Summer

Summer's officially here so that means:

Lots of park days!  Patrick looooves his cousins.  Every time I overhear his conversations with other kids, he's always mentioning his cousins or Aiden.  I love that he thinks family members are his best friends.

Also, triathlon training has started.  Yep, we're doing it again.  We just can't stop torturing ourselves.

I'm the shadow in the bottom of the picture...taking pictures while biking is no joke

 Lots of time playing in our driveway.  We have a driveway...and a yard.  A large lawn.  I still love that idea.

 Summer also means swim lessons started for Patrick.  I was too shy to really continue in swim lessons when I was little and didn't learn how until I was 27 and I knew I wanted my kids to be able to swim.  Patrick thought the lessons were the greatest thing ever.  I tried explaining to him that lessons wouldn't last forever but he's in denial about the fact that he's not going tomorrow...

And of course, there are also fun outings when the weather is nice.

 I cannot say it enough, but I love seeing my kids excitement at discovering new things.  Patrick fell asleep in the car and was pretty grumpy when we tried to wake him up but the moment he first saw a hot pool, he was the most excited 3 year old I've ever seen.  Aiden loved it as well but he's much more like Jon and I.  He shows a little excitement on the outside but keeps it pretty well contained.  Patrick, on the other hand, has enough energy and exuberance to outlast Jon, Aiden, and I combined.  Side note: every day the boys race around our downstairs.  Every single time, Aiden will run out of energy first, lay down on our stairs and then Patrick will say, "come race Aiden!  Come race!"  Aiden's response is always, "I tired Tatrick.  I tired."  Oh, it's the cutest thing.  And then inside I say, "who's child is he?  And where in the heck did he get so much energy!"  

 And lastly, Jon and I have started our diy list.  Another side note: when we built our house, we knew we didn't want the microwave above the stove.  However, whenever we'd start to talk about where to put the microwave, we always dismissed it and thought we would decide later.  Well...we never did decide.  And there was no place for the microwave.  So Jon built a little stand to sit next to our cupboards.  Maybe not ideal but it works. :)

 We've started trying to decorate our living room and the first thing we did was build the bookcase next to our t.v.  And when I say we, I mean Jon.  I painted it.   Considering Jon took up the hobby of building furniture when we moved into this house, I'd say he's off to a great start.  The list just keeps growing and I'm glad that he's still excited to have this new hobby.  An entertainment center is also on that list, but that might take a little longer...

Also, Tuesday marked 3 years since losing my dad.  I actually started a post by itself talking about it, but sometimes grief is exhausting.  And sometimes finishing an emotional post takes more energy and emotions than I'm willing to put out so I'm not sure if that post will ever get posted.  Three years ago I would have had no idea that grief could be such a long process because I'd never lost someone so close to me.  Sometimes I fall into self-pity and think, "why couldn't we have had at least 10 more years?"  I'm not ashamed to say that I'm not one of those people that never asked, "why us?" or "why me?"  Along with grief comes depression and a whole slew of emotions that I deeply wish could just go away and be replaced with my dad.  But now I'm starting to get lengthy again and I'll just end by saying, I can't wait until I can give that man a hug again.  The only man I've known without guile and complete unconditional love.  I'm lucky to have married a man who is really similar in a lot of ways.  

Anyway, here's to a summer that will hopefully be filled with swimming in the lake, road trips, races, and eating lots of watermelon.   

Oh hey, we moved into our new house! And I have lots of pictures.

Today I realized I have never gotten around to updating this blog with pictures of our new house!  Forgive the pictures...I'm just not a photographer.  I want to be, but I'm just not and I put forth zero effort to be one.  So keep that in mind.  Also, I remembered at around 6:00 at night so lighting is less than ideal in the house but anyway, before I get to those, I just need to catch up on a few random pictures from this last month.

Patrick finished preschool!  He loved it...overall.  I would say it had a lot of ups and downs for me and I'm pretty positive Aiden won't join preschool until he's 4(instead of 3 like Patrick did) but I'm glad he did it and I'm glad he's done!

 Aiden wanted a picture too.

 I love walking into my kitchen and seeing these two at our island.  We have an island...in our kitchen!  Big deal, guys.

Aiden literally took a bath for 2 hours this day and still cried when I took him out.  He's a little fish.  An adorable little fish.

 Right along the lines of adorable, how cute is this little man in a backpack?  He likes to copy everything his brother does, so wearing a backpack to preschool while dropping off Patrick is an obvious thing to do.

 These two.  They've been through a phase of constant fighting.  Constant.  Like, I want to rip out my hair and constantly ask why I had two close together.  However, these past couple weeks have slowly but surely started to change and these two have started to play more than fight.  Thank the heavens because I was giving myself the horrible mom award every single day.  On this particular day, Aiden was incredibly emotional.  I tried to make him happy, Jon tried to make him happy, but just looking at him wrong would send him into fits of tears.  Finally, Patrick decided to take it into his own hands, turned on his super sweet side, and within two minutes had Aiden completely happy.  I was mostly relieved but I have to admit a little part of me felt replaced.  But really, I love seeing the bond that these two are forming.  They truly are best friends.

And now to our house!

Our entryway...although now that I see the picture more closely, it's blurry but you get the idea.

Right after walking into the house, if you look to your left you see our dining room.  However, our dining room has no table because we are currently re-finishing it.  Our to-do list is insanely long but hopefully this room isn't too far down the road.

If you turn to your right, you'll see our music room.  This room has french doors that can close when I'm teaching a lesson or someday when our kids are practicing.

If you look straight ahead, you have this view.  I realize we are completely lacking in the rug department but I'm coming to realize that making quick decision always make me second guess so I'm taking the whole design process nice and slow.  These pictures are far from complete from the picture in my head of what these rooms will become. But again, our diy/buy list is incredibly long.

Walk through that lovely hallway and you come to our living room.  Again, a work in progress still. :)

 To the right of that bookcase is the doorway into our bedroom and to the right of that, is a little nook that looks like this:

Also part of that open living area, is our kitchen.  These pictures were taken on different days, hence the different lighting, but they give you the idea.

Our half bath that's part of that little hallway near the entryway.  We still have to hang that carton on the toilet...we'll get to it. :)

 Our laundry room leads out to the garage.

 And this is our butler's pantry that connects the kitchen and the formal dining room.

Off of the living room is our bedroom.  Completely blank slate still but I'm excited when we get around to this room.  

 Connected to our bedroom is the master bathroom.  Jon's closet is on the right and I have a walk in closet on the left.

 Our vanity area.  To the left of this we have a tub and shower but again, my camera skills are horrible and really I couldn't do it justice.  But I love this vanity area.

And a look down our stairs into the living room.

 Right at the top of the stairs is the area that will be my craft space/workout area.

 And to the right is our spare bedroom.

 And down the hall from that is the boy's bedroom.

 Which opens up to their play area.

 Which leads to Jon's office.

The boy's bathroom is also right off of the playroom.  

And that's it!  Most of our areas are still a clean slate that I'm really excited to start decorating but we already love this house.  The boys took zero time adjusting and Jon and I weren't far behind.  I wish the pictures would do it justice but they just don't.  Anyone is welcome to come take a tour.  We're always happy to have visitors. :)  But really, we count our blessings every single day that we were able to make this dream become a reality because it truly has been a dream come true.  I know people say that building a house is stressful, and it is, but it's also so incredibly rewarding.

Aiden turns 2!

On March 14, Aiden turned 2!  My baby is 2.  Lately, he's been obsessed with Mickey Mouse so I naturally did a Mickey Mouse themed birthday party.

Fondant is no joke.

 Unfortunately, Aiden has decided he doesn't have to smile everytime I tell him to.

 We told him he had to wait until the party to open presents, and wait he did.

It ended up being a small party between my mom, Karolyn and Jon's parents but it also was really nice to be so low key.  Aiden had a great time playing with all of his new toys.

At the age of 2, Aiden is:

-Counting to 11(after that he starts over around 2)

-Talking in little sentences like, "I don't like that(a favorite at meal time)", or "cuddle me mom!(love hearing that)", "I love you", etc.  It's hard to think of individual sentences because really he's just good at communicating what he wants.  He doesn't only have a couple of phrases he says and everyday, it seems, he's expanding his sentences.  

-Loves Mickey Mouse and Jake the Pirate or anything that Patrick has

-Has started trying to dress and undress himself

-Loves to sing

-Loves, loves, loves books

-Loves puzzles

-Loves being outside

-Knows most of his colors pretty well.  Not sure where he learned them from(most likely his brother) but one day he started saying things like, "I want the blue one!" It kind of shocked me.

-Loves learning about the letters, although I can't say he can name any on his own yet.

-My little cuddle buddy

I love this little man.  And love doesn't even fully describe how we feel about him.    I know that Aiden needs us but honestly, I think I need Aiden more. I really can't even explain what it is about him(besides the fact that he's sweet and adorable), but something about him just brings a peace to our family and,as cheezy as it sounds, he calms my soul.  

I would be lost without this little angel in our lives.  We love you, Aiden.

Hello blog...sorry to have neglected you.

So, it's been awhile and I almost don't know where to start.  I'll just jump right in and post every random picture I have.

Making forts is always a fun time at our house.  Especially for Patrick.

Aiden steals my camera on a daily basis and I frequently find pictures like this.  I have to delete a lot but really I love finding little videos he made or pictures he took.

We moved Aiden into a big boy bed(which at the time was just a mattress) because he was crawling out of his crib anyway and he always wanted to join Patrick in his bed.  He didn't transition as well as Patrick did, but now that we've been him his own actual bed, he sleeps great.

Puzzles, puzzles and more puzzles.  These boys are obsessed.

A little pinata fun at a cousin's birthday party.  Grandpa was trying to tell Aiden how to hit, and Aiden just looked around, saw everyone staring at him, dropped the stick and ran over to me.  Public attention is not quite his thing.

Also, Easter happened. :)  Really, it was a great weekend and there were some talks that completely hit home to me and were exactly what I needed to hear.  I would elaborate more, but I have a lot more to blog about so my personal journal gets to have all my thoughts instead.  This blog just gets lots of pictures.

Easter egg painting!  To say the boys loved it would be an understatement.

Patrick was our color master.  He would put one egg in multiple colors and I was pretty amazed at how the colors turned out.

Aiden had a preference for the paint brush.  It was the cutest thing ever to see his concentration in creating the perfect egg.  He's just like his grandpa.

Neighborhood Easter egg hunt.

The grandma Easter bunny(as Patrick says it) gave the boys some huge kites for Easter so between conference sessions, we flew some huge kites.  Unfortunately, the kites were so big that Jon and I could barely control them so our thoughts of the ideal kite flying session didn't quite pan out,but the boys still had fun.  Aiden kept saying to bring his down because he was worried it would fly away and Patrick was more interested in playing with his dragon on the ground...but yeah, they'll grow into them.

And lastly, jello jiggler eggs.  The boys are still really into "helping" so they were pretty excited about helping with this little activity.  Perfect way to start off our Easter holiday with lots of sugar.  I had no idea Aiden was capable of eating so much chocolate.