Road Trip!

We took our second mother/son road trip last weekend.  The first one was when the boys were one so needless to say, at age three it was not nearly as challenging as our first mother/son road trip.  It took a bit of work, but I was able to keep them awake until Mitchell so that we could go and take a quick picture at the Corn Palace. 
Here they are this year...they don't look all that impressed.

They've changed just a bit from our last trip.

It was no surprise, that the first thing they wanted to do at grandpa and grandma's house is play angry birds on grandpa's "lilypad" (a.k.a. IPad).  Pretty sad that my three year olds mastered Angry Birds before I had ever even played it:)

We did lots of FREE sight-seeing, the best part about Rapid City is that there are still lots of free things to do.  That is my kind of town!
Storybook Island...

Dinosaur Park...Colby was not a fan, but we still got him in a few pictures.

The Fish Hatchery...they gave us that bucket of fish food (not full) for free.  The boys loved feeding the fish, well to be honest, mom had fun feeding the fish too:)

What a great weekend!  Colby would have stayed a while longer he was pretty sad to leave, but Jacob was ready to go to his "home and see daddy."

Children's Museum

I am so glad that we had a couple of people tell us about the children's museum in Brookings, this place was so much fun.  I was sooooo wishing I could play too:)

Two little mechanics, fixing the car...

From the field....

To the grocery store...

Who doesn't love water and things to climb in and on...

This guy was pretty scary so you will notice our kids are not in the picture...

The boys' favorite part was the outdoor water area...



We for sure will be visiting again!



Five Alarm Fun!

I don't know who liked the fire truck birthday more, Jeff or the boys.  The fire dept did a fantastic job with this birthday party, they brought the cake, ice cream sandwiches, little stuffed toys and plastic hats for the kids on top of TWO fire trucks and five firefighters!!!  The kids got to spray a hose and an old fire extinguisher AND go for a ride in the fire trucks.  Colby and Jacob would correct me and say two rides, they went around our neighborhood and then decided to go for a longer ride so they went around town for a bit too...Wow!!!  I was so impressed.  So, here are some pics of all the fun...

Thank you to all of our friends and family that help us celebrate the boys' birthday and to the Marshall Fire Dept for making it such a special day.  How will we ever top this? 

updates are coming...

We are having an awesome summer and can't wait to share more photos with everyone.  We had the boys' fire truck birthday party a few weeks ago which was a blast...I think I am still recovering from it:)  We have not forgotten about the blog or sharing our pics with friends and family we just have not gotten a chance to go through the pictures yet.  Work and volunteer commitments are keeping us very busy lately, but we will be back soon.

Backyard Campout

First of all...thank you to everyone that made a donation to our "campout team".  It was so much fun to get our tent out for the weekend.  The boys got to help with set-up...

...had to check out every zipper...

...jumped, ran, wrestled, and roughhoused in the sleeping bags...

...and then asked if they could go to bed, that was a first:)

Here they are counting the stars as they enjoy their before bed snack by the fire.  

We woke up to a thunderstorm at 5:00 AM, we said that even if it rained we were going to tough it out and stay in the tent.  But, we were a little worried the boys would get scared which could ruin camping for them for a long time so we finished our campout in the house:) 

Airing Our Dirty Laundry

Ohhhhh do we have dirty laundry, and now that the boys are getting potty trained we have even more.  Most of the time I don't know why we own a hamper because the clothes are always overflowing and there are more on the floor than in the hamper.  Not to mention the fact that the clothes that ended up at the bottom would be there for weeks because I always just take stuff off of the top.  So when I came across these plans I knew that I needed to figure out how I could get this thing built.  I thought that building it would be easy but I am terrified of the circular saw:)  Luckily, Jeff was on board with the idea so he was willing to do all the cutting, and then I did all of the assembly and painting.  And what we ended up with is this awesome laundry sorter...

And within minutes of it being completed it was full, I guess it is time to wash some clothes..

We do feel bad about handing the old hamper his pink slip, he has been with us for years.  But, we are all about improving the efficiency of our home.  So, if anyone is in need of a dependable hamper he is looking for work.

Scrapbooking, Scrapbooking & More Scrapbooking

Pretty much all of my free time lately has been consumed by scrapbooking.  This evening I uploaded and ordered 60 pages for the boys' toddler albums.  I am far from caught up but at least I have most of the major events covered, I can add in all the other stuff later.

In honor of father's day I am posting one of my favorites.  The layout itself is not something I am in love with, but I love that when I look at the pictures I can't help but smile.  Those three boys have so much fun together:) 

The boys' albums can be viewed at shutterfly here.  There is one for each boy, and yes they are almost identical...one of the many, many awesome things about having twins is that I can cheat and make the same layouts for both boys.  All I have to do is swap out a couple of pictures and within minutes I have pages for two albums done:)

Ha...I was just testing the link to the albums and noticed a typo on one of the pages (in both books).  Too bad I didn't notice that before I ordered them...oops!

For anyone into digital scrapbooking my newest favorite site is Manda Girl.  She makes awesome templates and the best part is that she offers most of them for free for a few weeks before she puts them in her store.  So...not only am I cheating by making the same layout for both boys, but the layout itself is not original either:)