One Last Beach Vacation...

...before the weather turns into Fall! We went out to Myrtle Beach on the last weekend of Sept. (the 24th,25th) to take advantage of the great weather that we were having. It was a perfect weekend with lots of beach time, relaxing under the umbrellas and hanging out at a resort hotel that had a game room, lots of pools (the lazy river pool was my favorite!) and good food. We had never been to Myrtle Beach and it was a bit crazy with all the tourist attractions, but we just hung out on the beach and on Sunday, we took advantage of the Aquarium since the weather looked a bit ominous outside.
My boys LOVE playing in the sand, especially on the beach (versus the sandbox at the park)! Every time we go to the beach, it works out great because they will play for hours and we relax under the umbrellas! We do of course get in there and build sand castles with them, but that sand is thoroughly entertaining!
After running around all morning on Saturday, Gabriel finally passed out on my chest (willingly, I might add!) Here he is right after he woke up. :)

Hello Mr. Banana Peel!

Lately (about the last 2-3 months) Gabriel has been majorly into pretending! His favorite is to take any two little toys or objects, hand me one of them and make them talk to each other. In this picture, the two banana peels said hello, went on a walk together, went to play at the park together and had a picnic! Gabriel just cracks me up with this stuff lately! Mostly, it is little toy characters, but to me, it is especially cute when we have non toy objects interact. I am remembering back to when Ayden was about this age and two carrots had a conversation! :) This photo was taken on 9.21.10.
Here is a cute photo of Ayden playing with Jakey, his neighbor friend who we get together with every Friday (along with Quentin who wasn't there that day). They were waiting to catch the butterflies that were coming out of the elephants trunk! 9.23.10

Ayden's Reward - continued

Ayden's Reward!

Since Ayden started school a couple of months ago, he has been doing pretty well, discipline wise. His teacher has a system where the kids all start out with a green card at the beginning of the day. If they do something that they aren't supposed to, they get one warning and if they do it again, their status changes to a yellow card. From there it goes to a red card and to the principals office, but that doesn't happen often at all. If their status is on green the whole day, they get sent home with a smiley face stamp on their daily calendar. If they have the yellow card, they get sent home with a frown face. In the first few weeks of this, Ayden would always keep the majority of the 5 day week at a smiley face with maybe one or two frown faces here or there (not every week). We said that if he got a full week of smiley faces, he could get a prize. So, he picked out a remote control helicopter! Here are Daddy and Ayden having fun with his prize back in mid Sept. 9.19.10 to be exact so I can remember. :)

Fall Soccer Has Begun!

Coach Julio and Ayden after their second game of the season (mom forgot to take a photo at the first game)! The first game was super exciting...they won by a landslide, but more importantly, they all played so well together! This is Julio's second season as head coach and the second season of the same kids together and they are really getting to know each other better and seem to be playing well together. They've got better ball control, better passing and less bunching. It is so much fun to watch the games! I don't see the whole game though because Gabriel is too impatient to sit through it all and so we end up on the play ground! Oh well, such is life with a 2 year old!
After the games, we end up on the play ground some more! :)

More Play Date Fun!

More Fun!

Goofing Around with Dad!

Just some good old goofing around with Dad on the floor one night a couple of weeks ago!

Life Group Ladies Night!

After many months of wanting to have a girls fancy dinner party, we finally got all of us together to have some fun and eat some good food together! We had herb crusted rack of lamb, rich roasted potatoes, cranberry vinegrette salad, carrot & leek soup and mango tart for dessert. We all had a great time together!
Here I am serving up the mango tart! Diana insisted that we take a pic of the tart even though we had already started digging into it. :)

Being Silly with Peyton!

Silly neighbor friends! :)

A Week With Peyton!

Gabriel had such a great time a couple of weeks ago when we had Peyton with us all week in the mornings! The two of them are so silly together and get along really well. They were cracking me up and kept each other entertained!

Before & After!

So, this was our room before the paint job...
And here it is after! We don't yet have any furniture (hopefully in one more year...these grad school loans are taking forever to pay off!) but we like the colors much better...peaceful and tranquil. Hopefully I will get some things up on the wall soon as well to make the room look a little more complete. :)

Brotherly Love!

These boys are so often crazy, running around like chickens with their heads cut off that Julio had to capture this quiet moment while they were cozy, watching a movie together. Ahhhh...love it!!!!!

More Bug Fest!

Whenever we would go to these fun events, I would ask Ayden if he wanted to get his face painted, but up until this year, he didn't really want to wait in line. He had too much energy and not enough patience. But this year, it was Ayden's idea to wait in the line and decide what he wanted painted on his face! Needless to say, Mom was really excited! He looked through the book and picked out this spider! Pretty cool, huh?!
This was the Bug Olympics! This race had something to do with a dung beetle moving something! :) I can't quite remember. :)
There was a man doing some chalk art on the sidewalk and I had to snap a photo-pretty impressive, right?
All the kids were encouraged to draw their own picture with chalk on the side walk and so this is what Ayden came up with - a rocket with grey smoke coming out of the bottom (you can't see the smoke since the side walk is grey too!)
We also waited in line to try some bug food prepared by a few local restaurants. Ayden was brave and tried a roasted ant and I tried some cricket corn bread!

Bug Fest!!

We went to Bug Fest in downtown Raleigh last weekend (Sept. 11th) and this was the first thing Ayden saw and of course wanted to try out! It was called "Beetle Battle!" He met this boy on the left in line and they got along great and so they got to go in there and battle together! Ayden is so tall that he was about the same size as this child (who was 7, almost 8), so they were evenly matched and it turned out to be a draw! :) The battle was tied!
Beetles battling!
Here we are making crayfish homes (shaped like a chimney) or using play dough to create a pretend home like a real crayfish makes in the river.
Ayden took the time to make the "brick layered" chimney home for his crayfish!
We met up with Cousins Sonja, Frank and Annika! It was a fun afternoon!

Play Date with Jake & Zoey!

Gabriel loves his Friday morning play dates with his friends! We've missed having Quentin while Carmen is working, but hopefully we'll have him again in October. :) Last Friday, we got to have Zoey with us at our house and the three of them had a great time together! This was Friday, Sept. 10th.
Dog pile on the couch!
You'll love this catchup on your hamburger! They were having a great time deciding what they wanted for "lunch!" :)

Baby Shower for Tracey!

The talented cake maker, Wendy...at it again! :)
The lovely and delicious food that Diana so graciously prepared for all of us life group ladies!
The adorable diaper cake and decorations that Diana put together!
The group of ladies all enjoying our food and good conversation!
The Momma-to-be Tracey (for the second round or is it third? What do you say when you have had two pregnancies, but three kids - twins the first time around??), Diana with the diaper cake and Wendy, the lovely Cake Maker! We all had a wonderful time celebrating this soon to be little Baby Boy Drotts addition to our group!