Hershey Park

We are blessed to have the coolest friends ever, who gave us 3 free tickets to Hershey Park! All we had to get was one child's ticket. We went on Friday and had such a great time! Adam's parents were nice enough to watch Addie, so we were able to spend the entire day with just the boy. We got to the park around 11am and didn't leave until 10pm! Around 4:00 a thunder storm rolled in so we left to get dinner. Dinner was by far the worst part of the day. 2 boys who missed a nap and then slept for 15min. in the car, slow service and a new waitress.

The day was an encouraging reminder that we are making progress in maturity. No diapers, no bottles, both boys walked, they were able to tell us what they wanted to ride, etc. When you have 3 kids under the age of 4, there are days that you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Yesterday was a day were the light was real bright! We've loved all of our kids as babies, but Adam and I look forward to being able to do things with them.

The first ride- a train of course!

Adam and I noticed after a couple rides how lucky the boys were to have each other to ride with. Works out well for mom & dad who were able to sit and watch while other parents had to ride with their son or daughter.

Bryson chose to not ride with us. Tanyon and I had fun though.

While he waited, Bryson studied the map to find the water park. That is all he was focused on when we first got there.

Boy did they have fun when we found the water park!

Daddy taught the boys how to ride waves in the kiddie wave pool.

Maybe the boys might like the ocean the next time we go to the beach.

The water park was not for parents that wanted to sit back and stay dry. We were ALL soaked! It definitely beat the 90 degree weather!

We took this picture for Uncle Craig since Bryson reminded us that Craig's favorite candy is the peanut butter one!

In our PJ's and ready for the trip home to Mammaw's. This really wasn't the true face that Bryson was wearing the last 30 minutes of the night. Instead of a physical roller coaster, Bryson rode an emotional roller coast. We had 2 rides were he just lost it because we said we were riding them. At the end of the first ride, as we were walking off, Bryson looked at the lady operating the ride & informed her "I LOVED this ride". Adam and I had to remind ourselves that these little episodes were the result of it being 10pm. Honestly, the boys did go strong until the end or we would of left sooner!

This is probably a more realistic picture! :)

When I asked the boys what they liked best, Tanyon responded "the water slide" and Bryson said "all of it!".

A memorable moment- as we're walking out of the park, Bryson says "Mom, this wasn't the best day ever." A little surprised, but not shocked (because of the melt downs), I say why not? He's response- "We didn't see the chocolate bar guy!" At that point I had to fight back the urge to laugh. But as we were close to the exit of the park, Bryson spotted the chocolate bar guy. Bryson looked at me and said,"Mom this was the best day ever!" Thanks again to our coolest friends ever for the tickets because we would of never been able to afford this trip!

A Funny Little Clip

Adam took the kids to go see Kelsey's, our old neighbor, softball game. She has a younger brother who is about 6 months older than Addie who is in this little video. Addie and Karter seem to really get along.

Bikes

I was able to get the boys bikes this past weekend at a yard sale. I was pleased to get 2 bikes for 15 bucks! Neither are in great shape and one of them is a Barbie bike, but they are so excited!! The day I took these pictures Bryson's bike didn't have training wheels on it yet.

Be prepared for a close call at the beginning of this! :)

The new problem I have is the boys won't stay in the back part of the driveway. They want to ride thier bikes down the driveway and play by the trees. There's always something, never a perfect solution! :)

Kitchen Table or Race Track

Since watching Speed Racer, Bryson has been very into his cars and racing. It appears that our kitchen table has become the track. The boys line up their cars and just do circles around the table. I love listening to them, especially Bryson, make up stories and give dialog while his playing. Both boys will play for quite a while, with just an occasional argument about who has what car. Mommy can tolerate the mess that they make with knocked over chairs and such since it's so entertaining to them!

Thanks Oma!

Since the movie The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything came out, Bryson has thought what not that Oma should take him to see this movie. We had difficulty finding it when it was supposed to be in the movie theater. When I saw that it was going to be one of the freebie movies at Hagerstown this summer I was all over it. Oma arranged for her day off from work be today so she could take the boys to see the movie. I took Addie shopping while they went to the movies. While at the movies Oma received coupons for free kids meals at Chic-fil-a. So guess what we did for lunch! Talk about mad chaos because everyone else from the movie theater had the same idea!!! But we still had tons of fun! The boys were super excited because they love the super cool play area there!

Thanks Oma for always wanting to do fun stuff with us!

Gone Fishin'

Thursday night the boys got a special treat with their Dad- a little fishing treat. There weren't as many fish caught this time, but everyone seemed to have fun. Tanyon was the lone fisherman to catch a fish. Bryson had a learning moment through this trip. The last fishing outing, Bryson caught more fish than Tanyon and he made sure that his brother knew it too. Bryson had difficulty accepting that his brother caught something this time and he didn't. Daddy seemed a little exhausted when he got home! :)

Botherly Love

Last Thursday night the boys were out playing on the swing set when Tanyon started crying. I quickly told him he was okay and figured that they were arguing over something (which they had been doing all day!). Well when I got closer to Tanyon a little later I realized he had a large lump on the side of his eye. I quickly demanded to know what happened and Bryson proudly told me he hit him with a horseshoe (plastic). I scolded Bryson and was going to let it go at that until I heard Bryson say, "BROTHER, if you do that again I'm going to hit you with a horseshoe again! At that Bryson earned his way into a timeout. Tanyon has had a lot of fun telling people that Bryson hit him with a horseshoe and receiving the sympathy from them.

I haven't been able to get a real good picture. His eye actually looks a lot worse than this!

The next day as we were walking over to the neighbors to go swimming I heard Bryson say, "Brother (This is what Bryson always calls Tanyon), I'm sorry that I threw the horseshoe at you. I promise that I'll never do that again." Let's hope that he learned his lesson, but I'm sure it won't be the last brotherly inflicted injury we have. :)

Best Neighbors Ever

One of the reasons that I know God his hand in us finding this house is our neighbors. They continue to show such kindness to us! Most recently they have opened their swimming pool up for us to use. This brings such excitement for the boys and a little relief for mom from the heat since we are trying to not use air conditioning. From the minute that the boys get up in the morning they start asking if they can go swimming at Haven's house. On the days that Uncle Craig doesn't work we usually go swimming in the afternoon. On the other days we often will save swimming until the evening, to have a bribe for eating a good supper.

This is what it looks like as we head over to swim. Bryson pushes Addie in the stroller and Tanyon rides the scooter.

Bryson has become brave enough to jump off the diving board, but he still wants someone their to "catch" him. This was one of the first times he jumped.

Tanyon enjoys the water, but often wonders off to explore. Like looking for the cows, trying to feed their dog or pulling out some balls to play with. He's not as crazy about jumping right now.

Addie started out doing really well in the raft, but has now decided that she is to big for the and insists on playing at the steps.

Not only do they have a swimming pool, but they have a kids gator. The kids also think this is pretty great!

Addie is a little confused with why she can't make the gator go. It won't be long Addie!

Tanyon taking Addie for a ride.

Thank you Doug, Jackie, Marah and Haven for being so kind to our family. We greatly appreciate all that you've done for us and thank the Lord for such great neighbors!

Thank you Lord!

I'm a little behind on the events in our family, but I wanted to make sure that I recorded this. Last Sunday we had a very rough afternoon. Tanyon wouldn't sleep for his nap and Addie was EXTREMELY fussy. After talking to Adam on my cell phone, Addie was insistent that she have my phone. In a moment of weakness, hoping to get just 10 minutes of quiet, I let Addie have my phone. Very bad choice. As I tell the boys, bad choices have bad consequences. I must have vegged out for a couple of moments because when I took my phone from Addie it was covered in slobber. When I looked at the phone, the display read "car kit" and it was making no noise. No big deal I thought, Addie just pushed a button. Well after digging through the owner's manual and a call to Verizon, it was determined that my phone was ruined because of moisture. I was so mad at myself for being so stupid. In my moment of being so upset, because we really don't have any extra money right now to buy a phone, I was reminded over and over of the worship song "Blessed Be Your Name". Basically the song says, regardless good or bad, I will choose to say Blessed Be Your Name. I was really struggling to do this, but I know that God could take care of the situation even if it wasn't' how I wanted it to go. Well Adam, the science guy, decided to put my phone in a zip lock baggie with rice (because it's a decanter). Well 24 hours later, my phone was working again. God continues to be so faithful to our family. It truly amazes me. Thank you Lord!

Happy Father's Day

Wow, what a busy weekend we've had. Yesterday was Aunt Michelle's baby shower.





Addie playing with the girls!

Mommy and Addie went to the party while the boys got to hang out with Daddy and Pappaw. The boys went to see Kung Fu Panda.







Bryson with Uncle Mike!


Tanyon enjoying some food, especially the blue punch!

Then after supper, the boys all went fishing. Daddy reports that between the 2 boys they caught about 15 fish! (nothing big, but that doesn't matter to the boys yet) Bryson was able to cast his rod and reel it in by himself!


This morning we gave Daddy his present, which was a digital key chain full of pictures of the kids! (As I'm typing right now I'm realizing that I missed a lot of opportunities to take pictures this weekend.) After church we had a Dad-y-que (church picnic) which was lots of fun. It is so awesome to see so many faces at CrossWalk!




Mommy enjoying lunch with our kids and our friends Kate & Ellie!

For supper, Pappy, Oma, Pappy Buck and Mal all came for supper! We had lots of giggles with all the silly things Pappy was doing.



We finished the night up with a flat tire, but of course Daddy was able to fix it for Pappy Buck!

Happy Father's Day Adam! We love you so much and appreciate all that you do for our family. This past year has been so tough on you as you've put in very long hours trying to prepare our houses. Thank you for your loyalty to us and how hard you work to provide for us. We are so lucky to have you for a husband and father!

A Mom Moment

Tonight the kids and I made a quick trip to the grocery store. As I'm finishing up loading Addie into the cart, I realized that I was singing the "B-I-B-L-E" song out loud. To make it even worse, the kids weren't singing with me. I guess my brain never made the switch that I was out of the car! Very embarrassing. That's what being a mom does to ya I guess. :)

HOT, HOT, HOT!

Early this morning the boys decided that they were going to water flowers for me. The problem was they grabbed a broken bucket and decided to fill it in our bathroom. So when I caught them, there was a LARGE water trail from the bathroom to the door as a result of the leaking bucket. So I decided it was going to be warm enough to bust out the inflatable swimming pool. The boys had a blast (Uncle Craig enjoyed it also)!!! I called everyone for lunch and no one wanted to come and eat because they were swimming. It was so nice to spend the majority of our day outside and have the boys totally entertained. Next time though I've got to be a little quicker on the sunscreen. I hesitated because I figured with their attention span it wouldn't be worth the time to lather everyone up. Once I realized everyone was into the swimming, it was a little to late with the sunscreen. Everyone was a little pink.

I've just gotta laugh at my brother sitting in this little pool!

The water was freezing, but it didn't stop the boys!

It wasn't until after I set the pool up, that I realized that I had just created another danger zone for Addie in our backyard. What was I thinking?!

The kids had fun with this sprinkler ball too! Thanks Jen! Addie had some difficulties since the sprayer nozzles were right at the level of her face.