Spring Fever

We have had the best weather this week. Tuesday and Wednesday were just beautiful, with highs in the 70's. The boys didn't have school on Tuesday (it was a scheduled holiday) so we went out early to play outside. It was a little chilly when we went out there but it warmed up quick.

The boys could swing on this thing all day.

We went to Target to pick up a couple of things and then came home and went right back outside. My mom stopped by on her way to run some errands, so the boys were thrilled to see her. The boys were having so much fun outside, I just let them have lunch out there. They love getting to eat outside.

My dad stopped by when the boys woke up to check out some damage that was done to our fence during the storm. The boys were so excited, Evan said "we got to see Meemaw and Papaw today!" After he left, we went to the Fort Gordon park and let the boys play. We were having leftovers for dinner, so we were able to stay out later than we usually do. The park was pretty busy, which the boys love. They made friends with the cutest little girl and they all played the entire time together. Carter complimented her sparkly shoes (she was dressed up like Dorthey from Wizard of Oz) and they all became fast friends. We just sat on the bench the whole time while they played.

Wednesday, the boys had school. After a week off, I was ready for them to go back. ;) I went to Starbucks, Kohls, got my grocery shopping done, cooked dinner so all we'd have to do is heat it up later, etc. It was a nice little break and the boys were so happy to be back and school. They were so excited to see their teachers and friends.

When they got home, I let them play and have a snack outside before nap. It was warm, but Carter insisted on wearing his coat. I can't keep clothes on one boy and I can't get the other one to take them off. ;)

After naps, my sister came over and we went on Fort Gordon to the sand park. (I'm sure it has a name, but that's what we call it) I found a loaf of bread at Kroger for 33 cents (I'm sure everybody is tired of hearing about that--I told everybody about it!) and so I thought we could take it to go feed the ducks, have a picnic snack and the boys could play in the sand park. They like to take of their shoes and socks, so it's better to go when it's not too cold.

The boys were excited to have aunt Caroline come with us.

The boys say the cutest things to the geese and duck while they're feeding them. "come here duck, you want some of this bread? You can have some. I'll feed you" etc. I get a kick out of listening to them.

I brought fun snacks for the boys and they both wanted bread. So, they were eating with one hand and throwing some to the geese with the other.

They get pretty close. This is the only duck, the rest are geese.

Evan was so excited to take his shoes off. He had been talking about it all day. He loves the way the sand feels on his feet, he thinks it's such a treat to go barefoot.

They walked so carefully at first, just laughing.

It didn't take long before they were running and jumping around.

There was another little girl that came by later (there's never anybody there playing) and the boys had the best time with her. They were sad when she left. They said they'd have to come back again to play with her.

We went and looked at the lake one last time before leaving.

This warm weather makes me so excited for summer and I remember feeling the exact same way this time of year, every year since the boys were born. We always get a glimpse of spring in January/February, then it goes back to being cold for a little while longer before we officially hit spring time weather.

Leaves

Greg was home for 5 days in a row due to the ice storm and we all enjoyed his long weekend. But, Monday morning, it was time to get back into our routine. The boys woke up and got in bed with me and watched a cartoon while they woke up a little.

Then, we ran some errands. We went to Target and then to the library to return some books and get some new ones. The boys love going to the library and getting new books, and it makes story time at night more fun for everybody with new books to read. On the way in the library we saw this tree. You can't tell by this picture, but it fell onto a fence and into an outdoor play area at a day care. Carter immediately felt so sorry for this tree, he said it was so sad that it fell over.

We played with the boys toys before nap. They got out all their food and we had a little play picnic and they cooked for me and made me different juices to drink.

At least one of my boys will keep his clothes on. I have hardest time keeping Evan dressed. As soon as he wakes up in the morning, he takes of his pajamas--which is better than it used to be. He used to take his pajamas off right after going to bed. And as soon as we come inside from running errands, school, playing, etc he takes his clothes off as soon as I'm not looking.

The weather was SO nice on Monday, so Greg took the boys in the yard after their nap while I fixed supper. Greg decided to rake up some leaves and then came inside to get a few bags to bag them up. I could hear the boys laughing and I knew something was up. I went out there and they were having the time of their lives running through those leaves. *Notice how it starts out as a pile*

I took a million pictures, they were just so happy to be playing in those leaves.

I had to take a video, they were just too cute.


Then, Evan got the rake and decided to "help" daddy with the pile of leaves. By the time those boys got done with it, it was no longer a pile and you couldn't tell it had ever been raked.

Such a helper. :)

I loved that the weather was nice enough for the boys to play outside without coats. After dinner, they went out there and played until it was dark. We are all so done with winter and the weather this week is just what we needed.

Swim Lessons

Saturday, the boys had their second swim practice. Evan is still not happy that it's held indoors instead of being outside, but they were excited. They did really well. They were the first ones to get to their class, the other two girls in their class were about 15 minutes late, so the boys got some one on one time with the instructor, which was nice. At the end, they take off the floaties and she has them jump in the water. Carter was so excited at how well Evan was doing, he was cheering him on and when Evan got out of the water, Carter hugged him. It was SO cute!! I love how excited and happy he was for Evan.

Here's some videos that I took of what they did. They're about 20 seconds long. I'm sitting outside the pool area, so I'm taking this on my phone, through glass and on zoom, so it's not great.





Sunday morning, we took the boys to the car wash. We needed to get the van washed and figured the boys might find it entertaining.

Afterwards, we went out to lunch. We threw away a fridge full of food because of the power outage last week, so we were on our way to the grocery store.

Evan loves the chips and salsa. He has to have an entire salsa bowl to himself and would be happy if none of us touched the chip basket so he could have it all to himself.

Earlier that morning, we had gone to a park and there was nobody there and boys asked us to take them to one with kids to play with, so after nap, we went to another park. The weather was beautiful and after our ice storm, everybody was happy to be outside. We got lemonades and stayed at the park as long as we could.

Ice Storm/Earthquake 2014

Tuesday afternoon, schools were cancelled and Greg was told his work was going to be closed. The forecast was calling for lots of freezing rain and ice, so we knew that we were going to be stuck inside for a few days and that we might lose power.

 

The boys were so excited to see the snow on the ground Wednesday morning. But, it was just a little bit of snow, covered in a huge layer of ice. Definitely not something they could go out and play in. But, they understood and didn't beg to go outside. I had stocked up on kids movies from Redbox on Tuesday and I gave them their Valentine's gifts from my parents early, so we did pretty good on Wednesday.

My parents got the boys two Melissa and Doug toys for Valentine's day. They got the pizza kit for Christmas and LOVE it. They pretend it's birthday cake, so for Valentine's day, they got the birthday cake set and the cookie set.

They had so much fun playing with these.

The ice really weighed down the trees. There's tons of trees and branches down all over Augusta, at one point 85% of the entire county was out of power. This is our neighbors tree on our fence.

This is the damage it did to our fence. Not bad, especially compared to the massive amount of damage that other people had.


I'm so glad this tree didn't break on the boys playhouse. One big limb fell, but didn't hit the playhouse

 We decided to bake cupcakes with the boys and then decorate them. They had so much fun helping me in the kitchen. I gave each boy a cupcake and a dollop of frosting so they could decorate their cupcake and then eat it. Carter was so cute and careful with his.

Greg did such a good job. ;)

And this one just took the knife and scooped all the frosting directly into his mouth!! haha. I got so tickled at him just eating the frosting until I realized we were iced in with a 3 year old that had just ate spoonful after spoonful of straight frosting. I put a video on my youtube page of what frosting does to Evan.

 

I'm so glad we gave the boys these gifts early, it's what kept them entertained all day.

Wednesday night, after bath was done, we lost power. We read the boys a story in the dark and then about 5 minutes after putting them to bed, the power came on. I figured we were going to lose it. My parents, sister and several friends on Facebook had already lost theirs. Greg and I watched tv and relaxed and then as we were getting ready for bed, about 10pm, we lost power again. We didn't get it back until the next evening about 5:00ish.

We were all able to sleep pretty good, but when we woke up it was so cold in our house. I was freezing and cabin fever had set in for all of us. Greg decided to go outside and get the ice/snow off our cars and charge his phone on his car charger. I figured since the cars were running anyways, me and the boys might as well warm up and I could charge my phone while they watched tv in the van. It felt so good to be in the warm car.

This is how thick the ice was on the car, Greg put his thumb there for reference.

The boys were not the least bit interested in watching tv, they enjoyed watching greg get all the ice off our vehicles.

And writing on the windows with their fingers.

The neighbors tree fell on Greg's car. This picture was taken after Greg pulled is car back. There was such a thick layer of ice, that the tree didn't end up doing any damage to Greg's car.

We saw several people driving through our neighborhood and our street didn't look icy, just slushey. So, we decided to drive to the end of the neighborhood and see how the roads were. The main road was completely clear, so we drove around to see if any restaurants were open. Most had lost power, but we did find a McDonald's that every single person in Augusta was at. The line was out the door, but they had an amazing play area that was completely empty. So, Greg took the boys in there to play and they played hard while I waited in line and on our food for like, an hour. All they had was chicken nuggets, Mcchickens, and fries, which was fine. We were happy to have warm food and a place for the boys to run around. When we left it was started to get crazy, the play area had filled up, people were starting to seem mad about the wait, etc. so we decided it was a good time to go home and nap.

The McDonalds we went to had a tree house play area that the boys LOVED, we didn't even know that mcd's had a play area.

While we were gone, another tree in our yard fell.

 

This is what one street in our neighborhood looked like.

You can see all the power trucks parked in the grocery store parking lot, there were tons of them.

A poor house in our neighborhood had a tree fall on it. I'm so glad we didn't have that happen.

Even with our little trip out, we were starting to lose our minds. It's awful not having any power.

After the boys woke up from their nap, we decided to make another trip out. We got a little ways down the road and I realized how thirst I was, so Greg turned around and went in the house to get me some water (wasn't that sweet) and our power was back on!! We ended up going to the grocery store to get a few things because all the food in our fridge had to be thrown away because of how long our power was out. When we came back home, our house had enough time to heat up and it felt so great. My parents stopped by to get a pot of coffee because they still didn't have power, we let the boys watch some tv, took warm showers, cooked some warm food. It was SO nice to have power.

Greg's work closed Thursday and Friday, so Friday morning, we took the boys to the mall. It was still icy out and they couldn't play in the yard and they needed to get some energy out. Evan had been asking to go to the mall and chick-fil-a since Wednesday morning, but those places were closed until Friday. The boys played so good at the mall and you can just tell they needed to run around. My sister came over while we were gone and showered and charged her phone because she still didn't have power!! She ended up getting it back Friday afternoon.

The mall wasn't very busy. I was shocked. With the roads being completely clear, so many people still being out of power and kids out of school, I thought the mall play area was going to be madness, but it wasn't.

The boys wore their Valentine's shirts that they got from Grandma and Grandpa Westover, which they love.

 

Friday night, we took the boys to Chick-fil-a to play some and then Greg and I got hibachi to go and eat at home. After we put the boys to bed, we watched tv (we're so romantic) and then when Greg was going to bed, we had an earthquake. Seriously. I knew exactly what it was since we had been in an earthquake in Virginia.  I read a report that said it was 4.4 and the epicenter was in Edgefield, SC and I also read reports that said it was a 5.4 in Augusta, but that was right after it happened and haven't seen that number again. Either way, it was mild compared to the one we had in VA. And even the one in VA was mild to people in California, so it was bad, but just absolutely crazy that we had one. Greg and I were actually talking about how we experienced some pretty bad weather (the winter of 2009 was one of the worst as far as snowfall in VA) and earthquakes, etc and joked that we brought the bad winters with us, so it's crazy that a few hours after having that conversation, we have an earthquake in Georgia.

 

 

 

It has been a long few days, although I really don't have any room to complain, my parents lost power way before us and they still don't have it back as I type this on Saturday afternoon. (over 72 hours without power) I'm pretty sure I've been ending every post lately with "I can't wait for spring" or something like that, but seriously, I'm so ready for spring!!!