Summer Goal Progress

This week we made some progress on our Summer goals. We also did things just for fun!

We went to a Build and Grow workshop at Lowes. I'm getting good at putting these things together! This time I only made one mistake. Maybe next time I'll get it done perfectly. But probably not. They made How To Train Your Dragon Sheep Drop games. 

Lucas grew up a lot this week. Look how big he is getting. Where did my baby go?! He'll be 9 months on the 8th of July which is just crazy. He makes us all so so happy. Everyone wants to be around him all the time. He is working on getting some teeth in on bottom. And this week he started climbing up the stairs. Oh boy. He continues to army crawl and ruin all his clothes and get a blister on one big toe from constantly pushing off with that toe and foot, but it works for him.

He is perfection. 

Preston attended Pack Meeting for my cub scouts with me and the theme for the meeting was airplanes. The boys all made paper airplanes and threw them off the stage to land on the runway in the cultural hall. Preston loved it and as soon as we got home was asking for paper airplanes and runways. I got pretty good at making airplanes thanks to YouTube tutorials! If you look in this picture you can see Jaxton passed out on the couch dead asleep after our swimming trip. 

I showed Preston how to play dominoes, and taught him how to play it by himself by matching up numbers and building a fun design. Hopefully this helps him during the day when he asks over and over what fun thing he can do now. 

One of Preston's goals this Summer is to learn how to spell and write his last name. So we practiced that a few times on the chalkboard. 

S's are hard... 

Jaxton has been working on learning his alphabet and counting. He's so stubborn though and has to be in the right kind of mood to do it. We worked on recognizing letters big and small and Preston worked on the sounds each letter makes and what other words start with that sound. Now when we go out he will sound out letters and tell me D-d-d-d Daddy. Donut. Dragon. People around us will sometimes laugh when he says things like w-w-w- Wolf blood! or h-h-h-hilarious. 

We took a trip to the pet shop to look at all the cool animals that I will never allow them to own. Like rats. And snakes. And lizards. 

We painted with water and did more name writing. 

And then that turned into drawing Samurai symbols because we are obsessed with Power Ranger Samurai in this house.  

Lucas and I had some one on one time this week and we played on the trampoline. He loves it and wants to play on there all the time but its just too rough having him and the bigger boys on there. They just dont understand how to bounce softly & I'm still paranoid about Lucas's brain so I don't want him to get roughed up. 

But he was happy to be out there with me doing soft bounces and crawling around. 

I attempted to take the boys (all 3) to a free Summer movie. We lasted 21 minutes before having to go. Preston did well, and Lucas did ok even, but the second the lights went off Jaxton wanted to run around and be loud and even though it was a free movie full of kids I still don't want him to act like that in the theater. Preston was sad to go since he wanted to see the movie, How to train your dragon, but he got better when we went across the street to walmart and just bought the movie to watch at home. 

I even packed them snacks and food to keep them quiet at the movie, and it worked for the 30 minutes before it started. But then it wasn't enough. 

This week I am working on going through the boys closets and organizing it more which is part of my big summer goal of rearranging the boys rooms. Seems like I'm constantly packing clothes up that no longer fit and unpacking bigger clothes. And now I have to pack up and get rid of all the baby stuff. Such mixed emotions putting these things away knowing I wont ever use them again, but its whats best for our family, and we are at peace with that. Plus now other family members can use the hundreds of clothes I've collected over the years! 

My baby just isn't a baby anymore. But isn't he just adorable?! 

A week of "dates"

This week was wonderful. Patrick took a few days off work to stay home and do fun things with us and we LOVED having him around. The boys loved it and I loved the extra hands and naps I got to take. Lately I've been feeling just so extremely grateful that Patrick works so hard for our family and shares the same feelings that I do that its important for me to stay home and raise our boys. Sure things get stressful at times trying to make it work on 1 salary and there are days I long for adult conversations and less bum wiping, but my heart is so full that I get to do what I love.
ANYWAYS!

Lucas is getting more mobile. He army crawls which is really a combination of him doing a butterfly swim stroke and trying to leapfrog forward. All I know is that he's filthy by the end of the day making me feel like our floors are dirty (which they usually are) and I can't wait for him to walk so that there is less eating of the dog food and dumping out the water. If I could have my kids skip crawling and go right to walking I would! But its fun to see him getting around. I had to put the extended baby gate up to cage him in this weekend so that I could get things done and of course they all loved it. 

I found some more unique frames and added some pictures to our picture wall. Does it look too cluttered? I'm still unsure about it. I put 2 quotes up there. The one in the cream frame says "Any home can be a castle when the king and queen are in love" and the other is a scripture "Do not fear, I am with you." Looking at this picture I am annoyed that some of my frames are crooked and My "Love" is half off, but it was one of the boys turn to dust this week and that meant the feather duster got thrown up against the wall when they couldn't reach. 

We went to a birthday/swim party for one of our favorite 10 year olds and it was great! I think the boys set a new record on how much they ate. Both Jaxton and Preston had 3 slices of pizza and Preston had 2 slices of watermelon and I think Jaxton had at least 4. Lucas was a fan too which is so strange because last time I bought watermelon NONE of them would eat it. We'll try it again soon. 

Oh and there were fudgecicles. 

 They slept really well that night. And on the way home. 

 My garden is finally starting to produce some produce! The baby tomatoes are the first thing we've tried. By we I mean Lucas and myself because no one else likes tomatoes. Their loss! 

I joined the rest of the world and read this book this week. Oh man. Brutal. But SO SO SO good! Hopefully I'll be seeing the movie soon. I highly recommend it. 

A few times a year our community has a "clean sweep" where they bring in huge dumpsters from the city of Mesa and you can get rid of all your trash and yard clippings and such. We got a notice that this past weekend would be the clean sweep and decided to take advantage of it. At my grandpa's house we have a huge storage unit that is full of all kinds of things my mom "collected". I wont say "hoarded" b/c that just sounds mean. We've been working on going through that thing for years now and since this weekend was the clean sweep I decided we would take bring over all the trash/broken things from the storage unit so we could dump it there instead of having to pay to take it to the dump. It took me 5 car loads & all of the morning to bring all of it over. Waited all day for the dumpsters to be dropped off and they never were. Finally at the end of the day when I was getting the mail I decided to check to see if I had gotten the dates wrong and looked on the community bulletin board. There was a flier up- identical to the first one- saying the dates had been changed to the first weekend of July. I. Was. So. Mad. So later that night i moved it all around and made enough room in the garage to park the car back in there (b/c parking outside in 110 degrees with 3 littles is NOT an option) and we now have a garage filled to the max of trash waiting for the dumpsters. UGH. Rant over. 

One of the things Patrick wanted to do with his time off was take each of the boys out on a date to spend some time one on one with them. They love this kind of thing and so do we. Their personalities are so different when they are on their own. And its good for them to get some personal attention. First up was Preston. They were to Golfland and did some mini-golfing.
Here's Preston making a hole-in-one.
Patrick says he has about 3 tries to get his ball in the hole before Preston will pick it up and put it in for him. 

Naturally there was some video game playing in the arcade after golfing. 

And a big drink of water because he was "all dried out". 

The next day was Jaxton's turn. Again they went to Golfland. Jaxton hadn't ever been mini golfing and Patrick said he had a great time. 

The giant Icee didn't hurt either. 

Flat tire means some time at the tire store.
The boys love it and make themselves right at home. 

Other activities this week included number matching.... 

playing in rice while wearing a necklace as a crown.....

Puzzles....

And jerky making.
Delicious. 

It's the most busiest time of the year.

When did Summer get so busy?! I guess right around the time I decided we needed to keep busy & get out of the house a lot this Summer. My bad... I don't know how people who have lots of kids do it with all their kids in a bunch of activities. Most days last week we were busy going 3-4 places a day, which is a lot for us since usually I have a 1 place a day rule. But we've been having a lot of fun! 

We went to a Build and Grow workshop at Lowes and I helped the boys build a dragon from How To Train Your Dragon. Seriously so hard to assemble. You'll notice the top of Preston's dragon has a big sticker. That's because I had to take his wings off because I did a step wrong TWICE and it ripped his wings so we improvised and used a sticker to hold them on. I apparently wasn't assembling them fast enough for Preston becuase he kept saying "Aw. Those kids are cooking. We aren't cooking." but once we got past the first few steps then he said "now we're cookin!" Hopefully the next craft is a bit simpler for mom....

We went to Family Swim time at Fremont Pool. Every Friday from 5-7 is family swim and its half price to get in. By 5 it's usually not so hot out and so its not terrible to be out in the sun. And Fremont has a kid pool that is only 1 foot at its deepest. The boys were the only ones in there and enjoyed it. Well. Mostly. Preston warmed up to the idea of getting wet, Jaxton would get out of the pool anytime he got water on his face/shirt/head and Lucas was in heaven just splashing and kicking. 

The only sad part was Lucas rubbed sunscreen in his eyes on our way to the pool and so the whole time we were there he had red puffy teary eyes. Looked so sad. But he had fun! 

Sometimes Jaxton crouches down like Gollum from Lord of the Rings to eat things. Happens a lot actually. 

Preston has been into games lately and so we got out CandyLand which he usually refers to as "Candy Crush", the game people play on their phones. (not me). It's good for him to play it, he has to learn he cant win all the time & he needs to learn how to be a gracious loser. 

I think the first day we got it out we played it 5 or 6 times... Lucky me....
 And when he was going to bed that night he said "I wish we had a game called Steak Land instead of Candyland! That would be so funny and so much more delicious!" 

I agree. 

Louie continues to fit in nicely around here. He's very good at letting the boys maul him which is good because things like this happen a lot around here. 

Before we do anything fun the boys know we have to do our chores. Last week I let everyone pick what 5 chores they wanted on the chore chart as opposed to picking for them and one of the chores Preston picked was to do the window. Jaxton of course helped & kept telling Preston that he needed more "sauce" on his paper towel. Another one of Preston's chores was mopping and after about 5 minutes he told me he was never picking that chore again. HA! You wish... 

We did more sensory activities, and Lucas played with some shredded paper. Surprisingly he didn't try at all to eat it, just wanted it off him and his tray. Not a big fan of it. 

I let the boys slice and scoop out a honey dew melon. They thought they were pretty cool getting to use knifes. 

Preston went to day camp Mon-Thurs last week thru Mesa Parks & Rec. He enjoyed it but said it would be ok if he didn't' have to go anymore. He does his own hair now in the morning when he gets ready. Fancy. 

We had cousins over to play a few times last week and so we build a car track across the floor. 

We went to a Home Depot kids workshop and they built riding mowers. Those were a little easier for me to assemble then the dragons were. 

Lucas did great things this week. He is still progressing with his crawling, he can clap now, we are working on high 5's, he started saying the MMM sound, which is good since he is already showing some speech delays. He's mostly over his separation anxiety which is lovely & has discovered the deliciousness of graham crackers. 

Jaxton did get a double ear infection in the middle of our busy week so we had a nap time for a few days. One day EVERYONE fell asleep for a few hours, including me! It was magical. 

Lucas worked on picking up and dropping puffs while I worked with Jaxton on spelling his name & playing with some toys. Or at least thats what I told myself when I saw he had dumped out all his puffs. 

I took these milk tops & juice lids and wrote the letters to Jaxton's name on them and then he had to put them in the formula can. It's a work in progress. But we had a transition meeting for him to start preschool at the same school Preston is going to and he should be starting shortly after he turns 3 in November. The thought of Jaxton riding the bus and going to school seems so sad and big to me, but school has done AMAZING things for Preston. He's so much more social and talkative now then he was before and has learned so much so I think Jaxton will do great. Plus he will have the same teacher as Preston and he knows her and the classroom so it should be an easy transition for him. 

 Yes, it is possible to play outside in Arizona during the Summer! You just have to go at about 8am and find a covered one. 

 This week is another busy one. Library trips, book store trips, breakfast and lunch at the school, summer movies, patrick has a few days off to spend with us, and I have some Scout stuff that needs to be done. And of course, try to keep cool!