Beach Time

We wrapped up our fall fest & boat day with a just-before-sunset trip to the beach. Ahhh. Good times. These pictures don't need words.

 Wait. This one does need words. Cole was really into picking up "seashells". And almost every "shell" he picked up was some type of man-made trash. Below is his favorite. "Wooks wike a biwd!" It sort of does look like a bird.

On a Boat

See how ready the boys are for water? Safety first!

Right after the fall festival with girlfriends Lyla and Harper we we had the chance to go on a boat! Cap and Judes, parental unit of Sessy, was so gracious to take us out on a boatride. The day could not have been more perfect for it, and the Robitussin I chugged in the car could not worked any better during the boatride. It was kismet.

We donned safety gear and followed our boathosts. Was kinda nice to have two hands free.

With my free two hands I could document all the boat-things Judes and Sessy were doing to get ready. Not sure what they were doing, but they looked like important boat things.

Meanwhile we got settled.

And more boat things were done.

And then we were off. Seems only appropriate to eat cookies with the word Ahoy in it while on a boat.

Like I said before, the weather was gorgeous.

And Cap gave us a little tour as he cruised us towards Thunderbolt to check out the huge yachts. 

And then as little boys do, some of us got a little antsy (the boys) and were getting sleepy (me). So we headed back to dock and more boat things were done.

And we ate. And then the boys crashed.

And we all enjoyed two hours of quiet relaxation. This was my view from the boys. That's Elvis' head.

And Sessy and Keith channeled their inner teenager and played a game on her iPhone that involved angry birds of different colors. I can't keep up with what the kids are doing nowadays.

And then the boys woke up from nap and we went to the beach. You know I'm going to make you wait a day for those pictures. But, I will tell you now that the boatride made an impression on the boys. A few days ago they started playing 'boatride', which involves them sitting on the sofa cushions (on the floor below) and pretending to be (what I'm assuming is) captain and passenger. Below I was invited to join them on the boat, but could only sit at the front end of the boat.

Hmmm. Now that I see the picture here I can't really see the pillows. I only see Cole putting a choke hazard in his mouth. Trust me, the "boat"/pillows are there.

And, that shirt I'm wearing is from last year's Gobble Jog 10K, or maybe from the year before? I am not really ready for this year's Gobble Jog. Oh lordy. I best go work out.

D*mn

Interrupting this recap of our Savannah weekend to let you know that all the adults in this household would like to give Daylight Savings Time the finger. Suck it, DST.

All the kids say "waking up when it's COMPLETELY dark? That's awesome!"

So here is what we did at 5:30AM. Yes, they picked the balloon color themselves.

Sessy's House

Is where we went. I really should be working out now, seeing that I have a 10K race in exactly three weeks, but I really want to share our Savannah weekend with you. Or at least get the process started.

We've been threatening to visit Sessy for months. We had a trip planned back in April, I think, but had to cancel to due illness. And this trip wasn't without illness, but we put our big girl pants on and made the trip happen. And we're so glad we did.

It's only a 4 hour ride to Savannah, and the boys did so well. Cole, Grady, Dora the Explorer and Bribery Cookies all got along great in the backseat of the car. Before we knew it, we exploring Sessy's house. We had a pretty early bedtime that night, but luckily no one felt the need to sleep in the next monring. We had Savannah as our playground, after all!

We did explore Sessy's house more.

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And ate the delish cinnamon rolls she made us.

And joined Jake the Dog to explore the backyard.

And worked on getting our shirts on without assistance. This is both a learning experience for him, and a lesson in patience for us.

And then we were off because Sessy had stuff planned for us. We were meeting sister of Sessy, parents of Sessy and nieces of Sessy at a fall festival. Notice how our shirt is backwards here...at least it's on, I figured.

And this picture is the ONLY picture I have of Sessy's nieces. I cannot believe this. You can hardly see Harper's face, and it's a CUTE one. The two girls you see here are also twins, Lyla in the front, Harper checking out belly behind Lyla. These two are seriously cute. We look at their pictures on FB from time to time, and every time a picture of Harper comes on Grady says "ooooooooh, Hah-pah!". He must have gotten a little shy because there wasn't much interaction between the four this day. And that's ok, we can work out the details of the arranged marriages later.

Cole heard something about a hayride, and sat in that spot until someone delivered on the promise.

And a few minutes later, we got our hayride. Sessy documented. We did three loops around the big field. Cole relaxed and enjoyed it, but by lap 2.25, Grady said he wanted to get off.

At the end of lap 3.0, we joined Lyla and Hahpah on the slide. Their daddy was assisting at the top of the slide. Here comes Lyla, feet first.

WHOOOOOO! She's fearless. Good luck with that later, Emmy and Wilcox.

Then Grady...

And Cole. And Harper, too, but no picture of that.

And since we were moving on to a bigger playground and his assistance wasn't needed at the top of the slide anymore, down came the biggest kid of all.

We played at the bigger playground.

And rested for a snack. Emmy has taught her girls some sign language, and I'm pretty sure if Lyla knew how to sign "open your hand and give me those cheeze-its, dammit", she'd be giving her Aunt that sign here.

And more playing ensued.

More to come.

Yesterday and Today

I started this post on Friday, and as you can see I've been really good at finishing things in a timely manner. (The kitchen cabinet clean-out project is still going). So, Thursday I picked the boys up at "school" and had to laugh. They were wearing hats, their pajama shirts and underwear. Oh, and sandals. It was Orange and Black day at school, so that's where the hats came into play. And they were supposed to wear orange and black clothes, and the pajama shirts were the best thing we had. And no pants? It seems we both had accidents right before I picked them up and I must have forgotten to put back-up pants in their schoolbag.

It's our ritual now, when we get home, to sit on the front steps and chat about our day. Grady is the keeper of the schedule, so when we pull into the driveway, he immediately tells me that I need to go get him out of the car and go sit on the steps and chat. I do as I am told, and he runs to the steps immediately.

Cole, on the other hand, is going through his independence seeking phase, and at this point, on most days, is still in the car. For 15 minutes our conversations go like this:

Me: "Are you ready to come sit on the steps?"
Cole: "I NOT!"
Me: "Ok, I'll come check back in a few minutes."

I walk away, go sit on steps. Until Grady tells me that Cole is still in the car, and that I should go "get him!". So I walk back to the car and try again.

Me: "Coley, can I help you get out of the car."
Cole: (thinking for a minute, because 'i not' is not an appropriate response here). "YOU NOT!"
Me: "Ok".

And on and on this goes until finally, he wants to get out and starts crying as if I've locked him in the car for hours! How could I be so cruel??

And then he joins his bruder on the porch for a photo.

And we eat our after-school popcorn snack.

And act a little crazy.

And talk, talk, talk, talk. As their teacher likes to tell me "your boys are talkers". Uh-huh, yes, I was aware.

Our schedule keeper usually tells me when he's ready to go in to have dinner. And on this day, a special Mickey was waiting for each of the boys at their placemat. Thanks Grammie and Grampie for the Mickey. The boys loved "scawy Mickey".

We ate, we took bath-baths, we waited for Dada. We had a great Orange and Black day.

And then Friday, which would be the "today" part of this blog title, they wore their costumes to school. Which made our front step photo of the day look like this:

And at school they did a little trick or treating at a few neighbor's houses, so that meant part of our Friday front porch step time looked like this. We love "shocolate". We ate a lot of shocolate.

Dada made it home early today, so we played in the backyard a bit. With balls. We threw them "big high".

And we carried around the picture of baby cousin Maya, whom Grady has dubbed "baby sister". Thanks for the pics, Aunt Linda. That picture of Maya has been well-loved.

I've not yet shown you the boys' buckets. They LOVE these, more than I ever thought they would. It's Bat and 'Stein. Bat and Stein went to school with them on this day for Trick or Treating, and got a little bit of leaves and dirt on them. So after the boys went to bed I started cleaning the bags, and noticed something unusual in one of the bags.

Hmmm. It seems either one of the houses was giving out vintage books, or one of our boys snuck off with a school book. I wonder who that could be...

And finally, I leave you with their Halloween art masterpieces. I was told these are "booomtiful". I agree.