I was just looking at my camera and I have a TON of posts to do, but first - our trip to the Morton Arboretum last weekend. We met up with our good friends and their three little boys (yes - three little boys!) I was telling Logan about what we were going to do that day and he was SO excited to hang out with a family like ours. He kept saying "and they have three brothers just like we do?! That's so cool!". Timmy is 5, PJ is almost 4 & Patrick is 14 months. (Review: Logan = 4, Aiden = almost 3 and Bray is 17 months)

They've actually all met and Logan remembers quite a lot about the Wilkins's house, even though it's been over a year since we've been there with him. He was talking about their cool kid's closet where you can draw on the walls, the fact that Timmy & PJ have trick tracks too and about their playhouse in the back yard (styled like a mini version of the main house). Anyway, it was a blast to see the 6 boys all together. The littlest Wilkins is quite a calm baby just like his brothers while the littest Houck, a mere 3 months older, was trying to kamakazi jump out of the stroller and, again, act like a 4 year old. You can pretty much tell by my pictures who I was following around for most of the morning. I had to be on Aiden like white on rice or he may STILL be at the Arboretum. In fact, we almost lost him at one point! He was heading back to the creek area quite some distance from the tree house where we were playing and Brian had to run way ahead and find him....be still my (panic stricken) beating heart!



This was also the first official summer t-shirt test....HUGE success. I decided to order official brightly-colored shirts for the boys last week. I have some cool pictures of their arrival. I'll post that another time. Anyway, it was very easy to spot my troop of crazy boys running everywhere in their red Houck shirts. I wonder how it is that 3 little boys can manage to run in 7 different directions simultaneously.

On the way: Aiden models his McDonald's pancake as a hat. A and Brady get a kick out of holding hands between their seats.
The Arboretum has lots of cool water exhibits (or whatever they are called...water things). Brady LOVED them and played in this particular one for at least 15 minutes.

Aiden checks out the water too....and walks where he's not supposed to...and scares his mother...like what else is new with monkey-boy, right? :)

Here is Aiden again. He just finished climbing up the side of the this giant tree root structure (not a real tree root, but it's made to look like one). There is actually a ladder UNDER the roots that you're supposed to use to climb up and go down a couple slides. I encouraged his out-of-the-box climbing though...since I was standing right behind him, he wasn't in danger of drowning this time and...it seemed like more fun.

There are various water pumps around the kid's area that you can pull on. Poor Aiden had to throw ALL of his body weight into it to get the handle down...but he wasn't going to give up!!

Brady was especially grateful for Aiden's hard work.

Here are some of the boys climbing on a big giant net thing.

Here we are in "the tree fort". There are about 3 or 4 of these rope and wooden plank paths suspended above the ground. Brady wanted to go with his brothers, but it's actually quite trecherous so daddy escorted him.

This is the end of the walkway. Here come the boys - dashing out to do it again! This is also where we almost lost Aiden. The start of this structure is WAY around a corner and you can't see it from the end. We went to escort Brady on another go-round and....no Aiden in site. RUN!

Back to the creek...time to get wet (it's pretty much inevitable if you play the way the Houck boys do! The Wilkins kids managed to stay pretty dry for the most part)

Unfortunately, Brady really likes to throw rocks...mostly at people. On the plus side, kid's got a good arm!
Here, Brian helps Timmy (up on top...blending into the Houck clan with his red shirt), Aiden and Logan build a damn in the creek.

Nice work (see it there on the right?)

Aiden and Logan check out one of the cool teaching boxes around the area. This one was about color obviously.

Back view of the new Houck shirts. Logan is the 6th boy in a row on the Houck side, Aiden is the 8th...Brady is the 9th! After we played for a while, we headed over to the picnic area, changed cloths and had a nice lunch on the grass. After that, we goofed around a bit more before heading home. Aiden re-wet his shirt hugging a big floating water ball thing and had to wear Logan's less-soaked Houck shirt home.

How can we tell it was a good day?? This is a picture of the boys about 10 seconds after we left the Arboretum parking lot! Poor Brady...that head angle can not be comfy!