Girls Night!! (aka Fathers & Sons Outing)

Two weekends ago was the annual Fathers & Sons camp out for our ward. Blake and Gavin were sooooooooooo excited for this overnighter!!!! Matt also graciously brought my brothers Heston (15), Cody (13) and Joshua (9) along since my parents were out of town celebrating their anniversary. Blake and Gavin came back dirty as ever! Good times.

Now on to the important stuff! ;)

Brooklyn had BIG plans. I asked her to make a list of things she wanted to do while the boys were away and so she did!! I was bound and determined to make it a fun weekend for her and fun we had!!! I didn't even do an ounce of housework!!

Our handsome tag-a-long ;)And you better believe I hauled my camera around with us and documented every second of our awesome girls night!!! ;)

First off, the "craft store." We chose Michael's.
We perused the aisles, finding things to add to our projects stash at home.We also discovered some fun crafty projects, all for $1 a piece! We saved those for our trip to the cabin the following weekend. (more on that coming up in the next blog post)

Next, everybody's favorite store, Tarjay. That's fancy for Target. {ala Fancy Nancy} Here, we picked up a seriously adorable shower curtain for Brooklyn's bathroom,

some cute brown sandals ~~ a summer must-have,and just a *few* other odds and ends.
You know how Target is. ;) I always walk outta there $100+ poorer!!

Dinnertime!!! Brooklyn picked where she wanted to eat -- Panda's! That's my girl!
We got a two entree plate of Orange Chicken & Beef w/ Broccoli to share. MmmmMMMmm!

Quick stop by Blockbuster to pick up a flick.......then drive-thru McDs for some hot fudge sundaes!! Love the little chocolate chin here!Get home and put jammies on, grab snackies and snuggle in for movie night!We headed off to bed about 10:20ish. Brooklyn got to sleep on Daddy's side of the bed to keep me company! We slept in nice and late, until 8:30am (thanks to Preston for cooperating!), had a leisurely breakfast and the fun continued!!

Painting toenails AND fingernails.....
Playing the Wii.....
She drives a mean Mario Kart! LOL!

Here was my one mommy goof of the weekend! At about 11:20am, I went to check my e-mail to be sure the t-ball party started at noon. WHOOPS!!!! It had started at 11:00am!!!!!!!! So we raced around getting dressed and zipped over to Peter Piper Pizza (got there at noon) just in time for cake and trophies!

I let her get a few tokens to play some arcade games and we called it good. $7 worth of tokens, yielded enough tickets for an awesome slap bracelet and a fruity tootsie roll! Sweet.

We came home and checked off the last item on our list, reading Goldilicious. This was just newly released earlier that week and was eagerly anticipated! It joins Pinkalicious and Purplicious among favorite girlie books in our house. :)Just as we were finishing up the book, we heard the garage door open. Our BOYS were back!!

I'm so glad that I have a daughter to keep me company during Fathers and Sons. :) I'll look forward to that weekend every year, just as much as the boys do!

Love you, my sweet Beetle Bugs!! ♥♥♥

D-Backs Date Night

A couple weeks ago (has it really been that long already???), Matt got some sweet 'ole Diamondbacks tickets from work and was asked to find another optometrist to "wine & dine" for the evening. We ended up inviting the Moultons from our ward, which made it a lot more comfortable for me since we already knew them!


Thanks to THIS cute 'lil guy -----^ FINALLY taking a bottle (after many days of hard work on Matt's part), Matt and I were able to enjoy our very first date night alone since the baby was born!! Thanks to those who split the baby/kidsitting duties!

I used to keep up with who was playing for the D-Backs, but since we were in California for a few years, I kinda lost touch so I wasn't familiar with any of the players. We quickly learned who were the fan favorites! I loved being up so close -- we were like 8 rows behind the D-Backs dugout along the third baseline!!

Sa-wing batta, batta!!

The windup....Crazed fan runs thru the outfield. He laid right down on the field and security cuffed him. Idiot.

Typical baseball. *snort* Sorry dude, whoever you are!! I didn't actually mean to get a pic of you grabbing your jewels!!! Maybe I should sell this to a sports magazine. Haha!Baxter the Bobcat, official mascot of the Diamondbacks.
I don't get it???? But I did get to slap him five! ;)

Too bad every time I attend a sporting event, it seems like our team loses, but we sure had fun root-root-rooting for the home team anyway!

School's Out --- Scream & Shout!!

This is a bit overdue, since the kids have been out of school for a week and some already. Every time I think about blogging, I get overwhelmed at the amount of catching up I need to do, so I'll do it by bits and pieces now.

These cute twinners kissed kindergarten GOODBYE!!!!! I can't believe my first babies will be in 1st grade in a couple months! Every morning when either Matt or I would drop them off, we'd get this - I love you signs. Love it! I'm hoping we can keep this up as the years go on.

B&B with their kindy teacher, Mrs. Ctibor.

She taught them so many cute, cute, cute songs to help remember how to skip count, spell colors and various seasonal tunes. It's so funny when I'd start singing along and Brooklyn says, "MOM, you KNOW this song???!???!" Haha! We loved having Mrs. Ctibor as our kindergarten teacher!

After school was out, we had to do a little celebrating of course. We ordered pizza, played a new game on the Wii (yes, we got one - early bday present for Matt), and made homemade pizzookies!




































I'm really sad that they won't be attending the same school again next year. I went to this elementary school (different campuses) and am familiar with everything that it's all about. Some of the teachers that I had still teach at the school! But we just can't do the drive every day. Matt used to take the kids every morning on his way to work, but when he got moved to a different office, he had to leave much earlier and then I got to make the 25 minute drive each way, TWICE a day, to and fro. That was just too much. It was two hours out of my day, including waiting time for pick up. Heck, *I* was counting down the days left of school!!!!

I will not lie, it has NOT been easy having Brooklyn and Blake back in the house with us all day long. They are used to a structured day, and normally, Gav and I just hang out and do as we please. There has been a lot of bickering and yelling (some of it from me, the shame) and I'm trying to arrange some sort of "quote-unquote" schedule for us to make things run more smoothly. Plus, I was so used to dropping B&B off and then running my errands - grocery store, Target, what have you - and it's MUCH different trying to accomplish an errand with FOUR kids vs only two. We've managed the grocery store and Costco this week, but I assure you, we got plenty of stares, with kids dangling off my cart left and right!!!! The plan is to hit the library once a week and participate in the summer reading program there. I also want to have a "fun" trip every couple weeks, just to mix things up a bit - the movie theater, perhaps Bounce U or a kids museum, some swimming, etc. I'm looking into dance class for Brooklyn and karate for the boys.

We'll see if we can survive each other this summer! ;) If you don't hear from me in awhile, check in on me, ok?

Last Mommy & Me Hurrah

Cute stripey swim shorts courtesy of The Children's Place - $9.37















Soft cuddly Wall*E towel from the Disney Store - $9.99

Playing in the water fountains on a hot day after enduring Mommy's shopping - PRICELE$$

Of course Gavin doesn't have me exclusively to himself, but I considered that our last little fun outing together before the twinners were done with school. I got my shopping done and told him he could play on the playground, but when he saw the splash pad, he wanted THAT one instead!! Of course. I had already planned on getting him a new swim suit, but we didn't have a towel so we ran inside the Disney store real quick. I asked the cashier if they get quite a bit of business (swim suits and towels) by having the splash pad right outside their door and she said, "YES!" Gav was a little shy about the fountains at first, but as you can see above, he finally became acquainted nicely. ;)

We saw these cool clouds on the way home from school ----^
Looks like a shark eating a dolphin to us!!! Poor dolphin. I love when my kids point out things like this....

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary

How Does {YOUR} Garden Grow?

A little over a month ago, we got our supplies together and planted a garden in our backyard. We let the kids get in on the action and I'm afraid I've ruined them because they were complaining they'd get dirty if they dug in the garden with their hands. Of course they have no problem getting dirty of their own free will and choice!!!Please just ignore this most unflattering picture of me, psycho hair, g's hanging out and all!!! I didn't seem to get a pic of how the garden started out so this is as good as it gets!!

What are we GROWING in our garden you ask?

Cucumbers
Yellow Squash
Zucchini
Tomatoes - both Early Girl and Cherry varieties
Green bell pepper
Green onions
Cantaloupe
Watermelon

This is the garden NOW!!! WOW!!

We've watched our plants grow and grow and GROW!! We're finally starting to see the FRUITS of our labor - pun intended! ;) Our garden officially overfloweth!! Literally! I think we planted a little more than our planter could handle. We'll be up to our eyeballs in veggies in a few weeks! And I know this is just the start of the melon vines, oh boy!

Zucchini

SquashThe tiniest little cucumber you ever did see!Our lone red tomato so far!Green onion hairsBell peppers, fighting to survive. Not sure these are gonna turn out. :-/Cantaloupe vine, creeping over the edgeWatermelon vines going everywhere!Oops!!!! What else is that I see????
Our very own Cabbage Patch Kid perhaps??!??! ;)

And on the citrus front.....

Look at my BIGGEST grapefruit!!!!And we have LOTS of little oranges between the three trees! Yipee!

I can't WAIT to taste the first of the food from our garden! It always tastes SO much better than what you get at the grocery store! I'm sure we'll have plenty to go around, so just stop by Palmer's Farmers Market for produce home-grown with love!! ♥