He loves, loves, loves shoes. His new found love for shoes would be "fip fops" as he calls them. He walks around in them, and points to them often, talking to his fip fops. The only problem with this little shoe fettish is we can't find our shoes half the time. And just because there is one in the basket doesn't mean the other one will be there to accompany it!

So inappropriate

Yes, that is what this is. But it's also one of the funniest things that Max has done that had me almost peeing my pants.

Most of the things this boy does that he thinks is funny is mostly inappropriate, and I feel like I'm constantly reminding him to stop using "potty talk" or that what he's doing is not funny. But not this time.

I had bought him new underwear. Over the summer, he and Jackson had found a new love for the cartoon "Phineas and Ferb." Whatever. There are lots of other things more disturbing than this silly and funny cartoon. So I thought he would like if I bought him some Phineas and Ferb underwear.

I washed it, didn't pay much attention to what the underwear actually looked like, until my son came down in one of the pair, pulled down his pants and full on mooned me:


Like father, like son. But this one struck me in the funny bone for sure. Thank you Max and Perry the Platypus.

You know it's a good day when...

Before I got caught up on all the blogging that I've been missing out on, I have to remember how lucky I am to have the boys (meaning ALL my boys!) that I do in my life. I have no pictures of this moment, which is probably more fitting. I didn't know we would be making a memory that I would want to remember so no camera was brought along. But you know when you just have a really great moment in life, and all of a sudden, it hits you how blessed and lucky you are to be a parent, and you wish you could freeze that "moment" for just a few seconds longer?

That's what I had last Saturday.

I know every mom is tired. Seriously, how we get through the days sometimes with so many things to remember and get done is award winning in my opinion. But for some reason, the last few months, I've been SOOOO tired. Tired to the point that I can fall asleep at any given moment in the afternoon, and go SO deep into sleep that I have NO idea what time of day it is, or even what day of the week we're on for that matter. It's not good. So when Russ had taken Jackson and Max to t-ball practice Saturday afternoon, and Mitch had gone down for a nap, I didn't hesitate in taking one of those naps myself. I briefly remember them coming home, getting Mitch up, and telling me they were going for a bike ride if I wanted to come. I was too delirious to actually get up, so off they went without me.

Awhile later, I was called to come to the school park, so I could be "another" person for their baseball game. I'll admit, that did not sound like fun to me. I was still groggy, lazy, and not interested. But my husband was being a good sport with my kids, and I was missing out. So I went.

I'm so glad I did. Although I played softball when I was younger, I'm definitely not that great at baseball. I love cheering for my boys at their games, and I feel like I know what to yell at them at times to "encourage them", (ha ha ha ha!) but actually getting dirty with them in their fun is not what I would have considered a good time. But it WAS. We had SO much fun being together as a family. Russ and I took turns pitching the ball to them, letting them hit, and run around the bases as far as they could get until we tagged them out. And then we took turns hitting to them, watching them play on defense, as they would try and catch the ball, stop the ball, or try and tag us out. It truly was a good time, and even better that it was just us having a good time together.

And what was Mitch doing during all this? He thought he was part of the game too, as he kept "decorating" third base with dirt by piling on as much as he could, or until Jackson or Max came over and swept it off. He was having a great time on his own, and had no clue that he almost was hit by the baseball several times.

I need to create more of these moments, and be there for my boys in all that is important to them, whether it seems silly to me or not.