in a nutshell

So the past few blogs I've posted have been kind of long ones and have taken lots of time to do. I promised myself that I wouldn't let this get more than 2 weeks behind and I'm pushing that now, so here is our lives the past couple of weeks...in a nutshell.


It looks completely different outside now, but a couple weeks ago this was how beautiful spring looked in our yard. Now most of the blossoms are gone, but it still looks nice.

Two weeks ago yesterday my brother-in-law JD brought their 2 boys, Garrett and Gage, out to our house for a couple of days while Brenda took new baby Sydney to California to show her off to all the family down there. We had a great time!

Gage, age 2, and Garrett, age 4 (almost 5), had fun exploring all over the yard. At that point my garden wasn't planted yet so I let them dig to their hearts content. It's a fun play area for kids--plenty of fertile soil and plenty of worms!!

A real hit was Ben's new remote control monster-buggy. Jake really loves it.

Brenda came home on Tuesday the 5th, which was also her birthday. We made her lots of cupcakes, each and every one of them decorated by the boys!

That Saturday our neighbor and friend, Preston, was doing his eagle scout project at the cemetery close to us. We thought it would be nice to help out, so off we went.

The boys were all gung-ho about it at first...until they started fighting over the same shovel. They had their little gloves on and their little shovels, ready for action.

We stayed for almost 3 hours, and I don't know how much help the boys really were, but it was good for them to get out and get in on the action. The twins didn't mind getting pushed around by Preston throughout the cemetery! When Preston's mom, Jeanna, brought out the Otter Pops, Will had a quiet and sneaky way of finding almost all the green ones in there. Every time I looked over at Will, he had a new green Otter pop!

Finally, all those popsicles took their toll on Will and he couldn't resest lying down for a breather!!

Next was Mother's Day last weekend. Daren got me a couple of beautiful hanging flower baskets and then totally shocked me with tickets to see the Eagles in concert on Saturday night! He took me to see them in concert just before we got married over 14 years ago--they still look old, but dang can they still sing!!! I'm still kicking myself for not taking our picture as we headed out in all our leathers on the motorcycle! It was a blast!! I love being a mom to three of the greatest boys ever, and I love all the mom's, especially my own, who have influenced me to be a better mom.

And I was completely surprised when I got the "Legos Indiana Jones airplane and oil tanker." I let Will play with it all the time, though, because he has been wanting it for the longest time! ;) He sleeps with the box almost every night, and he likes to tell me bedtime stories about Indiana Jones. Yesterday at church he was wearing his Indy jacket and told everyone, "Just call me Professor Jones." He is such a character!!

This past Wednesday was Ben's first day of Cub Scouts!! He had such a blast with all the boys there. He came home from it and read his scout book all night long--I think he is really going to love the scouting program.

On Thursday Jake and Will's friend, Adam, came over for the day because his mom went out of town...to NY, no less! The day started with Will leaving for school just before 8:30am. Adam arrived just about the same time--since Jake had just barely woken up he was in the tub, so Adam thought it would be fun to join him...for the next 2 hours! They had a blast in there; so much laughing and giggling. Silly me forgot to empty the water out of the tub, so when they went in there later, around lunchtime, they thought it would be fun to open the window and throw the toys into the dirt below it. What could be better than that, except to throw buckets of water out onto the toys?!

What a mess!! I'm just sorry I didn't grab my camera soon enough to get a picture of the toys in the mud. After I got over the initial shock of it, I got a big bucket full of water and a couple of sponges so they could clean up. Can you see into the bucket? How clean do you think those really got?!

They returned to the scene of the crime to clean up, and as I was taking pictures I heard Jake say to Adam, "Hey Adam...This is a lot more fun than being bored, isn't it?!" I had to laugh pretty hard at that point!!

They had dumped all the dirty water into more dirt, and thought it would be fun to play in. You just can't keep boys away from dirt, can you?! Needless to say, they ended up back in the tub again, with all their clothes in the washing machine....and this time I remembered to empty the tub. :)

Friday was field day at school, and I was in charge of the "crazy soccer" station. It was a beautiful day, not too hot like last year.

Ben's class was in my second to the last group. He played scorekeeper at first and then went out to play and scored a goal.

And finally, what would be a week without pictures from Ben's lacrosse game?! This week they got to play in the stadium at Juan Diego School. It was totally different for them to play on astro turf rather than regular grass.

I didn't get great pictures because we were looking into the sun (Will actually took the 1st picture here), but photo 2 is Ben in a face-off. This was kind of a rough day for us--Daren had been out of town (to Mexico...post coming soon!) since Tuesday and I don't think any of us had had enough sleep so we were all grouchy! Daren came back last night and it's all good now. So is this really a nutshell?!