This one is for Beckie...

Last night when we were out taking pics, Beckie said that she didn't remember Owen being "that fat." Well, Beckie, here you go. A pic of my dimply-butt lil man! :o)

Flashback

Beckie and I were talking in the car on the way to Wonderscope about how it is hard to remember when the kids were babies. So, I did a little bit of digging in my hard drive, and found some "old" pics of the kids to mix in with the new pics. The pic above is from our outing last week to Legends. We ate at Trex Cafe and then the kids got to go play in the Paleo-Zone which is basically a big sand pit. :o) They had fun!

Here are Owen, Izzy and Hudson from the 4th of July. The G family and us have the same octogon shaped gate, so we brought both of them and made a huge gated area for the toddlers. It was reminiscent of the show "Rugrats" that used to play on Nickelodeon. :o)

And, here is a pic from one of Owen and Izzy's first play dates at Gymboree. They were SO LITTLE!!!

And here are Owen and Izzy 9 months later in the Lego submarine at Wonderscope. Beckie, I lifted some of these pics off of facebook...I didn't think you would care!!

And here we are 9 months ago at Gymboree again. Kind of brings a tear to your eye!

Back in the submarine. O's shirt is wet because he was splashing like a maniacal fool in the water room. Izzy's shirt is wet because she was standing next to Owen who was splashing like a maniacal fool. :o)

Owen's birthday, where the "3 amigos" are playing instruments. Look at how tiny Hudson is!

Owen and Izzy on the alligator ride!

I don't know why this pic posted again, but it makes me laugh. They were NOT fans of being in the gate!

Here are Owen and Izzy peeking in a shop window on the square when we went out for dinner! I hope you enjoyed this trip down (short) memory lane!

Beach on our deck

We broke down and bought Owen a sandbox tonight. I had been against a sandbox, because, well I think they are gross. But Owen loved the sand at Wonderscope, and I started thinking that maybe he was missing a crucial toddler experience by not having a sandbox. As you can see by the sand stuck on his face, he loves it.

O's cute crab sandbox...and 150 lbs of sand. 50 lbs are now scattered on our deck.

He had to stop playing because he saw an airplane, lol.

And here are his new crocs...they are possibly the ugliest shoes ever made, but he absolutely loves them. In fact, he picked them out himself! If you look close you can see the eyes on the shoes...they are frogs and when he walks through water they make frog prints.

There was so much sand stuck in his hair...wonder why? The next photos will explain...

Yes, if you are sweaty and lay in a sandbox, you will have sand stuck to you.


Apparently sand is cozy to lay on!

And this is what he does 90% of the time he is playing in the sand...he throws it all over the deck.


Oh, what a goof. After his sand adventure, he had a bath, and I kid you not, there were at least 2 cups of sand in the bottom of the tub. Speaking of cups, my poor measuring cups are now sand toys. Oh the joys of being wrapped around your child's finger!

Our Weekly Field Trips

Okay. I have to start this post off by coming clean. The above picture was taken last night. The above picture was taken in the master bedroom of our house. If you put 2 and 2 together, you will see where I am going with this...Owen is still in our room. Sigh. (Although you can tell by my smile that I don't mind *too* much...) He and I are laying sideways in the bed which is why you can't see our headboard...that weird blue thing behind us is the rail that helps make sure O doesn't fall out!

Anyways, now that I have that off of my chest! During the summer, Beckie, Kristen and I have taken the kids on a special field trip each week. We have been to The Legends (went to TRex Cafe and then shopping), we have gone to Crowne Center for a play (which we may or may not have been kicked out of...) and lunch, we have been to the spray grounds at Zona Rosa and City Park, and we were supposed to go to the library's story hour, but it started at 9:30 and Owen slept in that day, haha. Today we took the kids to Wonderscope Children's Museum. It was so much fun!

Excuse the horrible pictures, they are from my phone. I can't find the charger for our point and shoot camera, and there is no way that I can lug my DSLR around! The above pic is of Owen and Izzy playing in the racetrack room where you can race golf balls on different kinds of tracks. Basically the kids just wanted to climb the stairs

Wonderscope is in an old elementary school, and they have different exhibits/activities in each room. This was a weird kinetic thingamajig that Owen was obsessed with! You can see that Hudson is super excited as well!

Here is Owen and Ozzy playing at the station where you can build these weird animals. Owen and Hudson basically just threw the pieces down the hall...

Here is the water room! Hudson was having a blast with those tubes...he may have drenched me at one point, lol.

Here are Owen and Izzy splashing in one of the water tables...they had several different ones set up and they each had different faucets that sprayed water out. So cool!

Another water pic...and can I just say that the White Balance on my camera-phone STINKS!!! I am pretty sure that Owen and Izzy aren't yellow in real life! In the water room, Owen realized that he can use the same technique that he uses in the bathtub to get water everywhere. He soaked the floor in that room. Oops!

Here are the kids playing in the lego room.

Here are the kids playing in the sand room. They had a blast in here!

Another pic...the little girl in white is a random girl, and she kept dumping sand on Izzy's back, lol. The mom had no clue either because she was texting, haha. Poor Izzy! They also had an entire room dedicated to toddlers where they could just climb and explore and have fun. Unfortunately I did not get any pictures in there...hopefully Beckie and Kristen did! Next week we are going to the Deanna Rose Petting Zoo/Farm. Should be a good time!

Wyoming..day 1

I figured that I had better start doing blog posts about our trip, otherwise I will forget what we did! We left on Wednesday afternoon, at about 5:00. Owen did really well in the car. He would snooze, and when we would stop for gas he would tottle around the gas station, get back in the car and go back to sleep! When we were driving through Nebraska there was a terrible storm, and we actually saw a tornado! To say I was freaking out would be an understatement. We drove all the way to Cheyenn, Wyoming that night, got there about 2:00 am. We got a hotel room, and were planning on taking Owen from his carseat to the hotel room without him waking up. HAHA. He woke up and was so excited to be in a hotel that he was hooting and hollering. Chris and I were sure that we were going to be thrown out. I took him to the hotel gym to play so that Chris could sleep, but after 3 hours, we just left the hotel since Owen was so wound up! We finished the drive to Casper, and passed out in our hotel room as soon as we could! Above is a photo that I took from Casper Mountain in Wyoming. You can see how it is only raining in one area...so neat!

The view from the middle of the mountain.


Here are Brittany(my niece), Gina (my sis-in-law), Savannah (my niece) and Barb (my Mother-in-law) looking out over the town. I was still in the car, because I hate heights!!

Here is Chris's brother, Corey taking a pic.

Here is Chris's dad looking out from the mountain. Man, my captions are ORIGINAL tonight.

Barb and Gina..it was really chilly up there!

Brittany and Savannah

A neat little stream that we saw when we stopped to look at a waterfall

A VERY over-exposed photo of Owen...get your sunglasses!!


Owen and Daddy checking out the stream

The pretty waterfall! After we drover through the mountain, we all went to On the Border and ate dinner. (Well, most of us did, some of the fam went to the Loony Tunes restaurant.) We had met up with the rest of Chris's family by this point. There was...Chris's uncle Jerry (and his wife, Dawn, their sons and Dylan), Jerry's girls Ryann (and her husband Harlen and their boys Cody and Cameron) and Gina (and her daughter, Aubrey) All together, there were 19 of us! After dinner, we all went back to the hotel and the kids (and Corey and Chris) took a dip in the hotel swimming pool!

The next day, we had a memorial service for Chris's grandma. Owen liked the rock beds, and during the service, he was very enthusiastic and clapped after each song. He was also interested in the man sitting at the end of our pew...he kept walking down and poking this guy, and then running back to me! After the service, the kids found a rabbit and chased that poor bunny until I thought the rabbit was going to collapse! I wish I had my camera on me then...

After the service, we went to Chris's aunt's house and had lunch before we started the drive to the cabins in South Dakota. Yes, we did more driving! :o)