Weekend pictures

We had a very full and fun weekend. And here are some pictures from our phones that we snapped throughout our family time.

A very chilly Friday morning bike ride. We love Jeremy's every other Friday off schedule. The only thing that could be better, would be every single Friday!

Friday morning, one of Holden's first comments to Jeremy was that he wanted to play soccer that morning. This was great for us to hear! We think he's finally starting to enjoy playing. Saturday morning, he had a pretty chilly game. But he scored 2 of 3 goals for his team! He also won the medal for teamwork. One of his teammates fell on his chest during practice and Holden helped him up. The other coach (not Jeremy) chose Holden to receive the medal this week.

Saturday afternoon we attended a birthday party for one of Holden's little friends from church. It was a costume party and it was so much fun for the boys. There was pumpkin bowling, tug of war, face painting, candy apples and so much more.  The boys had to skip naps to attend the party. This is something that rarely happens. We just typically plan to be home in the afternoon for naps. It works best for us. And Saturday was a good reminder of why we do that. Naps are still very much a necessity at our house. They actually did good until about 6pm. Then their responses to everything became very unpredictable. More unpredictable than normal for 3 and 4 year old boys. What can I say! My boys need their sleep! And I'm sure not going to deny them of that.

So I'm sort of giving away the Halloween costumes with these party pictures, but oh well.  This was their first time to have their faces painted.

Just a little moment I caught of the boys this morning before we took Pax to his class at church.  Sometimes they really are the best of friends. And many times they are quite the opposite. :)

A chopstick style lunch at Pei Wei. They thought those were coolest utensils ever. So I'm honestly wondering if Holden's veggie consumption might increase if I had chopsticks for him at every meal.

Then this evening after the boys naps, we went to a favorite spot for them to ride bikes. Jeremy stayed with the boys as they pedaled along. While I went for a run by myself, lapping them a few times. ;) It was a great way to end our weekend. 

Carving the pumpkin

Every year, our master pumpkin carver sets aside an evening in October to work his magic. Yesterday was the evening.  The boys love watching daddy carve the pumpkin and they especially love the end result of his work.
Last year, the boys chose Mickey Mouse. And in 2010, Holden chose a picture of a cat. But after reading lots of pumpkin and jack-o-lantern books for the past 2 weeks, the boys agreed they wanted a scary faced jack-o-lantern. Jeremy and the boys scanned the internet for some options and they made their selection.

 

 

 

 

And now do you notice Holden's troubled face? Pax was fine. He just doesn't always smile for the camera. Once the lights were turned off so that we could see the jack-o-lantern lit up, Holden became a bit terrified. I love that he has this innocence about him. He can be very easily scared by things.

And Jeremy took it upon himself to find these glow swords at the Target dollar spot. So the boys got to play with these bad boys last night. It always makes me smile when Jeremy does something like this. It was a mere $2, but that he saw them and knew it was something his boys would love...it makes me happy.
Happy Pumpkin Carving everyone!!

It's been 10 whole years...

I had a fantastic weekend. Better than fantastic. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I'll go ahead and embarrass myself...I cried after the said weekend was over. I cried a few times. I couldn't pull myself together. I think part of it was sleep deprivation. But part of it was a lot more than that.

Jeremy and I went to our 10 year college reunion this past weekend. Do we look old enough to be out of college for 10 years? I think NOT. I'm sure that's what you were thinking too. ;) I did get asked once on campus if I was a student. Thank you 60-ish year old lady. I realize that everyone under 35 looks like a youngin' to you, but I'll take it any day. And yes, I did thank her, even if she didn't intend to compliment.

Jeremy and I met in college. We were 19 when we first introduced ourselves to one another. He had a few earings, bleached out hair and wide legged jeans. I thought I had him pegged and he wasn't my type. Nor would I ever be his. It was a short 6 months later that I really had the priviledge to know more than just his name and his hometown. October of 1999 he was my date to a Greek function. He was chosen for me by someone else. And it wasn't long after that date, that I quickly fell in love that with that laid-back, fun, trendy clothed boy. And lucky for me, he fell in love too. I think that is such a huge reason this place, Abilene, Texas...Hardin-Simmons University holds very fond memories for me. At this special place, Jeremy and I met, developed a friendship, fell in love, broke up and recommitted. And at the end of our senior year we were engaged to be married. A little drama (including, but not limited to, the break up), but a whole lot of fun and some very special memories linger when I think of this place. I teasingly told Holden and Pax that I would show them the place that mommy and daddy shared their first kiss. I don't think they really cared. ;)

Unfortunately for Jeremy he spent many hours working (waiting tables for the most part) during our college years. But fortunately for me, that gave me a lot of time with my friends, independent from him. I have a feeling if he had worked a whopping 15 hours a week on campus, like I did, we would have been glued to one another in our spare time. What can I say...we loved our time together. But because he was busy working to support himself while in college, I have a brain FULL of memories with my girlfriends. I could spend hours telling anyone that cared to listen of the fun memories that took place during those 4 years.

So last Friday, as we drove on campus I got a little swept away in all of the memories. You couldn't wipe the smile off of my face. It had been 8 years since we had visited this special place. It looked so different with tons of new buildings on campus. But it also looked very much the same. Very familiar. Then on Sunday, as we drove away from the campus, it happened again. I got a little swept away and the tears wouldn't stop coming. Jeremy was sweet but didn't quite understand. And to be honest, I don't either. I love my current life. Please don't misinterpret. But I think there is a part of me that longs to repeat history. Sometimes I think that I would do it all over again if given the opportunity. And right now, I'm just a little tender and achey for the past. So weird. Right? I do realize that I may sound a little like Tim McGraw in the movie Friday Night Lights. I'm not proud of that. Just trying to be authentic, even if it makes me appear a little pathetic.

So I've been thinking this week, I bet there were times that I wanted to be out of college and moving on...marrying my sweet love, starting a family, being done with all the classes. And here I am kind of wishing to be back in that place. So my lesson from this is that I should never rush towards the future because I might miss the past. Pretty good, huh? I may have unintentionally stolen that from some deep philosopher. But I'm pretty sure it just came about in my brain yesterday.

Here are a few pictures from our weekend. I barely touched my camera, so luckily I had some sweet friends share there pictures with me.

This greeted us on Friday when we entered the campus.

We took the boys on a little stroll around campus Friday afternoon.  I'm pretty sure they loved it and plan on enrolling in 14 and 15 years . . . if I let them move that far away from me. ;)

A small portion of my pledge class at a Saturday morning breakfast. Those 2 little Greek letters changed my college experience, for the better. And it helped me in creating some friendships that I'll never let go of. It also aided me in snagging my husband. :)

We stayed with some friends that we hadn't seen in YEARS. So the boys got to make some new friends. :)

 My hot date for our reunion dinner.  I really do cherish the fact that he was such a huge part of my college experience. It's fun for us to look back together on so many shared experiences.

 The girls attended All School Sing on Saturday night. The boys stayed back with the kiddos since it made for a late night.  And here is Sigma Alpha performing. They won it! We were pretty proud.

 Some Sigma Alpha spirit (blue and green fake lashes, necklaces and glow bracelets).

 Such fun to watch...but it was so much more fun being on stage...back in the day.

And some pictures of my future HSU Cowboys!

 

Looks like this one might attempt to be a cheerleader, but that's ok. We'll deal with it. :)

 

What a great weekend! It really was. But it's time to face the music and be 32. There is no possible way to go back to 1999. I've already looked into it. They said no. :)



Pumpkin Time

It is officially pumpkin time. We are seeing them everywhere. Yesterday we joined some friends at a Pumpkin Patch. That is always a fun fall treat. Especially for boys that love to run free and get dirty. Here are a few pictures from our fun morning yesterday.

 Silly little boys

 Pax and Mickey - a favorite character at our house!

 Sweet brothers. So happy to catch this moment of them laughing. They were probably laughing at me because I couldn't seem to get a picture of both of them smiling. Well, I got one. Now who's laughing...suckers!

 A little train ride for our bunch. And the dude driving the tractor was so sweet. I caught a glimpse of him grinning as he pulled each child out of their cart after the train ride. He was loving his job and it made me very happy. :)

 Pax...

 Holden...

 Max...

and Whitney.

 The hay bale maze!

 I caught someone hiding!

 Peek-a-boo from Whitney. Man, she's cute. And she likes me...which makes her even cuter. :)

 

 A fun, little hayride made our morning almost complete.

Then today we had a pumpkin themed morning of fun crafts and story books. We even had pumpkin muffins to go along with it. Have I mentioned how much the boys LOVE LOVE LOVE these days?! Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I have. ;) These days often take more prep time than I care to sacrifice (during the moment I'm prepping for it)...but how delighted Holden and Pax are to sit and do crafts and listen to me read story after story. And how delighted I am that it's something that they love to do.  I'm very blessed to enjoy these days with my little boys!

 

 

 

 



just catching up

I have been a little behind on the blog. Well, a little behind for my own taste. Especially considering there was a time that I blogged, almost daily. Those days are long gone. I've really been trying to be better at my time management over the last 6 months or so. Which means the blog doesn't get updated near as often. So today will just be a little photo catch up of the little things going on at our house lately. Or at least the things I've caught with my camera.

I've been doing school at home with the boys just 1 day per week. It's been fun for them. They love the structure and planned activities of those days. So far we've had an "All About Me Day". They spent some time working on their names. They did a little presentation for Jeremy that evening of their favorite things. And they did some other fun activities. We've had an "Apple Day" and made homemade apple sauce along with some other letter A activities. And today we had a "Dinosaur Day". We read tons of Dinosaur books. Discussed and checked out pictures of different types. We talked about carnivores and herbivores. And we worked on couting out and sorting dinosaur eggs (or dry black beans).

 

 

We've been going to the public library weekly. We load up on tons of books for the boys. (Did you know that 50 is the limit you can check out at once?! Whoa that's a lot of books!) Then we read these books 2,317 times before we return them the next week and do it all again. Last night Jeremy said to me, "It's amazing how quickly they memorize books."  They do. My boys memorize them. Then they pretend to read to one another. It's the cutest thing ever! And I catch them daily sitting and flipping through books, like the picture below. I love how much they love reading. I tell each baby sitter that comes here; if you need something to calm them down, tell them to pick out a book. They will quickly pick out books, crawl into your lap and sit for an hour as someone reads to them. It really is one of my favorite things to do with my boys. And I'm pretty sure it is one of their favorites as well.

This little guy LOVES his Hungry Hungry Hippos game. And this big guy is never too busy to play a round or two with him.

We hosted our own little family soccer practice. Jeremy found it important to teach Holden that kicking the soccer ball was a big purpose of the game. Rather than just running the field like a crazy child. We were rained out this past weekend, so this Saturday should be his 2nd game. It almost seems like little brother would be more into the sport than big. I'm not surprised. But it's only been one game, so we shall see.

We've enjoyed some beautiful fall days and even busted out some long sleeves and pants. It hasn't been too consistent here in Texas. But when those days come, we've tried to enjoy the time outside.

 

And that is the latest on my family. :)