A few random things

We were doing a rushed version of bedtime because it was late so I told them no books, but Austin really wanted to tell me a story. When I wasn't listening to him he looked at me and said, "Mom you're making my feelings bad." So I said ok tell me the story. He said, "It starts with three hummins and then it begins" and then he proceeded to hum three times and told me a story all about 3 wolves and Optimus Prime and Megatron. He then told me he would tell me his other story in the morning, but that one only starts with one hummin. I'm glad I took a minute to listen to that cute little boy and his story with the hummins.

Aaron was making breakfast and Zack came in and said, "Is there protein in sausage?" Aaron said, "Yes." And Zack ran in to the front room and said, "Austin we're having protein!"

When the boys all wrestle Aaron started pulling the bottom of their shirts over their heads and he would say, "hockey fight." So Austin figured out last week how to do it to Aaron with some help from mom and now that's their favorite thing to do to him, it's pretty funny to see.

Last Saturday night when the boys were taking a bath Aaron thought he would be funny and started throwing glasses of cold water on them so the next morning when Aaron was in the shower Austin came up to me and said, "Mom let's go throw water on Dad." So we filled a big glass of water in the kitchen and snuck in to the bathroom and lucky for us Aaron had his back to us. We threw the cold water on him and Aaron was gasping because it was quite cold. Austin and I thought it was pretty funny!

We moved Zack and Austin in to bunk beds a couple of weeks ago to get ready to move Gavin in to their room. So far they have just been taking turns with who gets to sleep on the top. On Valentine's night they decided for the first time ever that they wanted to sleep in the same bed. They've always been really funny before about not wanting the other one in their bed so I thought it was kind of appropriate that the first time they would want to sleep together is the anniversary of the night Zack came home from the NICU 5 years ago and they were reunited (Austin came home a week earlier than Zack on Feb. 7th). Needless to say I think they played in there for at least 2 hours before they fell asleep. They got flashlight for Christmas and at one point they came out and said, "Mom you should come and see the shadow puppets we're making on the wall" and then went in to detail about the T-Rex they were doing.

I've been trying to teach the boys about why we don't want to eat too much candy and other treats because they have a lot of sugar in them and they aren't healthy for our bodies. So now almost every time Zack eats anything he will ask me if it has sugar in it and if it's candy or something like that I will usually say yes. Then I will explain to him that it's ok to eat a little bit of sugar we just don't want to eat too much. I have felt like it was going well until they asked me if grapefruit had sugar in it and then I was trying to explain to him that it did, but it's natural sugar so it's ok to eat that. Needless to say I don't think he quite got it.

Gavin has become this blanket/stuffed animal/pillow hoarder. He will find all of the before mentioned items in the house and make piles where ever he's at. Sometimes I think it's cute and sometimes it drives me crazy because it makes the house feel like it's always messy.

Valentine's

We started Valentine's off this year with some yummy Raspberry Cream Cheese Sweet Rolls shaped like hearts. And they got to open their Valentine's surprises from us.I decided since they still don't have towels with their names on them to finally make some for them. Aaron picked the Utah towel theme and the boys were pretty excited about them. It is not easy to get a good picture of the 3 of them together, as you can see.
Then Austin and Zack got to go to school and have a Valentine party. After we picked Austin and Zack up we went and surprised Aaron with a concrete from Nielson's. He has had a rough month and a half at work so we wanted to make sure he knew how much we loved him. Then we came home and did our tradition of making sugar cookies.Zack loved being able to put them on the pan himself.Austin
Gavin trying out his hand with the rolling pin. He is such an independent soul.I love this picture, they had so much fun. What you can't tell is that they decided they had had enough of cutting out hearts and being the boys that they are they were rolling out the dough in to snakes. I love little boys!I should have taken a picture of their snakes before I baked them, but I didn't think about it. They all had to make at least one. :)Then of course it was time for the decorating.Austin has become very in to art and is quite the perfectionist so he had to make sure that every square inch of his cookies had frosting on them. His and Zack's cookies had so much frosting on them you couldn't hardly pick them up without having them break they were so loaded down.I don't know if they remember using colored sugar last year or what, but they kept talking about how they needed the colored sugar to put on their cookies. So I pulled out my colored sugar that has barely been used and most of them weren't even open yet. By the end they put so much on the cookies that almost all 9 of my containers were empty. I wish I would have taken some after pictures of some their decorated cookies.And of course there had to be some taste testing of the skittles that they wanted to use for decorating.

I'm glad that I've started some of these traditions because I think otherwise my lazy ways would override and I would miss out on making some of these fun memories with my kids. Although I told Aaron that night that it is exhausting to try and be a good mom and make holidays fun. I really admire those moms that make every holiday and occasion fun.