Thursday, June 30, 2011

So sweet...

Meatball is on a kick lately where he tells me that his dad lives at his green house, and his moms live at our white house. Yeah, yeah, yeah - and then I say "You know that you have no dads; you only have two moms. Right?" And he responds with a "yes."

So we were going through this at dinner last night. After the typical exchange, he said "But, I DO have Papa and Grandpa. They are dads."

Me: "Whose dad is Papa?"
Meatball: "He is your dad."
Me: "Whose dad is Grandpa?"
Meatball: "Mommy Kel's, and Granny is her mom."
Me: "That's right."
Meatball: "But who is your mommy?"
Me: "Her name was Arlene. Remember? We talked about her before. She is not here anymore."
Peanut chimes in: "Where is she?"
Me: "She died, honey. That means that she had to go away, and she cannot come back."
Meatball: "You should tell her to come back."
Me: "I can't. I can't talk to her anymore."
Peanut: "She can't come back ever?"
Me: "No, not ever. Sorry honey."
Peanut: "Not even if we sprinkle some magic dust for her?"

Man, I wish it was that easy. It was so sweet, but so sad at the same time. Mom would have been 70 this year. She would have just loved the boys...

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

From atop the ferris wheel

We had just gotten off of Rattlesnake Rapids, so Bub was soaked and freezing, and I had lost all of my make-up. The boys loved the ferris wheel.



Thursday, June 9, 2011

Fun day at Jungle Jim's Playland

Again, crappy phone photos. Where was the camera? At home on top of the piano.

Jungle Jim's is a little indoor playland place with overpriced pizza and ride operators who are sullen teenagers that resent the fact that their parents are making them work to pay for their future car. We managed to have fun anyway.

4 years old!

The weekend of the boys' 4th birthday was fantastic!

We started the celebration on Friday by heading up to Heber to attend A Day Out With Thomas. This was obviously for Peanut since he is fully obsessed with all things train, especially Thomas.

We rode the train.
We played in the maze (unless there were other grown-ups in it - then Meatball freaked out because there were "strangers" by him).
We watched a video.
We played mini golf - well, sort of.
We ate cotton candy.
It was a BLAST!

On Sunday, family and a couple of friends arrived for the birthday party. Imagine the mommies' excitement as Uncle Wade walked up the driveway with an electric keyboard. It was given to cousin Jamie by Granny years ago when she was about eight, and she thought that she wanted to learn the piano. That didn't really pan out, but it's been in their basement since. In a way, it's nice that it's staying in the family and wasn't donated to the local DI. In a way, it's irritating because it's loud and the default song is pretty obnoxious (which is why we're getting it back, I'm SURE). But, in the end, both boys love it although Meatball will sit and play with it for hours.
Here they are with their friend Zack (crappy phone photo, but where is the camera?):

After some very fun games of duck-duck-goose and musical chairs, we brought out the cakes. My friend and co-worker, Lish, completely rocked these cakes. There were squeals of delight and screams of "that's a real Thomas?" and "There are schmuzzies on my cake!" The grown-ups were pretty impressed, too.

Then, our friends, Zack/Jod/Kris spent the night. That was super fun since we've never had a friend sleep over at our house before! We played games and built train tracks all night. It's too bad the weather was cold and rainy.

After our friends left the next morning, we packed up our stuff to go to Little Las Vegas (Wendover). Ever since last year, Meatball has been talking about Vegas and the funny stairs (escalators) and the elevators and the bed-inside-the-couch. For some reason, he thought that our 3-day trip was the greatest thing ever. Well, since we did Thomas in Heber for Peanut, we figured that we should do something just for Meatball, and we had a cheap room rate at the Rainbow. So, off to Wendover we went!

We went swimming, relaxed in the hot tub, jumped on the bed, watched a movie, ate at a buffet (where the boys got to choose ANYTHING they wanted: sugar, sugar, sugar, cottage cheese, sugar, and sugar), rode the elevator (even though our room was on the ground floor), ran up and down the halls, swam some more, and generally acted silly.
This is Peanut in a gift bag. Yes - one of the two best presents I've ever received!

This is Meatball in the frog sunglasses that Auntie Sid gave him.

We didn't want to come home, but Granny and Grandpa were headed to our house since they had missed the birthday party. The prospect of MORE GIFTS was enough to get us all in the car and on the freeway.

The whole weekend was absolutely wonderful. It was probably the best family weekend we have ever had together. I hate that they are getting older, but I love who they are becoming.