summer time

summer is definitely steaming it's way into texas!  thankfully we're still in the high 80's low 90's, but I'm sure that's all going to change very quickly.  i mentioned i tried to summer-up our mantel and i also made this little ditty for our entryway:

I recently found this tutorial from a link party and it made the flowers really easy to make.  to be honest after i followed the tutorials i felt a little silly for not figuring it all out before, they're really easy!  i should probably warn you that with all the snippets of time i get to do something crafty, this wreath took about a month for me to make, the day i finished brody came over and said: "Oh, wow mom!  That looks so pretty, I'm really proud of you!" That definitely made the month worth it!

tangled

One day last week the boys and I were coloring, crew disappeared for a few minutes and through out the next week I found his crayola "artwork" around the house.  I've found scribbles on two separate walls, my bedroom door, bricks on the fireplace, an end table, a lantern, the glass on the entertainment center, and on the grout between tiles on our kitchen floor.  well recently i've become aquatinted with mr. clean magic eraser, so of course we went to work.  the twins were interested in my scrubbing so i gave them baby wipes to clean their toys, this is how they were cleaning stuff:

all tangled up and twisted together!  it's always so interesting to watch the way to do stuff together!  as an additional side note, after scrubbing those bricks they both thought it was especially pertinent to scrub t-rex's teeth.  you can guess who was proud of that!

mother's day questions

Well on mothers day, during primary, brody's teacher asked him some questions about me and i thought i'd share his answers with you-

My mom love me because: I give her hugs
My mom teaches me: to play piano
My mom makes the best: cereal
My favorite thing to do with my mom is: music
My mom is good at: making dinner
and my favorite:
My mom is as beautiful as: me!

Needless to say I enjoyed his answers and was impressed he thinks so highly of the generic brand honey nut cheerios he gets to eat once a week!  I am equally concerned about his level of humility concerning his looks, but i've decided i'm not going to intervene because i wake up to things like this:

 it's super cute.

warmin' up

 well it's certainly warming up here in texas, as you can tell from our laundry room!
we went from this:

 to this:

the pools don't officially open for a few more weeks, but the splash park has already been visited a couple times this week!  Of course the house needed a subtle summer flare as well, can you spot the differences?

before:

after:

hope you're finding ways to keep cool!

thomas

a couple days after we arrived home from our cali trip we headed over to grapevine for a day out with thomas!  last year justin took brody and he really enjoyed it, since then the twins have gotten into the thomas trains so we decided to make it a family venture.  

justin and the boys by thomas

the boys with the diesels.  the love the one in the middle, diesel 10, he's kinda a naughty engine, so their interest in him shouldn't be that surprising.

crewser showing off his new tattoo of diesel 10

watching the electric train displays, they were mesmerized!  it totally reminded me of the grandpa's electric train tables, i wish my boys could have seen it, they would have loved it!

 finally we boarded the engine for a ride on thomas, can you tell who was excited:

 kade, taking in the views

 crew and dad riding together

the boys enjoyed the train ride and after we got home i went through the pics and found this one justin took of brody, i don't know why, but it cracks me up every time!

home to cali

at the beginning of april we took a trip home to cali to visit with lots of family while cousins were enjoying spring break!  we finally got all packed:

and made our flight with more than enough time to spare, like we got through security so quick we had over an hour to kill in the airport with the boys, you can imagine how well that went- hint, it didn't.  (also i don't really know if i'm allowed to use the words kill and airport in the same sentence, but i hate to backtrack...)  I packed all sorts of stuff for the boys to do on the flight, movies, tags, foam sticker pictures, coloring in new coloring books, snacks, and each seat had a tv.  that held them for maybe 45 minutes, we still had another 2 hours and 45 minutes to go.  it was TERRIBLE!!  plus all three boys wanted to sit with me (at once) so i spent a bunch of the flight like this:

that poor lady to my right was a stranger, and she either somehow fell asleep with all the boys commotion, or was using some serious relaxation techniques to get through that flight.  finally, FINALLY, we made it!
The boys loved cali, mostly cause they were able to be outside all day long, play with tons of cousins and spent time with grandma and grandpa.

there were picnics on the trampoline:

and playing in the waves 

enjoying the sunshine

playing with actual sand- there's no sand here in texas, just wood chips, i didn't know how the twins would react to sand, but they loved it!

ps, that's kade above, and crew below

it takes two little guys to bury one little guy.

delish pizza!  well he was enjoying his slice until he set it down and seagull took it.  

lined up with cousins after an afternoon at the beach.

we also did lots of other stuff like parks, breakfast at the farmers market, shopping, four square tournaments, dinners out, saw the hunger games again, celebrated easter and visited with LOTS of family!    and we finally got to eat at geatano's and wahoo's fish tacos, two places we've really missed!
we braced our self for the flight home armed with some new cars, that entertained them in the airport, and wondering just how bad it would be, here's a look:

I'm as floored as you are!!!  the twins slept the whole flight, i was totally shocked!!  we were about to swear off trips for the next few years but this flight totally restored our faith in traveling with kids!  great job crewkade!!
we super enjoyed our trip home and loved having justin all to ourselves, with having to share him with work, we already miss everyone!

tornados

at the beginning of april we had a pretty serious tornado warning, so the boys and i headed into our "shelter" which is really just the closet housed under our stairs.  we were in there for a couple hours, thankfully we were far enough away from any of the tornados that touched down, but i was quite nervous!  this was our second tornado warning since moving here and this time i was a bit better prepared for the boys, we had snacks, coloring, FaceTime with dad (who was at work) and thankfully we had the pbskids app on the iPad!