Chef Mommy and Assistant William

William has been watching several of his favorite shows & in a lot of them, the main characters cook along with a chef or their parents, etc. At the auction for his preschool, I "won" (i.e., agreed to pay more than everyone else) a cooking set. It came with two adorable aprons with all of the kids' handprints on them. One is Mommy-sized & one is William-sized. It also came with a chef's hat and a cookbook that all the kids contributed their favorite recipe to. And, by "favorite recipes", I don't mean stuff they like to eat. I mean they sat down with the teacher & dictated a recipe for something they knew how to cook. It's pretty hilarious! William's contribution was chocolate chip cookies that require "drips of water, like the kind from the bathtub." His teacher said she asked him 4 times & each time he repeated it verbatim! We never even make cookies, much less any that require drips of any kind of liquid.

But I digress......

William has gotten interested in cooking & has been insisting on helping me at breakfast every morning. I am "Chef Mommy" and am required to don my apron, even if we're just popping waffles in the toaster. He is "assistant William" which requires both an apron and a chef's hat. Of course, Daniel wants in on it & I was very pleasantly surprised by how willing William was to share both his cooking responsibilities and the treasured chef's hat. Here are a couple of pictures of my budding foodies:

From Big kid pics

From Big kid pics

And, just a quick picture of "whiney hiney" (as we politely call him when he starts on his whining fits!) when William wouldn't immediately give him the hat!!

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Daniel's apron was a Christmas present from some of our good friends. William alternates between his white one and the one that matches Daniel's. GREAT gift idea for a kiddo if you're searching!!

Deployments....

So, we are officially over a month into it! He left the 28th of May, so as of today, I'm 4.5/18 weeks down; 1 month/4 months down; 24% of the way into it. While my boys have been waking up WAAAY too early and driving me crazy at times, I just want to say that I don't know how my husband does it! I can't imagine having to be away from these crazy monsters of mine for 4 weeks, let alone 4 MONTHS. They are just the sweetest, most delightful things at times, and while I long for my husband to come home for various reasons (the largest of which right now is SLEEP!), I wouldn't trade this time alone with them for any amount of anything in the world!! I just thank God for the gift of three insane-o boys who bring me such joy :)

Stay tuned for all the cute things they've been getting into!!

Bye-bye to friends

So, usually when a post has this title, someone is moving. Thankfully, that's not the case this time, but our friends are taking an extended vacation up to the Pacific NW. Aside from the fact that I'm soooo jealous (have I mentioned we love it up there??), my friend Lea and her two boys--Daniel's bestest friends in the whole world--are going to be gone for two months this summer AND the whole middle of Scott's deployment. I tried to tell her the timing just didn't work for me, but for some reason, that didn't factor into their decision?????

Her husband has been up there for a few months now for work & has been able to come home every 3rd weekend or so. Now that it's summer, Lea & the boys are going to stay with him for the last 2 months of his training. We headed over there last night for dinner & to say good-bye. Of course, we had to take the obligatory kiddo pictures. Looking at these makes me kind of teary! We really can't do anything around here without one of my boys asking if Luke & Will are going to come, too. And, when you say "Luke and Will" to Colin, he grins madly! Luke loooooves babies, and in true baby fashion, Colin loves anyone who pays him attention :) Check out these pics of the two of them:

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Colin has recently learned to hug:

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And, Daniel with Will:

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The Three Muskateers (I really do think sometimes they think they're triplets!!)

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And, all 5 boys, being....well, BOYS!

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I explained to the boys yesterday that Luke, Will, and Ms. Lea were going to be gone until after William was already in Kindergarden & would come home when Daniel started school again. I think that Daniel has had too much leaving the past few weeks, b/c he had a meltdown at dinner last night (not that that's TOO unusual), and after we got home & he'd calmed down, he told me he didn't like Seattle and didn't want to go there "never, ever again". I think my poor little boy is going to miss his friends, and I KNOW I will!!

Defying Gravity Wickedly

I went to see Wicked last night with my friend Lea, her husband Chris, our friend Julie (whose husband is also deployed), and Lea's mom. I didn't know much about it, other than that it was about the witches from The Wizard of Oz--Glinda the good witch, and the Wicked Witch of the West. It was so much more than I was expecting! The story is adorable, the jokes were funny (with LOTS of W of O references), and the singing was beyond fabulous! I'd recommend it to anyone who loves musicals (and even some who don't) and would eagerly go see it again, given the chance. Pictures weren't allowed in the theater, so here we are getting ready to go in:

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From Grown-up pics

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The Children's Museum

Another set of pictures I "found" along the way. We also hit The Magic House over in St. Louis the week before Scott left. We'd been before, but not in a long time & Scott had never seen the improvements they made over a year ago. We had our neighbor's little girl, Maddie, with us, so she & the boys had so much fun running wild together!

The little kid part opens first, so my kids headed immediately over to the water room. They put on water-proof (or in our case, water "resistant"!) aprons, grab some toys & go to town:

From Big kid pics

From Big kid pics

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There is even a little section where you can sit the babies so they can reach the water & splash, too. I had to take our water-lovin' baby out to the car to change his outfit & dry him off after his turn:

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From Big kid pics

Colin was so happy in the under-2 area! Finally, no one to stop him from climbing on every ever-loving thing he can find:

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So surprised to see Daddy across the way in the water room:

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Notice I couldn't even get him to look at the camera:

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The Magic House always has some type of exhibit that teaches the kids about something specific. Right now, it's all about recycling, composting, reusing, etc. Here is the sign on the wall as you enter the exhibit:

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Maddie & Daniel took it to heart!

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From Big kid pics

There was a bike they pedaled, which powered a light if you went fast enough, a "fuel-friendly" car they could sit in, and a recycling area where they had to separate the glass, cardboard, and plastic into different sections so the recycling "truck" could pick it up. It was a lot of fun for them! William wasn't so into the dressing up--imagine that!

Their next favorite area is the fishing pond. It doesn't open until later, with the bigger kid stuff, so we had to wait until after lunch. They had a blast "catching" magnetic fish & then running back to the start of the river to set them free so they could float back to the fishing pond!

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The C-man was worn out from his 15 minute nap in the car & all that activity!!

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The last thing we did was hit the construction zone. There are lots of educational things about building houses (even an area where you can design the decor & lay out your floor plan!), as well as stuff about the types of equipment, etc, they use. Of course, my boys gravitated right to the digger truck. William was very insistent about taking part in the dress-up this time! Construction goggles and a hard hat were a must:

From Big kid pics

From Big kid pics

From Big kid pics

And, then it was time to play in the rock pit a little before heading home. William looooooves these scooper-thingies. There is one in Slidell by Maw-Maw Lin's and Paw-Paw Bip's house in a sand pit & William always runs right for it when we hit that park. Here he is scooping some rocks up:

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Things I forget (my poor husband!)

So, I got myself to the pancake post (May 24th) & then took a break. When I went back, I didn't go back to see where I'd left off, I simply went to my photo albums & started from there. As a result, I've left off all of the "grown-up pics" from our nights out before Scott deployed, as well as the pics of him with the boys at the airport the morning he left!! This is why I should update my blog as things happen & not try to go back (I hear you, MOM!!). So, a menagerie of all I managed to leave out in my updates:

Our night out with Lea and Chris & our friend Georgia (her husband had to work) to The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant over in St. Louis:

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And, I have to toot our horns a little here--did you notice my hubbie is looking a little thinner? We joined Weight Watchers when Colin decided to wean himself back in February. Scott is down 12-15 lbs & I'm pushing 20. Yay for dropping a "William" between us :) Here's to hoping we've dropped a William AND a Daniel (or at least a Colin, LOL!) by the time he gets home.

And, we went to the local horse racing track with a bunch of friends the weekend before he left town. Mikki & Paul left before I could get a pic, but here are some snaps of everyone else:

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Corey & Dawn:

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Me & Dawn:

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Lea & me squashing Dawn:

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Lea & me:

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Lea, me, & Joy:

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And, Jennifer & Jeremy's little bambino, Jacob. He's still at that "sleep anywhere" age & was so cooperative about sleeping on Joy through all of the yelling & loud noise:

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And, then, on the 28th of May, our Daddy left for four months. The boys & I did surprisingly well saying good-bye. He's now been gone a month & we're surviving. Four weeks down, 14 to go!! If anyone wants a road trip, we've got plenty of room :)

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Daniel & Lukey-Luke

So, somewhere along the way between IL & KY, Daniel & Luke decided they were twins separated at birth. We stopped for lunch at a Burger King & as Dawn & I were getting everyone settled, we noticed the two of them were "missing". A quick glance around the restaurant found them snuggled up at a table together patiently awaiting their food. Dawn & I quickly redirected them to the table where we were gathered & they protested as there was no room for them to sit next to each other! Their solution was to sit together at one of the little tables built for two. However, instead of sitting in the normal fashion, this was how they chose to sit:

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Both on one side of the table instead of across from each other! And, tractor riding was sooo much more fun together, too:

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Dawn & just giggled all week at the two of them. Anything they could do together (riding the "jeep", sitting on the tractor, etc, etc, etc...), they did together. It was pretty darn cute!!

And, just for the sake of continued adorableness, here is one of William & Drew traipsing across a field after seeing the cows. My little man loves him some big boy Drew!!

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Updates, Finally!!

So, we've been extremely busy around here for the past month. We found out around May 10th that Scott was going to deploy NOW instead of in August like we'd been planning. It was a crazy 3 weeks of trying to squeeze in everything we wanted to do for the summer, as well as trying to get him ready to go. So, long story short, I've been very neglectful of my blogging duties & promise to do better in the future ;) Scroll down to May 1st if you want to get caught up on everything we've been doing!! And, be sure to keep going all the way back. I keep finding extra pictures that go before posts I've already published, so you might find a surprise or two along the way!

Colin and random Kentucky cuteness

So, looking back at my Kentucky posts, I didn't put much of Colin on the posts. To be honest, his main entertainment was crawling around the porch freely. He was just so excited to be outside & to play with the dogs. And, all that fresh air wore him right out, so he napped longer than usual & went to bed early every night! But, just for the sake of keeping things semi-even, here are a few cute Colin snaps:

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This guitar was a surprise for Drew & he was very gracious about sharing it with Colin, who LOVED it. Buttons & music--two of his favorite things!! He was adorable with pushing buttons, then getting up on his knees and "dancing". He'd look at you like he was expecting you to dance with him, then giggled madly when you did.

Taking a quick rest break:

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Having a snack at "his" chair at the table:

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Lovin' that darn frog!!

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Taking a quick swing break--and I do mean quick! That boy of mine does NOT like to be confined for long. Made the car ride pretty interesting, to say the least :)

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No problems crawling around in the grass--he screamed every time someone picked him up!

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And, then just random fun cuteness throughout the week:

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From Kentucky

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