Whew

I sit here relaxing after a week of living outside maintaning the kids, the garden, the animals, the pool, the flower beds, and the like! i waited all winter for this, so i have to remind myself not to stress out! i do love it, and memories are being made.

Some things from the past week or so:

Adam feeding Buck. It's the funnest thing feeding a bunny a carrot.

Naked Clay & the sprinkler, he could have played with that until the water ran dry.

Slip & Slide:

The twins driving around Great Aunt Mary's lawn mower. FYI: It's for sale if anyone needs a lawn mower. Boys not included.

Adam flying a kite....sortof.

We got to see a wild turkey with 11 newborn babies! The cutest thing ever:

Also saw a balloon take off: You could say I was stressed out about this! We got rid of 5 kittens today, just from posting a sign at the end of the lane. So i feel better now. But still have 4+ kittens and 1 pregnant mom. Getting the mammas spayed is on "the list", which means it WILL happen!

Quote of the week, from Brad: After i acknowledged something cute he did this week, he asks "Could you try to get that up on facebook?" Oh dear.

He's riding

So proud of Adam tonight, he rode bike w/out his training wheels! Thanks for the motivation Dana, he can't wait to ride with you!

Phillies!

Last night was the much anticipated Phillies game. Michael, Rod and I headed down for the game. I've been looking forward to this since the 2011 schedule came out and i saw they were playing the Rangers this year. My Rangers buddy Josh Hamilton is injured and rehabing in triple A, so we didn't get to see him.

The new HD scoreboard is pretty nice. Roy Halladay pitched..
It was raining all week, and i prayed and prayed that it wouldn't rain on us Friday night! It only rained a little bit for about an inning and that was it!! Thank you God, it was a beautiful evening. I did get to try out my lovely white poncho from Rod's bro.
It was Irish Heritage night at the ballpark, so the Phanatic was doing some Irish dancing. A win for the Phillies!

Thanks to those who helped with the boys, so we could enjoy a night away. It was a fun evening!

A week later....

and we added more animals to the zoo!

first we found a litter of kitties. 6 of them, 2 are spoken for. Any other takers?

Tuesday (i think) we picked up 9 chicks. Adam really wanted a yellow one, which will turn white. The others are Australorps and will stay black. We're better prepared this time around for chickens, i think the setup we have in the garden shed will work out good.

Now i didn't say they are the cutest animals you'll ever see!
Wed. we got 2 female bunnies 2 months old, "Diamond" and "Crystal". They are such soft and sweet little things.
Love this one of Clay and Buck:We are all loving the excitment of the new animals, lots of people have come by to play with the masses. But what happens when the newness wears off, and the animals get bigger, and it's less exciting? we'll burn that bridge when we get there!

Projects, projects, projects!

First of all, Happy Mother's Day to my wonderful Mom!! I won't be able to see her on Mother's Day, but we had a nice time on Thursday celebrating and being together.

We've had many a project take place here this week. Not only is there never a dull moment with the boys, but there's never a dull moment with my husband! He's always got something up his sleeve. I love it (most of the time.....or at least more then 1/2 the time!) This week a big pile of stone came, AKA heaven for little boys. They've been out there for 2 days straight! Let me tell you it makes for some dirty bath water. But at least this way they actually get baths! The stone was to help cover the huge red propane tank you see here. Rod dug a nice big hole with the backhoe and buried the tank.
Clay does a lot of observing..
We've been talking about getting bunnies here, and some chickens. We converted the garden shed into a chicken coupe. Rod left today to pick up some bunny cages a guy had for sale. He came back with some nice cages, and a bunny!
We named him "Buck". Male bunnies are bucks, females are Does. Buck is a buck, naturally :) We plan to get a couple Does for Buck.
This hair has been driving me nuts since February!!!

Well they finally got their summer cuts!! You can see Brad's cut on the bunny picture. Ben's looks the same :) Glad it got cut before they got stone dust all throughout their hair!

Whenever i buy Vanilla extract at the store i think "are you kidding me?!?" It's so expensive and i use a lot of it. A cousin in law posted a link on how to make your own vanilla. I'm going to start that process this week! As soon as i buy me some rum. It looks so easy and fun. Here's the site... http://www.diynatural.com/homemade-vanilla-extract/ You can get vanilla beans on ebay or amazon or other favorite online stores. They also should be found in health food stores.

I'm sure i missed some things. A lot goes on in one week! I'm also happy to have my garden planted and flowers planted.

To all you moms, have a very blessed Mother's day!

the "Walk for Babies"

Yesterday was a good day for the walk. Not too hot, not too cold. No rain (that's amazing!) This was our first year walking for March of Dimes, walk for babies. The money raised went towards equipping NICU's with the latest equipment and therapy for the little babies. It was exciting to see all the people! There were hundreds of walkers. I can't imagine how much money was raised.

Ready for the walk: Adam likes my pink hat, i decided not to fight it.

The Armadillo gave us free kids meal tokens for Texas Roadhouse:

Ann Shannon from News 8 was the MC for the preemie parade; that's when all the NICU graduates went up front and got their medals. She called the kids names, one at a time (or 2 at a time for twins) and said their birth weight and how many weeks early they were. It was very cool.

Then we walked!

....and walked

....and walked...

and walked! Adam walked the whole thing. Ben and Brad about 2/3's of it.
It was a privilege to be a part of this event!