FHE cookies

Tonight for our family home evening activity we made dinosaur sugar cookies. The boys love making cookies and I enjoy eating them. :) The dinosaur cookie cutters were supposed to be for part of Jared's birthday present but Ian found them today and showed Daddy. So we opened them and used them!! It is quite a chore trying to roll out cookies with 2 little helpers but we did it!!

Quintin sneaking some dough

Daddy doesn't look very happy

Enjoying the cookies!!

Ode to green beans

I just wanted to say thank you to the ever faithful can of green beans. My children love you and I don't know how I would get them to eat vegetables if it weren't for you. I am luck that they will even eat vegetables but most especially that they ask for green beans especially!! Thank you for being yummy, good for you, and delicious.

g

Long Beach Trip

Today we went to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach for the first time in our lives. Since we have the opportunity to live in California for the moment we are trying to expose the kids to everything it has to offer. We ended up buying a season pass because if you go twice it pays for itself plus we got parking and 2 free passes with it. We had such a fun time exploring the creatures that are native to the different parts of the California coast.

Outside before the fun began

Learning what makes a shark work

Diver feeding the sharks

The rays

Ian and Jared petting the rays

I was too scared to try.

Petting the sharks

In the lorikeet exhibit. Those birds are kissing each other. :)

Quintin petting the rays. He loved to touch them.

Tank full of Nemos!!

Taking a break. :)

Thema or Louise the turtle. Didn't know which one was which.

Long Beach has a lighthouse, kind of. :)

Queen Mary is across the harbor.

If anyone wants to go with us we'll go again. :)

Potty training again?

I just got done potty training Ian. He is done except for night time. It took only 4-5 months!! The longest 4-5 months of my life. Now Quintin is wanting to go potty on the potty chair. I wasn't going to start potty training him until he was 2 in November but he wants to start now so who am I to deny him. And how cute is he in his little underwear!!! And yes, he actually goes pee pee on the potty. Wish us luck!!

Hello?

Quintin is obsessed with phones. He has pretend conversations that go like this. "Hello? Da da da da da da no. No. No no no!! Bye" I hope he doesn't think all of my phone calls go like this. :)

First Day

Ian had his first day of preschool today. Well, it is not really preschool. I am doing a co op with a few friends of mine so I only have to teach once a month and in exchange I get 2 hours of bliss once a week until it is my turn. That way preschool is practically free. Don't get me wrong, I love preschool but I think it is a waste for kids to go more than a year. They learn the same things anyways so I didn't want to pay twice for Ian to be bored the second year. He will go to real preschool next year and then start kindergarden the year after that. I feel like I am perfectly capable to teach Ian the fundamentals before he goes to preschool. Ian loves this situation though. When we got there he turned to me and said, "Bye Mommy." There was one kid who was not so keen on the idea... can you tell? His mom had to stay the whole time. I had 2 hours to play and clean and it felt weird to only have Quintin. This is going to be great. :)

I am not sure how I feel about you kids...

The problem is this family just moved into our ward so the other 3 boys have know each other for a year already.

Butterflies flutter by....

Today the boys and I headed up to Santa Barbara to the museum of natural history to go see the Butterflies Alive! exhibit. It was cool to be in a room full of butterflies flying every which way. We learned all about them and many even landed right on us!! Ian was a little wary of them landing on him but he thought overall it was neat. Quintin almost killed one but we got it away from him before he could finish it off. The curator said it was dying anyway, that is why it wasn't quick enough to get out of his way. Afterwards we had a lot of fun posing with the cutouts!!