Flowers and worms

We made our annual trip to the garden store to stock up on flowers and planted them a few weekends ago. Avery really got into the planting this year. Morgan lost interest pretty quickly... as soon as she discovered worms! She loves all living things!

Sister love

For as much as they fight (which seems to be a lot lately!), they really do love each other! They cuddled up on the couch together to watch a show the other night. :) And they really do like to dress alike. I let them pick their own outfits every day and there are many days where they pick out the same thing. I actually had to start buying everything in pairs again because they would cry if I only had one.

Bowling alley fun!

We spent a very rainy Saturday a couple weeks ago at the bowling alley. The girls love bowling, but they really love the pink lemonade the bowling alley serves. And of course, they love the game room. We spent as long in the game room as we did bowling.

The girls wanted to wear their Owlette and Gecko costumes (PJ Masks)

Waiting patiently to go play games!

Aunt Erin is surprisingly good at these games!

Grayson and Morgan played air hockey for a while

Another game for Erin... this time for candy!

A new nephew!!!

My brother and Sandi welcomed a beautiful new baby boy recently! The girls have another cousin - Calvin! :)

We made him a little gift earlier this month, decorating bibs at Erin's house. Avery loved this activity, of course!

He's such a sweetie! And from what we hear, he's a great little baby! His big brother Nolan is anxiously waiting for when Calvin can play trains with him! :) 

Mother's Day

I had an awesome Mother's Day weekend, thanks to a couple of little girls and their daddy! :)

The girls school had a Mother's Day Tea with crafts and a little show! The girls had been singing the songs all week and they were so excited to perform in the show.

This was the invitation they sent to all the moms

Crafts for the kiddos

Picture station

I love seeing what they come up with on these questionnaires every year!

The teachers thought it was hilarious that Avery mentioned more than one time about my less than stellar cooking skills! Just to clarify, I do almost no cooking at our house. Matt is the chef! I bake, that's about it. And besides that, I must just sit around coloring all the time (according to Avery!) :)

These are the beautiful flowers that the girls got me for Mother's Day. If you know anything about Avery and Morgan, you will immediately guess which arrangement is from each girl. Of course, our animal lover Morgan got me the doggie bouquet. And our rainbow loving, "everything has to be purple" girl sent me the rainbow roses in the purple vase!

We took a walk outside since it was such a gorgeous day!

The cards the girls got me were also pretty true to their personalities. Morgan is our little stinker, plus she just loves anything with animals. And Avery loves butterflies and anything girly, so no surprise this card is from her.

A special thanks to their daddy for making my day great! :)

Crafts and Milkshakes!

Another Home Depot craft...

Future drummer! 

Followed by a trip to Steak-n-Shake for lunch and banana milkshakes!

While we were waiting for our food, an older man with a big beer belly walked by us. Morgan yelled "hey, daddy, does he have a baby in his tummy?" Ugh! I don't think the man heard, but I was still embarrassed!

And remember that purple starfish that Avery saw at the bowling alley that ended up with me sewing a purple starfish stuffed animal by hand for Christmas? They had the same one in a game at Steak-n-Shake today.

Weekly roundup

Just a few pictures from the past week... we spent a lot of time in the house due to all the RAIN!!! We had to get creative to keep us all from going batty!

My favorite astronaut!

My parents were visiting to help watch the boys while Erin and Ross were out of town. The kids love it when Mama and Papa are in town.

Mama never gets to sit by herself!

The girls went to a birthday party for a friend of theirs from school, Fiona. The party was at the DuPage Children's Museum. They started off with a silly putty craft - they got to mix in different colors and sparkles and glow-in-the-dark stuff.

After that, the kids had pizza and then got a little silly themselves. I'm not even sure what was happening, but they were pulling one girl all around the floor! She was laughing, so I think it was all in good fun. :) It was interesting to see how the girls interact with the kids from their school. When we got there, Morgan immediately ran to the other kids and started playing. She is such a little social butterfly. It took Avery about 15 minutes to get into the action. She sat back with Matt and me and watched the other kids. She is SO me. I was always the one that had to feel out the situation before diving in.

I'm pretty sure that Fiona didn't blow out a single candle on her own cake. All the other kids helped!

We then got to walk around the museum. Morgan hung out with Matt most of the time, while Avery and I checked out exhibits together. Avery was on override, jumping from one thing to the next. She just loved all of it. We're planning to go check out the museum again when it's not so crowded and we can spend some more time there.

We tried to keep the girls entertained with all the rain we've had the past week. We colored and cooked and built tents!

We rode bikes and roller skated in the basement!

Pure silliness!

And then Avery had a major breakthrough at swimming lessons on Sunday. After just a short 10 months (read that with a lot of sarcasm, please!), Avery finally decided to put her face in the water and actually swim! She has a new teacher that she really likes and I guess she just decided she was ready. She was SO SO SO proud of herself! And we were really proud of her, too. :) We gave her a badge for being so brave! She really wants to move up to the next level with Morgan and Grayson. She's still got a ways to go for that, but this is definitely a step in the right direction!