I posted a picture of the cousins in birth order a couple of days ago, but here’s how my brother got them to do it. Cue the giggles!
We came home on Tuesday so we could sleep in our own beds (my mom’s house, while large and lovely, is not quite large enough for four families, so the boys and I were camped out on the floor of my mom’s office on various mattresses and sleeping pads) and it was kind of sweet how sad Linus was to leave his cousins. Mean of me to take joy in his sadness, I know, but it just makes me happy that they are having so much fun together.
(He was also sad to leave the big house with the big yard. Yeah, kid, we all want a big house with a big yard.)
We had crawfish and shrimp Monday night, yum.
Ellie and Miles in their matching Wapuu shirts
Mesmerized by the fire pit.
Relatedly, my brother has spent a bunch of time working on his current Kickstarter project, which I promised I’d pimp out for him. A few years ago, he drove cross country and did a time lapse of the drive, which you can see here:
My brother made standing in a line, in birth order, into a game. Voila! Pics of the boys and almost all of their cousins. (Andrew is at home, but we’ll see him next month when we go to Virginia.)
Oh yeah, it’s Valentine’s Day, huh? Mardi Gras pretty much supercedes anything related to February 14, but we did manage to exchange them anyway.
George gave me Hot Tamales, which you know are my favorite but the cards the boys made me were absolutely the best gift I could have gotten. I literally teared up at Miles’s card. Gah.
Even though I support bloggers all day long, I still tend to post more on Facebook and Twitter than on my blog. I guess because I get more immediate feedback, and I crave feedback in the form of likes and comments. (At least one thing I’ve learned as a Happiness Engineer is that I’m not the only one.)
But there are of course huge drawbacks. Even though, of course, Facebook will store everything we ever write or think and use it against us one day, it’s really hard to go back and find old posts. So I’ve decided I’m going to start sharing some of my FB, Twitter, and Instagram posts here on my blog so I can archive them better.
December 28, 2014, 7:14 pm For the first time ever, I can hear the boys talking to each other in French!*
*it seems to be about poop, the universal language of boys.
Every Christmas with the boys just gets more and more fun. This morning was just wonderful.
The boys got up around 6:45, but I made them stay in bed til 7 because I’m mean like that. Last year I got up before them (miracle) and was able to have coffee and turn on the fireplace channel before they got up. I was kind of hoping that would happen again this year. Not so much. Oh well.
First, they opened their stockings and got their presents from Santa.
Checking out stockings
Reese’s Pieces!
Miles was excited about the snowman he asked Santa for.
What’s this?
Santa really hopes the boys will play outside more now.
Then, in the most heart-melting part of the day, they opened their gifts from each other. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.
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The rest of the morning was spent opening the rest of the gifts, and then I cooked, and all of the grandparents came over, and we ate a ton of delicious food, and then after they left, I went to Steph’s house to hang out with friends and drink wine.
I totally under-ordered. In lieu of ordering more cards (they’d have to be crappy ones to get them in time) I’ll post some more photos from the session we did with Christina Childress last month. (Dallas people, get her to photograph your family! You will not regret it!)
Well, there’s the one in my blog header. There are a few in a “series” that I absolutely adore. Giggling, happy boys. Natural smiles. Love!
And here are a couple more…
And here’s my new over-the-fireplace display, with a couple of the aforementioned pics of the boys. The canvases were from Groupon, so the color isn’t as gorgeous as they should be. Those will be replaced with better quality prints soon enough.
This is a really hard post to write. I don’t mean emotionally, I mean physically. This is going to sound ridiculous, but I have some kind of crafting injury. I spent some time Friday working on a big decoration for the party, and by that night, my left wrist and thumb, and a couple of the fingers on my right hand, as well as my left ankle, were in pain. Enough pain that I had to cancel an outing to a birthday party that evening.
The next morning, both wrists and thumbs and more fingers were affected, as well as both ankles. No idea what was going on – were my ankles sore from getting on and off chairs? And also my left shoulder, what was that about? I felt like I’d been hit by a car, or maybe had run a marathon on my hands. It felt a lot like muscle soreness from overuse. Pretty awful. Sunday I woke up feeling even worse, but since I’d kind of figured out on Saturday that moving kept the pain at bay, I just kept busy all day. Not hard, since I had so much birthday party prep to do.
But I was exhausted by nighttime, and the pain intensified. Woke up this morning, got the boys off to school, took a leftover painkiller from my surgery, and passed out. Took the day off work so I wouldn’t have to type all day (except to write this post, of course) and am feeling much better just for getting a solid four hour block of sleep. Hopefully I’m on the road to recovery now.
Shoot, this post wasn’t supposed to be about me, but about the boys’ birthday party!
It was great. Basically the same party as last year – rented a bounce house and a popcorn machine, ordered a stack of pizzas, filled a pinata, and let the kids play and the adults hang out. The boys got to invite 5-6 friends each from their classes, and there were kids from the neighborhood there too. Lots of fun was had by all. 🙂
We went to the fair with Grandpa a few weekends ago. It was a gorgeous day, and I think they boys probably used up half the world’s supply of Silly String.
The boys are on Fall Break this week (don’t even get me started on this ridiculousness…I’m just lucky I work from home now, because this is bullshit for working parents) so I took today off so we could go to the pumpkin patch. I’d been eying the forecast for the past few days, and today was shaping up to be cool enough to make the trip and not be totally miserable.
The weather was gorgeous, as promised, but a bit warmer than I would have liked. I mean, is it too much to ask for the air to be crisp when you’re at a pumpkin patch? Of course, we’re in south Louisiana. I’m fairly certain it’s not a real pumpkin patch anyway. I could see the giant crates of pumpkins that they litter a field with, and it was pretty obvious they were shipped in from elsewhere. Never mind, it’s not like it matters. It’s a great place and I’m sounding very grumpy about it.
After the hour-long trip to get to the pumpkin patch, we sat down for our picnic lunch. I’d promised it was too chilly for bees to come out, but I was a lying liar. There were bees. Miles freaked out, wouldn’t eat. Linus sat calmly and finished his food.
After “lunch”, they milked a cow. Nature, man.
Then they went on the giant bouncy pillow thing.
Then they went on the zipline thing, but I have no pictures of that, because I was too busy trying to hold a rubber tire horse thingy in place and simultaneously lift a 50-lb child onto it.
Then they rode on ponies. Miles had words with his recalcitrant equine.
Then I saw a shady spot that would make a good background for a group selfie. I was right.
Then the boys climbed all over the haystacks. That was fun. They cooperated for some group pics, they jumped from stack to stack, they played with other kids, etc.
Miles impersonates an angel
Miles ran to
and fro
Group pic!
At least I got a good group picture.
Artsy Linus pic
Jump!
almost made it!
Taught them how to give each other boosts.
Didn’t really work.
But it was cute.
At least I got a good group picture.
When they were done playing in hay, they wanted to go down a slide. A slide with a puddle at the bottom. After Oliver ended up sitting in said puddle, he declared it a terrible day. Gee, thanks, kid. His brothers mocked his tears, which didn’t help much. We picked out some pumpkins. The selection was weak. Whatever. I had given up on photos by this point.
Before leaving, I told them we’d get drinks and a snack. Oliver and Linus picked Sprite (judge all you want, they never drink soft drinks) but guess what else likes sugary beverages? That’s right, bees. Again, Linus was like, “whatever” but Oliver was freaking out. I ended up throwing the can in the trash to the sounds of Oliver’s declarations that this was indeed THE WORST DAY OF HIS ENTIRE LIFE. Dramatic much?
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