Payton's 4th Birthday!

On July 27th Payton turned 4 years old!!

He is getting SO big, and learning so much!

He is such a funny guy, and is ALWAYS making us laugh! 

He LOVES anything that goes...cars, trucks, trains, airplanes.

He LOVES books, puzzles and games.

And the TV and IPad. of course. 

He adores his daddy, and would spend all day every day by his side.

He is a very good big brother, and helps me out a ton.

He is growing up so fast!

I love this not so little guy.

He had his 4 year well check up and weighed 42 lbs(96th percentile), and was in the 99th percentile for height. He wears size 5-6, and is often mistaken for being older because he's so tall.

Devry went and bought Payton's Favorite - Donuts For his Birthday Breakfast

This year for his Birthday, we had a "friend" party for the first time. (We usually have a family party, and invite a few close friends). He requested a "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" theme. I love planning parties, so of course I had a blast planning it! He had 12 friends come to his party, and it was a lot of fun! Here are tons of pictures showing what we did at the party.

When the kids arrived, they each got to open their little treasure chest. Inside was a bandana, eye patch, sword, compass and the girls got pixie dust. They had so much fun putting everything on and pretending to be pirates. 

Payton with most of the kids who came to the party.

 After all the kids had their pirate gear on, we went on a treasure hunt. They had little pirate maps telling them where to go and what to do. 

First, we actually did "bowling at buccaneers bluff"... but I didn't take any pictures. 

Next we Fed Tick Tock crock at Crocodile Creek.

Then We walked the plank at pirates plunge.

After that we dug for buried treasure at Shipwreck Beach

And Finally we found our final treasure and Neverland Island... A treasure chest piñata!

 The kids each had turns hitting the pinata. 

And were rewarded with lots of Gold doubloons! 

After our treasure hunt, we had planned on playing on our water slide for the next hour or so. The weather was overcast, and a bit chilly, but all the kids (and parents) voted we still play on it for a while. Some of them lasted over half hour, but all of them were shivering by the time we were done. They played downstairs for a bit while we finished making dinner. 

For Dinner we had hamburgers and hotdogs, salads, fruit, and jello.

We decorated with a banner that I made, balloons and table cloth, with matching plates and napkins.

After we finished eating, it was time for Cake!

I may have slightly gotten carried away with the cake. I made a "bucky" cake (the ships name on the show). I made the cake the night before, and decorated it that morning. It took me a bit of time, but it turned out better then I imagined it would!

Payton loved the cake! 

So did the twins...

After Cake and Ice cream Payton opened his presents. He was so spoiled by all his friends, and received such thoughtful gifts! 

 It was a fun day! We enjoyed planning and having the party, and were grateful for the kids (and parents) who came to celebrate with us!

We Love this little man SO much, and enjoyed celebrating with him on his big day!

Homeowners!

We are once again homeowners!

We FINALLY closed on our house yesterday, after some dramatic problems from the sellers. 

They received a higher offer on the house after we were under contract. They tried to get out of the contract or make us pay more. The house had appraised for what we were paying, so paying more would have meant it coming out of pocket. It was completely shocking and very stressful! We had given notice for our rental that we would be out, and we were worried they would find a way out of our contract, leaving us nowhere to live! 

Luckily I had Craig (the dad of the family I nannied for, and a real estate genius) look over the contract with his lawyer, and they were able to give me great advice and help us out a ton. The sellers finally realized they couldn't get out of the contract or demand more money from us just because of a higher offer, and went ahead with signing a few days late. 

So, we closed yesterday!

Then I spent all evening cleaning because the sellers left it a mess!

Seriously, I am responsible for cleaning the house I am renting! I think homeowners should have to clean, or pay to clean a house when they are leaving! Thankfully they were relatively clean people, so it could have been worse. Its mostly done, but still have to do the bathrooms, which I am dreading. I mean, I can handle cleaning crumbs, dust and similar messes, but other people's hair? Ew. 

We are busy packing and moving stuff over. I had the carpets cleaned today, and we will spend the next two weeks cleaning, moving, unpacking and making it home! 

Here are just a few pictures. I will be posting more as I get the house put together!

Payton loves playing in the garage (we have 2, 2 car garages! :) )

The back deck with built in slide and swings! One of my most favorite things about this house!

We had an amazing lender and realtor who worked SO hard to get us the house. They both gave us beautiful flowers when we finally closed.  These are the ones from our lender. 

Hanging flower basket from our realtor. She was great!

And just because they are cute, here are some pics of the boys I took on Father's day...

My four favorites!

Simplifying Motherhood.

Happy Mothers Day Weekend!

I am so blessed to have so many mothers in my life!

Mom, grandmothers, step mother, mother in law. I am beyond blessed with wonderful women who inspire me. 

I have been thinking alot about motherhood lately. 

Today I had a mom Fail.

We went to the park this morning with some friends. It was a beautiful morning, and we had some fun play and social time. It started to rain, so I hurried to get the kids into the car. Payton is very good about hopping in his seat on his own while I buckle the babies. Unfortunately today the car was parked on a bit of a slant. I was placing Kayson in his seat when I see Payton attempt to open his door. The slant of the car pulled his door shut right away. I hear him start to scream. That heart wrenching scream that brings out the protective momma bear side of me. I run to the other side of the car and see my poor helpless 3 year old with his fingers in the closed car door. He was trying to pull them out, causing more pain and screaming harder. I quickly opened the door and picked him up to comfort him. He just sobbed and sobbed. I wrapped his bleeding fingers in a tissue, and put him in his seat. I grabbed Cohen from the stroller, loaded him in his seat,  packed up the stroller, and jumped in the car to hurry home. Payton cried and cried, and all of a sudden stops crying and says "mom, Kayson is going to come get you."  I turn and see my adorable little slobbery Kayson turned around in his seat, and climbing up it towards me. oops. Forgot to buckle him in after the finger slam. I stop and buckle him quickly. We get home and I clean and bandage up Payton's fingers. Luckily they didn't get hurt too bad. Just some scrapes and cuts. Nothing broken. Nothing deep enough for stitches. Apple juice, some kisses and cuddles from mom, and an episode of Jake and the pirates did the trick. 

Motherhood is a wonderful, rewarding, exciting, fun, challenging, horrible, impossible job. 

I often spend too much time on the addictive world of social media. Facebook, instagram, blogs and pinterest are daily visits for me. Ok ok....maybe many times daily. There are always some wonderful ideas, inspiring stories, and fun new activities to try! You can find anything you want from decorating ideas, to new recipes, to ideas to help potty train. They can be extremely useful tools! I often leave the sites feeling so motivated! However. I have also found myself leaving these sites feeling inadequate. Completely and totally inadequate as a mom. As a wife. As a woman. 

I don't plan enough fun stuff for my kids. 

I don't use cloth diapers. 

I don't cook only with organic food.

I am not skinny enough.

I let my babies cry it out to learn to sleep. 

My family eats mac n cheese, chicken nuggets and other processed food. 

I don't read to my kids enough. 

My house isn't clean enough.

I have and will work most of my kids life. 

I get upset at my kids too much.

I don't have enough patience with them.

And the list goes on and on and on and on. 

My kids will probably be cancer infested, unsociable, deprived people with major lifelong attachment issues because of my parenting. 

At least this is sometimes how I feel leaving the social media world of perfect lives, perfect women, perfect moms, perfect kids, perfect houses, perfect decorating, perfect cooking...perfect everything. 

The same sites that can be motivating, inspiring and helpful can also be complete poison. 

No one is perfect. Everyone has flaws as a woman, mother, homemaker etc. 

It is sometimes hard to see from the outside looking in. Some woman may not try to portray perfection from their blog or instagram etc. They just may not write about the difficulties in their day. Just because someone is pinning fun fabulous ideas on pinterest doesn't mean they are doing them all. 

Others may be trying to hide behind a fake, perfect facade. 

This mothers day, I am trying to have more appreciation for myself. I am doing my best. I am no where near perfect. Nor do I need to be. I love my children. I would do anything for them. My world is centered around them. They know I love them. I hug and kiss them over and over again each day. I tell them I love them. I give them my attention. I try to plan fun things for them. I know I am not perfect. I know I need to continuously improve as a mom, wife, and woman. But as long as I am working on it, I can't expect anything more of myself.  

The truth is Motherhood needs to be simplified. Before the world of social media, no one sent each other pictures of their perfectly cooked dinner, or the amazing creative fun activity they did with their kids. People had their own lives, that wasn't shared with the world. I want to simplify my role as a mom, and turn the focus of motherhood back to my kids, not to how it compares to other mothers out there. 

So for mothers day this year, I am not cleaning, or cooking, or feeling guilty. I am relaxing and going out to eat with my wonderful family. I am not counting calories, or stressing about all the things that need done. I am going to have a simple, relaxing, stress free weekend. I hope you all can do the same and enjoy yourselves!

Happy Mother's Day!

Our Happenings

April was a fun, busy month!

We adjusted to Devry's new, WONDERFUL work schedule. We saw him every single day!

I'll recap our month with lots of pictures!!

We had a lot of fun, and saw a ton of smiles!!

We also had some fussy kids....

They did not enjoy being locked up while I mopped.

We enjoyed some of our favorite past times....

Bare baby bums trying to climb in the tub

Bathtime

And ate some of our favorite foods....

First Ice cream cone!

They loved it!

 We played together..

They destroyed the house.....  over and over and over and over..

Some growing boys learned to walk! 

We Enjoyed the spring weather....

.......Sometimes. 

We talked to Grandparents on the phone..

We had some clingy, sad, teething babies.

I applied for a job in Labor and Delivery at the local hospital. I was offered the job on Monday, and I will start May 20th!

 We found a house we love. And put in an offer. AND THEY ACCEPTED!!!!

Looks like we will be moving near the End of June! Hopefully everything continues to go smoothly! We LOVE this house! It's perfect for us! We were so lucky to find it! We've been looking in this ridiculously expensive market for months. Everything is old, and needs so much work, but is still so expensive! Anything nice is gone as soon as its up! I happened to go to a workout class at the Rec center, and a lady there was talking about putting her house up for sale. We got talking about it, and it sounded great. We called our realtor, and arranged to go see it that evening. It wasn't officially being listed for 3 more days, so we had a head start. We fell in love with it!! It took a couple of days to work out our financing, but we were able to put in an offer before anyone else even looked at it. They counter offered just a little higher, and we accepted! I'm mostly excited for the amazing kitchen and big family room downstairs, oh and all the storage! Devry is most excited for the additional two car garage with huge loft above it and the fenced in yard! Payton is most excited for his room and the built in twirly slide off the deck. And the twins are most excited for the built in baby gate (ok maybe thats me).... but they are excited for the swings under the deck! We can't wait to move, and get settled in our OWN house. We can't wait to be done renting, and start putting money towards our own mortgage instead of someone else's. We can't wait to be able to paint and decorate, and not worry about all the pains of renting! 

April was a wonderful month. We are hoping for some consistent nicer weather in the next few weeks. We have lots happening and lots to look forward to this summer!