Saturday, July 17, 2010

Showered with Love

My good friend Sherrie recently threw me a baby shower. We had a lot of fun visiting and eating yummy food! Thank you to all my friends for all the wonderful, cute gifts, I am so excited for this baby girl to join us! Thank you Sherrie!!
And a picture from later that day with the boys-

Happy Birthday USA!

We had a wonderful Independence Day weekend this year! We started it off with a pancake breakfast put together by our church on Saturday. They also invited the children to bring their bicycles decorated, the boys thought it was fun to put flags on their bikes and enjoyed riding them around for the first time outside this year (yes, we keep them in the basement and I let them ride around down there where I can keep the confined and where I stay nice and cool, it's the perfect race track for them down there!)
On the 4th we had some friends over after church for a little celebration dinner. There was so much yummy food that once all of us had eaten (10 adults and 6 eating kids) it didn't even look like we had eaten yet. Once again it was a yucky weather day, pretty close to how it was last year! Rainy, cloudy and cool all day- we were glad we chose something we didn't have to grill. Despite the forecast the rain thankfully stopped in the early evening time so we could play with some fireworks! Sadly everyone ended up leaving before nightfall due to crying babies....it was kind of funny thinking about the fact that everyone left with a baby crying...we were glad we had a break from that this year. I am really sad I didn't get more pictures of all our friends this year, but it was so crazy I kind of forgot to. Thanks all for coming, we had a blast!
Cami and Joseph Jacob and his buddy Chloe

Taylor and cutie petutie Beckham (I'm pretty sure I just might make this little girl marry him- the baby that is)

It was so much fun watching the fireworks that surround our home. We have an amazing, un-obstructed view of the horizon in front or our house and just like last year, it didn't disappoint on the 4th of July. Every inch of view there were fireworks being shot off. Here in Nebraska people are firework fanatics. In our county, the week before the holiday, big tents pop up EVERYWHERE selling fireworks. We had at least 10 of these tents within 3 minutes of our home. People here love buying the big, show fireworks too. We don't feel like blowing our money like that, but appreciate that people surrounding us do because we don't even need to go watch a show, we just sit on our front porch, or back porch and enjoy them. We can see a professional fireworks show from our house too though! Anyhow, we all had a lot of fun this year! I even played around with the fireworks mode on our camera, and even though they aren't professional pictures, I think I got some pretty cool looking shots!

Flyin' High

On Jack's birthday he arranged for his friend/coworker to take us up in a small airplane around the city. I was a little nervous about how the boys would react, and if I would get sick or not, but we had fun and all survived! The boys were so excited the whole day and couldn't wait for Jack to get home from work. We told them how they would get to wear headphones to talk through, and after that whenever you mentioned airplanes Jacob would get excited and say "headphone, headphone!" As a matter of fact, he still does that. It's funny though, because after we took this picture, he didn't want anything to do with the headphones...I can't blame him though, you can see how they didn't exactly fit him comfortably. On the flight Jacob didn't look too sure of how he felt. It was kind of a mixture of him looking like he would vomit at any second and him not knowing if he should be scared or excited but Tyler thoroughly enjoyed himself the whole time. I sat in the front and as long as I concentrated on the beautiful scenery I didn't get feel too sick...until about the last 5 minutes.

I attempted to put an arrow pointing at our house...it's a little small though, sorry. It was fun to see it from the air!

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

More Spring Storms

Here are some more Midwest spring storms!
June 10, 2010-
You can't really tell too much from this picture, but this storm was like this big wall moving in on us. The contrast of the the clouds and the sky was amazing, and within seconds the second picture shows how dark everything got!

June 17, 2010-
I LOVED all the beautiful colors in this sunset/oncoming storm! Simply beautiful, and a good reminder of all the beautiful creations given to us from our Heavenly Father.

Fun In the Sun

It's been hot here. and Humid.(UPDATE: This last week hasn't actually been as hot, or humid...tender mercies I say) Combine that with a very pregnant mom and it's not fun, but we manage. I am glad that we get until about 1 pm to have shade on the back porch, so the boys usually get a couple hours of play time outside before I just can't bare the heat and humidity anymore. They love to play in the sprinkler or have me spray them with the hose. We occasionally get together with friends for water parties, and today we even got to play in our neighbor's new quick-set pool! Here are a few fun summer pictures from recently-


We've been using our grill more this year than any year since we've owned it. These chicken kabobs were amazingly delicious, the boys even ate them!

We've also been enjoying making milkshakes...probably a little too many.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Kansas City Vacation

Memorial Day weekend we took a short trip to Kansas City for a little vacation before this baby arrives. It is only a 3 hour drive to KC, so easy enough for a weekend trip. We found an awesome hotel, in the perfect location! We stayed at the Westin Crown Center and enjoyed the fact that we didn't have to use the car if we didn't want to. It was neat because they had little kids activity packs that came with a fun bucket hat, some crayons and other fun things for them to play with. The hotel also had a pool that we enjoyed a couple times while there. There was a mall connected to the hotel, complete with many different restaurants, who can ask for a better convenience?! We chose this weekend because there was a family festival going on right outside the hotel called Jiggle Jam. (Oddly enough I found out about it through a small sidebar ad on Facebook!) They had all sorts of bands geared to children playing concerts all day long and of course lots of different game booths for the kids to have fun at. The boys love listening and dancing to music all the time at home so I thought they would have SO much fun at the concerts.....key word THOUGHT. They just sat there. Tyler kept asking, "Can we go somewhere else now?" when we were at one of the concert tents. I think we determined it was just too loud, and they aren't kids who enjoy crowds to begin with, so they didn't "outwardly" enjoy it as much as I thought they would. But I suppose it is a good sign that he keeps asking me now, "When can we go back to the JIGGLE JAM mommy?"
The area we were in was called Crown Center. Where the festival was held is a big terrace area that is complete with a splash park, and little things for kids to climb and play on, like this horse. Tyler wasn't so sure about being on top of it as you can see from his awkward smile, and Jacob just plain old refused to sit on it with him.
Rockin' out to Ralph's World! Ralph's World is featured on Huggies commercials doing the Potty Dance as well as on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon in between cartoons. The boys enjoy rockin' out to him at home often.
Enjoying a little brotherly love train ride together.
There was a restaurant in the mall area that was train themed. They even delivered your food by train! It wasn't the best food, but the boys sure enjoyed it and keep asking to go there for dinner.
The mall area also had an area where they have traveling exhibits, the day we got there they opened up a Clifford exhibit. Here they are building sandcastles with T-Bone!

Monday, June 21, 2010

Raytheon Summer Celebration

Jack's company had their yearly summer gathering at Papio Fun Park in May. It was a VERY windy day (what's new about that?), so at least we were able to stay moderately cool. The boys each got a ride on the go-carts with daddy and we played a little arcade games and some mini-golf and of course enjoyed some yummy hot dogs! Jacob wasn't so sure about his ride on the go-kart....I'm not sure he liked them much, but Tyler had a ton of fun during his race!

Welcome Clara!

The Mo Family welcomed a new addition middle of May. Meet Clara, our new cousin/niece! Isn't she beautiful! The boys thought it was so fun to go visit her and Aunt Bekah in the hospital after she was born. Ever since then Jacob has been quite obsessed with babies and they are both even more excited for the arrival of their baby sister in just a few short weeks. Jacob likes to point out every baby we see and is always touching my belly, and even has his little doggy feel it and listen to my belly.
Here the boys are enjoying a little free hospital icecream! You can tell Jacob is happy about it.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Baseball

We love having such a big backyard- at least compared to our old backyard in Tucson. A few times a week Jack takes the boys out to practice some baseball. Tyler is getting so good at pitch baseball, we think he will get pretty bored with T-ball and may just skip it all together! (We don't plan on putting him in baseball until he's a little bit older) He wacks the ball pretty hard and even hit Jack in the hand the other day. Jack has started teaching Jacob a little here and there, but right now he seems to think that you are just supposed to hold the bat still and let the ball hit it that way.

A nice little action shot


Their Favorite Person...

We were fortunate enough to have found an absolutely amazing babysitter, and friend, the last year since we moved in this house. Meet Catie- I think the boys just might love her more than me sometimes. She was so great with them and they got SO excited when they found out she would be coming to watch them or if she would be at a church activity we were going to. Sadly her family moved to Colorado a couple weeks ago, and we will all really miss her and her family. One day I was talking to Tyler about her leaving and a few hours later I found him a little teary eyed sitting on the couch and I asked him what was the matter he said, "I just can't stop thinking about it." "About what Tyler?" "About Catie moving." I wish her good luck at BYU this coming year! Now...time to start the search for a new babysitter.....

Grandma's Visit

My mom came into town to help me out with the kids while Jack was away on a business trip. This is the first time in a while the boys have been able to really get to know her and vise versa. They had a lot of fun with her and thought it was pretty neat all the cool stuff she made for us. She said it was a little hard to get used to all the "boy" toys and way of play compared to the girly stuff she is used to with my 4 nieces. (Frankly, I'm looking forward to a little break from playing Transformers and all the "bad guy/good guy fights" and getting to play with dolls again.)

I always make sure I get my fill of Crepes when she is in town, I just can't make them like she does! Here the boys are helping her make some for lunch one day!
Like I said, she made all sorts of things for me and the boys- baby baskets, baby blanket, a knit blanket for Jacob, and small "Cars" pillows for the boys, and their friend Jackson. They enjoyed a good pillow fight with the pillows she made later that evening too!
It was a nice visit to have her all to ourselves, and I'm greatful for the extra help she was while jack aws out of town! Thanks mom/grandma!