My Beautiful Boys

Tanner's favorite thing to get into right now is the dog bowls, especially if there's water in them. If they are empty, he pulls them out of the stand and "drives" them around the house. He turns them upside down, then puts one hand on each of them and pushes them around as if they were cars.

St. Patrick's day was a good excuse to get them all decked out in green. These are actually Rugby shirts/jackets that Aunt Angie had bought Joey years ago on her way through Ireland.

I'm so happy that they still get along so well.

His other favorite toy is real car toys that have wheels that he can drive around the house.

Joey is still obsessed with dinosaurs. This is him out in the backyard doing some dinosaur discovering and dinosaur experiments (just like Dino Dan). That's my old cell phone he's using as a "DinoTalkie" and "Dino-corder" to document his findings.

While they boys were playing outside in the beautiful weather on Friday, I took a lot of pictures. I had fun editing some of them as you can see. My boys are sooooo gorgeous! :)

^Unfortunately, I don't know how to edit off snot and chocolate.

Joey spend much of the time Friday riding his fourwheeler. He loves it!

I got all 4 of my boys in this shot! Whoowhoo! Lars turned 10 in Feb and Thor turned 9 in Dec. They are getting old.

High fives!

Daddy and his boys swinging on the hammock.

Silly boys.

Our Weekend

We had a nice warm weekend this weekend so we got to enjoy some outside festivities. We got out Joey's bounce house and let Tanner on it for the first time. He didn't fall in love with it. Maybe when he's on his feet in a few months.

We went car shopping and got a new vehicle. It's a 2006 Saturn Relay. It's basically a mini-van inside, but looks a little more like an SUV outside. I don't really love the way minivan's look on the outside, so this was the perfect solution. We got all the room we need, especially with all the traveling we do.

The other thing we're working on now is Earl's motorcycle touring business. He's starting a business on the side for motorcycle tours. He's got the website almost built and even has some tours lined up. Now all we need are customers!

Tanner's sleeping is gradually getting better again. I'm hoping, anyway. The last 2 nights, he's slept one 3 or 3 1/2 hour stretch. The rest of the night is 1-2 hour stretches, but this is progress. I've been going months now on 1-2 hour stretches of sleep at night. Not sure how I even function, it's miserable. I shouldn't even be able to remember my own name from this exhaustion. But hopefully it's getting better. He's as happy as ever, so the lack of restful sleep doesn't seem to be affecting him at all. He really is so happy. And loveable! I seriously fall in love with him over and over every day. As I do with Joey, but Joey's easy to do that with: he's teaching me so much and learning so much. He has such a wonderful personality, despite his phase of whining. I'm hoping he's growing out of that soon.

Tanner is holding on to things and thinking about cruising, but he's not doing that yet. Any day now. For now, he really enjoys cars, and emptying out all the toy buckets in the playroom.

Joey's still loving TaeKwonDo and got his first stripe on his belt last week for memorizing his TaeKwonDo promise (not sure if I already posted that in the last blog). Joey has also been planning his 5th birthday party since the day after his 4th birthday party last summer. And it hasn't changed much at all. He's planned out specific decorating ideas and everything. He's a planner!

Enjoying some family time

We went to Dismal Swamp State Park last weekend to enjoy the decent weather. Joey got to ride his bike. He's got us convinced that when he's done with training wheels, he gets a new bike--with dinosaurs on it. But he won't let Earl take these training wheels off so he can practice.

He had to stop and pick up this stick.

My happy baby.

Yup. ^ That's my boy.

Joey's showing us one of his TaeKwonDo positions ^

^ Position #3.

I honestly have tried a few times to keep Tanner's hair down, like a normal baby. But you should see it. It's ridiculous looking. It stands up on it's own in the back and in the front, and the middle lays down to the side. I can't have him going around looking like that. Ha ha.

The boys get along so well at home. Joey still loves playing with Tanner, especially now that Tanner's getting bigger and can interact better.

Tanner was trying to put the harmonica in Joey's mouth so he'd play some more.

Helping with the dishes. He got up there by himself.

Tanner's favorite toys to play with is cars. He loves crawling on his knees pushing them around. Joey didn't have any interest in doing that at this age. Joey was obsessed with balls back then. It's so fun watching how different Tanner is than Joey and how similiar (can we say climbing monkeys!?)

Tanner still isn't sleeping through the night. In fact, it's gotten much worse. He used to go 4 or 5 hours at least, but now he won't sleep longer than 1 1/2 or 2 hours at a time. He started that when he started teething, but now that the tooth broke, he is still in that habit and I can't break him no matter what I try. It's difficult, but I'm hoping once he's weaned in a couple months, he'll start sleeping better.