summer fun

I watched 2 of my nephews for a few days last week, and here are some pics I took of the boys in the sandbox.  They all played well together, and made me think that I could handle a big family :) 

Handprints in the Cement

We recently added on to our house.  We used to have a small 2 bedroom house.  With the addition, we now have a  3 bedroom, and 3 bathroom home that more comfortably holds our growing family.  (No, I'm not preggos, but we are thinking about that 3rd little blessing coming soon)

Anyway, so 2 weeks ago, thanks to the help of my in-laws: Joe, Jessie, Colton and Ethan, we had our sidewalks poured, and I didn't miss the opportunity to set the boys prints forever in cement! :)  

Here, Joe is helping me put Henry's hand in the cement.  We had to do it twice, he kept wiggling those little digits of his, and smearing the print.

Wade was much more cooperative. 

And the finished product!  I love it :) 

(and will certainly make a scrapbook page for this event as well!!!)

Chuck E. Cheese

A few thoughts on Chuck E Cheese:

1.  It's overpriced... but what isn't these days???

2.  You spend $30 to play games with these tokens, and end up getting a crazy straw, rub on tattoo, and a pack of smarties.  You'd have to spend $300 in tokens just to get a cool $10 water gun.  

3.  It's like crack for kids.  Once they start, they are addicted- just keep reading and you'll see what I mean....

4.  It's safe!  I loved the fact that they stamped all 4 of our hands with a special ID number, and checked our hands to make sure we had our kids.  I was impressed :)

5.  Kids are scared of Chuck E Cheese, himself.  There is a robotic Chuck on stage.  If we got close to it, Henry would climb up my leg and hold on so tight, with fear for his life.  Wade and Alaina refused to get their pic taken with the real Chuck walking around the place.  Maybe when they get older :)

But, here's our story of our night out with CEC:

It all started out with great intentions!  Wade slept in his bed all night for 5 straight days, so we went to Chuck E. Cheese.  Here's how it happened:

My dad cut some Chuck E Cheese coupons off of a juice jug for us.  Thanks dad! (This place is EXPENSIVE, and if you know me, I'm a thrifty shopper, and was excited to see this place offered deals!)

We invited our friends, Chris and Mandy along with their 2 kids, to come along.  Here's Daddy and Wade walking in!!

We get there, order pizza, and sit down.  There are big screens with a blue background, so you can stand in front of the screen and be on TV!  Here's Mandy, Conner, and Alaina on the big screen.

After eating, the fun begins.  Here's Wade and Alaina climbing up the playzone.

Ben and Chris playing skeeball with Henry and Conner.

Wade loves playing Operation at home, so you can imagine the look on his face when he saw this beauty- a larger than life sized version of Operation!!!  The only thing better could have been Candyland.  :)

You pay a token and you can "talk" to Chuck on the phone.

Henry loving every minute of it!

The end of the night, the ticket muncher eats the tickets, and gives you a receipt of how many tickets you won. It actually sounds like someone eating.

And here's when it happened....

The.Biggest.Meltdown.Of.All.Time.

I'm not kidding you, I was EMBARRASSED, and if you know me, I don't get embarrassed easily.  He actually screamed at the top of his lungs.  really, it was bad.  I don't want to ever go back.... 

And Wade begs to go back.  Any takers? 

because it won't be me! 

Wade

Wade.  Funny Man.

Wade has several nicknames:  Waders, Wader Bs, Monkey, Meathead, Love.  Here are some things you should know about my oldest, Wade.

1.  He needs a knock-knock joke to smile right for the camera.  He usually does this big cheesy fake smile (see pic below), until I tell him the knock knock joke... and it's one he made up.  Goes like this:

Mommy: Knock Knock

Wade: Whos there?

Mommy: Pickles

Wade: Pickels who?

Mommy: Pickels in a jar! 

He made that up about a year ago, and it never fails to get him to give a big belly laugh and a natural smile.  I love it!  Here's a pic pre-knock knock joke:

2.  He's silly.  (As you can already tell from the above knock knock joke.)  Here he is putting his Easter basket on his head.  You can always find him doing something to crack someone up.

3.  He's independent.  Maybe it's the terrible 3s I've been hearing about, but lately Wade has gotten SO independent-and insists on doing everything himself!!! Here he is coloring the Easter eggs all by himself because he didn't want any help.  Later he got some help from Papaw, but not without a little coaxing.

4.  He wants to go to school... right now.  I teach Kindergarten, so he hears me talk about school, so he thinks he needs to go NOW.  The other day he was going to the bathroom, and I heard this:

            Wade: Henry, you need to leave the bathroom because I'm about to wipe my butt and it's practice  

                        for preschool because you have to wipe your own butt in preschool.

5.  He is named after my brother's middle name, Wade.  His middle name is my husband's name, Benjamin.

6.  He's always trying to make people laugh.  Here he is trying to make me laugh as I'm taking this picture of him and his friend Michael. (and when I said, Wade put in your tongue, Michael stuck his out... so I have 2 pics of these boys... 1 with Wade's tongue out, and 1 with Michael's tongue out.  I'm sure photoshop will help me get a good pic out of the 2!)

7.  Wade was recently in my school's junior high musical of Willy Wonka.  He was a Candy Kid, and got to keep this oversized lollipop after the show.

8.  He loves his brother.  Wade is always looking out for Henry, and always giving him hugs and love.  *But don't get me wrong- they have their moments of fighting like cats and dogs. but for the most part, it's brotherly love :)

9.  Wade has a temper.  And for those of you who know me, it may or may not come from me. :)  Here is a pic of Wade with his temper when I was trying to take their pictures.  I kept telling him to look at the field, and he about had it.  He was tired of looking at the dumb old grass and just wanted to play on his playset! :)

10.  Wade loves his daddy.  Here he is helping Daddy drive a Massey Ferguson tractor around to push dirt around the new addition to our house.

And there you have it.  10 things you need to know (and love) about my Wade Benjamin.

Henry

Henry. Sweet Henry.
Henry is my youngest son- he's 20 months old today- 1 and 1/2.  :)  Here are some things you should know about my Henry.

1.  He likes to be outside.  all.the.time.  I can hardly get him back inside once he is out.

It's usually like this:

Mommy: Henry, it's time to go inside.

Henry: NO!

Mommy: Let's go take a bath.

Henry: NO!

Mommy: Henry Joseph, we need to go inside, it's getting dark.

Henry: NO!

Mommy: You want a cookie?

Henry: COOKIE!!!!! 

which leads me to the next thing you need to know about Henry.

2.  Henry loves cookies.  chocolate chip, oatmeal, sugar, snickerdoodle, oreo.  You name it, he loves it.  And he says it like this "cooooooooookeeeeeeeee"

3.  Henry loves his Daddy.  (and it's usually because Daddy is outside... see number 1)

4.  Henry has a "lovey" and "paci" that are H.I.S.  You take them and he's yelling "loveeeeeey" "pathi" (he has a lisp, it's cute, really, it is)  We have started using only lovey and paci at night, so now the beloveds stay in bed, which makes bedtime REAL easy... because if he gets lovey and paci, he willingly goes to bed.  AMAZING!

5.  Henry likes to hide.  Hide himself, Hide his toys, Hide everything!  When we started taking paci and lovey away for only nighttimes, he would run back to his room and come back out with ANOTHER paci.  Along the 1 and 1/2 years he has been around, I've gone through about 8 packages of pacis... and then, one day, I decided to follow him to see where he was getting these pacis.  He was hoarding them in a secret hiding place.  There were all the pacis... every last one of them!  stinker.  And here's a pic of Henry hiding himself in the closet... with lovey and paci.

6.  Words- I love the words he is picking up on.  We were getting ready for a bath one night and he had a bath toy that was a seagull.  He said "thullgea"  so cute.  I repeated for him, "seagull" and his eyes lit up to know that I knew what he was talking about.  His words to date are: mommy, daddy, water (wah-der), milk (mElk), cookie (cooooookeeeee), no, yes (yeth), please (peath), thank you (tank ku), and mine.

7.  Wild Kratts.  If you don't have children yet, you may not know about this show.  It's 2 brothers who go on animal adventures.  Henry LOVES this show, and even sings the theme song (in his own cute little Henry way) "Wild, Wild, Wild Kratts" comes out more like "why why why kath"

8.  Henry loves his brother, Wade.  He likes to do whatever Wade is doing.  Wade sometimes gets frusterated, but he'll soon learn that it's just because Henry loves him. :)

9.  Henry is mischevious.  He'll be doing something, and I'll say No Henry.  He'll look out the corner of his eye as if to say, "do you really mean, No, or can I get away with it."  He's a stinker! :)

10.  Henry is named after family.  Ben's grandpa as well as my grandpa- their middle name was Henry.  Joseph comes from my dad's middle name.  I'm a sucker for family names.  Lots of people ask if we will call him Hank.  It hasn't stuck yet, but I'm not opposed to it.  What do you think?

So, there you have it.  A peek into my little Henry's world.