Nothin' cuter...kinda wish I had a picture

There is NOTHING cuter than your 3 year old shuffling out of the bathroom, with his pants and underwear around his ankles saying, "mom, I just went poop and there is no toilet paper!". 

Then, as I approach, he turns around and shuffles back into the bathroom and bends over with his head on the ground and his butt in the air, pointing right at me.  He holds that position until I finish wiping his bottom. 

I make him flush and pull up his own pants.

Morning at the park

The little boys and I had some free time this morning while Brandon was at his testing so we went to the Sports Complex to enjoy the park.  It was only 45 degrees though so it got a bit chilly.  Logon had to put on Austin's coat that was in the car and Austin had to put his spring coat over his sweatshirt...BUT they had LOTS of fun.

 

Afterwards we went to L& M Fleet Supply to check out the baby chicks....now only if I could get Dave to let me have some.  The meat chicks are only .99 Cents each...of course there ain't much meat on them yet!

Random...

If you look closely, Austin is trying to "pop a wheelie" on his scooter...

And after spending all winter clearing the snow OFF the driveway, I just wanted to help it melt, so I started shoveling it back ON the driveway.  Of course Austin thought he should help push it around a bit.

Boys and their dirt...and trucks.

These pictures were taken in Phoenix, Arizona while Dave was chaining down the truck and forklift we were going to haul back to Grand Forks, North Dakota. Austin was able to get out of the truck to play for a bit in the 86 degrees of Arizona heat. He found a styrofoam cup and had a blast for those 15 or so minutes he got to play in the dirt.

Big truck tires...and a little boy in the background.

Going to show daddy his cup 'o dirt.

The smile, the dirty knees....big trucks and dirt. That is what being a 3 yr old boy is all about.

Logan and Austin were deep in conversation about their super heros...specifically Batman, Robin, Bat Girl and Wonder Woman.

Austin: "wonnerwomangirl can't hold big house up, only little house"

Logan: "what, I can't understand you."

Austin:wonnerwomangirl can't hold big houses up, only little ones"

Logan: "STOP SPEAKING CHINESE, I DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT!"

Kids are so precious.....and humorous!

Tonight at dinner.

Austin: "Mom, if Brandon hates me, I won't have any friends."

Me: "But, Brandon doesn't hate you."

Austin: "But he will if I kick him."

To busy laughing to even respond.

Chicken, more chicken?

Totally random, but totally annoying as well.

How I would love to go to the grocery store solo once in a while. Today I thought I might get that chance using marshmallows as a bribe. I told Austin I was taking Logan to preschool and then going to the store. If he wanted to come with he needed to get his shoes. Instead he wanted "big marshmallow, just one". So I said, "OK...I am going to the store, you can have a big marshmallow if you are good while I am gone."

Austin, "Ok."
As I was heading out the door with Logan, Austin crams his big marshmallow in his mouth and attempts to also hoover his 2nd "bonus" marshmallow down, so he can yell, "I WANT TO GO WITH YOU!" Oy.

So, onto the chicken story.

After we drop Logan off at preschool we are on our way to the store and Austin says, "can we get chicken?".

Me: "no."
Austin: "why?"
Me: "cause we already have chicken at home."
Austin: "Well, can we get more chicken?"
Me: "no."
Austin: "why?"
Me: "Cause we don't need more chicken."

Now if that wasn't bad enough. Once we have arrived at the store, I get....
"Are we getting chicken?".

Now, I understand why Dave enjoys being hard of hearing.

Sloppy part 2

Austin, meanwhile, was devouring his second joe.

Again...no shirt, no shoes, no pants, whatever.

Easter Eggs

We colored Easter Eggs for the 2nd time this week.

All the eggs from the first batch got eaten up.

Here is Logan with the bowl of freshly colored eggs.

And Austin, our main egg eater.

And Brandon, getting creative with crayons.

Poop scooper

I scoop dog poop, Austin scoops the snow man poop.

I think he got the better job!

Musical mattresses

Toddler beds: Pros - lightweight, cheap, convenient. Cons - lightweight, don't last til they are 18, easily movable by even the wimpiest of toddlers.

Logan does not like sleeping in his own room by himself, so he often will drag his mattress over to our room and sleep there. Well, Austin is in that "monkey see, monkey do" phase and decided he wanted to drag his mattress over too. He sleeps with us everynight still but he still has his own toddler bed in their shared room. Once they got their mattresses all set up next to our bed, they weren't exactly in the mood to close their eyes and go to sleep, so I had to keep telling them to go to sleep. They didn't, so I kicked them out of my room. I told them to take their mattresses and go sleep in their own room.

Logan: "I AM NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER SLEEPING IN YOUR ROOM AGAIN!" (There might have been a few more "evers" but you get the picture.)

Austin: "ever, ever in your room." (The monkey hear, monkey do syndrome.)

Dave: "wow, that was easy! Think they will keep their word?"

They grab their respective mattresses and proceed to attempt to stomp out of our room in a huff, well Austin can't wrangle his fast enough, so.....

Logan: "Austin, move OUT of the way!"

Austin: "YOU ELP ME!"

Logan: "I think we can fit a tow truck in here."

They finally get their mattresses back into their own room and they don't want to sleep on top of them, they want to sleep under them. Dave and I were laughing hysterically by this point, so I had to get up and get a few pictures.

Austin attempting to get his mattress set up to sleep under it.

Logan underneath his mattress.

This was all good and fine, until Austin thought it would be much funner to jump on top of Logans mattress. Logan was not happy when he got pinned underneath. I went back to bed...Austin followed asking for "ma-nahs" and then Logan came back, with his mattress in tow, to our room.

10 minutes later, all was quiet.

Cookie Time!

YAY! Its time to decorate cookies!! (I fully expect a huge mess.)

Lots of yummy, sticky frosting!

LOTS of yummy sprinkles, too!


And last, but not least, you have to lick the knife!!
Makes me wonder who licks the knife in the bakery?

Austin and Logan had a blast decorating cookies. They both decided that daddy needed more than a couple nicely decorated cookies too. Logan served his up to daddy, daddy ate them willingly. Then Austin got off his chair with plate in hand and promptly fell, 1 cookie landed on the floor. Upside down. I helped him pick it up and said it would be just fine. (I am the only one who saw!) He then tripped again and 2 cookies landed on the floor. I helped him pick them up again and said, "they will be just fine" and then Austin headed straight for daddy with his fine confections and said they were all for daddy. I laughed! Hard!

Safety first!

For some reason, whenever daddy drives, both boys INSIST on wearing some form of head protection. :o)

Another broken bone...

Austin has a broken leg. He broke his right tibia in 2 spots. It happened Saturday night and we go tomorrow morning to see the ortho doc for a cast. I am hoping it just needs to be casted and that it won't require surgery or anything "harsh" to fix it. It was a bad accident. Brandon was jumping off of the trampoline and tried to jump over Austin but instead landed right on his shoulders and crumpled him to the ground. I know Brandon feels really bad about it...as he should. We have had a talk about being more careful and slowing down and thinking before he acts. He has a tendency to be pretty rough with his little brothers and this time it had bad results.

Austin had an awful day yesterday cause it was so painful but today was a lot better. He was able to sit up on his own and play in the recliner with things that he yelled for all day. He has a bubble machine that blows bubbles and lots of other "lap" stuff that works out great. Plus he gets extra treats like push-pops and popsicles.

Duck wrangler/Horse Whisperer?

We spent some time down doing chores this morning and I got a couple nice pictures of Austin with the duck and horses. The duck has another broken leg so he wasn't really up to running from us.

Austin petting the duck, while Mokie sniffs his hair.

Austin sitting next to the duck while Mokie and JuneBug look on. It appears he is right in with the horses, but he is between their 2 enclosures.

Austin and Pumpkin (the duck).

Best Friends....err....duck with a broken leg so he can't run from the toddler!

Mokie grubbing on Pumpkins food.

"Hey kid! What you got there? Can you give us some?"

(Austin is trying to feed the duck, while Gypsy, JuneBug and Echo look on.)

We had an issue with our septic so we ended up renting a small excavator so Dave could fix it. The boys LOVE riding with daddy and most of the time fall asleep.

This time Austin fell asleep. Thats Pioneer Peak out there above the trees.

Logan looks a tad bit uncomfortable as Austin rests on him.

Here are a few pictures from Austin's Birthday party on May 23rd. I have been so busy, but I am gonna try and get some things posted here today!!

He got a little scared when everyone started singing, he hopped into my lap for protection from the scary choir. (Nevermind the unfinished cake...I got impatient with putting the baseball stitches on.)

Blowing out his candles, we practiced before-hand and I just had to help a little bit.

So happy about eating cake. Yum!

Opening presents....he wasn't as excited as I thought he would be. He kept walking off to do other stuff.

Austin Tyrel is 2

My littlest little one turned 2 on Wednesday, May 20th. I just cannot believe how time flies. We will have his birthday party on Saturday so I will post pictures after that. I wasn't sure what kind of cake to do for him cause he didn't seem to be "into" anything in particular like Logan was into Elmo or excavators. After thinking about it for a while we realized he is very into baseball right now. I should have thought of that since I am having to throw a ball at him all day while he tries to catch it or hit it with whatever he has found to use as a bat. We bought both Logan and Austin their own glove and bats with balls since they both wanted to be like Brandon and Autumn.

He is my little Baby Bug and always has a smile on his face for me. He LOVES riding horses and will often throw a bit of a fit when its someone else's turn. It makes me a tad bit nervous since he thinks those horses love him so much he can just walk up and pat them on their head or butt or leg. They do love him cause he is the one that will bring out 2 or 3 tablespoons of grain at a time when they are being brushed down for riding.

He gives the sweetest kisses. And then wipes them off to see the reaction. Its almost automatic now - kiss, wipe, smile.

I remember the day he was born. We didn't find out if he was going to be a boy or a girl and I told the midwife and nurses present that I didn't want anyone in the room to announce it except for myself or Dave. I wanted us to be able to discover it ourselves. When he was born and plopped up on my stomach, it didn't even occur to me to look. I was just so happy to have him in my arms and to hear him cry. Of course I was sorta wishing for a girl, but at that point it didn't even matter. He was healthy and crying and here. It took me a few minutes to say, "wait, what do we have here?". Of course after discovering he was a boy, I was overjoyed. There was no regrets at all. He was perfect. He was born at 3:27 PM on May 20, 2007 weighing in at 9 lbs 4 oz.

Austin's Cast

Austin got his cast on yesterday. We got him a blue one and promptly added some personalization to it. He thought it was pretty cool that people could write on it.

As you can see, it hasn't dampened his spirits. He is still a happy, smily baby.

BUT, he was trying real hard to cut that cast off!

It's back! I'm back.

Well, it looks as if I was able to fix that annoying error. I just removed the music at the top....so no fine tunes for your enjoyment anymore. I know you will all be terribly sad at that loss, but too bad, so sad! I am back.

In other news....my littlest little boy broke his arm on Friday. He either fell or jumped (I am betting on jumped) off of Brandon's bed. Not sure how he landed, but he broke his left arm right above the elbow. I was more concerned for his mental state immediately after since he was acting a little funny. I wonder if he got knocked a little loopy to begin with. The doctor at the ER was NOT impressive. I think he would do better with dogs at this point. He didn't even want to do an x-ray, just thought he had a dislocated elbow and wanted so badly to just do this special "manuever" to fix it. He was a bit to eager for me and I instead insisted on an x-ray first. I could not believe he wouldn't want to make sure something wasn't broken first before agressively flexing his little arm. Either way, I was right. The one without the M.D. behind my name. Makes me scared for other parents who take their kids in to that ER and have to be unnecessarily tortured by that doc. I am going to file a complaint about him though, so maybe he will get a stern talking to. I sure hope he actually took something from that experience though and may be a little more cautious anyway.

So....Austin has a temporary cast/splint thing on his arm until tomorrow. We will go into the Ortho doc tomorrow for his permanent cast (well not totally permanent, lets hope!). I was so glad they have to call in the expert when something like this happens. I surely wouldn't have sat still for that dumb doctor to splint or cast it. I really liked the Ortho doc, seemed really laid-back and more importantly - knowledgable!

Austin is doing just fine with his bum arm. He has a bit of frustration here and there when he can't do what he would like as efficiently as he wants, but overall he is running and playing just like normal. Its a bit different at night. I am sure that is when the discomfort is at it's peak and its been difficult to settle down to sleep or to get long stretches of sleep without having to dose up on some motrin and/or tylenol. That seems to fix it though, which is good.

Other than that awful experience, things are going well in our house. Brandon kicked my butt in Tic today, he is very pleased with himself. He even hung up our score sheet on the door so Dad (Dave) could see it when he got home. Let's just hope he doesn't want me to send it off to Grandma Ione. Brandon also made some bomb ass (borrowed that from Anna!) peanut butter cookies. I am sure as soon as Dave gets home their life span will shorten dramatically.