Little boys = baseballs busting out windows

 We’ve had lots of baseball this week, two games and a practice on Sunday.  Jason came back to hang out after the game on Saturday and everyone was outside playing more baseball.  Jason was pitching, Jacob hitting, and Brian fielding, and what do we hear….CRASH!  Jacob broke our bedroom window, oh the joys of having a little boy!  Earlier this week he was playing next door outside, and he almost threw it in one of our neighbors windows, and I jokingly told him that if you are going to break a window, you better break mine since we have the original 1964 windows on our house…sure enough, he did!

 

 We are loving baseball, so much fun to watch…even for Gwyn and Annie who have recently discovered ring pops, can you please these are now $1 each?!?!  I remember when they were $0.25!

Jacob's baseball pictures, he's so cute!

 Jacob’s school celebrated Earth Day with picnics with the parents, so Annie and I went since Gwyn was in school that day.  They were having a contest to see who could bring the most recyclable containers and have no trash…we had absolutely no trash (in the lunches I packed that is, I guess they weren’t counting the trash that I made at home!).  Annie had a good time, and Jacob thought it was great!

 Our little garden is growing…I guess that is what you get when you use child labor to water your plants and keep them growing!  Annie's is growing the least because she picks hers!

 Brian took down the baby swing and replaced it with a monkey bar.  The kids have been having a blast, and this has freed up a swing for Annie who is hilarious when she swings on her little belly, I’ve got to get that on video because she had us rolling!

 Little Annie is a firecracker.  She has been pushing the limits lately, we think maybe it is because we’ve let her be the baby for so much longer than Jacob or Gwyn since when they were each at her age, they both had a year old little sister!  She took a pen with her to time out the other day…here was the result:

 She has also recently used my stamps as stickersL  She got out all of the diapers in the basket upstairs and set them neatly all over the room, she unfolded all of the napkins and tore half of them up, and since she has stopped napping, she has been in some rather bad moods.  She wakes up and says to Gwyn and Jacob, “don’t look at me.”  “Don’t talk to me.”  She also has a hard time going to sleep, and broke into screaming tears when she said that Gwyn looked at her upstairs.  She also got up and went to try to get into Jacob’s bed with him…the kids know, she is not fun to sleep with and they ratted her out, which lead to a huge amount of tears!  She also says, “Sorry Mommy!” and “Sorry Daddy!” right before she is about to get into trouble, it has obviously saved her in the past, but no more…we are bringing the hammer down, ha!


Brian has pretty much finished the bathroom cabinets, they look awesome, and the counter top is so nice!  We are going to paint, get a new light fixture and install the mirror, and then I'll have the finished product pictures, but here is the progress thus far...Brian's custom made cabinets:

 Love this silly little girl!  She had her first birthday party all by herself, that only she was invited too.  She is usually tagging along to Jacob's friends parties or all the kids get invited to friend's, but this one was just for her, and she was super excited to go!

 Love this sweet kid, who is much lighter when carried on my shoulders, I can't believe how big he is getting!

 To help Jacob with his writing and reading, I have started accepting written requests for things.  When he wrote me a note about asking to play on my phone and Brian’s iPad, I let him.  Gwyn caught on really quick, so she asked Jacob to help her write a letter too.  He had her add in that she likes candy and can she please have some.  I love them working together!!

Bike ride in the rain and Peppa Pig on the big screen!

 Is she not the cutest little bike rider you've ever seen?  She is wearing the helmet that Jacob grew out of when he was 3, he has a big head, hence the c-section!  Things have been going pretty well, we have just been pretty busy with baseball, which has sometimes been 4 nights/week between practices and games.  The bathroom is also really coming along, the cabinets are in, and the granite countertop/sink/faucet will be installed on Friday...brushing my teeth in the kitchen sink is not so fun, but we will only have been out our sink for a week, so that isn't too bad.  We have been swimming in the pool a few more times, and had some friends over to swim again last weekend.  We also planted some seeds and some plants out back.  The kids are watching each if theirs grow, and I guess I'm getting my own lesson that if you do consistently water plants they grow and don't die.  We'll see how long I keep that up!

We did get in a family bike ride, although we got caught out in the rain it was pretty fun and Gwyn chose to ride her bike (with extremely loud plastic training wheels) the entire way, so Annie was able to lounge by herself in the trailer:

 Here are a few videos of the bike ride:






It is so much fun to watch Jacob play baseball, the coach is mixing up the line up and what positions the kids play, Jacob batted 2nd in the line-up and got 3 hits, all to the left side of the field, and he played third base, first base and catcher.

All the kids think playing catcher is the coolest position because his coach calls it the Transformer suit, so they all want to get a turn dressed up in it:

We did take the kids to see Peppa Pig at the theater...the Studio Movie Grill offers kidtoons movies at the theater for $2 each on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and for some reason our kids LOVE Peppa Pig...Annie is so sweet and her little hair is growing out so much!  She found a paci in my purse while we were at the grocery store, and I took it out of her mouth (she hasn't had them at all for the past 2 weeks), but I broke her heart.  She was so upset, we were getting stared at by everyone!

Peppa on the Big Screen, coolest thing ever!

Everyone in awe...I think Brian may have been asleep, and I had my ear buds in listening to music!

I thought this was pretty funny, considering they snorted during the entire movie:


Funny things the kids said this week:

Me to Jacob:  Awesome job Jacob.
Jacob:  Thanks, but I'm kind of an expert.
Brian to Jacob when he kicked his soccer ball over the fence and thought he had lost it forever in the neighbors yard:  Do you really need to cry about that?
Annie:  Yes he did, he was sad.
Jacob (after I took him on a "date" to sonic just he and I):  This is the best day ever!  Well, maybe not the best day, I sure do have a lot of good days.
Me:  Do you know what was the three best days of my life?
Jacob:  No
Me:  When you were born, when Gwyn was born, and when Annie was born.
Jacob (all confused and looking like I'm crazy):  Those were the best days of your life???  When you got your belly split open???

Sea World and Easter!

 What a fun last week we have had!  We took a quick trip over to Sea World since everyone was off of school and work for Good Friday...we were planning to do this over Spring Break, but Brian couldn't get away from work.  We started off the 3 hour drive to San Antonio, with the kids asking "are we there yet" from about 10 minutes into the trip all the way there, asking every 10 minutes or so!  It was Gwyn and Annie's first time in a hotel, but Jacob had stayed in one for the trip to Maine when he was 14 months old...he acted like he was big stuff because he had done it before, but really it was his first time too since of course he couldn't remember it.  This might have been the highlight of the trip, they just couldn't believe that our room had two beds that we got to sleep in, two phones, and free pads of paper and pens (which all got used, they drew pictures and wrote notes to each other).  Here they are after we gave them a bath.  Brian drew the short straw and got to sleep with Annie, who turns around like a helicopter all night kicking you in the face:

 Jacob wrote this note to us, such a sweet boy:

 After a not so rested nights sleep...everyone was up due to Annie before 5 am, they were all using their electric toothbrushes that I brought them for the trip by 5:10 am...Brian and I were just laying there trying to act like we were asleep so they would go back to sleep, and we hear this rrrrrrrrrrrrr sound of their electric tooth brushes, nice!  The kids loved Sea World, especially the rides for the little kids:

 Sweet little sisters rode together!

 Jacob feeding some ducks:

 Gwyn and Annie checking the ducks out:

 Gwyn posing:

 Annie enjoying some dip n dots...one of the best inventions ever!!

 Amazing how still she will sit when she wants a butterfly painted on her face:

 My cute little butterfly:

 Of course Jacob picked a full-face Loch Ness monster design:

 Annie, who has dropped her nap over the last two weeks decided that she needed a nap while walking around with Brian...so sweet!

 Another pic of Jacob:

 Sweet little Gwyn:

 A motley crew...this was before the water ride:

 All the kids loved the Shamu show...Jacob wanted me to take pictures every time any of the whales jumped or came up for a picture...these are a few of the MANY I have:

 Here is a video, and evidence of why you do not pay $15/face painting BEFORE you go on a water ride:



Gwyn really wanted to go on the ride, until the top, and then she screamed in sheer terror, poor thing, and they were on the front row!





Easter was nice, we went to church, to brunch, and then hunted eggs with our neighbors...I couldn't get a picture of all three of them.  Here Jacob was trying to get them to look at me, Gwyn was smiling as usual for the camera, and Annie as usual was displaying some attitude:

 Before the egg hunt:

 LOVED this picture of Annie...we color coded the eggs, so they would each get the same amount...although a squirrel got into some of them that we had to throw out.

 Jacob with his eggs:

 Gwyn hunting for eggs:

 Gwyn also had an Easter party up at her school.  Annie got to go with me, and I do believe she is ready for school because she wanted nothing to do with the snack (and for her to turn down a juice box is really unheard of), and all she wanted to do is play with things in Gwyn's classroom:

 Little "teacher assistant" Gwyn, helped the other kids count out their eggs.  They were limited to 12, so she told one friend to go pick up two more, one to put two back, and one to go get three more.  Little bossy pants is in her element at school!!

 I took the girls to lunch at the Brookwood community center, they loved it, although Gwyn apparently got a mosquito bite right when I took this picture, which was tremendous DRAMA right after I took this:

 Gwyn got a feather (on a clip) at Brookwood, she loves it.  I think she sees older girls wearing them and thinks she is pretty cool stuff:

 Little ornery Annie...she refuses to nap, she stays upstairs for awhile and gets into stuff and then comes down and exclaims, "I didn't close my eyes!"  This week she has gotten into some blue paint, tried to paint her own fingernails, pulled out an entire thing of floss, loaded a toilet with toilet paper and flushable wipes, gotten into some gum, eaten Easter candy that she wasn't supposed to, eaten Gwyn's chapstick, squirted out Gwyn's lip gloss all over herself, among other things.  She is giving me grey hair!!  I had to take a picture of her after I found her finally asleep after a week of not napping, of course she fell asleep about 10 minutes  before I had to leave to go pick up Gwyn!

 Best errand to run ever...the Apple Store, everyone had their own ipad!!

Funny things the kids said:
Annie (while watching Brian build a Lego tower):  You do a good job Daddy, high five!
Jacob to Gwyn (I love their conversations):  You don't like eyeballs?  They are very important!
Me to Annie:  You're such a big girl now, no more pacis at bedtime.
Annie:  I just sleep with my mouth.
Jacob:  This is the best day in my whole life!
Annie (after I told her how cute her little baby legs were):  I not have baby legs, I have big legs!