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.

I know, I'm such a slacker!

Well we made it to Texas! We are loving our new house and have settled into our new life here. To catch up on what we've been doing here for the past month, I will illustrate with pictures.
1. First and foremost, Samuel, Mason, and I got Crypto the first 2 weeks we were here. We couldn't wait to try out our amazing community pool facilities, so we went swimming the day after we moved here. The very next day, the pool closed down for Crypto. Wasn't it our luck that they couldn't discover Crypto running rampant in their pools the day before...when we decided to try out the pool for the first time? So the picture below...I had to run to Walmart for more pedialite and thought that surely we could make it to the store and back without any incidences. 5 minutes into the store and Samuel had diarrhea all over his clothes. It was supposed to be a quick trip so I didn't bring any spare clothing. So here is Samuel feeling miserable and half naked at Walmart. The only way he'd stop crying is when I let him hold his bag of poopy clothes. 2. We've been trying to unpack a little at a time, which has been a challenging task with these two busy boys. We've also been shocked at how much you have to buy when you move into a house...lawn mower, ladder, vacuum, security system, pest control. Things that are not fun to buy and therefore hurt even more to spend money on. Unfortunately, this means that I have not been able to decorate to my heart's content. This little table for our breakfast nook is one of the few things I was able to talk Joe into getting. And yes, we still have the yellow paint and have decided to live with it for a year. Neither one of us wants to put forth the labor so we will wait until we can afford to pay someone else to do it:) 3. Mason turned 1 on September 10! My sweet, sweet, naughty boy! We went and took his 1 year pictures and he was an absolute pill. He would not sit still for more than a few seconds. We went to the Rainforest Cafe earlier that week to celebrate, which was so much fun, I highly recommend it to anyone with kids. Then on his actual birthday, we sang to him and tried to give him cake, but it ended up on the floor after he gagged on the frosting. I'm starting to wonder if I've been a little too strict on the "no sweets" rule with the boys. I think I've turned my kids into party poopers! The video is long, but its entertaining if you want to witness the grouchy birthday boy diss his cupcake. To the grandparents, we missed you and wished you were here!

4. In the past month, my life has gotten dramatically busier with Mason being more mobile. Not only has he gotten more active, but he also has gotten more attitude, more assertive with Samuel (therefore more fighting), and naps LESS. This is pretty annoying b/c Samuel still sleeps like a champ, but I can never take advantage of it since Mason is always awake and creating havoc at that. Here he is caught red-handed with the toilet paper. He looks pretty guilty, doesn't he? And then on the next picture he is trying to crawl away from me (while giggling) since he knows he's been naughty. Oh my life! At least this wasn't a bad clean up.
5. We've been exploring around this area, trying to see what is out here to do. So far, there's a lot to do for families which has been great! We have so many things on our agenda to do and see that we will not be bored for a while. In the picture we are at an awesome outlet mall close to where we live and the boys are cheering for the good deals that we found that day. Plus, that mall had fun little rides that are perfect for little kids. It was definitely my idea of fun...a little shopping for me while Joe played with the kids at the mall!
So that's a little about us in the past month. So far we absolutely love it here and it feels like Keller Texas was part of our future the whole time! Our ward is gigantic...400 attendance on Sundays! So hopefully between church and all of my playgroups, I can meet some friends that are as wonderful as the close friends I've made over the past years. The most surprising thing so far though is that I haven't met too many people with southern accents. So many people have moved here from all over the place, its amazing. Well, I am going to regret blogging tommorrow morning when my early bird Mason wakes up at the crack of dawn!

Catch-up: summer fun in Utah

My little Mason turned 11 months today...he's growing up so fast.

Mason loves, loves, loves playing in the water. Family picture at Cherry Hill. This was the best shot out of 10 tries! We had some fun times with the Berretts at the Oakridge pool. Samuel wearing Papa Tom's hat. Samuel snuggling with grandma Suzy on the lazy river.Samuel loves making animal noises so it was so fun to take him to the zoo and watch his excitement when he saw the animals in person. You can't go to the Hogle zoo without riding the train! Mason with Joe's parents, Suzy and Tom.
The highlight of the day for Mason was the Merry Go Round. He absolutely loved it...too bad I happened to sit on the only animal that didn't move. We were too cheap to pay for another round, but luckily Mason didn't care. I think his expression in this picture is so funny.
Samuel on the other hand certainly did care. He was sitting on his favorite animal and did not want to leave. He was content to watch the Merry-go-Round, so we let him be for 30 minutes. We waited until the crowd died down before we finally braved the full-on-out tantrum.
Well we are finally on our way to Texas tommorrow, yay!!! After 6 weeks on hold in Utah, we can finally get our 'post-graduation' lives started. On Thursday, Joe and his dad flew to Milwaukee to get our stuff, and made it to Kellar,Texas by Saturday night. They had a delay due to a tire blowing out on the car trailer. Fun stuff...glad I'm responsible for flying the kids down! Many thanks to Tom and Suzy for opening your home to myself and our 2 busy, busy boys. I really appreciate your help these past weeks and I am certainly going to miss it once I'm on my own during the days again:( I will especially miss the wonderful company and watching you both interact with these babies in ways that only grandparents can. Thank you so much for everything! This move is so happy and so sad at the same time. For those of you that live by family, please always remember how truly lucky you are!! Well, hope everyone's summers are going well and I will see ya in Texas!!

Hanging out in Utah

Here's a happy Mason ready for church...spike and all! Well, so far we have been living in Bountiful, UT with Joe's parents for 5 weeks. We finally closed on our house this past Thursday and will be on our way to Dallas next weekend...hooray!! I am excited to move on to the next stage of our life, but even more excited to see my wonderful husband again. So while we've waited, in the mean time lots have been happening.

(1) Both boys took turns with a virus (we think) where they had really high fevers for a couple of days. Samuel even made it up to 104. It was pretty funny trying to guess what it was..."maybe it was the pool water?", "his gums are inflamed, it must be teething", "his stool was a little loose, it must be a cold or virus" When it was Mason's turn, we blamed the fever on a virus.

(2) I've been able to spend some time with some great friends. Below is a picture of my get-together with Kristin and Rebekah...my good friends that I grew up with in Kissimmee, FL. It's hard to believe how much has changed since our Young Women days. After chatting for a while, we decided to herd our children to a nearby park...a process that took us nearly a half hour! The great photographer that I am, the picture ended up blurry and I cut off Hallie. Sorry! This is the best shot too! Below is a picture of Sienna and Mason waiting for their burritos at Chipotle. Katie and I met for lunch and these two were so patient while we slowly ate our lunch over a 2 hour period! Thank goodness for fruit puffs and yogurt melts!
This is the aftermath of our lunch. In addition to snacks, the babies also liked to play with straws and napkins. This extended our lunch another 30 minutes.
(3) Samuel has just about discovered every nook and cranny in grandma and grandpa's house. Toys entertain him for only so long, so we've had to be creative in keeping Samuel busy to divert him away from: the toilets, toiletpaper, the bathroom in general, all the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen, the formal living room, climbing bookshelves, and again Samuel in a bathroom is very bad news. So back to being creative. One of Samuel's favorite things to do is help me with laundry. He loves putting clothes in the dryer. Once he runs out of clothes, than he'll put anything he else he can find into the dryer. Well, even that can become old news, so in the video Samuel has moved on to the next step with the dryer.

(4) Finally, some exciting news for our family, Mason has finally started to crawl!! At 10 months, I was concerned that he was never going to figure it out. The next video is for: my parents who ask me EVERY time I talk to them "Is Mason crawling yet?", my nieces Bella and Lilly who devoted a lot of time into helping Mason crawl, and my poor husband who was bummed that he missed this moment.

(5) We have been going non-stop since we've been here and luckily time has gone fast, since I am beginning to miss Joe. Ha, Ha, just kidding...I've missed you the whole time and I can't wait to see you. I was planning on posting more pictures, but I am way too tired. Stay tuned for pictures at Cherry Hill...the greatest funspot you'll ever know.

How do you like our new house?

Here are some pictures of our "possible" new house. I say that because although we are in contract, you never know what is going to happen until the final closing day. I have had a few requests to post pictures on our blog, so here it is. I am a huge fan of the cape cod look with a little porch in front, so this house fits me exactly. We got a killer deal as well, so that was a bonus...gotta love inexpensive Texan living!

I love porches in the front!

Front entry way...it is not nearly as wide as this picture makes it look. The formal dining room is to the right

The living area. The lemon yellow will have to go (what were they thinking?) but my favorite part about the whole house is the sunroom which is through those double doors on the left of the fireplace. It's supposed to be a study, but I'll make it a playroom...my goal would be to keep the toys in that designated area and then shut the doors when I get tired of looking at them! Joe tells me good luck on ever keeping the toys contained. It's worth a try!

Another look of the living room. Below is the kitchen. This is by far the most counterspace I've ever had...goodbye tiny aparments!

There's 4 bedrooms altogether, a formal dining room, a gameroom on the top floor, and a big backyard. The best part about this house is the community center...a waterpark area, lap pools, spray parks, and so forth. I look forward to taking our kids swimming on the the many hot Texas days! Well that's the house. Joe just barely got to take a look at it while in Texas and he gives me two thumbs up on my choice. Thank goodness! It was not easy house hunting alone...talk about pressure!