Happy Easter 2011

We were so blessed to be able to be home with our families for Easter!  We're rarely home for major holidays, so I was so happy to be amongst family for such a special holiday as Easter.  We all got dressed and made it (somewhat on time) for one of the Easter services at church.  It was so nice to spend a beautiful, sunny morning being so thankful for the Cross and what it means to us on a daily basis. 

Just like John Michael's Easter verse he memorized, He is RISEN!  I am so proud of him for memorizing his first verse!  It was fun to share the Easter story with him this year and have him catch on a little more than last year.

Happy Easter everyone!

Matthew has this look on his face in every picture!  Either way, they were the cutest, most precious boys at church on Easter!  I loved their outfits.  I literally wanted to just eat them up!

 

My family after Easter service

Jordan's family after Easter service

Matthew snuggled with Bop after church.  He was pretty tired and just wanted to be rocked for some of the day.

We let the boys nap after lunch at Gaga's and then we headed over to Meme's house for a big Easter dinner with everyone!

John Michael was happy to go "jump, jump, jump" at the neighbor's house.

After dinner we threw some plastic eggs around the yard and let the boys gather them up.  I wanted so badly to dye eggs for the boys, but we have been SUPER busy since we've been home and I have been so tired, so no eggs this year.  That's ok, they loved that there was a single M&M inside each one!

 

So many eggs!

 

We had a great Easter and I think the boys loved getting eggs, candy, and their baskets from their grandparents.  We were just blessed and happy to be with our families!

Busy Wednesday

We've had a really busy day today!  John Michael had an Easter egg hunt at his school today.  He was all prepared with his basket and eggs to share with his other friends.  I wish I could have seen him while he was gathering eggs with his friends, but I know he had a great time!  He wanted to make sure I remembered to put his basket in the car after school.

Matthew had a doctor's appointment this morning.  The look on his face afterwards says it all!  He was not excited about his shots, but he did great!

His little Elmo sticker made it all better!

I also finally got Jack a grooming appointment and he looks so great.  He's soft and fluffy and he knows he's all clean!  What a good fluff!

Happy Wednesday!

Verse O' the Day:

I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”

Psalm 16:2

Playing Catch-Up, Again!

It seems like I'm always playing catch up with my blog lately.  Pregnancy-wise things are going great but I am so tired at night that I hardly want to make time to update the old blog!  I know the grandparents are wanting some pictures, so here we go!

We found Matthew in our bathroom stacking my hair rollers.  They weren't hot and he had the best time stacking them back and forth into the roller holder!

Whenever it's quiet and you don't know where Matthew is, he's probably doing something random like this!

Jordan and I took advantage of our local Jump Zone's Friday night open jump a few weekends ago.  Jordan met us after work and we played and played.  Jordan and JM stayed even longer and played.  JM had the best time and talked and talked about it.  I know he had a great time with his daddy!

Matthew was pretty happy because there were a few random balls to play with.  Plus, he liked the foosball table they have there!

 

Our boys are growing like weeds!  Matthew is 16 1/2 months old and he is so all over the place.  It's so funny how he and JM have different personalities!  Matthew is so destructive and wild, but at the same time he is so sweet and he is the cuddler of our family.  He looooves to give hugs all day long.  I just eat it up!

And I still can't believe our sweet first-born is nearly 3.  I'm not sure how that happened.  He just talks all day long and I love that we can just carry on conversations during dinner and while driving in the car.  I keep thinking how each year is the best and sweetest, but this past year has been just wonderful with him.  Two has not been terrible with my sweet boy!

One of the shows we let the boys watch is "Wheel of Fortune" and this is how we found them the other day when we walked into the den.  Mesmerized!

Strawberry Swiper

I walked into the kitchen to find Matthew up at the countertop getting into the strawberries I was preparing for breakfast.

 

 

Matthew looooves "straw-beeees"!  He is such a mess!  He's always climbing and getting into things!  I can't wait to see his funny little personality grow as he grows up!

Little of This, Little of That...

I've been way behind on blogging and also taking pictures of the boys.  I really need to do a better job of taking more pictures of them! We haven't been doing anything too interesting lately, just a little of this and a little of that......

I noticed John Michael stole my camera and took about 20 pictures exactly like this!

We made a fun slide out of a little blow up mattress and our trampoline.

 

Matthew has been loving his favorite turtle shape sorter.  He's so good at getting all the correct shapes into the turtle!

Matthew has been crawling up onto our kitchen chairs and playing with our little Easter egg tree.  John Michael has a look on his face like, you're not supposed to be doing that!

And here's Matthew saying "uh-oh" after the tree fell over!

I successfully tackled a HUGE pile of the boys' laundry.  It was all clean but it just needed hanging up and putting away.  Fun times.  By the way, that changing table in the background doesn't live there, it's on its way to the garage for a yard sale in the next few weeks!

And last but not least, we did a pretty big shopping trip to Wal-Greens.  We spent a good bit of money, but we used a combination of coupons and and in-store coupons for almost everything pictured.  I went ahead and bought some wipes and diapers for the new baby too!  I'm sure some of you coupon experts could have gotten it for cheaper, but we think we did a pretty good job with our coupons and register rewards!

The toothpaste was FREE, the Purex cost $0.99 and we got 6 boxes of cereal and 4 boxes of Pop-Tarts.  We spent about $45.  It sounds like a lot, but we started figuring out between 2 Pampers packs and the 10 Kellogs products, that's about $40 right there.  We're still learning!

A Day at the Aquarium

Several weekends ago we packed up and took a mini road trip to the Oklahoma Aquarium.  The last time we were there John Michael was about 9 months old.  This trip just did not go well.  We made the mistake of seeing a Nemo fish in the very first tank we looked at.  Not good.  John Michael did not understand that there were more fish to look at and we were not there to see just Nemo.  His behavior was not good and it became a stressful trip for the rest of the afternoon.

 We hope they at least learned a little bit and made a few good memories along the way.  John Michael surprised us by reaching straight into the touch pools and touching star fish and big shrimp!  We were proud of him!

 Both boys loved the turtles too!

 I can't even remember what was in this tank.  I had been chasing Matthew and John Michael had been having multiple breakdowns by this point, so I was too tired to care.

After we were there for awhile we decided to take a break and go sit outside in the sunshine and eat the lunch I had packed.  This bronze alligator was one of the boys' favorite things of the day.  They loved sitting on it, playing on it, and putting rocks into his mouth!

After lunch we made it back inside to go see the sharks and see the rays.

 

Matthew liked seeing the fish and pointing at them.  He kept saying "fssssssh!"

 

John Michael looks pretty excited about seeing all the tropical fish!

One of the neatest things about this aquarium is their walk-through shark tank.  John Michael loved it and we went to see the sharks twice while we were there!  It's pretty fun to see all the sharks swimming all around you as you walk through!

And of course, this was the best picture we could get of the boys before we left.  They loved the big alligator but refused to pose for a picture together!

We were exhausted after this trip!  I'm not sure why both boys were so out of sorts but we just thought it would be a lot more fun than it was!  Like most adventures in parenting, you're always learning something and you just never know how they're actually going to behave on some days!