Dan Nicholas Park

The boys and I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and venture up I-85 to Dan Nicholas Park with our good friends, Miss Donna and her son, Liam. The park has a mini train, carousel, a few animal exhibits, gem mining, a huge playground, and a pond. They also have paddle boats and a splash pad, but those attractions aren’t open quite open for the season. All three boys had so much fun! They even talked us into riding the train twice!

Alex refused to take normal pictures …

Posing by the engine.

Alex and Spencer are so proud of the gems they found!

Comparing gems and rocks. Spencer carried his favorite rock around in his hand the rest of the day.

Alex is showing his muscles.

My silly boys. Thanks, Donna, for taking pictures of us!

We had a blast and will have to do it again soon!

M&M’s Guy

“Mom, take my picture with the M-uh-M”

PVC Construction

Most kids have K’NEX and Erector Sets. Not my boys … they have PVC pipes and fittings to build huge towers. These pipes are actually Tim’s solution for Alex always begging us to build him a tent. Tim’s thought was that we could easily fit a few pipes together, throw some sheets over it, and bam … a tent. Who knew the boys would actually enjoy building with the pipes as well?

The original purpose for the PVC pipes.

Turns out building with the pipes is fun too!

The pipes are also great for our Hot Wheels track.

Little Gardeners

We’ve spent the last few weekends getting our yard ready for our garden projects. We moved more stone around to fix some flooding/mud issues, put down new mulch, and planted new plants in our old garden area. Last year’s gardens didn’t get enough sun and/or blocked my view of the yard from the kitchen window. We also had a bit of a delay in garden planning last year (remember the month of hand-foot-mouth … yuck), so we didn’t quite accomplish what we had set out to do. So, to make up for it, we decided to start all our plants from seed and to make use of our huge backyard. My parents brought up their tiller and we tilled almost 200 ft where the playground used to be. The boys had a blast helping and were actually useful helpers! Now we just need the rain to stop, our yard to dry out, and maybe we can start planting!

Alex helped me plant our tomato and pepper seeds in this mini-greenhouse.

Alex and Papa jumping over the freshly tilled rows.

Alex was a big helper and raked the new soil in with the old.

I found Spencer’s sand rake and he jumped right in to help as well.

He’s always looking for an opportunity to be like his big brother!

Easter 2015

With Easter Sunday and Tim’s birthday falling on the same day this year, we decided to take things easy and stay in Charlotte. After finding Easter baskets, the boys enjoyed some of their goodies while I cooked waffles and bacon for breakfast. Later in the afternoon, Alex asked me to hide eggs in the backyard. We spent the next hour or so hiding, finding, and re-hiding eggs. We had a blast!

The Easter Bunny left a trail of eggs leading to the baskets (inside the previous night’s blanket fort).

Alex put together his Lego Junior sets while Spencer and Daddy watched.

The finished products – a racecar and a train engine.

Spencer enjoyed coloring with is new Color Wonder markers.

Spencer had a better idea of what to do at our egg hunt.

Thousands of eggs!

Kovu also enjoyed Easter this year.

Spencer’s First Egg Hunt

A friend of ours invited us to a community egg hunt in Mt. Holly. Two baseball fields were covered in eggs … one for toddlers up to two, and the other for three-five year olds. Alex stayed with Miss Donna and Liam to tour a fire truck while I took Spencer down to the first ball field. Spencer was very concerned about leaving Alex, but Alex was too excited to notice. While we were waiting, I realized Spencer probably didn’t even know what to do! So, we practiced holding the basket and I tried to get him to admire the eggs through the fence. In the end, he ended up with 5 eggs (Alex only picked up two at his first egg hunt). After Spencer and I finished our hunt, we booked it over to the other field to cheer on Alex. He definitely filled his basket!

Why is Mommy telling me to put eggs in here?

So proud to hold his basket!

Alex smiling in the fire truck while Spencer and I were egg hunting.

Alex and his friends on the run!

Figures I dressed them up but they wouldn’t look at the camera.

Spencer, hanging with the big boys.

Roasting Hotdogs!

Now that the weather has been nice, we’ve been spending a lot of time outdoors. Alex has been throwing a bunch of twigs in our fire pit and pretending to build fires lately. So, Tim surprised him one Sunday afternoon and built a fire. I had some hotdogs in the fridge, so we founds some roasting sticks and let Alex cook dinner. Both boys devoured their supper! Smores are next (we didn’t have marshmallows this night)!

Alex thought he was so cool!

Spencer really enjoyed having Alex cook dinner for him.

Spencer would walk around and roast his bites on his fork.

Alex said he was going to eat his hotdog “like Daddy”. He squirted mustard on one end, then bit the other end. Too funny.