Monday, May 28, 2012

Capture Gratitude: Garage Sales & Great Wolf Lodge

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“There is no event so common place but that God is present within it, always hidden, always leaving you room to recognize Him or not to recognize Him.”  Fredrick Buechner 
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132. CUTIE BOYS
I know I share cute pictures of these two being cute almost every week. But I do spend the bulk of my days watching their cuteness (and occasionally breaking up the not-so-cute). I'm looking forward to having pics of all three of my cute boys now that Luke will is out of school. But for now....







133. GARAGE SALE (the sale itself and that it's over...)
We had a garage sale last weekend... I'm not a fan of the work that goes into having a sale - either getting every thing together, or the actual sale. But I am thankful to have some cash in exchange for clearing out quite a bit of clutter... and some baby items we were hanging onto after Tobin, in the hopes that we'd have another baby. Now that we know that baby came to us at 2.5, we had quite a few goodies to sell. And I loved getting to spend 3 days with my awesome sister-in-law (who is a garage sale QUEEN and the only reason it was worth it to me to have a sale!)
 Luke and our neighbor and friend Zachary had a lemonade and icy pop stand, and as you can see in the top picture, Tobin helped with sales. Except sometimes he told people, "Yeah, that looks cool, but it never works." Thanks kiddo!

134. SOCCER
I love soccer. I really hope one of my boys loves it as much as I do, because it would certainly be my sport of choice for them to continue with. At the moment, Luke is pretty set on being a professional basketball player. Soccer is his second favorite, even though we had a really rough season (5th and 6th graders playing mostly 7th and 8th grade teams... Our guys looked pretty small playing against boys who looked like they may already be shaving.)

BUT they played hard and we are proud of them.


135. DRESS UP BOYS
Luke was never one for pretend play. He loved (and still loves) to build things - take them apart and put them back together, then start all over again. Tobin, on the other hand, lives in a pretend world. And takes Micah right along with him. Today T spent all day being a police officer (because our neighbor gave him some play handcuffs that didn't sell in the garage sale.) But the pretend play of choice for a long while now has been cowboys. And cute little cowboys they are.


(In the interest of full disclosure and keeping it real: The bandaid on Tobin's chest resulted from Matt getting the Cozy Coup car out of storage - and not supervising Micah's introduction to it. By the time Micah saw it, Tobin was already driving it around the porch, and there may or may not have been a frenzied scratching attack. Lots of cute pictures of them together, but it's not all cute around here any more than it is anywhere!)

136. DOGSITTING
We looked after our neighbor's cutie beagle while they were out of town. I think they felt like they might be putting us out by asking...little do they know that Tobin is now in LOVE with Colt and wants to have Colt move in with us.
 


136. MINI-VACATION
We didn't buy gifts for the boys for their birthdays this year. They get a fair amount from their grandparents, and we decided we'd rather use the money we would spend on gifts to do something fun as a family. Of course their birthdays were in February, March, and April, and here it is the end of May and we still hadn't done anything. You better believe Luke noticed.

So... We got a great deal at Great Wolf Lodge and surprised the boys. We pulled Luke out of school early on the last day of school and headed to Kansas City (I love KC.) The boys were super excited. Great Wolf Lodge has an indoor waterpark/water play area.

 It was especially a hit with our youngest. He basically screamed in excitement for 24 hours.

Maybe my favorite picture of these two EVER:
There was a giant bucket of water that dropped every 5 minutes. It had a clanging bell to warn you that it was coming...so every 5 minutes the ENTIRE time we were there, Micah would stop and watch it and scream. Luke dragged him out there to be under the water (being careful to protect his head and neck, like the good brother he is). Look at Micah's little feet, sucked up off the ground!

Here's a video of Micah's love-hate relationship with the giant bucket...(If the video isn't working, you should be able to watch it here....

And here's Tobin getting the bucket treatment (and taking it like a BOSS.)


And here's the first time Luke took Micah under (the picture above is from the second time, I asked him to do it again, but facing me this time so I could get a picture.) The joyful screaming you hear at the end is Micah. :) (if the video isn't working, watch it here...)

And my cutie littles going down the slides in the baby pool together, killing me with their cuteness. I basically spent most of the day watching Micah go down these slides over...and over....and over. "Yook at me, Mom!"


We played at the water park for several hours Thursday (then had a very overpriced meal at the hotel because we didn't feel like driving anywhere...we won't make that mistake again, there are tons of fun restaurants near by, and it wouldn't have taken us any longer to get to them than the very long wait for our $8 kids meals at the hotel.) Then we spent most of Friday at the park again, enjoying a pizza meal that came with the deal we got on our room...then showered off and went to the T-Rex Cafe, which is just 10 minutes away, and which the kids LOVED as well. And we headed back to Lincoln with all the boys snoring away in the van... Fun times.

We might make a family tradition out of making memories for the boys' birthdays rather than buying them gifts. We don't need any more stuff, and the time together outside of our normal schedule was priceless. Saturday morning I took the two younger boys to a friend's birthday party - and Tobin was so disappointed that Matt and Luke were staying home. "But I WUVE Daddy!" My. Heart.