Some guy retired, he gave my kids cupcakes, and now he's fired!

March 2018

Guys!! I have found two community groups that everyone should be part of! The first is Salad group: a group of ladies get together every Monday morning and bring salad toppings to share - a big bowl of two toppings each. Then we each use all the collective toppings to make five individual salads. It's great! I think I spend $10 or less each week to get five FREAKING AMAZING salads because they have at least twelve toppings and we all know that if I was making a salad, the toppings would stop at carrots, tomatoes and celery. The end. So these salads are gourmet compared to that, I mean, look at this picture! That's probably 16 toppings or more! Delicious!

Salad group is my new secret

Group 2 is actually one that I started - a freezer meal group! I love it! Every other month a few ladies come to my house and we make about 12-18 meals each in about three hours. It's fantastic! I live on these meals! This picture is pretty much all the ingredients for our meat marinade themed event. It's a smaller ingredient list so cheap meals, easy assembly, all around success!

Freezer meal ingredients

So excited to show off her writing skills

GUYS THIS HAPPENED!!! Hyrum took his first steps! It was that magical moment when the air seems to tingle and you can see it in their eyes that they are now going to walk from this day forward. It was so cool! The only sad part was that James had been unemployed and home with us for three months - could have witnessed Hyrum's first steps any one of those 90+ days. But alas, James was at his first day of his new job when Hyrum decided to start walking. Haha! Such is life! Thankfully, I got plenty of video for James to see. After Hyrum took his first steps, I naturally cheered loudly and laughed and cried and got Abi's attention from the other room so she and Audrianne joined us in the kitchen and all three kids paraded around the island for about half an hour. It was adorable!

First steps!!!!

You know you're doing OK as a parent when your kid says their nightly prayers. What a great milestone for Abi to hit!

She's getting pretty good at her nighttime prayers

My kids LOVE these tortellini's from Costco, especially since they make perfect rings.

Tortellini noodles are the coolest

Why is Hyrum making this face, you ask? Well, check out the next picture if you don't believe me but Audrianne is asleep. Yep! This cannot be good on her nose long term. Haha!

Oh dear!

She's asleep!

James made Sea World sound so fun, I decided to brave it with all three kids which meant no roller coasters but we did manage to see a show. Ok, I have to brag/commiserate for a minute to any who have multiples or just kids very close together because they will understand. Sea World does not allow strollers in their theater areas which I did not consider when I prepared for this day and I NEED my stroller with three mobile children. So what did I do but suck it up and carry two 20+ pound children and a stuffed-full diaper bag past about a mile of strollers so we could watch the dolphins. Yeah, I felt pretty tough at that moment! And a bit like everyone should be parting the way in front of me. I wanted to shout, "Everybody move!" like Andre the giant as the kids kept slipping a little further down my hips. Haha! It worked, we loved it, the kids didn't get lost. It's just part of being a twin mom. #iprayedforthis

Look who we found!

Watching the dolphins

OK, so we go to HEB which is an anxiety-inducing-because-it's-so-large grocery store and as we walk in, people surround us and offer my children cupcakes because Frank or somebody is retiring after several lifetimes of being with the company. He was sweet and clearly ecstatic about his life but, hello! Train these young, childless employees please! They all walked up and offered my kids RED CUPCAKES. Um no! I quickly intervened and requested white ones for the twins at least. Sheesh, people. Haha! I actually love to spoil my kids and am trying very hard to be ok with messes. It has taken a few therapy sessions (that's not a joke) but we're getting there. But this is why: please see the next picture...

Some guy retired, he gave my kids cupcakes, and now he's fired!

See Audrianne's hair? See how there is a red circle? Yeah, Abi decided to give her kisses on her hair with her messy red lips. Oh my goodness. You can't even get mad at anybody, not Frank because he's so happy to retire that he's hugging everyone who walks in; not Abi because she's sharing her love with Audrianne which is rare; not even the grocery store because they conveniently set out twice as many trash cans throughout the store and gave us extra napkins. So, what do you do? Just smile and enjoy the mess!

Notice the red circle in her hair?

Abi is old enough we are trying to get in a better habit of having weekly Family Night. She definitely is loving it and having a tasty treat helps her remember that we need to do it so I think it's going to stick this time. :)

Family night!

Ok, remember in the earlier post I mentioned wanting to teach Ring Around the Rosey to my kids? Well, I did. Hyrum didn't get the point, so I tried to tug him along in the circle and he tripped and fell and somehow in the process we pulled his elbow out of socket and gave him what is called Nurse-maid's elbow. Well, his arm just hung limp and he wouldn't use it for hours so while I took Abi and Audrianne to church, James went with Hyrum to urgent care (I had to teach a class or you bet we'd have all been in urgent care together). Hyrum was apparently a champ, albeit a sad champ! Several exercises, stretches and x-rays later showed nothing so official diagnoses was simply the Nurse-maid's elbow. What a bummer! He wasn't real keen to play Ring Around the Rosey again but now months later, he loves it! We're more careful now though.

And a trip to the urgent care on a Sunday afternoon

He's fine!...

Audrianne is my stick-collecting child. We call them treasures. Abi gets real excited to follow her example and collect treasures. It's actually adorable! Until they want to bring them in the house. So we've established a special place in the flower bed to leave their treasures. Haha!

Collecting sticks

H-H-Hair for "H" week

How he likes to chill

Just keeping it real folks. We don't do adventures all the time. Haha! Sometimes we veg.

Watching a show

Pretty sure this fun resulted in us being sick again a week later. UGH! Haha!

Playing in the rain - yep, they got dirty

Not sure what he's after but he's stinking cute!

James has passed on his love for Mother's Taffy cookies.

Daddy's favorite cookie

They inherited his taste buds

Zoned out

Give it to us!

We win!

Every now and then, Audrianne finds hats around the house and brings them to me to put on her. She and Abi really love hats and it's super cute. Hyrum hates them, but he also had to wear the helmet so? Bad memories maybe? Hehe

Audrianne loves hats