Weekend Randoms

Last week my friend Kristen and I took our kiddos to the zoo while they were on Spring Break.  It was a little busy there but it was a beautiful day and we had so much fun.  We both have memberships this year so it works out wonderfully.  We spent about 6 hours at the zoo so the boys were exhausted at the end of the day....so was mama.  Of course I forgot my camera but I stole a few pictures from Kristen.

The other morning I needed to clean the kitchen so I decided to let the boys play with ice cubes in bowls.  They loved it.  They spooned them from bowl to bowl and then I eventually added a little food coloring.  Simple fun and I got to clean uninterrupted.

Another morning we played on our front porch with some sidewalk chalk.

The boys played with chalk while I took pictures of the beautiful spring flowers in our yard.  So pretty!

A typical Saturday morning for us consists of a big, lazy breakfast.  And then the boys climb all over me the moment I try to sit on the couch and bring me a book to read to them.  Then they get tired of me and wrestle Daddy.  It's these simple moments like this though that bring the biggest smile to my face.  How privileged am I to have this gift of a family?

Last night we had another EPIC event and took the youth ice skating and out for ice cream.  It was a really fun night and I didn't fall, woot woot!  Love these kiddos and the chance to invest in them.

Time to watch some Final Four basketball while watching the rain from my couch and trying not to eat too many Reeses Peanut Butter Eggs :-)

Favorite boy books

One of the blogs I read is doing a link-up today showcasing their favorite kids book.  What a clever idea to capture what books yours kids love on your blog and get new ideas too!  Someday they'll look back and remember which books were read to them over and over as a kid.

And we sure do love books in our house!  It's one thing I absolutely love to hunt for at garage sales and thrift stores.  You can find some well-used favorites for a fraction of the price.

Here are a few that Benjamin (3) and Jonah (1) love to read.....

*  such great animal pictures - Jonah's favorite

*  classic bear hunt with a great ending

*  super cute big bad wolf spin-off book

*  great way to introduce the alphabet

*  adorable illustrations with trains....perfect for a boy

*  Benjamin LOVES these look&find books (like Where's Waldo but a bit easier)

*  love all the books in the "If you give a...." series

*  SUCH a fun pirate book for boys

*  my boys both loved Spot books and love lifting the flaps

*  Ben's favorite was the Little Mouse & the Strawberry....boom, boom, boom comes the bear

*  really quick but fun Thomas stories

*  helps Ben learn how to read a clock by using his favorite Thomas engines

*  both boys LOVES this 3 little pigs classic.  They love to sing "who's afraid of the big bad wolf...."

*  silly alphabet book with bugs and flaps.....boys love it

*  fun rhyming book about a toy train

*  Ben loves the book about the train-tastic crew

*  both boys are obsessed with this Dig, Dig Digging book about all kinds of trucks/tractors/vehicles

*  Ben looooves these read-along Disney storybooks.  They're super fun!

*  an adorable book for a mama to read to her boys.  We found this at the library and I need to find a copy our own, it is really sweet!

*  cute rhyming book perfect for little ones

*  rhyming, touch & feel book with really cute pictures and words

*  gotta have the classic brown bear, brown bear

*  a great tractor/truck lift-the-flap book.  You will read it over and over and over if you have boys

*  you can't go wrong with mischievous Curious George stories

*  a fun lift-the-flap book for infants/1 year olds

*  great book for infant/1 year olds with a finger hole to slide open the animals

I could go on and on with books we love in this house!  I'm pretty sure we have a bookshelf in every room.  Happy reading!!! :-)

Dyed & Hunted

For a boy who doesn't like to eat eggs, he sure enjoyed using them for fun Easter'ish activities this weekend.  He loves his eggs dyed & hunted.  I've never done either before because he was young and didn't know any difference!

But this year I thought I'd make a little memory for him, so we dyed eggs on Saturday morning.  As one would expect, he was super impatient, and put several coloring dots into one bowl of water....but he really enjoyed it and loved the green one in particular.

 using the egg holder as a magnifying glass :-)

 

 

Then later that afternoon, Peter hid about a dozen eggs around the backyard.  They were just the cheapies filled with Benjamin, but he was delighted.  He ran around and found them all, counting them all along the way.

And YES,that is a Kitchen Aid mixing bowl as my boy's Easter basket.  Guess I'm not getting pinned to Pinterest huh?  :-)

He had fun, we had fun.  And who doesn't love jellybeans?

Playing Outside

Despite the fact that Benjamin says "the sun is blinding my eyes" everytime the sun is out, my boys LOVE playing outside.  I have a feeling we're going to be outdoors all summer long and I will need to buy lots of Oxi-clean for the grass stains :-)

Even on days like this when I wish I could pretend I was an ostrich and bury my head in a hole, I love looking at pictures like these and remembering just how blessed and privileged to be their mama.  Can't wait to fill our spring and summer with views from the kitchen window like the one above.

Love my boys!

Double Date

If you don't have best friends you should really find some.  Just not our best friends, they're already taken.  Ha ha!

All kidding aside, God has abundantly blessed us with wonderful friends since we moved here 8 1/2 years ago.  So many couples and families to share life with.  It hasn't been until the last 5 years that I've truly learned the value of a good friend and how worth it it is to invest in their lives and allow ourselves to be invested in as well.

And Jeremy and Kristen are all kinds of wonderful and we love them.

So we decided to double date.  Something we haven't done in awhile and something we will most definetly do again sooner rather than later.

Two teen girls watched our kiddos (6 kids for a whole day?  Built-in-birth-control right?)  :-)  The kids did great and we lucked out with a beautiful day in Portland.

Agenda for the day......eat at Benihana's.  Then find additional activities that could be structured around eating at Benihana's.  Maybe we're best friends with them because we.know.how.to.eat.

We left around 9:45am and headed to the waterfront to enjoy the sunshine and walk a bit.  Uninterrupted time to just enjoy conversation and share with each other....awesome!  Add in some vitamin D and we were loving it.

the cool bridge we walked across

Then came Benihana's.  Oh wow.  Let's just say I may have eaten every.last.little.bit of my filet/scallops combo dinner.  With rice, vegetables, shrimp, salad, soup and a scoop of chocolate ice cream.  SOOOOOO good.  I want to go back.  Now.  And the best part is that they give you $30 gift certificates for your birthday month so both Peter and Kristen had one to use.  Amazing food with bills cut in half?  Perfect.

After lunch we headed to the Pittock Mansion (inspired by another amazing friend Heather - thanks for the idea!!)  We're too cheap to pay the $8 per person admission but you can tour the grounds for free and it was really pretty.  We made it part-way down the path to see the arboritum, but didn't finish because it was getting late.  Besides, according to Kristen, wasn't the path we were walking on God's arboritum?  Ha ha.

After a quick stop at Washington Square for a slice of cheesecake a piece and a coffee (which we may or may not have consumed in it entirety on the drive home) we came back to our kiddos.  The babysitters had survived, cleaned the house and made cookies.  The best part was they wore our kids out and there was only an hour until bedtime once we got home.

It was a wonderful day filled with lots of laughs, food, and conversation.  Thank you Lord for our friends!!