Beach Fun

We ended up going to Galveston 3 times this summer.

Our first trip was our annual ‘just us’ trip.  We make it a point to take a trip down there for the day.  We ate lunch at Willie G’s, then took a boat tour of the bay and got to see lots of dolphins.

This was on the dolphin boat. No dolphin pictures, since I only took video of them. Nathan’s stink face. We skipped nap time and it shows.

We spent the afternoon playing in the water and sand.  We were able to let the boys have more freedom than last year, which was really nice and fun to watch them explore.

Logan especially loves the beach. He’s one happy boy!

We got snow cones before we headed home.  Nathan fell asleep before we made it to the snow cone stand.  I woke him up for his treat, which they both thoroughly enjoyed, but he ended up being super grumpy the whole way home.  It was a long, fun day in the sun.  We all slept well that night.

Nathan’s out like a light before his snow cone!

Our second trip was a full day with my sister’s family, but without Todd.  The cousins had lots of fun playing in the water.  I’m so thankful that the boys are blessed to have the BEST cousins in the world!  They are so kind, gentle, and protective with the boys.  They took such care of them while we were at the beach! 

After the morning time at the beach, then lunch, we spent time at the condo pool.  Oh my, how the boys loved the pool.  They have never had swimming lessons, and we kept their puddle jumpers on them the whole time, but Logan can really move in the water.  Nathan didn’t want to move so much, but he was not afraid to just float.  Our new neighborhood doesn’t have a pool, and in our area, unless you are part of a community that you pay property association fees to, there is no pool you can visit.  The Y and other gyms are options, but expensive ones that I’m not willing to pay.  All of this to say… the boys have not had much experience swimming, but they love it!

We headed home after cleaning up from the pool.  It was a great time!

Todd’s sister and family vacationed out of our house at the end of the summer and invited us to spend yet another day with them in Galveston.  We made an afternoon of it and had a fabulous time!  While they pretty much had their own family time, we played in the water, sand, and took a long walk with our little family.  It was really nice. 

I don’t have any pictures of us at the beach that time, but here are some of us hanging out at our house with the cousins…

Cousins!  Playroom = Guest bedroom #2.  Todd and his sister, Julia, busy making the beds up.No, silly Logi… That’s not your bed!

Library Time

We have gone to our local library’s toddler story time several times. 
Nathan thinks story time was made for him!  He was born for story time!  He loves to sing and dance, too.  He participates with such confidence and joy!
Logan doesn’t like to be held down, so he doesn’t so much love it, but he warms up to it the more we go.  He loves to sing, dance, and read, too; just not in the library environment.

Nathan joined the group with no pushing from me.  He saw the other kids go there and sit, then looked at me for permission, then joined right in.

Enjoying kid zone and browsing the books.

We got library cards, too! 

Bug Bash Show: Dr. Vintage’s Collection

My brother thought it would be a fun idea to take all of Dad’s Volkswagen collection to one of Dad’s favorite VW shows this year.  Steven spent a few weekends here with a couple of Dad’s VW buddies preparing all 11 to show at the Bug Bash.  Getting all of the cars cleaned up was a big undertaking!  The guys worked really hard!  One of our dear friends drove in from Fort Worth several times just to help! 

Dad had so many friends that were in his VW circle, but most of them had never seen his whole collection.  Dad usually only entered 1 or 2 VWs into any given show when he went.  Steven thought it would be great to give Dad’s friends the chance to see the whole collection. 

The show was on a Sunday, so we had a short church service at Mom’s before we headed out.  It was really nice. 

Here are all the cars ready to go in my driveway…

Several VW friends that volunteered to drive some of Dad’s cars to the show. 

Some of Dad’s VWs at the show.

I wish I had more pictures.  I think Todd has more on one of his millions of SD cards.  I’ll have to raid through those.

The VW community and judges at the show kindly awarded Dad’s collection as Best In Show.  I know Dad would be proud of that, and of Steven and his VW friends for all of their thought and work to do this in his honor.

All About The Potty

I am currently potty training Logan.  Nathan, who has been trained for a long time now, was a complete breeze to train.  He doesn’t like to be wet or dirty at all.  Even before he turned 2, if I sat him on the potty, he would pee.  I gave him lots of opportunities to earn an M&M, and when I figured out that he knew how to get pee out at the right time, we bought him a potty watch.  I didn’t do any research on how to train, but I knew he was ready, so we just did it.  The Potty Watch was a cheap investment; it’s just a little timer that plays a song and blinks at 30-minute intervals (or whatever amount of time you set it for, actually).  I just put him on the potty every time the watch went off.  A day or 2 later, I started asking him if he needed to go every other time the watch went off.  Then, the next thing we knew, he was trained.  We didn’t even use pull-ups with him.  It was like we blinked and he was completely day and night trained!  See?  A breeze, I tell ya!

Nathan: Gee, I wonder how much fun it will be to stand here and pee on the recliner?

Underwear style. Sorry, Son, but I’m your Mama, and I can post underwear pictures if I want to.  Especially after you peed on my recliner! :-)

Logan, on the other hand, has not shown as much interest in training.  While I hadn’t planned to even try to train the boys until they were at least 2 1/2 (I mean, they’re boys!  And twins!), I really want them both out of diapers before they’re 3.  If you know Logan at all, you know he’s very smart and precious, but when his mind is on something else, he is not easily disturbed/distracted.  So, I decided that I needed more of a methodical approach for training him.  I happened across a video for “Potty Training 1-2-3” and went with it.  We sent Nathan to Mamaw’s house for the day and focused completely on potty training; just Logan and me.  I guess it was kind of a boot camp approach.  He got treats for being dry – not that he cared that he was dry.  He got treats for going in the potty – not that this achievement was exciting to him, either.  All he cared about was the sugary treats and fun drinks.  After many accidents and sugar highs, I decided this method was not going to work.  Logan isn’t one to tell me that he is dry when I ask.  So, I broke out the potty watch and am doing exactly what I did with Nathan.  Guess what!  It’s working!!  He’s not trained, and I don’t expect it will happen quickly for him, but we’re getting somewhere.  He woke up dry from his nap today.  He sat on his potty on his own (with his pull-up on) and tee teed then jumped up and said “yay!” 

I’ll love you forever, my sweet Logi Bear!  Doesn’t this picture remind you of that book?

Training Day #1.  Such a sweet, cute trainee!

I can’t get over cute underwear pictures!  Seriously!  They’re wearing big boy underwear!  They’re growing up so fast!

March & Move

I’ve had a few people mention the lack of activity on my blog, but when Todd told me I need to update it, I knew it’s been too long!

We closed on our new-to-us house in early February, but had workers in it for nearly a month, so we didn’t move in until March.  This Spring has been surprisingly busy for Texas Group Photo (usually, most of our accounts are in the Fall), so I was still traveling and shooting bands up until the last week of school.  This left very little time to settle in to the new home.  It seems like we’re always so busy, but who’s not?  Luckily, now that it’s Summer, Todd has been able to finish up most of the back-end work on all of our 2011-2012 accounts and we’ve been able to slowly unpack more boxes and settle into our house a little.  We love our new house and the location!  I will try to do some house pictures in upcoming posts.

We also sold our old house!  We were so blessed to unload it just one month after we started payments on our new house. 

Here are some random pictures from March…

Visiting Timpa’s grave

Puddle stomping

Discovering a worm.  Logan held it until it wiggled, then he dropped it.

Nathan touched it then dropped it and said “It’s sticky!”

Teasing with my to-be sister-in-law.  She comes with me on some jobs and makes work a joy!

Lunch with to-be S-I-L on the deck at Saltgrass Steakhouse overlooking the river in San Marcos makes traveling for work kind of nice, too.

Shopping at Sam’s with Todd.

February

What a relief to be almost caught up with this silly little blog! 

February was fun…

We started shopping and selecting items for our new house.

Not any of the items I took pictures of actually made the cut.

The boys had many normal days just playing here at the house.  Painting is a new love.

Todd and I went to TMEA and got a lot of new business for the rest of this year and the coming school year.

The boys got surprises in the mail from Great Granny, Papaw, and Aunt Pat for Valentines Day!

Todd got me candy and flowers for V Day.  He got two separate bouquets.  Said one was from him, one was from the boys.  I only have 1 vase right now (moving), so I combined them.

I gave the boys much-needed haircuts.

We celebrated cousin Jim’s 30 years.

We tore into the new house.  Here’s a few before pictures.

These last few pictures are actually of early March.  Here, the paint crew was nearly finished with the house after 3 weeks of work (they were great, by the way!), and our new floors had just gone down.  The floor trim is not complete or clean at this point. The kitchen cabinets are not complete (this pic is only showing the base coat) at this point, either.

I can’t wait to show some after pictures.  Maybe I can do some side-by-side before/after.