The River Trip

Yes, we are all still alive over here!!  And not really all that busy, although we have been doing things - I guess I just haven't been very inspired recently to post anything.  Sorry peeps - sometimes Mama gets into a slump.

This last weekend though, Blake went out of town hunting with all the Men-folk of the family, so the kids and I decided that we would take Mom and go out to the River House and enjoy a little time of relaxation of our own.  Little did I know that this would be the ABSOLUTE BEST decision that I have made in a long time regarding how to spend our time!!!

Shortly after arriving on Friday and getting all our stuff into the house and generally arranged, we walked down to the river.  The grass was knee-high (elbow/shoulder high if you are 2 1/2), so there was a bit of complaining about sticker-burrs, but the kids and dogs were all troopers and made it all the way down.  Once there, the dogs swam, and the kids threw rocks - because why not?

We actually stayed down at the river for nearly an hour, and finally decided we needed to head back so that we didn't have to find the overgrown trail in the dark.  While I made dinner, Mom and the boys built us a fire in the fireplace.  No, it wasn't really all that cold (although it did get into the higher 40s overnight), but I had promised Marshmallow roasting if they did a good job on eating their dinners.

It was their first time to ever roast marshmallows, and they thought that it was a pretty fun thing to do - I mean who doesn't like playing with fire?

Jake's Marshmallow

Travis's Marshmallow

After roasting them, they actually decided that they didn't like roasted marshmallows, and that they preferred them not squishy.  Maybe next time I will have to introduce them to frozen marshmallows...

The boys even had a room all to themselves while we were out there - oh the wonderfulness of having a decently sized house to get away and play at.  (Thanks Grandmommy and Grandaddy - the house you built is perfect)  They were so excited to get to have a slumber party together, and they did quite a bit of playing in their room before it was actually time to go to bed.

Quite a bit of playing also of course was done in the living room - mainly Legos, tractors, and Go Fishing (thanks Aunt Laura), since those are the toys that the boys deemed necessary to come out to the river with us.  Sorry to the next visitors if you find any Lego pieces - just stick them on the mantle and we'll retrieve them.

It took about 30 minutes after sticking them in bed before they quit goofing off and actually went to sleep, but 30 minutes isn't too long, they really weren't too loud, and I had wine - so I decided I really didn't care that they weren't doing exactly what I told them to do.

Jake woke up a couple times in the night with a foot that fell asleep and freaked him out, but other than that they slept pretty well, and got up at the mostly reasonable weekend hour of 7am.  (I say mostly reasonable because my boys aren't supposed to get up before 7:30, but at home they have blackout curtains, and there are definitely not blackouts at the River House).

After being up for a while, getting enough coffee and breakfast, we headed back outside - because what is the point of having all this outdoor space if you aren't going to use it!!  So we spent some time blowing bubbles, and Grandma got the tractor out and mowed so that we wouldn't have quite as many instances of "Mama - Sticker" when we headed back down to the river.

When we headed back down, we only took 2 dogs - Miss Molly was a little tired from the day before, but she still protested being left behind, sorry girl, I want you as healthy as I can keep you and your hips would not have liked a second trip all the way down to the water.

One dog short though did not stop the boys from having just as much fun.  The above is a picture of them running back and forth from the ledge (where they could grab decent sized rocks) to the water's edge to throw the rocks for the dogs, or maybe just for splashing and the dogs decided to chase anyway.  Either way, it was a bit difficult to tear them away when everyone started getting hungry.

Eventually we made our way back up to the house for lunch, and then we went around to make sure all the bird feeders had food in them - there are 6!!  So the boys got to do lots of seed filling which they of course loved.

When it rolled back around to nap time/quiet time, we packed up and headed back home.  And you would think that my boys would have been so exhausted that they would have fallen asleep by the end of the couple miles long driveway... nope definitely not.  And they weren't asleep when we hit the turnoff from 281 to 71, and they still weren't asleep when we hit Spicewood!!  Jake finally fell asleep about 15 - 20 minutes from home, and Travis not until about 8 minutes from home.  And of course that was all the nap that they got.  Oh well.

My favorite things about taking the boys out to the River you ask??  Well, even though we missed nap time 2 days in a row to be able to drive out and back...

• All the screams were happy screams
• The boys were mostly polite to each other and polite to their Mama and Grandma
• There was NO TV for over 24 hours
• Everyone slept REALLY well when we got home

So, I am thinking that this is something that we can do again some time - particularly at a time when Mama again gets to her wit's end with the way that the small people are acting, as had probably recently happened which spurred me to just want to get away for a bit.

The video blog

Video fun of us last week - not that this week hasn't been fun, but I didn't get this week on video...

Enjoy.

Jake going on the Zip-Line at Rollie Pollies, and LOVING it.

Travis running down the Trampoline at Rollie Pollies, and crash landing..

Jake running all the bases and scoring a run for the team!!

Just a little rain...

Well, I was all prepared to share a cute little post with videos of the boys doing adorable things... but then last night's storm hit, and the craziness that ensued is WAY more entertaining, and needing of an outlet currently.  So next time you will get cute videos, probably...

So, I was exhausted and actually went to bed at 10:30 last night.  Blake, not so much - I think he was up until closer to 12:30.  It started raining around or shortly after I went to bed.  At about 1am the thunder got going a bit more, and poor sweet Molly dog jumped into bed with us.  She unfortunately pants like a crazed dog, so I got up and put her in the bedroom closet where she can't see the lightning, and would get better sleep - also better sleep for us.  I got back in bed, and that is when we started hearing rain inside the house...

Blake got up, turned on the lights, and that is when the smoke detectors started going off... because rain (or something else water related - still to be determined how this happened) was coming thru the smoke detector and raining down onto our bedroom floor.  This of course shorted out the detector.  We both ran upstairs and grabbed a kid to bring them down, because of course they were terrified of the screeching smoke detectors going off in the middle of the night.

Luckily we both pretty much kept our wits about us, and I went to get a bowl and towel for the water, while Blake went and got the earphones for our noise sensitive little Travis (whose sweet little head was buried in my chest).  After a while we discovered that the Master Bedroom Closet was the quietest place in the house, so the kids, the dogs, and I hung out in there while Blake tried all of the circuit breakers to attempt to get the darn detectors to turn off.  Now it doesn't seem like an issue, but the ceilings in our bedroom are about 14' tall at the location where they put the smoke detector, and our ladder is only 5' tall, which put us a few feet shy of being able to tear the thing out of the ceiling even if I had been sitting on Blake's shoulders while standing atop the ladder (isn't that an interesting image).

(Since there is a broom in this picture too, I am lead to believe that he tried unsuccessfully to swat at it with a broom too.)

For a little while Blake contemplated running out in the rain and lightning to get to the side of the house where the whole house circuit breaker is - but it was raining really very very very hard, so that plan was abandoned.  Eventually we ended up pulling the old breakfast table into the middle of our room, stacking the ladder on top of that, and Blake very carefully climbed up that to remove the detector - while I bravely held the ladder and swore I would catch him if he fell.

Amazingly he reached it, and killed the beeping which had been going on for 30+ minutes.  At that point, and after reassuring the kids that the smoke detectors would be quiet the rest of the night, I got them back to bed - but not without more fun!!

I had Jake sit in the playroom while I sang Travis his song and tucked him in.  And as I was saying goodnight, I love you, etc. etc., the power went out, and the bright room Jake had been in was plunged into darkness - so he starts screaming of course (what other reaction could really be anticipated from a 4 year old anyway).  So I put him in Travis's bed too, and determine that the 3 of us will just sleep up there together until morning.  Luckily the power outage was short lived, and in about 1 minute after it went out, it came back on.

When I tucked poor distraught Jake into bed he kept asking if the alarms would go off again, and if the house was going to fall down, and a myriad of other things.  He did eventually believe me that everything was going to be okay the rest of the night, and went to bed.  Even more amazingly, with the continuing thunder and lightning, we didn't have either child appear in bed with us during the rest of the night.

Just before going back to bed at 2am, I checked the rain gauge.  We have a digital gauge, and it was reading 5.10" of rain.  Holy Moly that is a lot of rain.  When we got up in the morning to check it again, it said OFL - which we have taken to be rain gauge code for either - OMG, WTF, or SOL.  I know it continued raining after that, and our total had to be closer to if not squarely in the 6" area.  The official total for our area was 4.77" from the weather channel, but it seems we got considerably more than that from our reading.

It also appears that the amount of rain was too much for the drainage system to handle at one point, as it appears that the street flooded up a full 6" high on our mailbox... and being at the bottom of the hill (apparently right at the bottom of both sides of the hill), we got all the lawn clippings, mulch, etc. in our yard - yay!

It is supposed to rain more today, so hopefully it will be NOWHERE near as exciting as last night's escapades ended up being.  Now off to make some coffee and then take a nap, because really I need both today.

Game time

I must say, a T-Ball game has got to be the absolute cutest thing that I have seen!  All these tiny people dressed up in baseball uniforms - so adorable.  Maybe all those little boys don't want to be referred to as adorable and cute, but seriously they were.  So I will warn you ahead of time, there are a lot of pictures in this post because of all the cute.

I have been warned that it gets a lot more competitive the older the kids get, but right now it is really fun to sit on the sides and just yell "RUN", when they hit a ball. (Mainly as a reminder because they aren't really sure what to do once a ball is hit).

Here is our team - The Angels in our uniforms.  Not that I have to point him out, because seriously you should be able to find him if you have been following along on this blog for a while, but Jake is the shortest one visible in the photo.  There is one other little boy who is just about on-par with Jake's height but I think you can only just see the corner of his hat behind one of the bigger boys shoulders - or at least you can in a larger version of this photo.

And Jake stretching (sort-of), guess that we still need to work on that a little bit.

The first position that they had him play (During innings 1 and 2) was one of the (3) center fielders - yep we have 11 kiddos on our team, so we have quite a few hanging out in the field.  He looks so serious too!  The first few balls hit that way just kind of rolled past all the kids, and they were like "What you want me to go get that?".  But they quickly picked up on the concept that their entire team was on the field and they needed to work together to get the ball where the coaches were telling them to.  Jake got the ball quite a few times while at this position, and did pretty well once things got going.

Jake didn't end up hitting in the first inning due to his location in the game lineup, but he did in the second, and he was pretty happy about it. (Not sure what coach Nick is up to in this photo, but he looks like he can fly!)

And Jake's hitting got him successfully on base!

\

Unfortunately, it appeared that the other team was made up mostly of 6-year olds who had played before, and ours is really mostly kindergartners with a couple who aren't even there yet (Jake)... so when this happened on his way to second, Jake was mostly thinking - um hello get out of my way I am trying to get to the base over there behind you.  Not sure that he liked being tagged out (being the first on the team for it to happen to and not knowing what to expect), but he handled it like a trooper.

The next position Jake played (during the 3rd and 4th innings) was catcher.  At first, when he had just pulled off his helmet, and coach came up to him with the catcher helmet, Jake just shook his head and was like "nope, not doing that", but he quickly got into the spirit of it, and wore the helmet while standing behind home plate.  (Not that this particular position sees any action at this level - kind of like the pitching position actually...)

And coach asked Blake to come onto the field and help out at this point also, which was kind of fun for Jake too.  Oh, and Jake is #3 by the way.

In the 5th and 6th innings, Jake was back to being an outfielder, and Travis had gotten tired of watching and playing on the Kindle... so I walked over to the little playground with him, which Jake of course saw us, and started posing for pictures at that point.  (I don't think that he missed much in the game while he was posing though)

Cute little dude! (Yes that is still #3, not a random photo of some other kid with a #5)

At his last time to bat, Jake made the full rounding on the bases, but unfortunately got tagged out right as he was getting to home base.  Not sure that he noticed he was tagged out... oh well.  And there is our cheering section right behind him, all looking very proud!  Everyone showed up too, both sets of grandparents, the aunt and the uncle.  Jake was a very happy little kid.

And after the game, he very cheerfully swatted hands with the other team, got a snack and we headed home to figure out dinner (which ended up being chicken strips from Chicken Express because it was easy).  I am absolutely loving how happy this kid is about playing baseball.  Every night he wants to play, this probably warms Blake's heart even more than mine as this was "his sport" while he was growing up too, and getting to see his kiddo play it must just be awesome for him.

Oh, and because big brother was all decked out in his baseball uniform, Travis picked up and proceeded to put on Jake's spare pair of baseball pants because he wanted to be dressed and ready so he could play baseball too.  I did make him take them off so that he could up underwear on beneath them, but then I let him wear them so he could "play baseball too".  I am pretty sure that he thought that the big kids just might need him to come in and bat for them at some point.  (Maybe next game kiddo, maybe next game.)

Going through my pictures, it did become apparent to me that I missed out on the great picture opportunity of both boys together in their baseball digs, so I will just have to get that one together next time.

Next game is Wednesday at 6 if anyone is so inclined to want to come and see my little guy in all of his cuteness!!

First day of School 2014

Another school year is upon us, and I say "Thank Goodness"!  I was pretty done with summer come the end of July (and the kids were still in some summer sessions then...), and was really done with it come the end of last week.  There must be something about summer that whispers in a kid's ear - you should run, and yell, and not listen to your parents, and refuse to do all things good which you do during the school year (like be polite) - because it is summer, and why not.  Well, I have lots of reasons, but the kids don't seem to like my reasons - so let's just say - YAY SEPTEMBER!!! And really it isn't as bad as I am making it out to be, but there is definitely something about fall that I just love, and getting back to a normal routine is one of them!

On Tuesday, I got up at the ridiculously still dark hour of 6:15, got dressed and went to "Boot Camp" with a couple of the neighborhood ladies, at the just barely starting to get light hour of 6:45 (way too early).  Oh, and it was way humid that morning, and there was NO breeze or nice shady tree.  But that got me done with my workout and back home by 8 to be able to pack lunches and get kiddos ready to get out the door for school.

And because showing what your kids are eating for lunch in cute little bento boxes is all the rage - here it is - Jake on the left and Travis on the right - you are welcome!!

First day of school last year -

Feel free to follow the link to read about last year if you are so inclined.

First day of school this year - apparently I have a thing for sending my kids off to school with banded arm shirts.  Jake looked much happier about last year, and Travis about this year - but that is just looks, I think they both just smile silly.  They were both excited.

When walking in we met up with Jake's girlfriend Kelsey, and they posed for this adorable picture that her Mama sent me.  (So sad they are in separate classes this year).

Drop off went great.  Travis put his things in his cubby, and ran off to play after a quick hug.  Jake like always was a little more reluctant, but did put his things up and go off to play pretty quickly as well.  Many times better than the subsequent to the first day of school last year.  I decided to celebrate the success of surviving the summer with a White Mocha from Starbucks, and Mmmmmm, it was lovely (probably undid my entire workout, but oh well).  

I must say, I was not as productive this year on the kids first day of school as I was last year, but I did still accomplish quite a bit.  Blake bought patio furniture on Labor Day, and we put it together that night, but since it took 2 hours to put together, and we were pretty tired afterward, it just sat on the patio next to the two HUGE boxes waiting to be expertly arranged. (Granted it didn't wait too long since the first day of school was Tuesday).  Here is the after - I didn't take a before.

New sofa (another one is on the front patio).

New chairs and table.

Somehow getting the boxes broken down and to the curb for recycling, plus moving all the furniture, relocating all the things which I didn't want on the patio, and getting them organized in their new homes took quite a while, and ended up being most of what I did while the boys were at school - oh well though.

Both boys were very happy when I picked them up from school.

Jake and his new teacher Miss Kathy.

When asked about his day, Jake said that he:

- Learned how to spell a J with dots

- Made an ice cream cone out of paper

- Went looking for a cat

- Played on the playground with Kelsey

- Went potty (this is so huge if you look back at last year, he didn't potty at school once)

I'm not sure about all of it, but whatever.

Travis and his new teacher Miss Melissa.

When asked about his day, Travis said that he didn't do anything... upon further prodding he said that he:

- Painted with blue and yellow paint and then very excitedly exclaimed that he also used red!

- Played on playground

- Ate lunch

- And after hearing Jake say that he went potty, Travis said he did too (not surprising here, as he has been doing this at school all summer too)

There are probably other things that he did too - but he isn't much for talking about his day when asked.

So, in celebration of a wonderful first day of school, I took the kiddos out for ice cream at the yogurt shop nearby (and somehow managed not to partake in the yumminess myself - see Stacy I can avoid giving in to temptation).  These kiddos were happy!

Toward the end of our ice cream eating, Travis said - "That's Madison", and I said "huh?"  And the lady at the table next to us looked over, and I tilted my head that way and asked Travis "That's Madison?", he said yes, and the lady said yes, and so we met one of Travis's new little friends who was sitting at the next table over, also enjoying ice cream.  Guess that she made a big impression on him because they were not in class together last year!

Unfortunately, Wednesday was a crap-shoot and much like a lot of our summer days went behavior-wise on both kiddos parts when there wasn't a scheduled activity to last all morning - but today went very well with them in school again.  Hopefully we will find our even-keel soon, and have good days on days when they actually spend the whole morning with me!

Batter up!

Well, Jake is playing T-Ball this year, for the first time.  In the weeks leading up to the start of baseball, I was a little (okay a lot) worried that our first day would go very similarly to how our first day of soccer last year went, if you don't remember, refer to: Our little soccer star!! .  Any-who, I was pleasantly surprised that it went absolutely nothing like that "wonderful" grass plucking day.  He paid attention and participated in everything - we may need to work on his stretching though, it was hilarious!  He even did a really good job with his throwing, catching, and batting.  And even better, when we left Jake said - "Mom, I did awesome at baseball".  My response was "yes honey, yes you did".

Stretching

Catching (If you couldn't tell from the first picture, Jake is kind of the littlest one on the team - although to be fair I think the other kid in this picture is the biggest one) (and yes they are throwing tennis balls) (enough ( ) for you yet??)

Travis staying entertained with his own glove, and later with Jake's kindle, and after that with some dirt and rocks!

Getting ready to bat - I think talking about which side of the plate to stand on (he is not being scolded even though it kind of looks that way)

Ready to bat!

Running home

Jake hitting a ball. (Day 2 of practice) And he didn't even knock down the T this time.

  So for the fall we will have practice 3 days a week, and eventually will have games too.  Apparently practice 3 days a week is a bit out of the ordinary for this age group, but Jake loves it, so we'll go to as much as we possibly can.  The way I figure, if these kiddos practice that much, they'll be just about the best T-ball team to ever grace the LTYA fields!

  Go Angels!!

The Patio Project

  So, I have really been slacking on keeping up with the blog recently - and it isn't that we have been up to nothing at all, just staying happily busy and enjoying our summer.  Sorry, maybe things will get back to normal posting when the kids go back to school next week - certainly something exciting is bound to happen.
Our big summer project was to get the back patio expanded into something more usable... see before:

House before moving into it with 8x12 approx. patio - good for fitting the grill, the smoker, the box of toys, the box of smoker equipment, and stacking chairs - can't sit on it though because with all the stuff we keep on it, there isn't any additional room!!!  (Oh and the stupid tree in the middle of the yard - so glad we made them move that!)

The first step in the process, after coming up with the design, and going through all the permitting fun with the HOA and the city - was to measure and stake out the location for digging up the grass...

The larger side of the patio, coming out an additional 4', and going the length of the side of the house up to the master bedroom windows. (This was from April 16)

The smaller side of the patio, adding on a large enough area for the grill and smoker with "work around it all" room.

The next logical step was to dig up all that grass. Enter small children with garden spades...

And when they did a grand total of absolutely no help at all, Blake was recruited to do the heavy lifting, and he recruited his dad for additional help - I tried, really I did, but I was not very good at the removing of grass.

 

And my parents were recruited to haul away the grass and fill empty spots on their lawn - so everyone was happy - particularly the little boys who just made everyone's loads a little heavier.

  After all of the grass was removed, we laid out the stone border in approximate locations where we wanted the rock to end up - and then of course we relocated all of it 3 times before they were actually set.  We also ended up having to dig the trench for the stones a little deeper to be able to put a 2" concrete footing down to better secure the edge so that over time our patio would not push the limestone border away from it. 

Edge laid out on larger area

Edge laid out on smaller area

Cliff (Blake's Dad) mixing up concrete for the footing

Our lovely footing trench

Concrete poured in the footing trench (This is from May 3)

Guys taking a break from concrete work

  After laying the footing, the edging began to take shape - Blake and Cliff mixed up mortar, and got the rocks in!!  This process took about 2 weeks, since we were predominately working on the weekends - you know since Blake has a full time job and all - so weekends and evenings were when we got stuff done.

We started with the area directly in front of the existing patio, because we figured that was our "constant", and the rest needed to be aligned to it.

And then of course it started raining when we wanted to be doing work, so that was helpful... but not really.

  We did about 90% of the border, and then left one 5' section open so that we would be more easily able to dump the road base for filling in the height of the patio - this made life SO much easier - brilliant plan honey!

A dump truck came and delivered all of the road base - which the boys thought was absolutely the coolest thing that had ever happened at our house.

We laid landscaping sheeting down to prevent (or at least try to prevent) weeds from growing through the patio.

And then we dumped, spread, wet and tamped the road base down - in about 4" deep sections, and then did it again on top.

It really helped to give a feel for how this was all going to come together at the end, and made me very happy.

Large side got done too

After the large side got done with the road base, we added sand, and the boys decided that it was their own personal sand-box - and for a little while, we were the coolest parents in the whole world, and then it rained, and filled up the whole thing, and spilled onto the lawn...

And this is when we realized that our lawn drainage sucks, but not as much as our poor neighbor's does - look at that lake!!  This was about 3" of rain in an hour. Great for the grass, awful for our plans to proceed with the patio.  (This was the end of May).

The beginning of June saw the delivery of, and our laying out and setting of the patio stone - this took and entire month, no kidding all of June!

Stone delivered to the driveway, where it sat for what felt like a very long time.

The beginnings of laying out the stone the first weekend in June.

The boys playing in their very own 400 s.f. sand box!

Layout of the stone in front of the door (Look at that lush green lawn, too bad all the rain was in May and June, and now it is all brown)

This was the last weekend in June, when we finally had all of the stone laid out just the way that we wanted it to be.

Once all stones were in place, and level, we spread polymeric dust into all the gaps, watered it in and watched it for a little bit (July 4th weekend)

Then Blake blew off the excess water with the leaf-blower

And voila - finished patio

And large section of finished patio

View from yard of the patio

And our next step is to get non-plastic patio furniture!!

  So, overall it was a long project - mid April thru early July - but it is done now, and we NEVER EVER EVER have to build another patio again!