Princess and Po

I stole this building block idea from another twin mommy, we had such fun creating castles all day.  It was something fun for Braeden to do with me and let Liam and Brenna play (and destroy) with when we were done.

Let’s build with blocks!

In the beginning……..

All done with our first project, notice who is on top.

Also you may notice Braeden’s mouth and nose look a bit odd, he fell when we were running in the park on Monday.  He finished though with some walking involved he ran/walked 3 miles.

 

Why is Po on top?  PRINCESSES RULE!

 

Po is dethroned.

We have a difference in opinions on who should be on top. Liam puts Po back up and knocks the princess down

And Po rules once more!

 

Our block castle mansion.

My assistant!  Or was I the assistant?

The Destroyer

Two for Tuesday

They were cracking me up today, Brenna stole my newspaper then they both had fun dancing on it, they thought they were soooo funny!

Another playdate….7 one year olds and a 5 year old

Today Barb came over with Sarah and Jacob, my kids a bit crabby without their morning nap, but they did pretty well.  While we were outside playing Cindy another mom from our multiples group showed up with her triplets Cameron, Connor, and Caden. 

Braeden became bored with all the babies and got a bit too “helpful”.  He said afterwards he wished Anna and Megan came.  I guess seven one year olds can be a bit boring for a five year old, but they sure keep us moms on our toes. 

Braeden and Brenna

 

I only got a few pics with all the kids….notice all the kids sharing goldfish and look at Brenna on the right side….I guess she doesn’t like sharing with 6 others.

The boys at the water table

The Naked Brothers! Hee hee!

Movie Night

On Saturday we planned a movie night for fourteen of our nieces and nephews and of course their parents.  Ed brought the digital projector thingie from work to project the movie on the side of the house.  We bought all of the “movie” candy that you could think of and I popped popcorn….the old fashioned way.

I will say I now know why we have microwave popcorn.  As it was popping, the cover wasn’t on tight and a kernel flew out…..and landed down my shirt and

IN MY BRA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   I finally got it out, but not without a boobie blister. OUCH!!!!!!!

Anyway, it decided to pour down rain and storm, so we moved the movie indoors to the living room.  We set all the couches up like stadium seating and the kids had blankets on the floor.  So it all sounds good, but what I didn’t count on was kids that didn’t know how to sit and watch a movie….maybe all the excitement of something new, but I was a bit irritated. 

The older kids from 7-10 were the worst.  I couldn’t believe they couldn’t sit down and watch a movie….esp a movie they all said they wanted to see. They were banging on the baby toys and playing inappropriately with them and broke one toy.  One of them (8 yr old) decided to drive the cozy coupe into the living room as everyone was watching the movie, the 9 year old thought the popper lawnmower would be cool.

Finally, I had it, I told them that they were too old to be playing with the toys like that and to watch the movie or go play in the garage.  Their parents did nothing but let them act like that.

I hope none of them read my blog, as far as I know, they don’t.  One of my biggest pet peeves is parents who let their kids run the house and do whatever they want.  I’m not the perfect parent and I pick and chose what I let go, but there is a line when it comes to other peoples houses and being destructive and rude.

Braeden and about twelve others (adults included) did watch the movie and had a nice time, but I have the feeling from now on movie night will consist of Ed, Braeden, and me.

The pics all turned out fuzzy, my high ceilings do that even when its light out, so in the dark it was worse.

fuzzy….but you get the picture

The flash is making it look light on the screen but it looked perfect.  Look there is the cozy coupe.  It looks like the 1 year old is in it now, I can accept that esp when the movie started at 930pm….but when she was still doing it at 1am and screaming because she was soooo exhausted,  I didn’t quite understand why she wasn’t at home in bed (she lives across the street)  Thank goodness my 1 year olds were in bed sleeping by the time the movies began and didn’t wake up until their normal middle of the night wake up times.

Okay….so my movie night post turned into an outlaw rant.

Oh yeah, and what was all over Liam’s face?  Well some of the movie candy fell between the cushions of the couch Liam found it a few days later.  I even swept the floor twice because I was worried about them finding popcorn and choking on it.  Liam takes after mommy……he was enjoying his

 

LICORICE!!!

What do you think he got into?

I went upstairs to get Brenna out of bed and this is what I found…..

This is how I found him in his Cozy Coupe, looked like a hit and run!  Boy did I panic!

And a full length view , nice shirt huh?

Any guesses what he got into?

Potter Park Zoo

Today we went to the Potter Park Zoo. This is one of my favorite zoos around. Detroit Zoo is nice, but usually very crowded and for little ones its hard to get up and close to the animals.

Our favorites:

BRAEDEN’S FAVORITE

The penguins! He kept bugging us and bugging us, he wanted to go straight to the penguins.

LIAM’S FAVORITE

The tiger! He refused to leave the tiger house, we would leave the building and he wound turn around and go back, and leave and go back. Finally I decided it might be time to get back in the stroller.

Sneaking back to see the tigers one more time, little stinker!

BRENNA’S FAVORITE

The COW’S! Okay….so they aren’t cows, but to Liam and Brenna the black and white goats looked like cows, they were yelling “COW, COW”. They also like the whole farm area. The rooster would have been Brenna’s favorite…but he was hiding on her. He kept cock-a-doodle-dooing and she would do it back, but she was getting frustrated when she couldn’t find him.

Here is a cute video of the kids with the “COWGOAT”.....OOPS! Somehow it ended up at the very bottom of the blog, check in out at the end.

And a few more faves

I love this peacock, it was my fave!

My goofballs!

And no trip to Potter Park Zoo is complete without a little bit of time in the park….to run off steam before the long ride home

Then time to go home…..always a fun ride! Funny thing is the first kid to sleep in the car was Braeden, then Brenna, and Liam decided to stay up the whole hour ride.

Five more weeks until……………….

 

Braeden officially is in school! Where is the summer going? We are halfway through summer and I fell like it just began. We didn't really do a summer vacation, its hard with the babies. We are going away for a long weekend to Traverse City a resort town which I LOVE. We are staying at the Great Wolf Lodge and Braeden is counting the days down. Anyway, just started thinking about summers when I was a kid.

Do you have a favorite summer vacation spot from your childhood?

As a kid we did so much camping, I remember getting to the campground and putting up the tent and running to the playground to find "friends" to play with. I don't remember ever staying in a hotel until I was 12 on a cross country drive to California for the 84 Olympics. My sister got sick at the Grand Canyon and we ended up in an emergency clinic. Because she had a fever and was vomiting we went to Vegas and stayed at a hotel. We were soo excited. It's funny because Braeden has only been camping once, once the babies get older maybe we will try again. I remember I thought camping with Braeden (he was 3 at the time) would be hard on him.....actually camping was the hardest on ME! I just don't cut it tent camping anymore. I want a potty of my own. In fact, in the middle of the night I didn't want to walk all the way to the community bathroom, so used Braeden's potty chair! The thought of showers and slimy floors grosses me out. I guess I am more the hotel type these days.

Where would you go for the perfect family vacation?

Before we had kids we travelled all over the country and overseas. I would love to pick somewhere really exciting like say on and African Safari or to some tropical island like Bora Bora....I really really want to go there. But I suppose now being more practical I would want to go to Smuggler's Notch in Vermont. I see advertisements for it in the parenting magazines and it looks great with family activities and tons of things to do. I also hear Wisconsin Dells is great for families too. I remember when we were in Jamaica you could stay at a resort where you get a nanny with your room....cool, but I would be a bit nervous about this, plus I want to do things with my kids on vacation. A night out by ourselves would be nice too....guess that's why you invite grandma and grandpa to go too! I used to have a "grown up" list with Hawaii, Alaska, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Italy, France, the funny thing was we went everywhere on our "list" except Ireland....guess you have to save something for the 25 yr anniversary.

Anyway, I am going to start my family vacation list soon.

Feel free to give me ideas to add to my list or share your favorite vacation destinations.

Just a few pics

Been a long and tiring week, just took today to go to t-ball and visit with family, probably more of the same tomorrow.

Hoping to squeeze a few fun things in this weekend before family in FL have to leave.

Braeden at t-ball

Brenna in Aunt Helen’s rocker.

  Liam in Aunt Helen’s other rocker.

Brenna’s EEG

We went in on Monday morning 10:00 am (nap time) to get the hook up done.  I brought a Signing Times DVD and although she wasn’t happy about laying on her back, she was distracted for the right side of her hook up.  Once we got to the left side she was a bit ticked.  Nothing really helped, she was just MAD.  It took about 1 hr 15 minutes, the guy doing it said it went pretty well….he has had tons worse.  I was just relieved that we wouldn’t have to sedate her. 

Once we were on the way home she went right to sleep.  Of course once the car stopped the nap was over, which was not a good thing because she was just overtired at that point.  Nothing really slowed her down.

Once we got to the afternoon nap she wouldn’t go down.  We were not allowed to let her sleep unsupervised and Brenna likes her space.  Normally when she gets tired she will get her blankie to let me know it’s time and she leaps into her bed because she likes it.  She does not like to be held once she is ready to be alone.

So she was extremely overtired from the short morning nap, no afternoon nap, and then could not go to sleep with me holding her for the night.  I tried everything, rocking, swaying, Baby Einstein, everything.  Finally at 8:10 she finally gave in.

A bit of accessorizing!

This morning was pretty normal, no morning nap, then on the way to the hospital at 11:15 she fell asleep and woke up about 10 minutes later when we had to go to the elevator.  Both babies screamed for the 4 elevator rides at the hospital.  It took about 45 minutes to unhook her.  They said that the Dr will read the report in the next few days and should call us in the next few weeks, unless they notice something that needs to be addressed right away.

So this part is over….it feels good to be done.  As much as I love my little girl, I am glad to have my arms back.  My arms are feeling like jelly and my back is cramped.  I have been holding her about 20 of the last 24 hours.  Ed has been at the funeral home for visitation the past few days and I stayed up with her as long as I could last night.  Then I wrapped my arms around her so she couldn’t move, or at least I would feel it when she did move.  I’m tired, no time to sleep, as soon as the babies are up I am up to the funeral home to visit as long as the kids allow and then the funeral is tomorrow.  Then maybe this weekend we can get a few hours extra sleep.

Some GREAT news!

In all of this sadness with Aunt Helen passing, we received some really good news yesterday. JJ's heart surgery went well, actually they said it went even better than expected. I only talked to family for a few minutes, but it was a much relieved call.

We have family in town from GA from my side of the family this weekend so we are having a get together tonight at our house, they spend a week up in northern MI and are leaving tomorrow. My cousin's parents who were there for the surgery will be here tonight, so I'm sure they will give us more details about the surgery.

My nephew's open house is today, I can't believe he is graduating. Ed and I started dating two weeks after he was born. We used to take him everywhere when he was little. Where does the time go? Ed's sisters from FL arrive in tomorrow and the funeral has been set for Wednesday.

After calling the neurology dept we have decided to keep Brenna's 24 hour EEG scheduled for Monday/Tuesday. It means I might miss visitation, but if we cancelled we couldn't get back in until September. We already had to cancel the first one when she had MRSA.

Anyway, its going to be pretty crazy busy here until after the funeral

Good-bye Aunt Helen

This morning I took Braeden to t-ball and when I returned home I noticed a few cars more than normal and I knew immediately what it meant.  I went inside and checked the answering machine and the message was there.  Aunt Helen is on her way to heaven where she can be with her husband, brother, and son.  She lived a long life of 90 years and was in pain and is at peace now with her loved ones and the biggest garden of all.

Here is one of her favorite hymns:

On Eagle’s Wings

You who dwell in the shelter of the Lord,
Who abide in his shadow for life,
Say to the Lord: "My refuge,
My rock in whom I trust!"

The snare of the fowler will never capture you,
And famine will bring you no fear;
Under his wings your refuge,
His faithfulness your shield. 

You need not fear the terror of the night,
Nor the arrow that flies by day;
Though thousands fall about you,
Near you it shall not come. 

For to his angels he's given a command
To guard you in all of your ways;
Upon their hands they will bear you up,
Lest you dash your foot against a stone.

And he will lift you up on eagle's wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun,
And hold you in the palm of his hand.

The Children’s Museum

We were off to the museum today, I was a bit nervous after yesterday’s trip to the library, but at least a children’s museum is more age appropriate with fun things to see and places to explore.

We met up with Barb, Kerry, and Lisa and their kiddos (twins) Jacob and Sarah, Anna and Megan, and Jackson and Quentin.  This kids had a great time, and I think they were all sad to go.  Liam cried on the way home.  Brenna fell asleep on the way home and they are both napping now.  Braeden and I have been looking at pics and he has picked several out to share.

I had my camera set on something different and I’m not sure if that was the problem….or the subjects that were a bit wiggly that were to blame, but I didn’t get many pictures that were not blurry.

I definitely think we will be back because all three kids liked it and I was especially thankful Anna and Megan were there, because it makes things so much more for him when there are kids closer to him in age to play with. 

Liam trying to balance the scale

All three kids in one pic….the only one I have.

   Playing dress up at the castle

Being a bit dramatic on stage

Brennella in her stagecoach

A puppet show, Braeden gave Brenna a show earlier and just just went up and hugged the puppets….it was so cute, of course the pic was really blurry.

Braeden and Megan in the grocery store

Brenna in the chopper

I forgot to mention, Daddy works at the University across the street from the Children’s Museum, so he popped over for a few minutes.

  Braeden and Megan on the rock climbing wall….”Look mom I’m on Level 3.”

There was a little play house they were playing in, but behind the house was a dog and Brenna kept going back and saying “woof woof” to the doggie.

Quite the hangout, shopping with Sarah and Jacob.

Braeden and Jacob looking out the window at the flowers.

They even have a pizzeria where the kids can make pizza and serve it.

Jacob and his beautiful blues!

Liam the fireman

I love it!  I always saw Liam as a policeman though.

Jackson and Quentin eating their snack before we left.

Sarah and Jacob snacking too.

Braeden taking one one last spin with Megan and Anna before leaving.

Can’t wait to go again!