What's for lunch?

As strange as it looks, this is the only sandwich Big Brother will eat - turkey and strawberries. He'll substitute halved grapes too. No PB&J for this kid! 

When he was a toddler he used to dip bananas into ketchup. So, I guess his taste buds have evolved a little.

Friday Favorites

A long time ago I started Friday Favorites. I never did it again. These are a couple of photos from the past few weeks that I love.

We made these "spaghetti" cupcakes for April Fool's Day. They are Chocolate cupcakes from a box with yellow frosting, Rolo- 'meatballs' and strawberry jelly 'sauce'. Big Brother got a big kick out of these. I love the way Little Brother is trying to see what his big bro is doing. That is the way it is around here. He says what he says, does what he does. This picture is precious to me.

Found the boys on my bed with every pillow in the house having a pillow fight! Too cute!

Piano Man

Big Brother has asked to take piano lessons for a few months now. His good buddy's mom just happens to  teach piano lessons. He started Monday. He learned a song with 4 notes. He plays it for everyone that visits our house. It makes my heart glad that he is learning the piano. 

(It also makes me glad that it's being used for more than just dusting practice!)

My week

It's been a while, I know! This has been my week....

Yep, a sick little guy. I will spare you the details, but it hasn't been pretty! Let's just say a dose of Mirilax an hour before a stomach bug shows up is not a good combination. And just when I think he's better, he relapsed today. We haven't left the house much. Every time I turned around this little guy was sleeping. 

Being home has had it's benefits. I have an almost clean house, some almost completed projects, 2 sets of vacation plans almost completed, and best of all had plenty of time to look at these...

These are the boys' photobooks from age 4 and age 1 that came in the mail this week. (Yes, I am aware that I almost 2 years behind for them both!) I do a book for each year for each boy with Shutterfly. I use my photoshop and usually templates I find on the internet. These are both about 90 pages and I love every page and every memory they represent. Here are some of my favorites...

When we took the training wheels off Big Brother's Bike.

A fun Halloween memory

Turning 5!

Going back to Pre-K

A summary of a fun one year old!

Days at the park

A sweet toddler with only 2 teeth!

A sweet little boy who loved his pacifiers!

It was a good treat to get these in the mail this week! 

Title-less

I can't even think of a title to go with this cowboy-darth vader-yoda combo Little Brother created!

Move Over Michael

(Michael Jordan-in case you don't get my lame sense of humor!)

Big Brother has been waiting all winter to be on a basketball team. He finally started practice and his first game last week. He's loving it! Check out those shoes. They make him look so official!

He didn't get the ball much during the game. Let's just say there are some kids that like to keep the ball as long as possible. But, when he did have the ball, he did his best dribbling. When I asked him after the game if the game was what he thought it would be like. He answered, "Not really. I thought all the kids would be really nice and pass the ball to me. But, they don't." 

(Not loving the picture quality! I still struggle with indoor light situations. I least I have many more weeks to practice :)

A New View

So, no... this isn't about some new outlook on life. This post is about this baby...

I have been saving every penny of my tutoring money to buy it. I finally took the plunge last Friday and have been playing with it ever since. It is a new lens for my Canon. It is the best quality lens I've had and it's awesome! 

So, in addition to showing you what I love about it, I'll show you what we've been up to for spring break as well! (It takes color photos - in case you were wondering. I just happened to love them all in black and white for a change.

Loving the library 

Time outdoors

Wrestling with Daddy

Train ride at the zoo. ( I love little Bro's excitement to see me!)

A terribly windy afternoon of tennis

Dont' you love his shirt? It's his favorite "show"

Yaaahooooo!

It's Spring Break. Enough said!

Prayers

Every night we pray with the kids before they go to bed. They each take turns praying too. Big Brother prays quietly and privately, but Little Brother lets us hear his prayers. And it's a good thing, because quite often he gives us a laugh before bed. This night his prayer was...

"Thank you God for keeping me safe and for helping me eat my proteins."

Overheard

While riding to the doctor yesterday in the car this conversation was overheard...

B: "I love Laser Tag. We played it at my friends birthday party."

N: "Yah, me too. (doesn't even know what it is) Will you laser me?"

B: "I am going to have laser tag at my 7 year old party"

N: "Can I be on your team?"

B: "Yes. We'll be the green team."

N: "We'll be the GreenBay Packers"

B: "Yah, the other team will be the Red Bay Packers."

ER Visit

We spent 3 hours in the ER last night. Around noon, big brother complained about his jaw hurting. We looked, saw nothing and went on about our day. By 3pm he fell asleep. He woke up at 5:30 and was swollen from behind his left ear to his jaw and in a lot of pain with a decent fever. We began calling the after hours nurse line and they didn't get back to us until after 7. 

Well, in the meantime, I went on and did a little google search. Let me tell you that's not a great idea! Within a couple hours, I was convinced he had the mumps! After talking to the nurse, they thought we should head in to the ER. When discharged at 11:30pm (yikes!) we were told his salivary gland was infected due to a virus (NOT MUMPS!) and to give him sour candy (to get his saliva going to pull out the infection). 

We stopped at the grocery store and filled up on sour candy and ibuprofen. I felt like a misfit mom- carting my kid into a store in the middle of the night in his pj's and loading him up on sugar! I even found myself explaining myself to the young checkout boy who could really care less!

He slept well, stayed home from school and we finally got him on an antibiotic. The fever is gone, the pain is less and they say he'll be swollen for at least a week. Grateful it's not something worse and I swear not to look up symptoms on the internet anymore...

He wasn't happy about these photos!

Happy Birthday Daddy!

I love birthdays! One of my favorite parts of the year is making our family birthdays really special. It's fun to see that the kids are finding joy in it too! They helped me pick out gifts, make birthday treats and decorate! They were so excited for Daddy's Party (and confused when it was just the 4 of us!) His festivities spanned 3 days- a hibatchi dinner, his real birthday and gifts, ending in an adult's only date night with friends.

One of our favorite restaurants is Fujiyama. We've only been once before, but Kevin's been wanting to take the kids. It was a fun place to go to celebrate his day! Not only fun, but tasty! I couldn't believe how much the kids ate and enjoyed their food. They now call it their favorite food! They have expensive tastes :)

Little Brother wasn't into the fire at all! To put out the little "volcano" fire above, the chef had a little doll who's pants came down and "peed" out the fire. He squirted Little Brother in the hair and that did not go over well! He did however, enjoy when they threw food and he was supposed to catch it in his mouth. In fact, both boys thought that was pretty awesome. As we left Little Brother said he really liked it, "but not when the little man peed on me!" I can only imagine what someone would've thought if they had overheard that comment!

Kevin requested chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, but we made it even better! Both boys got to decorate their own cookie cake. They picked out Bronco's colors and were convinced he was having a "Bronco Birthday Party". They don't get that adults don't have quite the parties that kids have!

This was Big Brother's Cake- notice the "Brthday!"

This was Little Brother's!

We hid all of his gifts in this new toolbox. Little Brother had already told him he was getting a new toolbox, so Big Brother thought it would be a fun surprise to hide them in there. We had fun making Daddy's day special!