The boys

Here is my SUPER weak attempt to keep things updated and documented about what my boys have been up to lately.

Brooks and I took the three older boys to see the Harlem Globetrotters last weekend. Word has it that it has been 17 years since they have come to South Carolina because the state capital has the Confederate/Rebel flag flown on its grounds and the team was apparently against that. Anyway, I guess they got over it? Who knows. But we were thrilled to get tickets with the money from Brooks' returned wedding ring.

I think it's safe to say the boys had a BLAST.

Camden REALLY thought it was real. Got REALLY into it. and yelled REALLY loud at the refs. It was pretty funny.

It was fun. I think I had more fun then Brooks though since he was more concerned about the guy showing crack in front of us.

Royce......Royce........Royce.

He is just an entertaining kid trying to be like his brothers and dad in EVERYTHING.

For example, after we get home from the church ALL the kids change out of their church clothes. Brooks and I stay in our's all day and I guess Royce has noticed. He will NOT change out of his clothes. When we ask him if he wants to, he says no, because he "wants to be like Daddy". So here are the two church-dressed boys making bacon for dinner.

He also can throw balls up the driveway and have them roll down to him (to practice grounders) for hours. It's so cute. (getting ready to do his crocodile "chomp" on the ball)

He also has been doing my workouts with me that I do from videos online. It's actually been fun (hard) because I'm doing it with my sisters. It's kinda a cross-country-sister-bonding thing..... +Royce and Kellyn.

This particular day Royce had me help him hit 3 buckets of balls off his tee. He's clearly loving it.

Royce is actually standing in our NEW batting cage that Brooks and the boys built.

Royce was SO helpful stepping on it as they were trying to build it.

It was so funny watching them put this up from my kitchen window because Emerson and Camden had to stand on Brooks shoulders for part of it.

The cage was bought for 3 reasons: 

1) my family LOVES baseball

2) this will prevent them from hitting balls over the fence and hitting our neighbor's client's convertible window and breaking it so we had to pay $1500. (hypothetically speaking of COURSE)

3) and a home for THIS BEAST of a pitching machine..... Brooks is SO excited a guy let him borrow it (maybe have?) for baseball season.

Literally every day since it was built there have been HOURS clocked in it.

Emerson doesn't like putting the balls in for Bronson because he hits pretty hard. (I should know, I have a bruise on my side to prove it.) So he came up with hiding behind the wading pool to stick the balls in.

(Aleeya just wears a football helmet while putting balls in it. haha)

Yesterday Bronson and Camden built a pitcher's mound on one side of it to practice their pitching and their catching since they both play those positions.

It's aaaaaaaall fun and games until "someone" forgets to wear a cup while he plays catcher.

That ended fast. Pretty sure he won't make THAT mistake again.

St. Paddy's Jellybean Race

It's the time of year for the St. Patrick's Day jellybean race!!!!!!

(a tradition I've done every St. Patrick's day for over 30 years!)

In our skinny living room we have to break down the race into heats. We decided to switch things up a little and put Camden against Aleeya (who is actually better then Bronson and equal to Emerson usually, so we thought this battle was fair).

Aleeya actually was ahead most of the jellybean race!!! 

(She could use her hands since she isn't 8 yet)

Until.......this picture really does make me sad though.......notice Aleeya's pink jellybean SO close to the finish line and you can SEE how far back Camden was. He basically had an amazing flip of the jellybean and you can see the little green speck at the bottom, passing the finish line before Aleeya's did. Soooooo close. It's like she's staring at it in disbelief!

Next it was Bronson vs. Emerson.

Which, as expected, Emerson creamed Bronson. I think his days of winning haven't happened since he was 4 or 5. haha

We had to do a little adjustment to the finish line since Everly couldn't keep her dirty paws off it!

Then there were these three.......

They were having  a little too much fun and towards the end both Royce and Iris just swatted their jellybeans with their hands over the finish line and agreed to a tie. Whatever.

Next was THIS intense battle.....

Emerson had my phone taking pictures and I'm SO glad he caught this "boxing-out" moment Brooks pulled on me on camera. 

So I at least had an excuse as to why I lost......(Brooks celebrating in the back)

The semi-finals was btw. Emerson and Camden.....

Needless to say, Camden won and Emerson spent the next few minutes explaining through tears how Camden cheated.... (he didn't). I can't IMAGINE where he gets his hate-of-losing from.....

And the GRAND FINALE...... THE RACE OF THE YEAR (since Camden allowed the parents back in the "running" to officially win).....the DECIDING FACTOR OF THE LOCATION OF DINNER came down to Brooks vs. Camden

Game. Faces. On.

And I'll be darned if Camden didn't pull out the win!!!!!!!

(it's legit too.....we aren't the let-your-kids-win type )

The obligatory congratulations handshake of the winner.

Camden was SOOOOO excited.

He picked Golden Corral........(surprise surprise.....pretty sure that's been at LEAST 5 years straight. Brooks reeeeeally wanted to win to go someplace else). We loaded everyone up in the Yeti and gave Kellyn JUUUUUUST enough time to find my make-up bag and make herself all "pretty" for dinner. Great.

The whole clan out in front of Golden Corral. Pretty soon that restaurant won't know what hit them!

So I DON'T let my kids win, but I DO let them pick out their own clothes. Aleeya's outfits never disappoint. I need this picture framed.

The winner with his dessert plate, fish tacos, pizza and everything else he already downed.

Mascara lady with her cotton candy....

Okay, so we are SUGARED-up and ready to leave.

Maybe NEXT year someone can beat Camden and we will venture out and eat someplace else!

Boyish Girl

Of COURSE I think that Everly is the cutest!!! (and she is).....after all, I AM her mother.

But Brooks and I (ESPECIALLY Brooks) are also objective/realists about our children. For example, ALL our girl babies look like boys. You take their bows and pink away and they could definitely pass as little boy babies. It's so funny. (Then again, the old ladies at Walmart STILL get genders wrong whether they are painted pink with 20 bows on them or not!)

See what I mean?

This picture REALLY got me because she was playing with an Iron man notebook!

And there are SOME things Little Ev has a growing-boy's-appetite for..... like when you peel a whole orange and hand it to her, it will be gone in a few minutes. The WHOLE thing.

(It's serious business with her orange-attacking too)

Where are her other two at-home sidekicks? Oh, ya know, being normal.....for them.

There is a LOT of dress up going on here. Everyday. And Kellyn has to MULTI-LAYER her dresses.

Kellyn is kinda full of personality if you haven't noticed....

(I love her disappearing-eye trick when she smiles)

But Kellyn has decided over the past two months to take out her morning nap. Now she's just down to one nap (around noon when Royce and Everly go down too). The problem with THAT is I used to take my shower during her and Everly's morning nap!!!

So lately I've had a few visitors in my bathroom with me when I step out of the shower.

(Apparently I took too long that day for Royce?)

As you can imagine that got old, so after putting Everly down for morning naps a few days ago, I took matters into my own hands to make sure my bathroom didn't turn into a toddler visitor center.

I turned on a show and buckled Kellyn in a carseat watching it. #motheroftheyear 

She thought she was SO special sitting up in that throne. 

It was beautiful. 

Oh, and because I want to remember our most fun date ever, I'll include the only two pictures I have from it. Here we are at a "Mascarade Ball"

I realize they aren't really "masks" but we didn't know what to expect (there were people dressed like Phantom of the Opera there!!), so we went for the Throw-on-the-obnoxious-Pepto-Bismal-colored-dress and put-something-ridiculous-from-the-dollar-store-over-our-eyes look. 

I think we pulled it off perfectly.

Turns out everyone was basically dressed in black there, soon, weeeeeeee, kinda stuck out. Which made the dancing all the more fun.

We danced our hearts out. Swing dancing, line dancing, slow-dancing, cha-cha-ing, waltzing and ridiculous farm-yard dancing. We never sat down to eat, it was just too much fun. This is SOOOO not my husband's thing naturally, so it made it all the more memorable.

Sometimes it's fun to let loose like you're at a college sock hop again. And that's exactly what we did.

Looooooong weekend

The Monday after Valentine's Day was President's Day and for the first time in......I don't even remember, but a LONG time.......the kids got President's Day off of school.

That night a snow front was supposed to be coming through. 

I needed to go grocery shopping for the weekly menu anyway so I ventured out that Monday. WHAT A PACKED STORE!!!!! HOLY COW! Everyone was acting like we were going to be snowed in for 3 weeks. I just got my usual grocery trip worth of groceries (read: a WHOLE cart full) and went to check out. 

A lady looked at my cart and said, "Stocking up for the storm huh?"

"No, just a regular feeding-my-family shopping trip".

I left her looking rather confused.

Anyway, it started snow-raining after dark. The kids were SO excited to go out into it.......in shorts?

It was cold pretty fast and the roads were slippery enough to slide around on and the kids had a blast.

The boys actually stayed outside until 10:30pm maybe? I don't know, Brooks and I went to bed. ;) They were working on a hockey rink though with the hose and bricks and mud.

Kellyn, not wanting to be left out ventured outside as well dressed in the outfit she insisted on wearing. My personal favorite part is the one croc and the Cinderella glass slipper.

And, as expected, she didn't last very long.

Tuesday school was cancelled. No surprise there.

Here is Royce and Aleeya trying out the hockey rink that apparently wasn't as good as last year's.

(Royce outside in his swimsuit.....do you think I need to invest in snow clothing?......nah.)

You would THINK the hockey rink would've ROCKED because we had a TON of ice. I mean, that's basically what the storm WAS!

But there was still enough snow to get dad with snowballs when he got home.

From Saturday morning through all the snow days there was a LOT of sliding down the stairs in sleeping bags.

And I pretty much mean my stairs have been ridden down at least over a thousand times.

We are talking hours......

The girls got jump ropes for Valentine's Day so there was a lot of practicing of that. I pretty much have heard every lame jump rope recess song on the face of the planet now. There was ONE proud-mom moment with one of them though. Aleeya sang this, 

"Ice cream, Ice Cream with a cherry on top,

How many boyfriends do I.......have?"

CLEARLY the word "got" was supposed to go there, but we've been working on her using it correctly. haha

Royce, the kid that picks up EVERYTHING fast would keep trying to sneak away the jump ropes so he could figure out how to do it. He actually got two in a row which was better then Iris could do that first day. He puts a LOT of work into it though, here's a video (with a special surprise at the end for you) of him with the jumprope...... 

Oh, and then there was that one night when after a day of winter/wet things everywhere and the house pretty much trashed that Brooks got a call from a news station and wanted to interview a doctor (about the flu) at our house.....in a 1/2 hour. That was fun. 

After he told me it kinda went like this, "Okay troops. Here we go. Emerson- clear the table. Bronson-clean the living room. Camden-you have the tv too. Aleena-Sweep the dining room. Iris- entertain Everly in your room. Royce and Kellyn- time for bed." 

I while I mopped the floors in the rooms they would see I could hear the boys plotting outside to ambush the news crew with snowballs when they arrived. 

Thank goodness for my mom-radar-like ears.

The news crew was grateful I foiled that plan.....obviously.

Oh, and in all the days (they are running together, were there 3 days cancelled and President's Day? I can't remember. But the the day(s) they DID go to school there was a 2 hour delay. School from 10-2-ish? Not to shabby.), there was a LOT of this in front of the TV.

I can just SEE their brain cells dying in this picture.

One snow day it was time to get some energy out, so I was grateful when a friend said to meet up at Gravitopia to jump their energy out.

It made everyone so happy.

Except when Kellyn got scared on the balance beam (1 foot from the beginning).....

Aaaaaaand when you get beaned by a dodge ball.........

but besides THAT, it was just what the doctor (and this mother) ordered.

(Oh and school was cancelled Tuesday of this week too with a large storm coming in tonight, school is cancelled for Thursday and my BEST guess would be for Friday as well. If not, there will be a 2-hour delay for sure. Here we go again.....)