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.