From April to July

Below are several posts updating things from April until now. We've been busy this summer with lots of fun activities, some of which I posted about. Luke has done fantastic with his swimming. Between week 1 and week 2 of lessons, it just clicked and he swims all over the pool by himself. He still can't touch anywhere, so he goes from edge of pool to Aaron or I and back and forth between us and the pool sides. He can swim 10-20 feet at a time and tries to come up for air, but hasn't quite got that down yet. He will change directions in the water though, and if we give him a shove down, he'll go down and get dive sticks and bring them back up. It's alot of fun to watch our little fish. I plan on getting some video of it, and I'll try to figure out how to put a video clip on the blog sometime this summer so you can see him swim firsthand. Aaron and I are also getting geared up for our trip to Europe. We leave the last week of July, and we'll be in Germany for 3 days and Paris, France for 5 days. Aaron and I will also take a one day detour to Belgium to visit my aunt and uncle who live there. We are so excited. The boys will get some grandparent time with both sets of grandparents. I know they will have fun too, but I do worry how their behavior will deteriorate over the 10 days Aaron and I are gone. We've never left them for more than 2 days at a time. Luke is old enough to understand, but I fear he will become meltdown central the last few days just because his routine will be out of whack with Aaron and I gone, and him wanting us home again. Ben doesn't have the same concept of time, but he may get increasingly whiny and fussy as time goes on, we'll see. I predict he'll be ok overall, but will be extraordinarily clingy for the first few days when we get back. Fortunately, the grandparents are coming to our house, so the boys will be at home in their own beds at least. Oh well, I'm keeping my worries to a minimum because there's nothing I can do to predict or change how they'll act while we're gone. It will be a great vacation for me and Aaron. We've not had a real vacation, as a family or a couple, since we moved to Fort Worth 8 years ago. We've gone on trips with our extended family for some long weekends at various places, but this will be our first extended vacation in 8 years. I also look forward to taking the boys on a family vacation sometime in the next year. We had planned on doing a big family vacation this year, but when the Europe opportunity came up, that trumped any family vacation plans. So we're thinking maybe Sea World/San Antonio next fall or spring, or something like that. So, get ready, I will have lots of pictures and stories coming up in the next month from our European vacation!

4th of July

We had a busy, and very fun 4th of July. My parents took all the kids and grandkids to Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine for the weekend. It's an indoor water park resort, and there are tons of other stuff to do there as well. We had fun, and there are truly things there for every age. However, Aaron and I are beginning to show our age. We came home so exhausted, more so than the boys even, and believe me they were tired too! I don't actually have many pictures of us in the water park, and that's where we spent most of our time, because I didn't want the camera to get wet. My sister in law got some good pics of the kids playing and if I get around to it I'll post some of those on here. But here are some pics I did get. There are also a few of us watching fireworks after we got home, and doing sparklers in our backyard.


This is their version of Build a Bear. They had various different animals you could pick out and stuff. Luke wanted a white seal. We chose the wolf for Ben. Luke loves his seal, and he would carry it around and pet it and pat it, and even tucked it into bed that night at the hotel. Ben also loves the wolf. He calls it a dog, and when we gave it to him he started barking. It was really funny.

They had an arcade area as well, and Gran bought tokens for all the kids. They had alot of fun playing games, and Ben especially loved getting in the cars/trucks that you could "ride". Above, Luke is pretending to play guitar hero. He had already used up all his tokens at this point.

Although most of the resort is indoor, they do have an outdoor area that's open in the summertime. These were some pics from our outdoor swim time.

Trip to Illinois over Memorial Day

Here are pictures from our trip to Illinois. Yes, I know it's July and this is from May, I have no excuses except it took me that long to get around to downloading pictures from our camera. Anyway, it was a good trip. You'll see several pictures with some of the boys' second cousins, Eli and Elise who are the same age as the boys (Luke and Eli are 10 days apart, and Ben and Elise are 2 or 3 weeks apart).

Ben "playing" the Nintendo Wii, with a grass skirt on.

Chillin in the pool.

Luke and Eli, and they truly are playing the Wii. Luke loved the Wii. And he was actually pretty good at it. He almost beat Aaron legitimately at bowling, and Aaron was trying to win. Santa may have to bring our family a Wii for next Christmas....

Boys playing and mom's retirement

Here are some various shots of the boys playing and of mom's retirement "party". She didn't want a big party or anything, so the kids and their families all got together and came down for a surprise dinner. We cooked her an italian meal, and she was surprised. The food was good, and mom loved having all the kids and grandkids there to celebrate.

I just thought it was funny that ALL the grandkids were playing topless.

Playing with the "moonsand" and having fun.

This is a great story. I'm getting ready one morning and Luke says, "Mommy come look. Tarzan is Jesus." I went and looked and this is what I found. He got a little wooden decorative cross off the piano, and placed his Tarzan toy on it just like Jesus being crucified. It was actually quite realistic considering Tarzan has long hair and wears a loincloth and all. I thought it was too sweet; I love his imagination and that he thinks and talks about Jesus and God the way he does. The other picture of him holding Tarzan up was "Jesus when he came to life again" as Luke said.

Ben watching cartoons on our bed. This was one of the first times he actually was paying attention to the TV and I just thought the thumb and how he holds his little lovey elephant was sweet.