{FaMilY piCtuRes 2012}

I am so excited to have finally had our family pictures done since Maddix joined our family almost a year ago!!  We hardly have any pictures of Maddix hanging on the walls, so I am glad to have these now and can't wait to spread them across my house!  We did our pictures in Crystal Cove and it was the cutest little beach area ever!  I love all the bright colorful buildings and great scenery!  But we quickly learned that taking pics at the beach makes it very hard for the kids to concentrate!  Maddix wanted to eat all the sand and Ayden & Zoey just wanted to play in it!  All in all, I think we got some great shots!  Thanks so much Lisa Webb Photography!!!  :)

Couldn't pick a fave, so had to post them all!!!!  :)

{eYe inFecTionS, reLatiVeS, cRusHeS & bAskEtbaLLs}

This is me this week in all of my one eyed Willy glory!!   Maddix had conjunctivitis last week and as careful as I tried to be wiping his eyes and picking out the goopiness, I obviously wasn't careful enough!!  I woke up Saturday morning with my eye glued shut!  The swelling was crazy at the beginning of the week....this picture is really what I looked like for 2 days....a red, goopy, watery, swollen shut eye!!  I haven't been able to wear any makeup all week and I discovered last night that I have been having an allergic reaction to the prescription eye drops that Maddix's doc prescribed for him!  Oh that has been fun....just picture being stabbed with needles in the eyeballs, itchiness in your eyes that is worse than you have ever experienced an instant runny nose and a sneezing attack that never ends!  Fun stuff!!  It is now nearing the end of the week and that eye is getting better....and surprise surprise....now I have it in the other eye!  Ahhhhhhh!!!  Time for me to make a doc appt!

In happier news, we went to Big Bear last weekend because my Grandma Emmy from Chicago & my Auntie Grace from Arizona (my dad's mom & aunt) were visiting.  It was fun to see them and visit for a couple days!

I love this picture of my cute 85 year old Grandma reading Zoe a book.  This is one of the things I remember so clearly from my childhood.....my Grandma reading stories to me at bedtime when I would spend the night at her house!  :)

I love that my kids will have memories of seeing their Great Grandma when they are older.....even if she does live so far away and we only get to see her once or twice a year!  I have such great memories of growing up with my Great Grandma too!  :)

She may be 85, but she still has the strength to carry around this chubby guy......

The kids with Grandma Emmy and Auntie Grace.....they are sisters only a couple years apart and it is so funny because Ayden and Zoey truly do not know which one is which!!  HA!  They think that they are twins and they cannot tell them apart!  :)  So cute!!  So happy that we got to visit with you both and we look forward to seeing you again at Christmas!  :)

Jeremiah and my mom took the kids to the Big Bear Zoo while I stayed home to take a nap make dinner, clean the cabin and be productive!!  It sure was a quiet couple hours!!  These 4 monkeys fit right in at the zoo......

This little monkey has a serious 1st grade crush!  I keep forgetting to blog about this, but I want to make sure I write down all the details so we can laugh about this someday with Ayden!  After the 1st day of school, he came home and said he liked a cute girl named Delaney and she was his girlfriend.  He said she had blonde hair like him and she was very pretty.  He said they were meant for each other!  He could hardly remember her name the first couple days, but he practiced and practiced so he would never forget!  HA!  Every day after school, Ayden would come home and "report" on how his day went with Delaney.  It got to the point where I had to start asking him if he was learning anything in school....anything other than girls that is!

He told us one day that he spied on her a lot that day.  Jeremiah told him girls don't like to be spied on.  So the next day, he acted cool....he showed us the "cool" walk he did in front of her!  Oh my....if you could only see it you would be worried for him to ever find a girlfriend!  HA!  Another day, he said that Delaney chased him at recess......he was sure that it was because the night before he had put some of Daddy's deodorant on after his shower!  Yep....girls do love good smelly boys!  :)  One day, he told me he was going to put scratches all over his face and body!!  I asked him why he would do that and he said because then he would look tough and Delaney would like him!  Zoe jumped right in and said, "That's right Ayden....girls like tough boys because they can save them!"  He has made her little notes and cards at home and taken them to her.....he has picked flowers on the way to school to give to her!!  Can you tell yet that he is super obsessed!?!?!  One day, he picked a purple flower out of our yard and Zoe told him that was a great thing to give to Delaney because she read in her Fancy Nancy book that if you give a girl a purple flower, they will remember you forever!!  I can just picture these 2 in high school trying to "help" each other understand what a boy likes and what a girl likes!  HA!  Just last week, he said that Delaney told him that she didn't like him.  He said to her, "When I go home from school, I am going to go straight to my room and cry and I am not going to even come out for dinner"!  (Seriously, where on earth does he hear these things?!?!?!?)  She then told him that she did like him, but she doesn't like that he chases her!  So that made him feel better!  And all this week, he has been using my little weights to make his muscles big!!  Oh my!  We are in trouble with this little guy already......I hope his puppy love doesn't get in the way of his 1st grade education!!  :)

I love that these 3 are all starting to play together!  Ayden and Zoey have always been really good about playing and now I can let Maddix in on it and they are so good to him!  They are lucky to have each other!!  :)

Maddix's favorite toy is Ayden's basketball!!  He seriously gets hysterical with excitement and starts salivating if he catches a glimpse of the basketball laying around in the garage!!

So we've been practicing his dribbling......

....this is his "I just dunked on you" face.....

.....learning to palm the basketball.....

I can already tell that he is gonna be such a little stud!!  If his ball handling skills don't give that away, then check out the size of his monstrous feet!!

{tHis iS oUr buSy liFe}

What a week!!  Thank goodness it is Friday!  I feel like I say that every week tho.  It seems that the older the kids are getting, the busier and busier our lives are becoming.  I know it is going to get a lot crazier....for now, I only have 1 kid with homework and 2 in sports!  What am I going to do when I have 3 kids with homework and 3 kids in sports!!  Ahhhhhh........!!!!!!!!!

Ayden and Jeremiah raced in the last Over The Hump mountain bike race last week!  It's super fun in the summer....a lot harder to go to on a school night, so I am glad it is over!

Poor little Maddix has had a cold for a couple weeks....finally took him to the doc this week and got some drugs for a sinus infection and conjunctivitis.  Poor guy!  I guess that is life now that kids are back in school, right?!?!  Germs, germs, everywhere!!

The insane heat wave that we have had for the past 2 or 3 weeks has finally subsided (for now)!  It is still super humid, but at least we are out of the 100 degree temps!  Two weeks into school and we were finally able to walk to pick Ayden up at school in the afternoon instead of drive the hop, skip and a jump distance the school is.  We walk every morning, but it's been too hot to walk at 2 pm to pick him up!  Thank goodness for cooler temps!

Soccer has started and is in full swing!  Zoey doesn't start practice til next week, but Ayden has been having practices 2 nights a week!

Here is what Ayden thinks of socer......

Ok, in his defense, it WAS over 100 degrees on that day at that practice....so I'll give him that!  He didn't really love soccer last year....he hates the running.  I think I am the one that wants him to play soccer so bad.  So I felt guilty for forcing him to go and decided to sign him up for winter baseball since he loved baseball so much.  So we started that practice this week too.....

We decided after going to both that we were gonna stick it out with soccer this fall!  Ayden's choice!  :)  I am happy he is giving it another shot and I hope he has more fun this year than he did last!  So far the practices are going great and he is getting better and better!  :)

Here is what happens when I put Ayden in charge of babysitting Maddix in the toy room for a couple minutes while I jump in the shower.....

He tied him to the table so he couldn't escape!  HA!  Gotta love his silly creative mind.  It was a good thought....he was just trying to keep him safe!  And Maddix didn't seem to mind too much....he just sat there and played....and didn't cry at all....but if looks could kill......

I found some yummy crock pot freezer meals on Pinterest and Jeremiah and I decided to spend the day last Saturday whipping them all up!  So nice to have them for those days when things are crazy and I just want to throw something in the crock!  The meals called for so many yummy fresh veggies!  But everything had to be chopped up....good thing Jeremiah is such a great chopper!!  ;-)

Ready to assemble!!  We made 14 freezer meals in 1 day!  We have had 2 so far.....1 was ok, but we probably wouldn't make again and 1 was really good!  :)  

It's the end of the week and this little cutie is feeling much better!  He's cutting teeth like crazy these days.....you can see the big one on the top is in and the 2nd big one on top has broke the skin!  This kid has the cutest smile ever....I can't wait to see how adorable it is when he has a mouth full of teeth and that to die for dimple!!  :)

Here's to a happy relaxing weekend.....to recharge us before we start the craziness of another busy week on Monday!!  :)