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!

Gazillion Pics from Embry"s First Birthday Party

I'm up tonight studying for my Boards while Wes does his own schoolwork and we've been up with Collin who just vomited which means we may be dealing wiht another stomach virus at our house! We've had a rough 6 wks starting with Embry getting tubes end of January, flulike virus with Embry and Collin, stomach virus with all 3 and then Collin got tubes yesterday. Plus, last week God was very merciful to us but we had a small kitchen fire so this time last week, Wes and I were up doing a major kitchen clean up while the boys were with my parents. We got some burned hardwoods replaced today and our cabinets are almost all cleaned of dust and soot, but we still are waiting on our new oven and microwave to be delivered next week. I'll have to post pictures and more later, but we are just so thankful that teh fire was not worse. Anyway, all that to say I have been wanting to post photos from Embry's first birthday party 2 wks ago which we had to postpone due to the first stomach bug! But we did have it and had a blast. I decided to go all out with the Pooh theme and had so much fun getting ready for it.So here goes with all the pics!!

The cake was done again by our amazing allergy free baker who threw in a smash cake for Embry too!

Found this recipe online for Tigger tales which were orange and chocolate dipped pretzels. Since we can't have candy coating due to the milk, I made my own fondant icing and dyed it with an all natural food dye I paid way too much for and then it turned out white by the next day! Oh well, it still tasted good and my sweet husband helped me paint on the stripes the night before

Got this idea on Pinterest for a party mix and used my sweet grandmother's collection of pinecones for the food labels

My wonderful mother made these amazing waterbottle labels!

I had fun with the Pooh quotes all around the house. He had some awesome ones!!

Wes helped me make this Hundred Acre Wood sign for the yard

Piglet's pink lemonade

We were so happy that my bro and his girlfriend Catherine could come! They had fun with the toys

And here's the birthday boy!!! I got the idea for his shirt and then found the fabric and asked my mama to sew it on. I'm good at finding ideas and asking her to make them!!

Birthday boy gets a squeeze from uncle P!

Denny playing with a big bro and my aunt Jeannie in the foreground. Not sure what she is looking at!

The big brothers were obsessed with the food

My second cousin MK and her sweet daughter Addison who is less than 2 wks younger then Embry! They are buddies at daycare now too!

Embers and Addie playing

The older boys doing pin the tail on Eeyore

Uncle P taking a turn with Kate and sweet little Anna in the background

Embry wasn't into the game and the blindfold!

Nor was he into his party hat my mom made which matched his shirt!!

Loved that he wore an Eeyore bib his cousin Edwin wore when he was a baby!

his smashcake

Uncle P trying the pooh squeezer!

James enjoying some cake

He finally decided to dig in a little but didn't get too messy. Collin definitely wins the prize for our boys' first birthday cake messes!

father and son

Sweet Grandma

fun with grandmother and grandaddy

Brothers were way into the gifts of course

James with his parting gifts...bubbles and honeybears!

We gave out copies of "My Utmost for His Highest" in honor of my grandfather who loved that book and read it as his devotional daily. He kept our family history documented in the pages including all our birthdays and special days like the day Ashton first called him Pop. We sure did miss him at this first family function without him.

I think he had a great day sweet little E!!!

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