Little Boys

I had a fun filled Saturday and Sunday. It started with this cutie coming to my house to play with me first thing in the morning! Bode and I had a great time and he got to make his first gingerbread house with me. He would poke a piece of candy on it and then get busy toddling around and then later come by and poke another piece on...

And of course he got to taste a few...thus the drool. Bode and I had a good morning!

By later afternoon we met up with Amy and Garrett and Ethan to watch the Chandler Lighted parade. They have such a great parade going with floats and lights and all kinds of great things. A few years back we always went with Amy and the boys and boy has there been an improvement to the parade in that time. We bundled up with quilts and watched for Aiden to come by, he was with his boy scout troop, they each had battery lights on them and Chris was walking along with Aiden and his Santa hat . All my photos from the parade were BAD, hurry back camera, the I phone doesn't do so well at night!

Then the rain moved in....so once Aiden came by then we all went back to the car as it rained and rained. What an adventure, we don't get to walk in the rain to much. We peeled wet clothes off little boys and got them in our car with the heat on to warm up, Aiden and Chris found us and Ken and I brought the little guys home with us for a spend the night! The washer started, shoes out to dry... You never appreciate how cute that is to see those little bitty shoes all lined up when you are the parent so now I even take a picture of how cute that is....isn't being the Grandparent the best!

Everyone was up bright and early on sunday so we got right into some fun. They got to make their gingerbread houses... Here is Garrett with his.

Aiden and his masterpiece...

Ethan looking so proud...
Back to Garrett working intently on his masterpiece. They took a ton of time this year and seemed to really enjoy it.

Ethans chocolate santa kept shrinking....... this was all before b-fast! Shhhh don't tell!
Garrett was building an outdoor firepit on his!

Aiden and Garrett loved being able to do their own frosting. I had built them the day before so we could just do the decorating and not have casualties.

And in between they all enjoyed the train being up. Ken and I stayed up late the night before getting it up so they could play with it. Ethan got to drive this year with supervision, a first for him.
A good time for us all to start our holiday fun. Ethan realized the little candy balls we had to decorate the houses would bounce ......I"m off to hose out the house!

spending the night!

We had a great time with our 3 big boys this last weekend. They came on friday afternoon and got to spend the night. We walked/rode bikes around the corner to the neighborhood park and had a great time on the swings! Here is Aiden flying thru the air...

Garrett having a blast!
And Ethan hanging on with everything he's got!

Papa had them all 3 going, laughing and begging for more fun pushes!
Garrett here has the best balance for a 5 year old! He walked these walls several times, pretty soon he was running along them. After watching him all summer in the pool and then seeing this, he's got the best spatial awareness of his body, makes me wonder where and what he's going to be doing in the future!
So yep I'm admitting we had some fun "junk" before bed. I ran across this cool donut. Biggest one I've ever seen. I swear they put that stuff out there cuz they know Grandmothers will buy them! So this "Texas Donut" had to come home with me but it sure was fun for these 3 to eat.

4 little boys

We had such a nice weekend catching up these 4 little boys. All unplanned fun things just happened. Bode came over to play with me while Mommy was working on Sat. and Daddy had something to go to so Bode and I just hung out. How fun and relaxing to just follow him around. He's so busy and just happy toddling around. We played out in the back yard, our weather was very "fallish" ( ahh that might have been our fall!) so we had to have jackets on...
Such happiness with Grammies empty cup, the rocks....
and a spoon! Loved those hours out in the cloudy weather. Hated to come in but Bode's nap was to be had and then lunch. He has so many words in his vocab. now and tried every trick in the book to not take his nap.......He says Nana which you think is banana but that means he's hungry and wants food whether it's a banana or not! So we get back to the crib and he's so smart, he tells me then he wants NANA....are you hungry Bode....YESH.....So we have a snack....it's now 15 minutes after he was supposed to go to bed, then we get back there again and he says POOPOO....Bode do you need your diaper changed...YESH and he points to the bathroom where the changing area is.....he really just was coming up with all the "delays" he could. Bode you are to smart for 15 months!
Sunday morning we went down to Amy's house and Amy and Ethan and I had a DATE! He even had cologne on again for his date! We started out at the grocery store counter having a donut!
Meanwhile these 2 and Papa and their Dad went on their golf outing. So cute to get there and Aiden and Garrett are all dressed to go golfing, their little sets of clubs out ! I do think tho riding in the cart might be half the fun of getting to go! So they left and played 9 holes together. Then Papa said he had to backwash the pool which you know is so much fun when you are 5 and 7, so they came home with Papa to do that. We brought Ethan back to his house to have a nap with his Daddy and Amy and I took off to do more errands and shopping, coming home to find these 3 again on their way out the door to Home Depot! Ahhhhh such a fun trip with papa even if you are just getting swimming pool things! But what is this that came back with them, Aiden and Garrett each with a couple little tools for their own tool boxes. Papa has started them a collection already with their tool boxes last christmas.
Oh here I am with my date again. After playing on the toys at the mall ( while Mommy scurried to a couple stores) we went to eat lunch. Ethan was so happy with "burros"( someburros) and so were we since we had swayed him from "donalds"(mcdonalds)! 3 is such a great age since you can shop for christmas things and they are so unaware or when you make the bean burros sound so much more exciting!What a fun and crazy weekend to catch up with these little boys!

All kinds of fun!

More random photo's from the weekend.... We enjoyed time at 2 parks, one we had a picnic at...The other one they chose was "Uncle Chris's park" which is the neighborhood park where Bode and Chris and MB live. It has the best toy structure! We had subway at this one and enjoyed that and then playing on the toys. We had fun going up to the mall to ride the carousel, altho Ethan fell asleep on the way and promptly slept thru the whole mall visit. Garrett had fun tho on the carousel and chose the seat that spins like the Disneyland teacups. Grammy gave him a few good spins and he giggled thru the whole ride! Pretzels for all and we even tried out the cotton candy machine they have there.
We had fun going to Build a Bear. They choose an outfit for their animal that we've gotten a different time. Aiden got a D-backs uniform, Garrett's bear had a Karate uniform with lots of colors of belts which he had fun wearing tied around his head, arms, legs! Ethan choose a spider man costume for his blueberry bear. It was fun to stop at our local little ice cream shop and have ice cream cones.

I know Ethan in about 10 years you are going to hate these but for now when you are 3 you are darling wearing your mommies apron and playing with the dishes and play food.

More random weekend photos

We spent Saturday morning at Loews with the boys. They have this great free program that kids can come and build a project. they each got a little kit and then everyone just goes and sits somewhere on the floor and starts to build.
Aiden and Garrett did so good following the diagrams on their own. They have aprons and get a patch to sew on their apron for each kit they come for. Amy planned ahead and sent along a sack with their aprons and they each have their own little hammer.

What a fun project that was...so cute, little people all over the floor building things! Thanks Loews for doing that!
How fun was this....Mommy and Daddy got to skype with these 3. I LOVE SKYPE! It was such fun to see them on the other side of the world. They sent me a text so we could be ready when they called, of course it was late at night in Paris. We even got to skype with Jeremy and Noah on sunday, that was fun for Uncle Jeremy to see them and the cousins to see each other! We sat outside and talked to them in Mississippi! See why I love skype!

More of our very busy weekend!

Here are more random photo's of our fun weekend with the boys. Of course they want chocolate chip pancakes for b-fast, they start scheming that as you are tucking them in to bed!half the fun is getting to help!

We've done this so much they are pros at it now!

Lots of fun playing outside! The weather was perfect so we had lots of fun in the back yard and then moved to the front yard each day!


Lots of good energy burning and excercise!

Ethan has grown to tall he can just reach the pedals on the big bike. We have to take the timer out to have a rotation of who's riding which bike!
By night time they were ready for a "movie night" after being so busy. We popped popcorn and watched The Lion King.