Papa and Nana Visit

Nana and Papa came to visit us the weekend of July 20th! 

They planned for us to go to Inner Space Caverns on Saturday and it was so much fun!  Here we are looking at the map of the caverns.

The boys were in heaven having Nana and Papa in Austin!


The tour was totally awesome!  There’s another tour that we heard about that you have to be 13 to go on.  It’s called “hidden caverns” and you wear knee and elbow pads and a helmet with a light and you crawl through tiny spaces for 4 hours.  That sounds like hell on earth to me but Nana promised to take Jackson when he is old enough.  I said I would happily cook them dinner during the tour.

Our crew in the cave!  Unfortunately Nanny was very sick and in the hospital so Jay went to stay with her and Paw Paw for the weekend.  Our boys are such a lively crowd that it wouldn’t have been a good time for all 5 of us to go.  We missed Jay but were so happy that he could be there to love on his sweet parents. 

Papa, Freckles and Lincoln.  Linc still just loves Freckles.  He was obsessed with petting her and saying “dada!”  That’s pretty much his word for everything these days.

I love seeing my dad with the boys.  He’s so patient and loving and just pours into them.  My guys are so very blessed.

Nana and Jack are serious buddies.  It’s so cool that Nana plays with him and does stuff that he loves.  They love to do legos, read, and all kinds of fun projects.  He was a happy boy all weekend.

Jack, Papa and Freckles played baseball.  Papa was the pitcher, Jack was the batter and Freckles was the catcher.  It was a perfect set up since she happily ran and retrieved all of the balls!

Nana and Papa also installed our new baby gate, got Jackson’s bike tuned up and ready to go and helped with countless other things around the house.  It was so nice having them.

Nana and I share the picture addiction.  Here she is getting a few shots of Linc, also known as Dinka to his older brothers.

Since we all had the flu when we were supposed to celebrate Bear’s 3rd birthday with Nana and Papa we decided to have a special night for him during this visit.  We had a pizza party with the awesome new baking stones that Gaga gave us for Valentine’s day.

We made roasted garlic, artichoke, pineapple, bell pepper and goat cheese pizzas on gluten free crust.  They were DELISH!

Mr. 3 1/2!

I just love these pictures (as you can tell by the fact that I included them all) of the boys with Nana and Papa.  They have so much fun together and were just wrestling and playing and I decided I had to get a few shots.  Grandparents are such an enormous blessing and my boys are blessed beyond measure!  It’s so tough not living near my family after doing so for so many years but we’ve had such amazing visits with them and that’s definitely helping. 

This one is a framer for sure.

Thank you Nana and Papa for coming and we’re ready to have you back ANY time!

BARON IS POTTY TRAINED!!!! And other July happenings. . .

This summer has been fast and furious, it’s really amazing how quickly it’s gone by.

One day in early July I kept a friends two boys for the afternoon and evening.  So, I had 5 boys ages 5, 4, 3, 11 months and 4 weeks from 3 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. and lived to tell the tales. 

Feeding sweet little barely 1 month old Joshua really made me miss the tiny baby stage.

As you can see, Lincoln was NOT impressed with me holding another baby.  The entire time I held Joshua, Lincoln stood at my knees and fussed.

The boys had played outside on the swing set for a few hours so I let them watch one tv show while I fed the baby.  The 5 kids really weren’t bad at all.  I think 3 must be the tipping point.  Either that or knowing that two of them were going home at the end of the night caused me to be super relaxed and not worry about anything. . .

One day in July we went to play at a new homeschool friend’s house.  They have 5 acres with ponds with canoes and kayaks and a chicken coop.  All kinds of fun stuff to do!

The boys loved roaming around on the land and even got to feed the chickens.  I so wish we had a chicken coop.  Organic eggs are insanely expensive and the boys eat eggs like crazy.

Jack was thrilled to find a little snake.

My heart in a target cart. . .

While Bear and Jay were in Beach City over the 4th, I got a call from our awesome pediatrician in Plano.  Bear does indeed have a gluten sensitivity.  I had suspected it due to some bumps on the backs of his arms and some digestive issues he was having.  So, we are now 99% gluten free at home.  Bear is 99.9% gluten free, he’s had gluten once since the Monday after 4th of July.  His current favorite gluten free lunch is tortilla soup in the blender.  It’s super healthy and I love it so it makes things very easy that he likes it so much as well.  He also eats a lot of peanut butter and honey sandwiches-but we use apple slices instead of bread.  Pretty yummy stuff!

Jackson drew a picture of himself holding hands with Amanda, his favorite babysitter from Plano.  Now I just need to mail it to her. . .

And now for the most exciting news of this post. . .BARON IS POTTY TRAINED!!!!
So, as I may or may not have posted prior we have been trying everything to motivate Bear to potty train.  He just didn’t care, not one single bit.  He was pretty close before Lincoln was born and we moved but once we got here he just reverted, like 100%.

We had many, MANY versions of this conversation:
Me: Bear, do you want to use the potty and wear underwear like Jackson, like a big boy?
Bear: Nope.
Me: If you are a big boy then you’ll get to ride horses at pine cove. . .
Bear: Nope, I don’t want to be a big boy.  I’m your baby.  I’m gonna be your baby forever.  Not Lincoln, me!
So-whatever, I didn’t push it.  I had no desire to clean up poop or pee from my floor so I tried bribing him but never pushed it at all.

Then one glorious day our church started Backyard Bible Club.  It’s our churches’ version of VBS.  The teens run these clubs in the front or backyards of over 500 member’s houses throughout Austin.  The thinking is that a lot of non churched families wouldn’t bring their kids to VBS but might let them walk a few houses down for a few hours a day for a week.  Then at the end of the week there is a huge festival at church for all of the kids and their families.  They have bounce houses, candy, face painting, etc. etc. etc.  Tons of fun and it’s called SummerFest.  So, back to the story.  Jackson went to two days of Backyard Bible Club at the neighbors house and just raved about it.  You were supposed to be 4 to go but it’s at a friend of mine’s house and she said Bear was welcome.  Bear REALLY wanted to go, most especially to SummerFest.  So, I told him he could go if he was potty trained.  Basically the heavens opened up and rained awesomeness on my house that day because he went for it.  That day, Wednesday, July 10th Bear said he wanted to wear underwear and go to Backyard Bible Club.  And my tiny man has been potty trained EVER SINCE.  YAY!!!!!!

I’ve been burned by toddlers before and I didn’t want this to be a 3 day stunt and then totally revert after SummerFest, so I made this sticker chart for him.  I was going to look on pinterest to see what kinds of adorable charts they had on there but wisely decided against it.  I knew if I looked at pinterest there would be some amazing potty charts done by descendants of Michelangelo and that I’d end up feeling like a talentless loser mom who couldn’t even create the perfect potty chart.  And really, my kid is now using the potty-there needs to be nothing but celebration surrounding such an event.
So, here’s my lame but completely effective potty chart.  He got to put 1 sticker on it each accident free day and each 5 days there was a prize.  He loved it!  And I’m happy to report, we hit day 20 a while back.  Ahhhhhh, the sweet taste of diaper free victory!

Love that these silly kids love to dress up.

I forgot to take a picture of the boys dressed up for cow appreciation day (if you dress like a cow you get a free meal) at Chick Fil A but here’s Bear pretending to be a cow. 

And onto the fabulous SummerFest.  It didn’t start until 7 so I stayed home with sleeping Lincoln and Jay took the bigs.
The boys had a BLAST and Bear said getting potty trained was definitely worth it for the party.

They got to play in planes, helicopters and several different emergency vehicles.  Jay said the party was super awesome and totally packed!

The next week Jack started Farm School Summer Camp (which he absolutely loved) and so Bear and I had a lot of one on one time while Lincoln napped.  We did a lot of art projects.  Here’s Bear creating a light house.  It was all his idea and he made the sky with lots of stars etc. and then the light house and he taped it all to the window.  I need post a picture of his final masterpiece.

If I turn away for one second Lincoln is into and climbing onto everything.  Love that active little guy!

And that was the first half of our July!

Gaga and Uncle Jeremy’s 4th of July Visit

Our 4th of July plans this year changed multiple times.  The way it ended was Jackson, Lincoln staying with me and getting a visit from Gaga and Uncle Jeremy.  Jay and Bear went to Beach City to hang with our sweet Nanny and Paw Paw.  We were sad to be separated and each wished we could have been with each others families as well.  But we all had a great time!

Jeremy, ever the jokester was pretending to sit and keep watch over mom while she slept.  He was worried about her geriatric state and was giving me the thumbs up from behind the binoculars that she was ok.  Jer is such a fun and crazy dude.

Lincoln ready to go outside and enjoy the 4th.  Poor little man is so fair skinned that I constantly make him wear a hat.  He hates hats so I had to get some with straps to velcro under his chin.  I promise that I’m only trying to protect you Linc!

On the evening of the 4th one of our neighbors put on an impromptu fireworks show for the street.  It was super cool and the kids (and adults) were thrilled.

Jeremy helped him out and they gave sparklers and other cool things to each of the kids. 

Jack having his sparkler lit by the mini torch.

Jackson, yet again scaling our street sign, with his legs dangling.  He has more upper body strength than I could ever dream of.

Fun neighbors lining the street.

Jeremy got to shot roman candles.  And yes, I’m pretty sure this show was not exactly kosher for a suburban street.

Happy Jackson with Gaga and Uncle Jer.  I love my adult relationships with my family.  My mom and I are such great friends and she’s such a wonderful and loving grandmother.  And Jer is probably the wittiest guy I’ve ever met.  He’s so smart and funny, and so patient with my boys.

I saw these scrambled egg, bacon and tomato avocado boats on pinterest and wanted to make them for breakfast.

Meanwhile my super stud of a man was bringing home the bacon. . .or fish to be more accurate.  Seriously though, he’s pretty stinking awesome-look at all of those fish.

And now look at what’s in my freezer!  Love that he loves to fish. . .and that my boys and I love to eat fish.

Lincoln was just obsessed with sweet Uncle Jer.

Jer with 3 of his 4 nephews. 

What a fun visit.  I just loved having mom and Jer here and was so glad to have such quality time with my family. 

A very blessed 4th all the way around!