little things in june part 1

diaper mail from target, goooood day

With 3 kids in diapers we go throughout these fast. 2 more boxes were still on their way.

An insanely rare date night with Casey love. He's just the best.

We always want to go to cold stone but it's too far away. That night it wasn't and we got some yumminess!

Family history event at the church where Max accompanied me and played with toys amongst the aging crowd.

A beautiful new chalkboard Casey and his friend, Josh, made me, WAHOOOO!

White washing

I have hopes to put inspiring words on it for our family for years to come.

Some really awful rice krispy treats Max helped me use. Don't use low fat marshmallows- they don't melt! I also used a box of stale rice krispy cereal that there wasn't even enough of so we had to add stale chez cereal. And then Max poured milk into the rice kris pies as they cooled down because DUH! Cereal needs milk!

Frog legged Quinny just drinking his bottle.

Max was thrilled to play with our neighbors cute little kitchen sink.

BQ

A little Dr's check up (healthy boys, just were cranky for no reason!), were hilarious in front of this mirror.

It's like he goes to school all day, comes home to be dad all evening, and then studies once the kids go to bed or something. Why the heck is he sleeping?!

More of Papa's birthday card

All his yummy puffs stuck on his chubby arms, couldn't quite get the hand eye coordination to his mouth.

That little dish washing station from earlier sparked Maxson's interest in heeling with real dishes and he's actually been a huge help!

Social interaction/Out and about

Winter is the worst.

When it's stinking cold out, germs are running rampant, and there's not snow to play in, cabin fever gets the worst of you and all I want to do is scream.

I WANT MY FRIENDS BACK! I WANT TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! I WANT TO BE HOT AND SWEATY AGAIN. And lots of internal yelling like that. It doesn't help that somehow the dads always get to get out of the house with basketball, bowling, school, callings, etc. Not complaining or anything...

Well in the past week or so I've finally gotten to get out a little more (lots of help because my mom is here to relieve some of the pressure of child watching)

I invited a bunch of friends over for craft night last week. That night was so rejuvenating: talking and laughing with friends, doing a fun activity with your hands, it was just what was needed. I made mini cookies for it and poor Max had to exercise his self control to the core to stop from eating those cookies, poor guy. (I did let him have a couple).

Crafting. Most of us made these easy banners.

Mid banner sewing.

Mini cookies. The perfect bite size (and child size serving amount)

From left to right: Renetta, myself, Katie, Suzanne, Tasha, Sarah.

Thanks girls for coming!

Another night I got to go to bowling with Casey! The babies stayed home with my mom and we took Max, holy cow Max was a HANDFUL (as seen from this first picture) but he had a lot of fun there too.

There was some high energy going on there (I'm talking about your hubby, Jessie! Ha, he was a hoot) and it was actually really fun. So many strikes and spares, ridiculous. I talked with a couple of the wives in the back and it felt like a vacation.

This is (to Max) Maxson's best friend Zack. Literally, he's one of the two adults Max is most obsessed with because he has the coolest toys: remote control helicopters and cars, Max loves Zack. Zack brought his helicopter to the bowling place to fly around a little and Max was thoroughly happy about it.

a. Random picture Max took: normal life is changing baby's diapers.
b. Casey and I got to go out for a quick lunch date (thanks mom!) to our favorite Honest Abe's Burger. We always split the fries and both burgers. This time we got their classic burger and another one with chili, cream cheese sauce, and jalepenos and it was superb. Our lunch date gave us a great time to regroup as parenting. (Max has entered this new REALLY awful stage of these really awful terrible screaming yelling tantrums and throwing stuff and it's really hard on all of us. We've no idea how to help him.) We also just laughed at silly things and it felt good to be childless for an hour.

My good looking guy even without a beard.

Lastly we took a trip to Target with my mom while she was here and Max was, surprise, awful. He has become *that* screaming, yelling, fighting, limp noodle, unconsolable child you see/hear about at the store, it's real fun. While we all had previously planned on going to the dollar store next, Max and I waited in the car for my mom because I was not about to deal with him again in public. You guys, it literally gives me anxiety now thinking about taking him places. HELP!

My 3 cute sons, melt my heart.

And my last part of social interaction: my mummy!!!!!! She was such an angel to come to town and rescue us for a week. The Lord was so very kind and knew to send her that week when we'd be needing the most amount of extra sleep since we were getting little to none at night. She cuddled and fed babies, cooked and cleaned constantly, tried helping with the terrible two year old, and gave me someone to talk and laugh to. Oh how I owe that woman so much of my time and energy.

And that there is the end (and height) of my social interaction and out and about happenings in pretty much the whole last month it seems like. Now come back spring/summer, I'm rooting for ya!

Going on a date.

A night out on the town without kiddies in tow is a rare find. Ahhhh, but that is life. 

A few weeks ago we had a day "date" with children in tow (let's be honest that's not a real date, cackle, cackle.). Ah, but we will continue with it being called as such. We went to COSTCO! (whenever we say Costco, we say it very loud an enthusiastically to let Max know it is a super fun place, he follows with a loud enthusiastic yell of some sort trying to say the word and totally not). Going to Costco was what felt like a whole day excursion. It took about half the day but that in turn wore us out for the other half of the day.  We do love Costco. And actually on the drive there we got a solid hour talking time with no interruption! That totally counts as a date. And on the way back we listened to the recent worldwide devotional for young adults. Very spiritually uplifting, it's a long one but find the time to listen to it and you'll be so happy you did!

Our hot lunch date at Costco.

BUT THEN last weekend we went on a REAL DATE! Like no kids, date, it was AMAZING! I felt young and free again, actually only kind of young and free because I still worried abut the children…sound asleep in their beds for the evening. Ha, ya, we didn't leave until they were all asleep in the evening. It was as if the babies knew we were wanting to go out because they gave us a hard time going to sleep and they never had done that before for evening sleep, that was weird.

But we went ice skating downtown! It was really fun (if you forget about how awful the ice was, how uncomfortable the skates were, and how all our afterwards-dessert places didn't work out). It was fun to just be together and be us again. Oh how I love us, I miss that phrase.

Oh hey Max!

And we ended our hot date at the grocery store (for doughnuts for Kimber THAT THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE ANYMORE).

Thanks, Katie, for sitting at our house with the sleeping children!

We've decided too make a bigger effort at finding one night a weekend for some kind of date time be that out and about or just a red box movie. I'm telling ya, we need that time together, and if we don't intentionally set time aside for us, we won't do it.

Christmas break: round 2 part 1

Beebees!!!! What a great picture to start out the post, right? BQ

Visiting Tristan and Megan. Tristan was so adorable with the babies, so so so cute. At one point he looked at me and said with wide eyes "I want two babies!"

Got to get together with these cute ladies. Nicole and Amy came to my house and we FaceTimed Brooke! I love them so so much. It's REALLY strange to think we're going on our 7th year after high school graduation and still great friends (You guys, 7 years since I graduate high school….weeeeeeeird)

New Year's day was the most wonderful weather finally (it was dang cold the whole time we were in AZ, rotten!) so we went to the park with Logan and Blair's family. We played and played and also played a great game of hide and seek with the gang where my brother hid in the top of the tree at point. THe kids ate that hiding spot up.

 It snowed New Year's Eve night actually, it was so cold! Well at least in the mountains by parent's house, it was such a beautiful site!

Casey is crazy. Just crazy. I really don't know why he wanted to do this other than to have a little fun. Scared me half to death with him jumping that far. The video I took of him doing it you can hear me gasp in air when he jumps off ha. I think he's just warming me up for the life with tons of boys.

Got to go out on a little date night with some of our siblings (THANK YOU MOM AND DAD FOR WATCHING ALL MY CHILDREN) and it was oh so much fun and oh so needed. We went to Top Golf down by the San Tan Mall and it was really fun. Imagine a golfing range bowling style with a group. Ha, ya fun. I'm no gofer AT ALL and it was still loads of fun. The place created such a fun feel kinda like a night life scene yet laid back and fun and just all around oh so great. We will definitely be going again. Helped that our siblings are so much fun :)

This picture makes me smile so big seeing that we're doing an activity with one of my brothers and Casey's brothers in the same state just casually for fun, I WANT IT TO BE LIKE THIS MORE OFTEN! Cue FOMO (feeling of missing out) tears.

This is the golfing range: Each of those screens is it's own group of golfers on the 3 stories. It seemed so futuristic and was sweet,

The golfing range had these big nets you'd try to get your golf balls in. Each ball had a censor that would tell you how far you hit it and gave you points with going in nets depending on what game you were playing, sweet huh?

The next night we went to the Mesa Temple with these family members. Oh how I love the temple1 It was a perfect way to start the year and brought peace to my soul. My parents found 3 amazing girls in their YSA ward to watch my 3 needy children and were just wonderful girls overall. I couldn't have been more thankful for them. Plus I also randomly saw my Aspen Grove friend Laurel in the temple! I love seeing familiar places everywhere in that city.

Max putting monkey in timeout, heh heh.

Coming home from a quick errand I always open the door with much hesitation. Hesitation because I always cringe to see if I hear crying from inside the house and then I feel really bad for whomever is watching the babies. It's the most wonderful sound if I hear silence knowing the babies aren't crying! I came in to find my mom like this. Bless her soul.

We got to play another game night with Megan and Scott!!! Oh how we love these 2 when it comes to Settlers! We made it a special date night in with pizza because our kids were asleep in the other rooms. We played 2 round of settlers and were deathly tired by the end. Casey sabotaged me the first game and we had a love HATE relationship the rest of the game, shocker. So glad Megan and Scott came up, it was  blast!

Max eating cookie dough like a boss.

I love that when I put them close enough together their arms usually end up locked together. BQ

And another great shot of these two, how my heart just melts over them! BQ (Bryson has caught up to Quinn in weight finally and weighs 2 oz more than him! They're 12# 6 oz and 12# 4 oz

Bahama Bucks with Kirk and Whitney! Max had a fabulous time monopolizing the shaved ice. Casey got his free everest sized one when we went in. It made him so happy.

You can see from this picture that our Bahama Bucks excursion was not nearly as relaxing as it used to be. Our time there was filled with baby spit up, feeding babies, putting in binkies, and oh, don't forget about Max ha.

Max loves these 2 people.

My saintly parents yet again offered to watch all 3 of our kids to give us another little date night out. We chose to get a pizza at Sauce, talked about our goals for the year, and decided to make it a priority to get out alone on dates like this when we got back to Nebraska no matter what the cost because after the 3rd time in a week getting out alone we understood how truly important it was for our relationship.

Aaaaaaaaand that's a wrap of our time in Arizona!