will and jake

One hard thing about having twins is that you end up lumping them together on so many things, even though they couldn't be more different than each other.  So, I'm going to take just a minute to write about each of them as individuals, since they just turned seven, starting with Will, because he is the oldest of the two, even if it was just by a minute.  

The boys were filling out their annual "favorites" papers the other night, 

and here are a few of the things Will wrote:

FAVORITE THING TO DO:  build Legos  

FAVORITE FOOD:  pizza (he's not just a kidding--he eats it for breakfast all the time)

FAVORITE TV SHOW:  Megamind: Button of Doom  (and Sponge Bob)

FAVORITE MOVIE:  Polar Express and Flushed Away...and Ghostbusters I and II...and BTTF...

FAVORITE BOOK:  Calvin and Hobbes, Polar Express and The Boxcar Children

FAVORITE GAME:  Little Big Planet 2

Will is just a little spitball of fire!  From the youngest times he has loved dressing up as his favorite movie characters, and now he's made it a little more simple by creating his favorite movie characters with the Lego minifigures.  You wouldn't believe how many we have, and how creative he gets with them.  I'll post his latest creation, The Polar Express, in the next few days.  He LOVES to read, and loves to just look at pictures in books.  He wants to be a captain of a ship someday, and he just might do it.  He loves Legos, and playing them with his brothers.  Will loves animals and is so kind to them (he would really love a dog if I wasn't so allergic to them...).   Will can quote any movie line from any movie he has seen, and loves music from movies.  Will's favorite website is You Tube--first he looks for a lego rendition of whatever movie he is into at that time, and then asks Ben to build it for him.  Will has a great connection with Jake, but he has a very special connection with Ben, who "gets" Will like hardly anyone else does.  He likes to hang out with me, but in reality he is a daddy's boy, and he is thrilled to be hanging out with "daddy" this weekend on their 4-wheeling trip.  

 Indiana Jones

 Ghostbuster

Mr. Staypuft Marshmallow Man

and a lover of Legos (and camouflage) 

 Jake's favorites:

THING TO DO:  build Legos (ok, one thing in common)

FOODS:  ice cream

TV SHOWS: Sponge Bob and Scooby Doo

MOVIE:  Star Wars

BOOK:  The Monster at the End of This Book, The Boxcar Children series, The Magic Treehouse series, Calvin and Hobbes, and My Weird School series

GAME: Lego Star Wars on the PS3

If I listed Jake's best friends, his list would go on and on...and on some more.  This is one boy who LIVES and breathes for friends.  Someone to play with.  Someone to keep him entertained.  Thus, he's the hardest one to have at home alone because he wants constant attention.  Jake is a very loving boy and shows it constantly with lots of hugs and kisses.  Even when he's been so mad at me (usually at bedtime at night) he will still yell to me as I'm closing his door, "You're the best mom in the whole world!!"  Jake is an amazing helper around the house too, with whatever needs to be done.  He is as stubborn as you get, though, when he doesn't want to do something.  He can be loud and obnoxious, just ask his bus driver and anyone who rides the bus with him, but he also loves to sit next to me as quiet as a mouse while we are reading a book.  Jake loves to wear shorts and flip flops year round, and he might be our little sports guy. 

When looking at this first picture of Jake, you would think that he is mild-mannered and so loving.  He did love holding Nan's puppies, but don't let him fool you.  This is also the kid of a thousand crazy faces.  I can't get him to give me a descent smile for the life of me, so I thought I'd throw a few of his crazier ones in here.

 This last picture makes me laugh out loud every single time I see it, and it has to be my favorite.  Oh how they wanted that gargantuan Hershey bar.  All 5 pounds of it.  For $40.  Dream on, bruthers!

And that might help explain why I am so darned tired all the time!!  

And every once in a while, they go to sleep too.   I love you guys!

pinewood delorean

The cub scout pinewood derby has been the major subject of talk around our house for the past couple weeks.  Every day Will would ask how many days it was until the pinewood derby, and could he help with it--I think he was almost more excited about it than Ben.  There was no question in Ben's mind what he was going to paint his car like--the Back to the Future DeLorean.   He decided to use Will's car from the second movie as his model.

There was a lot of cutting and sanding and painting before the big night last Thursday.

There is a pretty big group of boys in this troop!  (And a huge thank you  to Julie for taking pictures for me that night.  Jake and I were coming from his first soccer game and we were late and I couldn't find my camera.  I found it the next day in the storage room...where I had left it when I took pictures of Ben painting his car, duh!)

 Ben's car finishing first in the first heat.  

 Ben won two ribbons that night:  2nd place overall and "Most Realistic Car"

After the official derby was over, they boys were able to race their cars again over and over, just for fun. And just for fun, Will ran the full length of the track with every heat.  He slept well that night!!  (I LOVE the Lego dude on the top of Thomas' car!)

 The DeLorean was complete with the Mr. Fusion part on the back that had broken off of Will's car.  This is the part that you put garbage into to power the flux capacitor and fuel the car.  

For now the DeLorean has a home next to Daren's pinewood derby car that he made when he was in cub scouts.  How cute is that?!  And just think, when Daren was making his car when he was a kid, the BTTF movies were just about to come out.  The circle of life is a funny thing. 

protected

Yesterday: 75 degrees, partly cloudy, everyone outside in t-shirts and enjoying a beautiful spring day.  So beautiful that I decided to finally try planting tomatoes early, each protected inside their own wall-of-water.   Last night's forecast for pajama day (today):  stormy, perhaps a trace of snow in the valleys, but rain more likely.  Nothing to worry about for my newly planted tomatoes, right?!  

 (It was the best snow day the boys had in months!!)

I wasn't sure what to expect when I looked inside...  

 ...but so far, so good.  Now if they can remain protected and get through the couple of mornings which are supposed to be in the 20's this week, they might be all right.  Of course, the forecast has been wrong before.  

first job

I'm sitting here trying to think back to my very first job.  I'm sure it was probably babysitting.  There were other "winner" jobs I had growing up, like cleaning the guy's house across the street who was single (I still remember what a mess that place was!), being a pooper-scooper at Raging Waters in California one summer, and being one of those demonstrators at Sam's Club in Ca. another summer (but they were the BEST cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing to die for, so it wasn't too bad).  At least I was making more than $2.75 an hour scooping ice cream at Baskin Robins, which is what my best friend made when she worked there in high school.  Ok, enough of the nostalgia.

We were in California earlier this month, and we had taken the trailer down with us to haul a table for my brother.  We had to bring the trailer back home, so we decided to fill it with fresh picked oranges from a neighbor near my parents, who has an orange orchard in the back of their house.  Since there is no possible way to eat so many oranges ourselves, we decided the boys could help in the process and earn some money while they were at it.  Their very first job.  

They were amazing all along in the process.  We all spent an afternoon picking the oranges,  

and then Ben and Jake (Will had a hard time getting into this project) came back and started selling them.  First we washed every single orange, Ben made a flyer to put on people's doors with times they would be out selling them, and then they went around the neighborhood to pass out the flyers and sell a few while they were at it.  

These guys were pretty ambitious, and kept with it...most of the time.   Olivia and Janae were Jake's second customers at the orange stand set up in our driveway--I missed getting a picture of his first customer, Sharon, and her cute little granddaughters.  

The weather didn't really cooperate with the boys and their orange stand.  Between the rain, wind, and just plain freezing cold, they had it all that week they were selling, and spent lots of time in the garage, reading Calvin and Hobbes.  

It's funny when things come full-circle.  This orange crate belonged to my grandpa who, way back in the day, used to work for an orange company in California.  Funny how it all comes around. 

In the end, they learned a lot about working, and made some money while they were at it.  I am very proud of them for enduring all that they did, even for just a few dollars on some days.  Their motivation for earning money--Legos, what else?!  They are saving up for the Death Star.  However, Ben and Jake did take some of their "orange money" to spend at the bake sale they had at school to help those in Japan who were affected by the earthquake and tsunami, and they didn't even blink about it.  Good for them. 

treasure everywhere

   The subject of Calvin and Hobbes comes up on a regular basis around here, since the boys (and me too!) are completely obsessed with all the C&H comic books we have.  Last night I was sitting on Ben's bed, tickling his back as we were talking, and the subject of C&H came up again.  Ben started getting all philosophical on me and was talking about how "there is treasure everywhere" you look.  He was going for the deeper meaning of this phrase, so I asked him what one of his treasures were.  His reply?  "Milk is one of my treasures."  He went on a little about other things, school, etc., and then he said, "But my best treasures are you and Dad and Will and Jake."  Awwww.  How cute is that?  Thank you Calvin.  (Seriously wishing we would have named one of our boys that, but which one?!)  

And right back at him, this kid is a treasure and one of the funnest kids ever to have around.  He can find "treasure" in anything he does, from Legos to a toy car to a piece of paper and pencil to any object he can get his hands on.  Not including Jake. :)  He teaches me all the time to keep an eye out for treasures everywhere I go.  

P.s. Picture of Ben above after his "funnest night EVER" at the late-night science lollapalooza at school last month.  His favorite parts--"running down the halls, the scavenger hunt, making lava lamps, and the disco ball in the gym."  

two hours

Two hours.

Just two hours into this round of Will being off-track from school, and check him out.

It looks harmless enough--a tub with bubbles, right?  Who doesn't love that.  

It wasn't until a while later that I figured out the source of the bubbles.  It's that green bottle in the bottom right corner of the picture--shampoo!  I'm here to tell you, they make huge bubbles and it takes, like, all day for shampoo bubbles to disappear, and they leave a gross white film all over everything. 

The other half of the equation that makes this a pain in the rear is the balloon factor.  The boys have discovered how fun balloons can be in the tub...until they pop and go down the drain, which makes the water take FOREVER to drain out.  This happened the day before, and I thought it would be ok for Will to still get in, but you add in the very soapy water and the bubbles that took all day to disappear, and it was a pain.  Needless to say, balloons are forever banned in the tub!  Fortunately, the rest of this week hasn't been as eventful--just a lot of Lego playing and video games.  And at least it wasn't a house-full of crushed up styrofoam peanuts!