Last week, I went to visit Denay, her boys and her new baby girl Madeline. I was gone from Wednesday-Sunday (but in reality, Monday because I didn’t get home until 1am). Anyway…the boys had a great time with daddy who spoiled them rotten with “guy fun”. I was a bit nervous leaving knowing that Brian had to deal with the morning routine, getting them off to school, after school activities etc etc. The first night I was gone, Logan had an open house in his 3rd grade classroom. Brian and Logan co-authored a story:

 

“Boy’s Weekend: One day a silly mom left 4 boys (and one girl puppy) home alone for 5 days. BOY was that a big mistake! The first night went well and so did the second and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. Gee, did you think we would burn the house down or something?!”

Illustration of a house on fire with an arrow pointing to “?!”

The story was waiting for me on the counter when I walked in early Monday morning. Very funny boys…very funny!

Anyway, not much really happened while I was gone. They did have a “video game night” where they started playing something called Castle Crashers. This was still an obsession by the time I got back. I helped Aiden and Brady make Castle Crasher costumes…at least there is still something I can do better than Daddy!

Before bed last night, Logan told his brothers, “oh hey – the leprechauns come tonight!” I have to admit that I kind of forgot about those little buggers. Looks like they managed a visit though. This morning we found a note, the milk was green (again), the toilet water…also green (again), the living room was a mess and there were a bunch of shamrocks hidden all over the house leading the boys to their own little pots of gold (kind of gold…apparently the Easter rolos are out now so the leprechauns didn’t find “gold” ones like they usually do). I forgot that last year, the same three little guys visited us. They claim they are brothers and are strangely the same ages as our boys. Their names are Shamus, Rian and Connor. Last year, the boys left a trap and tried to catch them, but I guess Rian and Connor have giant scissors and cut Shamus out. Aiden remembered the whole thing…

This was the note. The boys “knew” it couldn’t be from me because I apparently do not draw lines like that on my shamrocks. I personally don’t think their artistic skills are that great. Aiden and I decided it looked more like a tree.

 

They picked some tricky hiding spots! This one was hung inside the towel in the powder room.

Final destination for “pots of gold”

Light-up cups filled with skittles, rolos and rainbow sour candy straws.

The boys organizing the shamrock clues which that had to put in order.

“Blue floor, red pole, floor of tiles, small goals” 

The basement! The boys also determined that all of this could not possibly be the work of their mother because I would never let them have candy before school. 

I did, however, purchase surgery cereal for them…which they ate with green milk. One year they refused to drink the milk. Last night, Logan said, “remember guys, if they dye the milk, it doesn’t taste any different!” Guess we’re growing up ;)

I didn’t take a picture of the living room in it’s full messy glory. They had taken all the pillows off the couch and put blankets everywhere as well. I tell you, these guys are good. They always find my St. Patrick’s day decorations stash…and, as Aiden pointed out, the Easter stuff too because they took the “grass” from their baskets! IF this had been something done by mom and dad, I would IMAGINE that Brian would say something along the lines of, “I can’t believe you’re letting me do this” while he pulled cushions off the couch and threw pillows around. In my IMAGINATION, he would have thought that was pretty hilarious.

The boys have been thrilled to see the grass again. Despite the freezing temps yesterday, they were outside playing soccer for at least 5 hours. It was wonderful! Last week, we had a relatively warm day and that was soccer, soccer, soccer as well. Here are some bad pics!

 

Brady swinging. As you can see, it’s still too cold for me to wander out of the doorway to get decent shots :)

As I mentioned previously, we stopped by the new house this past weekend to check the progress. Brian and I were there last Friday for a walk-through with the electrician and plumber before dry wall starts going up this week. All the addresses in our new subdivision have a letter in them (North, South, East, West). I’m told that the 39W in the beginning of ours means that we are 39 miles west of Chicago city limits.

Sometime in late October, this was our “house”. The boys had a soccer game in the area so we stopped by after to take our “before” pic.

November 28th - foundation

  December 29th:

This is the front of the house – the garage

January 16th – looking more like a house!

March 9th. We have windows, garage doors plus lots and lots of walls-to-be

I love taking pictures before the dry wall goes up. I have some framed that I took during the building process at our current house. I took tons last weekend and plan to frame a few.

This is an arch in the 2-story entry way above the front door.

This is in the living room. The area in the center will be a small overlook from the top floor into the living room.

This winter has been BRUTAL! Polar Vortex…snow, snow and more snow, freezing weather even on the warm days and up to –40 degrees with the wind chills. I’ve never before heard of school being cancelled for cold (as opposed to snow), but we had several days off this year because it was too dangerous for the kids waiting at bus stops. This past weekend was pretty nice, but yesterday, my phone said it was 54 degrees after school. Logan ran into the house, threw down his things and immediately changed into shorts. All the kids in the neighborhood came out of hibernation and played outside. When I snapped a few pics with my camera phone. Logan told me to put it on Twitter and say “"#54degressisshortsweather” also apparently, short-sleeves-and-no-coat weather.

After bike & scooter riding, Logan ran off with his friend Sam to the park for over and hour and a 1/2 while Brady and Aiden “shoveled” the back yard and played some soccer.

Of course more snow is on the way along with yet another winter weather advisory tonight, but at least we had yesterday!

A few years ago, I heard about the concept of the “golden” birthday which is when you turn the same age as the day you were born. Sadly, by the time I knew about this, mine had passed. While there is nothing particularly amazing about a golden birthday, it’s a fun little idea. Last Sunday, Logan turned 9 on the 9th of March. We didn’t intend to make this particular birthday any bigger than the previous 8. Like most of our friends, the days of the 60+ person birthday celebration at the house complete with decorations, hand-made invites, games, food etc have been over for a couple of years. These days my boys prefer to have a handful of their closest friends together for…something more intimate :)

A few weeks ago, after a day of “snowboarding” and sledding at a local hill, Logan said he wanted to take a real snowboarding lesson (not like the little stick-your-feet-in boards that we own). Brian ended up finding a snowboarding park relatively close to our house that offers birthday parties. The package included 10 kids plus the birthday boy. This ended up being quite a tall order to fill since we really didn’t want to make parents drive an hour away to sit around for the whole day while their kids went boarding. We planned to take 2 cars and drive all the kids ourselves, but we also knew that it would be hard for some parents to put us in charge when a 2-hour and helmets were involved. Logan invited 2 of his best friends who he’s known practically his whole life, Will and Adam. Adam’s mom asked if her family could tag along with their other son because it sounded like fun. This ended up being the PERFECT plan because I found out that the equipment rental and lessons didn’t necessarily have to go to the children! With Logan, his 2 buddies, assorted brothers and 4 parents…that made 10 boarders and we all joined in the fun (or the falling as it turned out for some of us). Will slept over the night before and we headed out early Sunday morning.

The staff at Raging Buffalo Snowboard and Ski Park was AMAZING! I was so stressed because we were running a bit late for our 10am scheduled lesson and I thought we might have to sit around until the 11am lesson, but when we arrived, we were assigned 2 really fun high-school boys (great for a group of little guys) who did our lesson, hung out with us all day and made the kids laugh like crazy. We also had a party coordinator and a party trailer where we could put our stuff, eat and hang out. It was such a great day! Logan had a blast and said it was the best birthday ever. Everyone woke up a little tired and sore Monday morning (Aiden now knows exactly where is quads are…must have never used them so intently before), but it was all worth it!

Breakfast before we hit the road. Brian made Logan a special cake-shaped pancake and we put a gold candle on top that we happened to have around

Equipment rental time!

In the trailer getting ready for our lesson  

 

After an hour on the beginner hill, we had a hot chocolate break complete with bags of candy for each of the boys that the owner Tiffany told us were AMAZING (I think they are called hi-chews and they were indeed delicious)

 

Logan, Will and Adam – sweaty sweaty heads!

Back in the trailer, we had pizza and the cake Logan picked out, a 7-up frosted bunt cake!

Because I was plugging my ears and closing my eyes during the “cha cha cha, o-lala” part of the birthday song, I missed the ACTUAL blowing out of the candles so Logan pretended to do it again.

The big and little boys CRACKED themselves up trying to make (ah hem) “rude” noises using their hands and arm pits. I don’t know who had more fun…the high school kids or the elementary ones!

  

They had this cool sign up on the wall for signatures. You wouldn’t believe who “came” to Logan’s party. All the boys pictured plus like…a LOT of famous soccer and football players :)

 

After lunch, we went back out for more. While the lesson was technically over, the older boys hung out and continued to help the kids. This is Brady. 

Aiden was done first and spent some quality time with Alex off to the side making snowballs.    

Brady working with Santo on his stops. He got SO close!

Logan coming off the beginner hill.

Some after-party pics to end the day

    

The “new” house was on the way back, so we stopped there and then quickly drove home, put on comfy cloths and relaxed. Logan and daddy spent some quality time playing FIFA soccer on the Xbox. Logan is wearing the tee shirt they gave him at Raging Buffalo…he later drew himself snowboarding on it with a sharpie.