{nighttime}

I. Am. So. Tired.

I am hoping someone takes mercy on me today and brings me a giant coffee. Be prepapred though I will be in sweatpants and look like I got hit by a truck.

Faelan has been getting up several times a night to nurse. Mahon got up with a sore toe at 3 am. Once he was back to sleep baby and I moved to the couch and then Wyatt joined us about 5:45. We all were asleep for about an hour then baby woke up again and now we are sitting here watching cars. Mahon and Daddy are sleeping peacefully.... Lucky them.

For the past three days the big boys have not napped. No matter how hard we try they just won't. I know this day will go how I set my mind for it to go, if i stay cranky I will be cranky and then everyone else will be cranky too. I need to set my mind to being happy and patient today.....

But first...Coffee.

{thinking}

I know I'm not the only mom who finds peanut butter sandwiches and rocks in her vacuum hose...
...or has to drag her kids out to the car twice to go to the grocery store and we still don't make it there.
 (it was one of those days)

I know I'm not the only mom who finds her basket of apples from the farmers market... not cheap apples... with a bite in almost every one... from yesterday...

I know I am not the only mom who knows all the songs on Dinosaur Train... and sometimes when watching tv alone will switch to a kid friendly show out of habit.


But.
I am the only mom who gets to mother these little boys and that makes me very very very happy. :)

{a smooth day}

Everyone in awhile you get a day where things for the most part go smoothly. Maybe it was because I started today without much of a plan, maybe it was because I was feeling (for the most part) very go with the flow of today. Either way, we had a great day and here are some pictures!

 Ok these are a little out of order but oh well... 

Here is my brilliant idea of the night...

cover your ipad with a page protector while cooking. 

You can even use it still through the plastic! 

We made potato cakes from leftover mashed potatoes for dinner

They were delicious and the boys (and mommy) devoured them! 

This morning we decided to take a walk, it was so beautiful outside! 

Here they are saying cheese. 

Here they are when I said "one more picture guys!"

They were ready to go!  

They had such a great time looking at the cars, and trees

and our shadow!  

I was trying to take a picture of this house without looking like a creeper, it looked like a building at the zoo it was really interesting. I'm not sure why they built a house like that in this area. 

Lesson learned: I need to bring me some water so I won't drink all of the boy's juice! 

Pushing three little people uphill is hard! 

GLITTER!!! 

Yeah. We needed something to do! 

Glitter on perfect toddler feet. 

I even let them use the glue. 

We had such a great day. 

My feet sure are tired from that walk though! It just shows that I really need to be more active! 

We have made a complete mess of the kitchen, living room, bathroom and dining room. Once these guys are in bed I will be cleaning! Kourtney comes tomorrow and I we have things to get done that do not include cleaning up today's messes! 

Get ready Kourtney! It's going to be a busy tuesday! Wear comfortable clothes! 

{challenge - day one.... Failure}

I have a long list of excuses but when it comes down to it... I already failed. I didn't drink pop but we ordered pizza for dinner and there were cinnamon sticks with icing.... I ate them. And not once did I think about my challenge and how I was avoiding sweets and fast food...

 But what I was thinking about were the two toddlers that we're hungry and a very cranky, feverish, teething baby. I knew that we needed to eat and it needed to be yummy and minimal work. 

My amazing grandmother came over and helped me out with everything tonight. She is such a blessing!! And thanks to her the big boys are sleeping, a load of laundry is in the washer and dryer, my dishes are done and everyone is happy. 

Well except Faelan, but I wouldn't be happy either if I was teething!

 It is barbaric. 

{my challenge}

Challenging my self is not something that I do... Ever. I am not good at sticking to things and I give in to myself a lot. But. I have 20lbs to lose and serious sugar lust. So for the next three weeks (I don't know why three, I just threw out a time frame) I am not going to have "sweets". No pop. I want to say no sugar but since America puts sugar in everything, including ketchep I can't totally get rid of all of it. So obviously no cookies, cake, candy ect. I have stevia incase I need to have something sweet but I'm not a big fan of it. Natural sweet is ok. Honey. Fruit. Ect.

When we are having a rough day around here I like to give myself something totally not good for me to make myself feel better. So I am trying to break that habit as well. While I am at it I am going to go off fast food as well. Including jimmy johns.... Which isn't my favorite but they deliver! So three weeks is hopefully enough time to lose a few pounds!

To sum it all up...
No pop.
No fast food.
No sweets
.
No scooters...

{Adventure Sunday}

I needed to go to the grocery store, we were out of milk and pretty much everything else... So I decided to take all three little boys with me! 

I like a good challenge now and then. 

We made it through with no screaming! 

Which sometimes doesn't even happen when we take super Kourtney with us. 

No one cried, there were a few fussy moments but nothing got out of control. Yes it did take a bag of chocolate covered almonds and two suckers but we were fine! I did forget a few things but nothing major. We didn't even go over our budget (probably because we forgot somet stuff) but we did get a few things that we didn't need but who doesn't need crazy straws??!!? 

{It's Wednesday ... again!}

I declare that today will be a GOOD day! 

We will have fun.

We will relax. 

We will not worry about the house or laundry... 

it's wednesday afterall.

We will love on each other.

We will play all day. 

We will not give into small trials.

We will stay calm.

We will read books.

We will play with playdough.

(and not care if it falls on the floor and gets stuck in the carpet again)

We will enjoy each other's company. 

We say no to anger and yes to love. 

We will have a good day!! 

It's Wednesday again, how does this day keep coming back! I am declaring that we will have a fantastic day! I already feel like I accomplished something by going to the farmers market before the kids got up to get some more beeswax. (since I lost the last bar) I will make the lotion bars for sweet little Faelan's head tonight. :) The big boys are up! Time to play! 

{Quality Time Quest}

On my quest to DO more things with my boys I have come up with a list, some things were taken from blogs (links included) or from pinterest ideas, or straight from my own head…  

1.       Car race game http://www.littlefamilyfun.com/2011/02/car-race-game.html

2.       Monster Lanterns http://www.littlefamilyfun.com/2011/10/monster-lantern.html

3.       Color hunt http://www.littlefamilyfun.com/2012/02/st-patricks-day-green-hunt.html

4.       Gather leaves and make a leaf collage with wax paper.

5.       Body paint in the back yard

6.       Make paper bag puppets

7.        Make it through the whole KC zoo in one trip! 

8.       Make a homemade car book http://www.littlefamilyfun.com/2010/02/homemade-car-book.html

9.       http://pinterest.com/pin/69031806758668081/ make them capes and have a superhero day

10.   Have daddy make them tents. http://pinterest.com/pin/69031806758322461/

11.   Have a drive in movie night with Keren & their little cars

12.   Pick out a Christmas tree together and set it up

13.   Do our 24 days of advent family project

14.   Make someone (or ourselves) crayon t-shirts http://alphamom.com/family-fun/crafts/sandpaper-printed-t-shirt/

15.   http://sewfearless.com/2011/08/05/pajama-eaters-the-tutorial/ Make them pajama eaters

16.   Dress up with Keren for Halloween (which means mommy needs to get on it with crocheting our bear hats!)

17.   Go run wild at the lake on 87^th

18.   Go through the entire list of http://www.playcreateexplore.com/p/activites-for-ages-1-3.html she has a great blog! I’m not sure how many we will get through but they all look fun! (120+ things for toddlers to do!)

19.   Watch Cars 2 ( we still haven’t seen it and hey that is one movie I will very happily sit through and snuggle the whole time!) Make it a family movie with popcorn and suger milk (chocolate milk)

20.    Take Gammie to the zoo! (Ha! Mom now you have to go! )

Ok I’m going to stop with 20 things, that’s enough to cover the rest of the year!  

{Cereal}

Question: What do you do with 6 boxes of cereal and 2 little boys?

Answer:

(They are a little out of order) 

{Creative Play}

Ever since lil F was born we have been a tv family. I'm not very happy with that but if you have ever tried to keep two 2yr olds from doing anything that requires parental intervention then you can imagine how hard it is to do that while trying to get a newborn to latch on or let alone just sit for the 15 to 20 minutes it takes him to eat.

So I have  been trying to think of things that will keep them busy without a large mess or needing too much help, so far we haven't come across anything that works too well except for sitting down to watch some Dinosaur Train. But we have had some good times playing while baby takes a nap...

Here are some photos of us playing with some chalk paint that we made. 

Note: It does not come off completely without a little help (hose or nice rain) 

Here are our colors 

We had to bring out the big paint brushes since the little ones went down the cracks. 

And as you can tell someone was trying to put the big ones down there too. 

After the paint was gone we filled it up with water and washed it off. (somewhat) 

Heres how it looks when it's drying.

Baby toes!!! 

Wyatt's new fashion statement.