Spoiled Boys

I got back from my girl's weekend to find that my boys had not missed me much at all. In fact, it appears that they may have been a little bit spoiled by the relatives! I loaned my camera to Nonni (since I had the rental) to get photos of all the fun - here's what I can piece together from the photographic evidence. And testimonials from a somewhat reliable 3 year old... ;)

They got to go on a train ride! This one is partially my fault, I thought of suggesting the Grapevine railroad when I was reading Thomas his "Goodnight Texas" book that features Puffy - the steam locomotive! Well the tickets were super cheap compared to all the Alaskan trains, so it was obviously a no brainer. :)

But the fact that they are decked out in railroad gear was all on my dad. He has always been all about trains and the fact that his grandsons love trains makes for a lot of train excitement when they get together. It's pretty adorable all around!

Happiest little engineer ever! Not pictured are the train whistles that I have hidden from them until we get back home... Ha!

Uncle Ralph and Aunt Barbie even made the long trek down from Oklahoma to hang out with the boys. I ended up not getting to see them, but Nonni dutifully reported back that they had a great time and they loved the boys. That's something every mom loves to hear! :)

When I got home, there were all these new toys - where did these come from?? Turns out the boys got their Christmas presents early and they were sooo excited about them. Thomas met me at the door talking about his castle and the knight and the catapult, etc. 

They also got Henry the rocking horse in the background of this photo. Henry was apparently not too sure about the horse - his feet don't quite touch the ground when you sit him on it. Thomas showed his little brother how to use it, but Henry was not quite convinced. So he mostly tried to steal parts of the awesome castle from his brother. 

After the initial excitement of me getting back wore off, the boys wanted to go play on the front porch and show me the fun set-up Nonni and Grandpa had for them. Grandpa definitely didn't skimp on the sand like we did with the tiny sandbox they have at home - ha!

Look at this happy little guy! Who knew a spoon and sand was all it took??

Actually, this guy seems pretty happy too!

Ok, ok...

We'll make them a better sandbox next year!

Mo was curious about all the excitement in the sandbox and wandered over to check it out. Henry was super excited and started yelling "Mo! Mo!" - he's gotten very good at picking up names recently!

Luckily, he already knows how to say "Anna" from daycare, so he was already a pro with my parent's new puppy. She was super excited about all the attention from the boys and wanted so badly to jump in the sandbox with her "nephews". Unfortunately she's still a pretty boisterous puppy and puppy claws are pretty sharp, so dad had to keep her on a pretty short lease. Poor Anna!

Not content to only have a sandbox for their grandsons, my parents also had a pool for them! See what I mean about spoiling them?? 

What's that? Oh, that super awesome wooden boat in his hand? Well... Theresa and I may have been on a girl's weekend, but we did mostly buy toys for the kiddos while we were perusing the plethora of shops in Fredericksburg. You apparently can't take the mom out of us when it comes to shopping. ;)

Thomas loved the boat! It's a little wooden boat that has a balloon attached to the smokestack. You blow into a tube at the back of the boat to inflate the balloon and it putters the boat across the water. It was having a little bit of trouble with forward progress with the gentle breeze on the porch, but they didn't care one bit. The boat was a hit! :)

I may have also bought them these super fun tubes... I blame this on Theresa - she swore up and down they were one of her kids favorite toys and convinced me to buy them each one. They make a super fun (and loud!) noise when you pull them apart, then you just compress them back down and do it again. The boys loved them so much - a well spent $2!

So it seems the boys had as much fun this weekend as I did. And they got super spoiled with attention, affection and some new toys. No wonder they were so excited to visit Texas! ;)

Girl's Weekend!

The next two weeks in Texas are going to be a bit of a whirlwind of trying to see everyone, but the trip had a very intentional slow start - a girl's weekend in Fredericksburg with Theresa! We have been planning it for months and I was so excited to see her and get some girl time away from the kids. (Nonni and Grandpa were more than happy to watch the boys for me!)

We booked a winery tour for Sunday and the best part was we didn't have to do anything but walk downstairs at our hotel, the limo picked us up right at the front door. The driver, Paul, was a retired cop from Portland and we all left it up to him as to which places we visited. 

There was only two other people on the tour with us - a couple named Aaron and Laura who were super friendly. I warned them that part of the girl's weekend was to play with our cameras and we had even rented a Nikon D750 to play with. It's the step up from our camera, a full frame that has great reviews. We figured we should try it out before we add it to our wish list!

Aaron and Laura were totally cool with the camera time. I even thought to ask them before using my flash to take photos indoors. I had no intentions of pointing it at anyone, but it always startles the kids, so I thought it would be nice to warn them. I flipped it up and backwards like I always do, then titled the camera up to take a photo of these wine bottles. 

Which is you are paying attention, would put the flash right in their eyes. Whoops! I pretty much blinded all of them. I felt so bad, but they just laughed it off and said maybe I should point it up instead. I decided I could just make it work without using the flash for the rest of the day... 

We went to four different wineries throughout the day. Grape Creek was the one everyone who had been to Fredericksburg recommended. I can see why - the wines were good and the whole winery was so pretty. There was even a nicely shaded patio that our new friends hung out on while we wandered over to the vineyard to take photos. Win-win!

The second winery, Santamaria Cellars, was literally in a garage. But it was awesome and by far our favorite! The guy was from Argentina and he knew how to make great wine! But if you are 6' or taller, you are going to have to stoop to do your wine tasting... 

The third winery, Becker Vineyards,  was not so hot. Which is why there is a photo of bath salts. Their aromatherapy selections off to the side were better than their wine. Though they won for the most scenic, so we still got a lot of photos from there. 

Last but not least, Paul took us to Kuhlman Cellars which had a food pairing with their tasting. I may have fallen in love with their seasoned almonds... Which, of course, were also available for purchase! Plus they had a wine named after alluvium, that speaks to my heart as a geologist! :) 

But enough about the wine, how about the camera play time? It was a totally sunny day, which isn't always the best for picture taking, but we had fun with it anyway. Plus I got some awesome sun flare with this windmill!

I may have left Texas, but I still love a good Texas flag shot. I can neither confirm nor deny I started humming "the stars at night are big and bright.." while I was framing out this shot. ;)

The flowers from Becker - I told you they had nice scenery! These fields of zinnias went on forever! We've already lost of all of our flowers in Alaska, so it was so nice to see such a colorful display. :)

This sign was especially funny because we were on a selfie mission! I was packing up all of my bags and gear for the trip and Matt noticed that I hadn't set the tripod out. He started giving me a hard time about how he spent all this effort picking out this super nice tripod and how I didn't seem to be using it much. When I relayed this to Theresa, she responded with "Well lets take a ton of selfies then!!!"

As a side note, I do love my tripod! I just don't need it all that often. And of course there was the whole incident when I drug it along to Hawaii and forgot to pack the piece it needed to connect to the camera. Matt made sure I had that piece this time! :)

Unfortunately, the fancy schmancy rental camera was so not cooperating! On the D7000, you just swivel a ring at the base of the shooting dial to put it in remote mode and you click away. It's a little more difficult on the D750 and we couldn't figure it out. It's probably a little obvious I was getting irritated with the fact it was only partially listening to the remote. 

I thought maybe it was me, so Theresa gave it a shot. I know it looks like the remote is working here, but it was listening to about one out of every ten "clicks".

The last shot I got before we ended up giving up on the rental camera and putting Theresa' camera on the tripod. At least we knew that one would work! And this is quite possibly my favorite photo out of the 200 or so "selfies" we took. :)

Success! And although we are obviously posing, we are genuinely this happy to be hanging out together. We had a few photos standing side by side, but the one where she hug attacked me was by far my favorite. Miss this girl so much!

Scenic Becker again! Why was it so pretty when their wine was so "meh"? And Theresa guilted me into taking my sunglasses off for the rest of the "selfies". I never take my sunglasses off, but I figured I could make it since she had hers off. Shockingly, I did not go blind! ;)

Every time we switched locations, I had to redo the camera settings before we could use the remote. This meant I was taking a bunch of test photos while Theresa patiently waited for me to get it right. This time we were joking around with each other and I caught her mid-laugh on a test shot. I think she looks way better than the selfies we took at this particular spot, so that's what I'm sharing.

Plus I apparently gave up and put my sunglasses back on... In my defense it is sooo bright outside!!

Last stop for the day! The lighting was starting to work against us on our selfie quest, but I think we managed to pull out one final cute one. I'm sure we looked silly to all the cows and goats that were hanging out nearby, but I'm actually glad we took so many photos of the two of us. Given that we are usually the ones holding the cameras, we rarely make it into the photos. So many photos with each other in one day? Awesome!

Thanks for the motivation, Matt! And thanks to everyone who helped watch our kiddos so we could get away for a weekend. :)

Flying to Texas

Our daycare is closed for both Columbus Day and an inservice day next week. Two days closed in one week was apparently enough to push me over the edge to just pack up the kids and go back to Texas to visit everyone. Then Matt planned a hunting trip to Kodiak for the following week and I decided traveling to Texas was the hard part, so why not just stay for two weeks??

I was more than a little worried about the plane ride alone with both boys. I did a test run in July to Seattle with just Thomas and it went great, but Henry was really the wild card. Getting ticketed and through security was way easier than I thought it would be. The Anchorage airport has a room set aside for people with little kids, so even killing time before take-off was super easy. And to top it all off, Alaskan Airlines lets you board early with kids. We were on the plane, ready to go and I was feeling so confident. 

For the most part, it was well deserved confidence. Look at this happy guy! Safely buckled up in his CARES harness because I decided lugging a car seat was more than I could confidently manage with the two of them. He was all smiles and giggles. 

For the first hour... I had to wake them up at 4:30 to get to the airport in enough time to catch a 7am flight. That severely cut in to his usual amount of sleep and it started to show. All the fun toys I packed became projectile objects and I really owe everyone in the radius around us a big thank you for patiently handing back books, crayons and his pillow. 

He wouldn't play with electronics longer than a few minutes before those were no longer entertaining and I had already stuffed him full of snacks. We were mostly hanging in there until he started pulling at his harness and saying "All done!" complete with hand signals. With an hour left until we really were all done, I decided the only thing left to do was to try and get him to nap. 

The only song I could think of to sing to him was Wheels on the Bus, so I leaned over to cuddle him as best I could without unbuckling him and sang him verses over and over until he fell asleep. Crisis mostly averted...? :(

But this guy? No problem! He ate his snacks, played with some new toys and then played games or watched movies on the iPad. Easy peasy!

My grand plan was to wear the two of them out during our layover by running them all over SeaTac. Unfortunately, our plane was late getting in and we had almost no time between trips. I ran them around as much as I could, then we got ready for round 2.

As soon as we stepped on the plane, the flight attendant at the front was gushing about how cute they were. She gave Henry a hug and a high five. He assumed that this was what everyone wanted and proceeded to walk down the aisle high-fiving everyone (adorable!). The rest of the flight attendants were just as awesome - coming by to talk to the boys, bringing them coloring books and even offering to watch them if I need to use the restroom.

Thomas pretty much had the same flight as the first time, though he did get tired at the end. I got him to finally nap by putting on Frozen but having him lean on me - I think he was out before it really got going. Henry required more attention, but he was much happier. I'm sure it was mostly because of the short nap he got, but I'm also giving some credit to the awesome flight crew. They made me less stressed and I swear the kids react to my stress levels.

To top it all off, when we landed the flight attendant came over the intercom like usual to thank the flight crew. They followed this by mentioning how many young children were on board and how well behaved they all were. They said the moms and dads should be commended for doing such a great job and the whole plane followed with applause! I can honestly say that has never happened in all my years of flying. Way to make a super stressed out mom have a great flight - I will forever love Alaskan Airlines and all of their employees! :)

Snow!!

I was bummed all day because Brittney kept texting me about how awesome the snow (first of the season!) was at her house. Who knew 300' in elevation could make such a difference?!? Hours later and still no snow... :(

But it started coming down while I was putting the boys to bed and I noticed it once I walked over to the sink to do the dishes. Haha - forget the dishes, I'm going to go take photos of the snow!

I'm not sure if I was as excited as the girls were - they seemed super pumped to run around and get covered in snow, while I stayed in the doorway to get photos. I think maybe my dogs are more Alaskan than I am... :)

Argh!!!

We got a package in the mail the other day from Grannie and I couldn't remember what she had told me was inside. I *did* remember I wasn't supposed to open it right away. But I had no idea when I was supposed to open it... Whoops! Luckily I thought to take a closer look at the package to see if it had any hints. And there on the outside was a taped on label for "Talk Like a Pirate Day".

Well that's a day I know by heart - September 19th!!!

So this morning, we got the boys all excited and then let them open the package. Pirate gear galore! And she had handmade all of it - I'm not sure who was more excited, me or the boys! 

Henry wasn't quite sure what to do with the pirate's sword...

Thomas had no problem, he grabbed that sword up and started swinging it around. The most impressive part was he started yelling "Yo-ho!!!" Who in the world taught him that?!?

I also learned it was safer to be out of sword distance when taking pictures...!

Henry made some progress on the sword, but still wasn't getting the hang of it. Poor guy would not make it as a pirate!

This is what happens when you don't know what to do with your sword - another pirate takes it and becomes doubly dangerous! I'm betting most pirates don't look so gosh darn adorable though! ;)

After nap time, Thomas went straight for his pirate hat again. He did decide he would rather see than wear the eye patch this time, but otherwise he was a super happy pirate! 

Henry, on the other hand, decided to convince his brother to push him around the house on his elephant. The pirates life may not be for Henry, but he is just fine with a life of leisure - ha!

Eliza was happy the swords were out of reach for a little while. Thomas never got close to her, but she is not a trusting kind of dog and ran every time he was holding them. Also, she looks scraggly enough to be a pirate dog - if there is such a thing? Surely some pirates had dogs?

Henry decides that if his pirate hat won't suit his life of leisure, then his fedora will have to do. The boy certainly has style! 

Thanks Grannie for the wonderful present. I am sure that my pirate hat just got lost on the way. Maybe I'll see if I can cram Henry's on my head while he's not using it. ;)

Hiking Flattop

Matt and I have discussed going for a hike on one of our Friday's off, but for one reason or another, it hasn't ever happened. So when he threw it out as a suggestion the other day, I was on board for getting a hike in before winter settles in! Plus the autumn foliage is gorgeous and I thought I could get some really pretty photos on the hike up. 

See what I mean? Everything is already turning red and yellow from it's previous bright green! But wait... what's that white stuff in the background?!?

Snow?!? Well I guess we weren't paying enough attention to the fact that it dumped several inches on the Chugach Range the day before we decided hiking was a good idea! I'm mostly kidding - we knew there was snow, we just underestimated how much there would be and didn't think to pack our ice grippers for the hike.

We are *those* people... Sigh.

But apart from the snow, it was a good day for a hike. The air was cool, but not too cold and it was nice and sunny. We'll take it - it's still a great day by Alaskan standards!

The hike up wasn't as strenuous as I was worried it was going to be, but when we got to this sign, I still got a little concerned. I have heard multiple people talking about what a scramble it was to get to the top and we were already slipping and sliding a little bit up to this point...

But we carried on! Matt is going on a hunting trip next month and he was testing out his pack options on our hike. I liked that because it meant I only had to carry my camera while he carried my multiple layers in case it got too cold. :)

We made it to the top! It was a little sketchy at the end, but doable! Probably a bit more fun when it's not covered in snow and ice, but it was still fun!

There weren't many other people that went up to the top, but there was someone that nicely offered to take our photo. Which was nice, because you know my motto is that if there isn't a photo, it didn't happen. Ha!

Of course, the weather went from awesome to awful in the span of a few minutes once we got to the top. We already needed to hustle down to make it to daycare in time to get the boys - getting pelted by sleet made it even easier to move fast. Luckily, the nasty weather blew over us in about 10 minutes and was back to being awesome again. It was a great ending to a super fun hike up Flattop! :)

Here's hoping we'll get more hiking in next year (or just be more prepared for snow & ice on the next one!)

Cookies and Car Wrecking

The weather has been pretty rainy lately and this weekend was no exception. I figured since we were kinda stuck inside, we might as well make cookies!

Of course, I had lots of help with ingredient holding and dumping!

I even got assistance with cookie cutting! The boys picked out the shapes they wanted from the huge assortment of cookie cutters and Matt arranged them on the rolled out dough. 

Quite the assortment, huh?

The main goal though, was to use these super cool dinosaur cookie cutters that Rachael had sent us forever ago! It's a two piece cutter - one that is the outline of the dinosaur and the other you press on top to imprint their bones. I wasn't super even on my rolling though, so you can see the T-Rex on the left isn't quite as defined in the head area. But not that bad for the first attempt... 

They looked super cool though! And way easier than free-handing in the skeletal structure!

The car tent also got pulled out for play time since the two of them like cars so much. Thomas got this from my parents for his birthday last year, and it had been hiding in his closet the last few months. Matt set it up in the living room and as soon as he walked away, it fell over.

Well that's weird. It never had that problem before... 

Of course, it never had Henry in it before, either! He was having a blast knocking it over and then pushing it back upright. That kid is a tank...

Thankfully, Thomas was more than happy to roll with getting knocked over again and again!

But the tent is only made for so much abuse... Once one of the tent poles split, I figured it was time to move on to a new activity. So I pulled out the markers and let the two of them color away. Henry did a pretty good job with the markers - one more thing I probably should have let him play with months ago! His technique is a little hard to see, but he is definitely leaning toward pointillism! :)

Finally, it was cookie time! Their momma may have claimed the super fun dinosaur cookies with the excuse that "they have too much sugar". They seemed pretty happy with the ones I made them though - Thomas was flying his airplane around and Henry was letting his dinosaur "eat". 

Well this makes my little lie about the sugar a little more obvious - I had forgotten the one I gave him was covered in icing and sprinkles. Ummm... it's less sugar because it's a smaller cookie?

Ok, fine. I just wanted the dinosaur cookies all to myself. And I am not going to feel guilty about it, because they were amazing. So there! ;)

Thank again for the fun cookie cutters, Rachael! I promise I'll figure out how to make perfect dinosaur cookies before your next visit!

Henry's Growing Up

Sometimes I feel like I'm not paying enough attention to how old Henry is getting until I realize that I haven't done something with him that I definitely had attempted with Thomas at his age. It's probably related to the fact I was convinced he was 18 months for about 6 months. It's hard to keep track of two of them sometimes... "/

The other morning I pulled out Hungry, Hungry Hippos since the game time with Thomas went so well the other night. As soon as I had it out though, Henry scooted over and started whacking the hippo with his hand. I realized he probably had enough strength / coordination to make it work, so I showed him how to make the hippo "eat".

This guy is a hippo pro! He even beat me a few times! Hungry, Hungry Hippos is obviously not my game...

Then I decided to make cookie bars with Thomas and Henry was pulling on my pants while I was trying to assemble the ingredients. Duh, he's probably old enough to help make cookies too. So I put him next to Thomas and handed over the whisk to give it a whirl. Look how excited he is! Also look at the shade Thomas is throwing at his brother, he is not so happy about sharing...

But once I realized sharing a whisk wasn't ideal, I figured out that everyone would be happy with their own spatula! Much easier - unless keeping the counter clean is your goal... ;)

I had thrown this easel in a stack of toys that I thought the boys weren't using anymore (in an attempt to try and free up some space). Matt protested that Henry would probably use it. Of course he would - and I hadn't pulled it out since last year. As you can see, he obviously loved it! 

So I'm a little behind on letting Henry try some things, but he seems pretty happy about all the fun new skills & toys! I promise to try to do better in the future (hopefully)!

Sunday Morning Donuts

Matt had to work late last night - so late that he came home early this morning. But being the awesome dad / husband he is, he brought home donuts for the rest of us to eat. A great surprise and I didn't have to cook. Win-win!

Henry loves sweets, so the fact that he was more than happy to chow down on a donut should not be a surprise to anyone. The only surprise in this photo was how little chocolate he had on his face - ha!

Thomas shocked me by not going for a chocolate covered donut with sprinkles (his loss, I ate it!). He doesn't look to upset about it though, does he?

While I was taking photos of Thomas, Henry started being super silly. I look over to see this... What are you doing son??

Then Thomas started doing similar antics and the two of them were having trouble finishing their donuts because they were both laughing so hard. So I got donuts and a show...

Never a dull moment with these boys! :)

Dance Party!

I'm not usually the one who gets the boys ready in the morning during the week. I go in to work before everyone else is up, then leave work earlier than Matt to go get the boys. I know some mornings they can be a handful to get ready, but Matt manages so that the boys don't have to spend over ten hours at daycare. (The sacrifice on my end is usually lack of sleep from not going to bed early enough..)

A few weeks ago, I ended up being the one to take them in to school and apparently I messed up their morning routine. I didn't know that part of that routine was to turn the radio on and have a quick dance party. Silly me! They were pretty vocal about the omission until I remedied it. ;)

This morning they were having fun playing with all of their toys, but started getting little fussy with each other. I figured it was the perfect time to do a dance party to get the mood happy again. They were on board as soon as I turned the oldies music on. (Not that the type of music really matters, they listen to kid's version of top 100 songs at school all the time.)

The two of them have very different dancing styles. Henry's involves a lot of spinning around, leaving over and swinging his hands in the air. He almost looks like he's going for something out of Thriller in this photo...

Thomas enjoys more running around in circles while laughing and clapping. Thomas appears to be getting the better work out from the dance parties. ;)

I think the two of them have awesomely hilarious dance moves. I have tried to shoot videos of them dancing before, but they usually stop as soon as I pull my phone out. I was surprised they let me take so many photos of them dancing and they never stopped. Now I know the trick to keep them dancing!

And yes, they are still in their pajamas and yes, it is after noon. Whatever, it was a laid back morning. I mean, I did drag them along to me with Starbucks in their pajamas, but I used the drive through... They didn't even have to put their shoes on!

Don't judge - the pumpkin spice latte is only here for a limited time!

Plus how else would I see this adorable toddler belly? His shirts are long enough that I would barely get a glimpse. Hurray for the Cars pajamas that are just a teensy bit too short!

Love you and your dance moves, boys. Stay young and excited forever, please!