Last Days of Summer

To all of you loyal readers out there I have to apologize for my tardiness in blogging. I would love to say that I have been too busy to blog, but it has just been pure laziness on my part. We have been enjoying the last few weeks of summer before Ethan starts preschool 3 days a week. He has been attending just 2 days and he has definitely shown me that he needs more structured activities and interaction with kids his age. Although I'm sad he's growing up too fast, I'm excited for him.

Earlier this week I took Ethan to the Lied's Discovery Children's Museum in North Las Vegas. I have been wanting to take him for a long time and I got the chance to meet up with some other moms and their kids. We started off on a bit of a scary note when Ethan decided to take off into the museum by himself. We immediately alerted security and they locked the building and began the search. After what felt like an eternity, we found him playing on one of the exhibits upstairs without a care in the world. I have never been so scared and felt so nauseous in my entire life! After that little incident, we spent about 2 hours in the museum. Ethan's favorite thing was the mini recording studio of course. He sang two songs and loved hearing himself when they played it back. What do you think? American Idol 2009?

That same afternoon, we took the boys to Esselmont Park to burn off some energy. The boys are all over the place now which of course makes it 100 times more challenging to keep up with them. We got several cute shots of them playing in the big tunnel together.

The next day we met some friends at the Artful Potter. It's a little paint your own pottery place. Ethan loves anything that has to do with music and art, so this was a perfect activity for him.

I took this photo this evening when the twins were finishing dinner. I thought it captured their playful sides. They are such good buddies and it has been so fun to watch them interact and play with one another. I can't believe they are already 15 months old!

Sharing an Apple

San Diego 2008

All San Diego pics

San Diego in the Summer

Our annual summer trip to San Diego was extra special this year because all three kiddoes were able to go. We left the twins behind last August because they were still too little. All three were great travelers and it was so nice to escape the heat! We had a weekend packed full of the zoo, the beach, and tons of yummy authentic mexican food. We have been really missing that in Vegas! Although the trip was a ton of fun, we were actually glad to get back to our home in the desert. I think the boys felt the same way too. They missed all of their toys and the puppies most of all.

Eric and the boys relaxing in the sun in La Jolla.

Once the twins finally figured out that the sand wasn't going to hurt them, we couldn't get them to stay put. They were all over the place!

After a morning at the beach, we decided to return to La Jolla that evening to see the seals and go to dinner. Such a blast!

More Fun at the Beach

Eric and Ethan enjoying some evening beach fun on our second night in San Diego. Ethan couldn't get enough of the sand!

The rare occasion that we get all five of us in a picture together.

More goofing around at the beach!

Ethan helped me bury my feet in the sand on our third day at the beach. We discovered a great family beach in La Jolla. It was a perfect place for the kids to explore.

Lions and Tigers and... Going Potty? Oh My!

While we are so thrilled that Ethan has learned to recognize when he needs to go potty, we realize he still needs to learn a couple of basic rules. Rule #1 - Public urination is not okay unless you are a four legged furry creature. The look on my face captures it all. At this point it was too late. Ethan joined in with all of the other beach bums and relieved himself right there on the beach.

The zoo really does get more fun for Ethan each year. This year it was all about the monkeys. He would have been just fine skipping all of the other exhibits and just going in circles looking at the monkeys.

I had Eric take this picture because I didn't want to forget our extremely long walk uphill to see the elephants. It would have been helpful if this sign was posted at the bottom of the hill to save us the trouble. Pushing 45 pounds of baby plus the stroller is not my idea of fun! I also had the pleasure of feeling like my knees were going to break on the way down the hill. We should have just paid the $10 and taken the sky tram to the bottom. Oh well, at least we got our exercise!

Eric and Carson getting ready to eat what seemed like our 50th mexican food meal during our trip. It was so yummy!

Booty Camp

Okay folks, brace yourself...Ethan has officially joined the ranks of the big boys!! Ethan is now enrolled in "booty-camp"! I call it booty-camp because all we have been doing for the last 7 days is talking about using the potty in our house. We started potty training three days before his 3rd birthday and it's going great! He has now informed us that he wears big boy underpants and diapers are for babies, not big boys. Many of you may be able to relate to the joy I experienced when he used the potty for the first time. It's crazy that I would allow myself to feel so euphoric when we said goodbye to Huggies and hello to underwear. For a split second I felt a bit of sadness and then I snapped back into reality. Only two kids in diapers now! This is an early Christmas gift to our garbage men! Hallelujah!

Hopefully Ethan won't hold this picture against us when he's 16 and he has brought his first girlfriend home to meet us and I can't resist breaking out the scrapbook. I just had to take this picture of him in these absurdly large nighttime undies. He just barely meets the minimum weight for these disposable disasters. He either needs to start eating 5 happy meals a day to fill these out or we need to find a different product! Any of you experienced moms out there - I welcome any advice!! I'm just thrilled that a couple of M&M's can make him feel like a superstar after going to the potty. Way to go Ethan!

Summer Fun

There is no big theme to this post. Just some fun photos I took on a lazy and extremely hot afternoon with the boys. We finally got our yard fixed and it is now officially kid friendly! I'll include more pictures of the new yard in the next few posts. We got the giant hump of rocks removed and I can relax a little more when the twins are out there playing.

What a silly boy!

Nothing says summer like Capri-Sun and a bubble machine. Thanks to the hubby and Jason for the awesome misters outside. It's actually pleasant to sit in the 110 degree weather!

I'm loving this ridiculously huge smile on Mason's face. If you look closely, you can see that he finally has a top tooth. Hooray!

Carson looks like such a little boy here. He now has 8 teeth with more coming in at the moment. What a cutie!

Ethan Turns 3!

This weekend we celebrated Ethan's 3rd birthday at Esselmont park. We love this park, not only because it's right around the corner, but also because it has a great water feature to keep the kids cool during the scorching summer. We had so much fun watching the kids splash and bounce around.

Eric is really looking forward to teaching Ethan how to golf. It helps that we have turf in our backyard. It's almost as if he has his very own putting green!

Ethan and Daddy sharing a cupcake at the party.

Yes there is supposed to be an E candle on this cake. However, the party setup didn't go as I had planned and I was a bit frazzled when I was trying to assemble the candles. So...I accidentally broke the E off and it became "Three-than" instead of Ethan. Not exactly how I envisioned it to look but it made us smile nonetheless. "Happy Birthday Three-than!"

Ethan and his friend Andrew being silly in the bouncehouse.

Curious George Party

We had a Curious George party so I decorated the gift bags with monkey faces and tales. It was actually a lot of fun to do this little project.

Blowing out the candles!

Mason had no trouble finishing off a cupcake with tons of green icing!

Uncle Jason bought Ethan a child size guitar since Ethan is obsessed with Jason's guitar. He absolutely loves to play it! I'm thinking he may have a music career in his future. :)

Happy Birthday Ethan!

Three years ago on July 19th, we were blessed with a beautiful baby boy. We could have never imagined just how much he would change our lives. The past three years have been some of the most joyous times of our lives. We are so excited to watch him grow up! Happy 3rd Birthday Ethan!

3 weeks old

Facts about Ethan
Born: July 19, 2005
Time: 11:50 a.m.
Weight: 6 pounds 15 ounces
Length: 19.5 inches
*It was 119 degrees the day he was born. A record high for that day in Vegas!

1 year old - San Diego Zoo

2 years old - San Diego beach

3 years old - Curious George birthday party

Likes:
The Wiggles
Curious George
Books
Getting dirty
Icing (can you tell?)
Music and dancing
Art
Cheeseburgers and chocolate shakes
Popsicles

Dislikes:
Macaroni and cheese
Timeout

Birthday Parties and Rainstorms

We had a great weekend filled with birthday parties and rainstorms. It was so nice to have rain so we could actually get out to take the dogs for a walk and not melt from the heat! It was nice to just relax since the next couple of weekends will be pretty full with Ethan's third birthday and our long awaited trip to San Diego.

It's so interesting to see how Ethan plays differently with each twin. He tends to be more playful and at times aggresive with Carson, and a bit more gentle with Mason. Here they are sharing a sweet moment.

My sister sent Ethan a scooter for his 3rd birthday and the twins loved playing inside the box and with mommy's shoes. This was a good thing since Ethan still has a hard time sharing his toys!

Ethan was invited to his friend Parker's birthday party this weekend. It actually turned out to be a nice morning since it rained the night before. They had so much fun splashing and playing at the park.

Cupcakes with lots of icing...Ethan's favorite food group!

Summer Trip to Texas

This is an extremely long post from our summer Texas trip so readers beware! We had a weekend filled with birthday parties and baptisms. Although the flight to Texas was a disaster (posted below) it was worth every second. Every moment with our family was a cherished one and it's getting more and more special with the new additions to our families. The twins and Kaitlyn are only 3.5 months apart so it was really neat to see them interact. Kaitlyn even reached the milestone of pulling up to standing when we were there. Peer pressure I guess. As always the time went by way too fast and we can't wait for our next visit.

Eric rented a Toyota Sienna minivan and had to constantly slip in little tidbits of information on how economical they were in hopes that we would convert...yet again. Although it was spacious, I am still not crossing over to the dark side! I think it worked against him when he tried to sell me on the fact that he could put all three boys in the same row. This put Ethan at an advantage where he could easily taunt the twins. I think I'll stick with the "Beast".

Ryan and Ethan posing in front of the fountain where they held the baptism.

What a sweetie! All dressed up for her baptism.

The Roup family on baptism day.