March Madness!

March has been a good month. Lots of sickness (We still just can't all seem to be healthy at the same time!) but lots of fun stuff too. 

After almost six years of living in Nebraska, we finally decided to go to the Henry Dorley Zoo. It was  a really cool zoo! But, unfortunately, the kids struggled a bit. It was about twenty-five degrees out and we had to walk A LOT. Luckily they had a bunch of cool indoor exhibits as well. Poor Brady probably had the hardest time. This was his first time at a zoo and the close proximity to some of the animals actually scared him. That and the fact that he threw up in the car as soon as we were done  kind of put a damper on his day. 

 Despite the parrot in the background, this picture was actually taken in a Monkey house and none of the monkeys were behind glass or anything. They were just in the trees all around and it really freaked him out.

Notice the monkeys behind us just hanging out in their tree!

 Jackson and Brady liked the penguins! 

Polar bears don't mind when the weather is below freezing!

Giraffes were awesome!

Ike was in charge of Prom (with one other teacher) again this year so prom week was busy busy busy! It is his least favorite week of the year but one of my favorite! I get to come after school and help with the decorations. 

 My blood, sweat and tears went into these palm trees.

 What a beautiful waterfall!

 This was one of my favorite themes yet. 

 Look at that handsome man!

 And look at that handsome baby!!!!

Love this little guy.

This is the only picture we actually took at the dance. One year we will buy prom pictures just of the fun of it.

Brady started Soccer last week and he was SO EXCITED! He is on a 4-5year old team so they don't play by all the rules but the kids learn the very basics. Brady loved it and played hard all the time he was in the game.

Then a few random pictures!

 This kid gave me a heart attack the other day when he managed to climb the bottom two steps to our DEATH TRAP stair case. I found him there. I need to come up with some sort of large baby gate.

 The view on the way to the bus stop. Can you spot Jackson and Brady way ahead of me?

 Jackson decided he would help Hudson learn to walk. No success yet but my guess is that soon Hudson will be walking and then I'll really be in trouble.

I just loved this picture of Hudson for some reason. He is getting so big!!!

Super Heroes and Magic Shows

The boys and I had a good week. Brady and Jackson discovered an unopened magic kit with an instructional DVD. They spent about four hours learning all the tricks. I only took one picture but I'm pretty sure there will be more to come. It was Family Literacy night at the school and it was all super hero themed. The boys were so excited! We got to meet some real super heroes and make some super crafts. They also got to wear their PJ's because it was pajama day at school.

I love these boys!

 How does he do it!!!!?

 Hanging out with Spidey.

 NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA BATMAN!

 Super (creepy?) hand puppets!

10 Months!!!

Hudson Hudson Hudson. This little guy pretty much makes my day every day. He is THE HAPPIEST kid in the world (or at least the happiest kid in my house). He crawls everywhere and gets into pretty much everything. I need to seriously start thinking about baby gates because our stairs are a death trap. Hudson loves all food and all non-food that he can put in his mouth. He turned 10 months this week it is amazing to me how much joy has come into our home this past year as a result of having a baby in the house. I think it brings out good things in my older boys. I love seeing Jackson and Brady interact with Hudson. It brings out a tenderness and protectiveness in them that I don't see in other circumstances.

So here it is! The 10 month gallery:

 Happy 10 months to my littlest buddy.

Oh the Weather Outside is Frightful...

You know those jokes people make about your state where they say, "If you don't like the weather here...just wait a few minutes". Or basically something similar to that. Well this week was like that. We had BEAUTIFUL spring (summer?) 70 degree weather for the first half of the week then on Thursday night it got cold cold cold and we ended up with three inches of snow, fifty  mile an hour winds and a snow day. Now, I can't really complain about the snow day because that was awesome but I can complain about being so cold! We went from 72 on Wednesday to 16 degrees by Friday night. I slept with my bathrobe over my PJs I was so cold. I won't lie, that little taste of summer has got me itching for spring now!

We went to Brady's winter Pre-school social on Thursday night. His class performed some cute songs and we ate a great meal. It was fun for him to see all his little buddies outside of the classroom. 

 Brady is the one on the end in the striped shirt.  Hudson made it through the entire evening without having any kind of melt down, which was kind of a miracle...he is going through a (hopefully short) faze.

A few pictures from our amazing warm days this week!

 Hudson was fascinated by grass. He may have eaten more than a few leaves and possibly a rock.

 Trying to get a good picture when the sun was SO bright!

 Hudson enjoying more sun. I just thought it was cute that he kept putting his hands on his head.

It was dinosaur week at story hour at the Library and Brady got to make fossils. Also, he was more than a little excited about the hat.

Why are we so sick!???

This has been a rough winter for our family as far as sickness goes.  Really ever since new years, someone has been sick in the family. And this week it was finally me. I have stayed healthy until now but I finally met my match. I have had some kind of stomach bug/flu/ear ache. It has been pretty terrible. Luckily, I have a really amazing husband (who is still recovering from his own flu from last week) who has stepped up and taken care of the house and the boys while I have tried to get better. I think I am on the mend and hopefully I will be the last one to get sick this winter.  Ike and I were supposed to have a romantic dinner tonight for Valentines but because of my sickness, Ike went out and got Dairy Queen for all of us.

I got a lovely delivery today from Ike for Valentines.

 I got Ike a Patriots Super Bowl shirt for his gift.

Ike had no school this past Friday so we decided to take Brady out to lunch. He doesn't to spend a lot of time with us without Jackson. 

Guess who turned 9 months last week?

Baby It's Cold Outside!!!

Ok so I'm feeling pretty done with winter. We have been sick. It has been cold. I can't get my house to stay clean. Well, the house cleaning thing doesn't really have anything to do with winter but still it adds so my overall annoyance. I decided to limit Jackson and Brady's TV time drastically and because of that they now play with their toys all over the house. Yay for playing! Boo for toys everywhere. Still, it is better than them watching so much TV. They didn't even complain when we cut netflix. 

So what has been going on? For starters, we have been sick. It all started on New Year's Eve when Jackson threw up all over the place. Then for about three weeks Jackson, Brady and Hudson all kept passing this vomiting sickens to each other. I did so much laundry and went though all the Clorox wipes in the house. Then we were good for about a week and Ike started to feel sick. His symptoms were flu symptoms though. A day or two after he went down, Hudson got hit bad. He had over 100 degree temperature for almost a week. Ibuprofen worked to get his fever down but Tylenol didn't seem to do anything. I was so desperate to get his fever down between Ibuprofen doses that I even tried an old wives tale of putting chopped onions in his socks. This actually did seem to work but it made our whole house smell like onions. I actually did this three different times during the roughly eight days he was sick and all three times, his fever did go down. 

The doctor said that Hudson most likely had the flu. Even though he got the flu shot, she said he probably got a different strain from Ike. She also said that the only thing we could do was just push fluids and give him tylenol/ibuprofen until the sickness passed. It was kind of a horrible week.

Not to make this a super sad post though! Some fun things did happen int the past few weeks. We had a snow day that really could have just been a delay so we went out to eat and let the kids each pick a present at Walmart. Brady picked this super cool costume from a kid's show he likes.

 Hudson contemplated this Batman mask.

 While Hudson was sick he refused to be put down so I eventually just started carrying him around in this sling. He didn't seem to mind being in the sling and this allowed me to use my arms. Neither of us have had much sleep in this picture.

 Feeling better at last!!! But now we have to go out in 10 degree weather (who knows what the windchill was but it felt COLD!)

This was actually taken over Christmas but who doesn't love a bathtub picture?!?!?!?? Probably both of these guys in about ten years. 

 Jackson and Brady have been playing Batman and Robin lately. Jackson even made his own batman logo  for his shirt and a Robin logo for Brady's.