Tennis

 We had some fun playing tennis with my brother Kyle while he was here. I think Guy enjoyed playing with someone who could actually hit the ball back. I am terrible and now that I'm pregnant, unless the ball is within reach I am too lazy to try to run and get it! :) Brayden has been getting a lot better since we've played more often and can actually hit the ball over the net about 50% of the time now. That's improvement!

 Ty just hoards all the balls and runs around like a maniac :)

Kyle was actually pretty good! We think he should play in high school.

Love these Ideas!

I have a hard time sometimes coming up with lunches for my boys.  I kind of feel like I give them the same things every day. So I loved this idea I saw on this website.  What a great idea to use muffin tins for lunch. It's the perfect portion sizes for toddlers I think.

We've been making them this week and the boys have been loving lunch time. And it makes me think of what healthy things I can come up with to fill each circle. The website has so many creative ideas to try and really cute ones for holiday lunches and monthly themes.

It took me awhile to find 6 cup muffin tins, but I eventually found some at Ross and they were only $5 each.

 These are 2 of our lunch creations

And I have to just say I love the neighborhood we are living in right now.  Someday when we settle down, I definitely want to be in a family oriented neighborhood like this one.  It seems like they are always coming up with neighborhood events like campouts, get togethers, etc. Once a month, you can sign up elementary age kids for a night with the "book cook" at the town hall.  It's completely free and last night was a dinosaur themed one which of course Brayden loved! They did so much fun stuff for 2 hours and there were a few really cute ideas that I want to remember. They'd be fun for a dinosaur birthday party or something.

• Take a balloon and blow it up and put one of those little 'grow in water dinosaur capsules' in it (the kind that turn into little foam animals).  Then paper mache the outside of it so it looks like an egg and let it dry. Once it's dried and hard, pop the balloon inside and put the whole paper mache egg in some water. When the egg dissolves, the kids find a little baby dinosaur inside..  We hatched our egg today and it was very cute!

• They took brown paper bags from the grocery store and put one on each foot.  Then the adults duct taped it around the ankle and all the kids had big dinosaur feet stompers.  Then they let out a bunch of balloons, turned on some dinosaur music, and they had fun stomping on all the balloons and dancing to the music.

Here's part of the dinosaur stomp.  You could bring younger kids at the end for the stomp so Tyler was excited to join in. It was so cute!

My little brother Kyle flies here tomorrow, followed by my sister Kelly, so I am REALLY excited to spend lots of time with them! It's hard to say if I'm more excited about their visit or Brayden.  He has been counting down the days for the last few weeks! Yay for visitors :)

Brayden's Creations & Ty's Mess!

Brayden has been busy lately coming up with different crafts on his own. Here is his "Ants Hone" (also known as home) that he made out of styrofoam and duct tape from the garage.  It's pretty cute and he put it on our back porch so the ants could live there.  Ya, we really don't want any ants living in our screened porch, but he did end up catching one a few days ago. More like he scooped it up so it would go in the house, but he was still pretty excited that it was in there.  

                              

And Tyler just enjoys making big messes with whatever Brayden is using to make a new craft. He got SO mad at me for discovering him playing with all this styrofoam cause he thought I was going to clean it up and make him stop.  It was actually really funny because he would just say over and over, "NO MOM, Go that way," and point his finger to my bedroom. Haha, I love 2 year olds!

 Brayden's 3 legged dinosaur he made out of construction paper and tape. 

 And we had a little lesson about being reverent because they sure needed it after our prayers the other night. I had to pull out the camera cause it was so cute how long they practiced folding their arms. Tyler would copy Brayden's every move. Of course this was all forgotten the next night when we said prayers again, but that's just the way it goes!

Memorial Day Weekend

I love 3 day weekends. I really think there should be one every month! We had plans to go somewhere big and explore since Guy got Monday off, but when it came down to it we just didn't feel like driving very far.  Relaxing close to home sounded much nicer.

We spent a few hours checking out Turtle beach in Sarasota. It was fun, but the sand was awful. I hated it! I like soft, white sand not this rocky stuff. Even the boys hated how it felt on their hands!  

But you know they still had fun :)

 The boys had a campout in our backyard Sunday night. 

Roasting marshmallows on our back porch....best we could do :) I haven't had smores in so long...they were yummy!

Playing in the tent the next morning. They loved it!

 We did some swimming too.  

Brayden is learning to float on his back!

 Splash Park

 We also did some work around the house, saw Kung Fu Panda 2 (the boys loved it), went on a few bike rides and just relaxed. It was a pretty good weekend I'd say.

On a side note, today is the first day of Hurricane season in Florida.  Kinda freaky to have to think about the possibility of that happening sometime. Guess we better get a few things organized in case one ever does head our way while we're here. Yikes! But it has been raining all day long, which I've been loving. It sure helps cool things off!

BB the Prankster

Brayden finds great joy in trying to play little jokes on us. He came over to me today cracking up at what he just did with all those race cars Guy picked up for him last week. He could hardly even tell me what he did because he was SO excited about it.

"I just hid almost all of my cars in all of Dad's stuff.  I put some in ALL his shoes, his work bag, TONS in his pillow AND even in his bike helmet! And he doesn't even know!"

He thinks doing this is the funniest trick in the world and I have to admit it did make me laugh when Guy put on his running shoes tonight and found a few. And then again when he laid on the bed and found like 20 in his pillow. And I'm sure it will still be funny when he wakes up tomorrow and puts on his work shoes in the morning and finds some more.  Nice work Brayden....I'm sure next time Guy will think twice about buying SO many cars! :)