What a fun week!

We went with our playgroup on our first visit ever to a pumpkin patch. This part is just the pumpkins, but we went on a hay ride, bounce houses, and a little hay maze. Samuel was very upset at first when he realized he couldn't pick up the "balls" since they were too heavy. Needless to say, he was very excited to find this little house full of small pumpkins. I had to pull him out kicking and screaming after he'd thrown a few "balls" around. I couldn't imagine explaining to Joe why I had to buy 50 damaged, little pumpkins. After several attempts, Mason decided to humor me and smile for the camera. Samuel is a little over stimulated at this point...I'm surprised I even got him to sit for picture time. I love the picture below of big brother showing Mason the tractor behind me. Now the best part of the week: My parents came to visit! We had such a busy, but fun time! Here we are at the BYU vs. TCU game. I never thought I'd see the Cougars play any time soon, but luckily they are in the same conference as TCU, which is located in Fort Worth. Unfortunately, we witnessed in person the Cougar beatdown and our dream to see them play in a BCS bowl went down the drain that night. What a disappointing college FB season!!! My Buckeyes lost AND my Gators lost. I better move on before I get upset all over again! During their visit, my dad helped us get our flowerbed in order...they dug out all the nasty weeds that had overtaken the bed, trimmed all the plants, planted flowers, and put up a stone border around the flowerbed. So here is the before (most of it looked like the side Joe is working on):

And here is the after picture. Thanks dad for helping us! You saved us so much money, time, and effort!

And here we are again at the zoo...we just love that place! It's always a big hit with Samuel.
And I just wanted to add that Samuel was such a huge fan of my dad's while he was here. It was so great to see this since the last visit, Samuel was terrified of my dad. Well actually, he was scared of anyone that wasn't me or Joe, so hopefully he is outgrowing this. I wanted to add a little video of my dad and Samuel playing the guitar. My dad is a wonderful guitarist and so we had lots of music time while he was here. I had him listen to all of Samuel's favorite songs and when he played the theme song from Diego or Popcorn popping, Samuel went wild dancing! Watch Samuel's wide-eyed stare as he plays with my dad. Also note Mason, ready to destroy the guitar.

Thanks mom and dad for coming to visit! We had such a great time and we already miss you! Can't wait to see you at Christmas time.

Life in Texas

I just wanted to start off with this picture to illustrate why I can't find time to blog. Aside from Mason never napping, my kids are destroyers!! I find myself constantly running around yelling "We only write on paper!", "Don't pound your car on that!", "No throwing blocks at the window!" Every day, actually every HOUR, you can find me mourning over all the marks, scratches, and dents on the surfaces of our furniture and new house...sniffle, sniffle. I'm beginning to think that I'm wasting my time and vocal chords trying to keep anything in decent shape around here. Anyways, by the time the kids go to bed I move into zombie mode, too tired to do anything except work the remote. As for the picture, we bought the boys a little tent for their playroom. Within minutes of playing with it, I found that Samuel had taken all the poles out and was scratching our walls with the ends of them. We then taped all the poles together so he couldn't take them apart, but it was no match for Samuel. He just had to get that tent through the doorway. Here's Joe and Mason enjoying the last day at our community pool. Isn't it awesome? There's also a 6 lane lap pool, another pool with a waterfall, other baby pools and slides shown below. This pool area was a major draw for us in choosing our house. We didn't get Crypto this time, thank goodness! Samuel and I going down the slide. Talk about a major fit when we have to leave the slide area!Joe and Samuel at the Fort Worth Zoo which is an awesome zoo. Samuel really loves animals so we've already taken him 3 times.
Here are some pictures of when our playgroup went to the zoo. I was not sure how fun it would be to take a bunch of 2 year olds and their baby siblings to the zoo, but we ended up having an awesome time. And, I swear my boys have more than 1 outfit! Our attempt at a group photo of the kids...Samuel trying to get as much space between he and all of the girls.

Samuel, not much of a socializer!
I just wanted to post this picture of my favorite grocery cart in the world. I absolutely cannot stand how most stores do not accomodate shopping with two babies very well. Samuel usually ends up in the basket part, either smashing my bread or throwing produce over the edge shouting "ball!" The big cars in the front are a pain to push and plus I can't monitor the hair pulling and hitting that goes on down there. So when I stepped into this expensive health food grocery store for the first time and saw this cart, I knew that I would be a frequent customer. Anything to make shopping with kids easier! Finally, my future golfer already in training. Just in case Samuel may one day want to go into the dental field, Joe wants to make sure that he meets the prerequisite of playing golf. Oh, and this is not a pose for the camera...this is really Joe trying to help Samuel connect with the ball.