taking a study break...

to finally post our Easter photos!! Pre-Easter I tried to get creative and do a few things with the boys leading up to Easter. We played a sensory Easter game where I hid different items in the plastic eggs and the boys had to feel them and guess what they were. They loved it and we got such a kick out of Collin. he looked so cute shutting his eyes and loved to teach others to play the game. On Easter, he wanted all of our family members to take a turn. He would get so excited that before they guessed, he would shout what the object is. My grandmother especially got a kick out of that and the photo of her laughing is at that moment.

 The next thing we did was dye some paper eggs. I found a craft online since we don't get to dye real eggs due to our egg allergy. We took glue and made designs on the paper. Then put salt on the glue and then dyed the salt with colored water. The boys loved it. AShton was meticulous and Collin loved pouring salt on the glue by the spoonfuls. Then he ended up dumping his colored water on the plate so AShton thought it was funny and did the same. Here they are working...

Embry snacking and watching from the porch doorway

 

 

Bunny Loot Easter AM

Dressed for church

Best Family photo from the day!

 

GG laughing at Collin during our sensory game!

twins

My mom playing our game

 

More Fun times with cousins at grandmother and grandaddy's house today

Aunt Laura took the boys to "the woods" to check out a neighbor mowing the grass.

Fun Morning with cousins!

 I was excited to post these fun pictures from a visit this morning by my cousin Laura and her two boys, Grayson and Griffin, and my Aunt Jeannie. These boys don't get to see each other nearly enough so we were glad they were in town. These are my favorites. It was nearly impossible to get a good group shot but these of the two babies were so sweet I thought and I was excited for my grandparents to see them!

Embers is such a goofball these days!! He loves to entertain us.

Grayson

The men

I liked this random shot!

Also great news of the week! Collin is potty trained except for at night but this is huge since it took us over a year to potty train his brother! 2 weeks ago I was with Kate and after her encouraging decided to do a potty boot camp. We did and Collin caught on after just three days of intensely taking him every 30 minutes. It's great now! He goes by himself yelling that he has to go tee tee on his way now! He is doing awesome and we are so proud of him. He and Ashton like to go together I have found and Ashton wants them to have a "tee tee crash" with their streams of urine. Boys, boys boys!! It's too funny. And, while at church 2 nights ago I got a text from wes that collin had told Ashton his (male part) was "lookin' good!" Who knows where he got that?!!  Whatever, it's working and we are down to one in diapers!!

Fire

So A few weeks ago we had quite a scary mishap. I accidentally left a burner on low after breakfast which caused a kitchen fire a few hours later because i had put Embry's high chair try on top of the stove after I cleaned it. We were all upstairs and thank God the fire alarm went off. The boys and I rushed outside and Wes went in and found the fire. He ran back outside calling 911 with the scariest look I have ever seen on his face. He went back in and turned off the burner while the 911 dispatcher yelled at him to get out. We ran across the street to a neighbors and prayed and prayed until the firetrucks came and put it out. When they opened our back door, smoke billowed out from the kitchen so we had no idea how much damage was done. God truly spared us and our house. We had only minimal kitchen damage and a big mess to clean up. The firemen were even surprised at the minimal damage. They brought in huge fans to air out a lot of the smoke and removed our oven which was demolished. My parents came and took the boys for the rest of the weekend while Wes and I cleaned up every inch. We decided after some advice from a fireman we know to do all the cleaning ourselves. I think it was more physically and emotionally exhausting than even moving ever was. There was dust and soot and ash all over our kitchen and had spread to cover everything in the living room too,
so we had to clean, blinds, curtains, our couch and remove everything and wash it from all our cabinets and drawers. We could not complain one bit because we were constantly shuddering at what it could have been. I still cannot believe how God spared us. Anyway, today we finally got our new microwave installed so I wanted to blog that the clean up is officially over! It took awhile but we are just so thankful and so glad to have our kitchen back. Unfortunately with the boys allergies, we can't just eat out likemost families so we knew we had to have our kitchen working asap. We finally got the oven installed last week but I was amazed at how much we could do with an extra microwave we had on hand, crockpot and grill! Here are a few photos so we can remember the damage and a photo of the boys enjoying our new oven when we made Easter cookies last week.The door has a window so they love to watch things cook now!

Embers 12 mos

Boys enjoying the chairs in our living room until our couch was cleaned

Embry one morning-he looks so old!

I love that A is able to feed Embry now when I am needing some extra help. He's such a goof pretending to eat the food. Embry isn't too happy about it. He's become pretty grouchy about his food lately.

Kiss from Collin.

Painting in the bathtub later. I absolutely love this photo!