VBS and Our Week

The boys had Vacation Bible School this week. It was held at the church that they have their summer program at, so they already felt comfortable going and being dropped off there. It was Monday through Friday from 9:30-12:30. The boys loved it. I meant to get a picture every day before they went, but it didn't happen.

Here's a picture of Carter on our way to VBS one day. The boys have been very into their tools lately and love talking about building or fixing things.

 

The boys on day 2 of VBS.

 

My parents have been giving us a lot of veggies from their garden, including a ton of cucumbers, so I checked Pinterest and got a ton of ideas on what to do with them. We had greek yogurt and dill cucumber salad, cucumbers with feta cheese, and cucumber salsa (my favorite!)

 

 

My parents also brought over a ton of peaches that they got at a farmer's stand in South Carolina. The boys love peaches, so they ate most of them, but I did try a few in some recipes. I made halibut tacos with peach salsa for dinner one night and some homemade peach ice cream for dessert.

 

Here's the boys at VBS on Thursday.

They were so excited to be there.

After I dropped them off, I went to the Giant Plant Sale at Mccorkles Nursery. They have a huge sale that's open to the public twice a year. I've heard a lot about them and have always wanted to check it out. It's right down the street from my parents, I went to their house first and me and my mom rode over together.

It was crazy there, it was so busy and there were so many plants/trees/flowers/bushes that it was overwhelming. It was also HOT outside. But, I knew exactly what I wanted, I came for one thing and one thing only.

Hydrangeas!! I'm so excited to have these. I got two for the front of the house and 4 for the sides and/or backyard.

Today the boys had their last day of VBS, they were so excited to go in, this was the best picture I could get. Evan was ready to go inside. :)

They invited family and friends to come to the last day of VBS celebration. It was held in the sanctuary, where the kids go every day to sing. The stage was decorated so neat.

My sister and mom were able to come with me to the celebration. Then, we came home and the boys took naps. When Greg and I woke them up, they were hyped up-especially Evan. He immediately jumped into Carter's bed and started being silly.

They both woke up in such good moods from their naps. It was so nice.

We've been looking and talking about getting the boys big boy beds and we finally decided to just do it. We went after naps and bought them each a full size mattress. My parents are bringing their truck into town tomorrow so we can pick up the mattresses. The boys are so excited about their new beds.

We got a great deal and I'm excited for the boys to have their new beds tomorrow. But, I'm even more excited about not having to go bed shopping with the boys anymore. They were so hyped up in the store.

There were Serta Sheep in the store and the boys loved them so much. The woman that sold us the mattresses gave each of the boys one and they were thrilled. They are both sleeping with them right now.

These balloons provided lots of entertainment for the boys.

After we got home, I decided to try canning some banana peppers my parents had brought over today. I only had enough to do one jar, but that's perfect since it was my first time. I can't wait to try them and see if they're worth making again.

  

 

BBQs and IKEA

Saturday, we went to a bbq with Greg's coworkers, they had a great set up outside for the kids. The house we went to was huge and great for hosting. The boys had the best time, but it was HOT. So hot and humid. I could tell it was even hot for the boys, because they kept needing to go inside to cool off and then they'd go right back outside.

The highlight for the boys was probably the dogs, they loved the dogs that were there. It was so sweet to see the boys with them.

We tried to show the boys how to play the games that were set up, but they didn't have much interest, they wanted to do it their way.

They had kids horseshoes set up and I gave Carter the horseshoe and told him what to do and he threw it and got it on the stick (I have no idea what that's called) the first try. I guess he figured he'd quit while he was ahead, because he lost interest after that.

There were a few other kids there that the boys got to play with.

Both boys were exhausted when we left, but Evan fell asleep in the car. I got him out of his car seat and carried him in the house and he didn't wake up. That hasn't happened since he was a baby.

It was too late to take a nap, but I sat down and enjoyed it for about 10 minutes before waking him up. :( He actually woke up in a great mood and the rest of the evening went along fine, I thought we'd have two fussy boys since they were so worn out, but they were in great moods.

Sunday morning, I got up early and picked my sister up and we went to Atlanta to go to IKEA. I'm redoing the boys playroom and needed to get some shelves and a couple other items. I've been wanting to go to Trader Joe's, so I looked online and saw that there was one only 2 miles from IKEA, so after shopping at IKEA, we slipped over to Trader Joes and picked up a couple of things. We stopped for lunch on our way home and made it back by 3:00.

I've been planning on redoing the boys playroom for awhile. We're changing their toddler beds into full size beds soon and will have to change their rooms around a little bit because of that, so I figured I'd go ahead and do the playroom and their rooms at the same time.

I'll post pictures when I'm done but here are some pictures from my Playroom board off Pinterest. I have wanted floor to ceiling bookshelves for a long time. I've pinned every picture I've seen of any type of book shelves and this is close to what I'm going to try and do on one of the walls in the playroom.

 

 This is what I needed to go to IKEA for--cube shelving. I wasn't sure how I wanted it to look, but ended up going with this floor to ceiling look for the most storage. I think it looks really neat and organized and holds a ton of toys. I'm hoping I can get mine to look this neat.

this is something else I picked up while at IKEA, it's a waste basket that's attached to the wall for coloring book storage. I'm moving a little table into the playroom and I'm going to have a coloring area, so I thought this would be perfect for holding their coloring books.

 

I can't wait to be done with the playroom, I'm so anxious to see how it's going to look. I need to work on almost every room in the house, but I'm starting with the playroom first.

Pirates and Sandboxes

Thursday night, we drove to the Chick-Fil-A in North Augusta (South Carolina) for Pirates and Princess night. The kids dressed up, they had a craft, the Princess Cow was out to greet the kids. The boys had the best time playing with the other kids. They got such a kick out of the other costumes.

I had the hardest time getting a picture of them. I snapped this one and Evan's telling me to stop. :( 
He's holding the little boat they made that actually floats and they've played with it in the bath every night since.

Evan had to go up and hug the Princess Cow, he loves meeting the cows when whenever they're out. Carter wanted to go by and wave, but when I asked if he wanted to hug her or give her five, he said "no thank you!" He also told me that she had a pretty dress, which I thought was very sweet.

Trying to get a picture of both of them before we left.

Haha, this was as good as I got, but I thought they looked so cute and they had so much fun. Definitely worth driving past 3 other closer Chick-Fil-As (that weren't having pirate night) to get to this one.

Friday, we went out and spent the day at my parents house. I usually don't get many pictures when we go out there but I made a point to get a couple of the boys playing. My parents built them a sandbox to play in and this was their first time seeing it. It's huge, which is perfect for them. It was stocked with new sand toys for the boys to play with.

When we got to my parents, they saw the pool on the deck, the sandbox, and then all the fun stuff inside the house, so they last about 5 minutes on each activity (if that long) until they've done everything fun they can think of at my parents house.

They wanted to play in the pool and water table, which normally would have lasted about 5 minutes, but my mom had bought them new little watering pails and they played with those things forever!!

Carter filled up our hands, watered the deck, made sure all the chairs had water, I didn't think he was ever going to get tired of playing with that thing.

Of course, they had to ride on swing. I pretty sure they think that swing was bought for them. ;)

Evan loves eating at my parents house because they have different foods than we have at home, but Friday, he did not stop eating the entire day. I'm pretty sure the boys are going through a growth spurt because for the past couple of weeks, they have been eating SO much food. They are little bottomless pits.

Barnes and Noble Story Time

On Sunday, we bought the boys booster seats to use at the table. We've been using space saver high chairs that convert to booster seats, but they were too tall to push the chair in, so the boys couldn't use them at the table very well. The boys love sitting at the table with us like big boys.

Monday, we had a play date with the Moms club. There was a pool, slip-n-slide, sand box, tons of toys, etc. The boys had a blast.

The pool was filled with water balloons and all the kids had the best time taking them out and throwing them on the ground to bust them.

I picked up some preschool workbooks at the Dollar Tree and the boys love working on them. Carter likes to work on the letters, he likes tracing them and then he'll practice writing them on his own.

Evan likes to trace the shapes and he also loves to pick out "what is different" I found a book that was just filled with things like that and he has already done almost all of them.

Today, we went to Barnes and Noble for storytime. They have story time every Wednesday at 10, which is the same time as the library story time, but today was special themed one that started at 11. It was The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so they started off with that and then read another book by Eric Carle, then they did a Caterpillar craft. The boys loved it. I was surprised that there wasn't more kids there. When it started, I think there was only 5-6 kids.

The boys were fidgety, but sat and listened to both books.

Afterwards, they got to decorate a crown to wear. They loved coloring it in.

Evan in his finished crown.

Carter in his finished crown.

Afterwards, I let the boys play with the train they have set up in the kids area. I think they could have stayed there all day.

Then, the boys wanted to go over to the blocks and play with those for a little while. I love that there's hands on things for the boys to do there. We went a couple of times over the winter for something to do, the boys actually remembered that and asked where the big Christmas tree was.

There was a huge display of Very Hungry Caterpillar things and they had these decorated sugar cookies. I knew the boys would love it and they were peanut free, so I got the boys one to share. They were SO excited about this. We had a gift card, so I got them that and also a hardcover copy of Jack and the Beanstalk that was on clearance.

The boys wanted to see the fountain and I knew the cookie was going to make a mess, so the boys went outside to eat their cookie. They didn't have the fountain on, but the boys still loved sitting there.

Another mom of twins came over to say hi. She had twin teenage boys (who were 6'4) who were very sweet to the boys and she was telling me how they fight over clothes and shoes-and that they share a car that they fight over. I've been hoping that the fighting would get better, but I guess not. :( I guess they probably just fight over different things, like clothes instead of toy trucks.

After the boys finished their cookies, I gave them a few pennies to throw in the fountain. We haven't done that in awhile, I forgot how much they loved throwing pennies in the water.

Half way back to our car, the boys said they needed to stop for a rest. Haha, we did not park that far away, but, I let them have a little rest in the shade.

We've been having a good summer so far and definitely staying busy with fun activities. Today was one of my favorite days. The boys slept in, we took our time this morning, it was nice not having to be to the story time until 11:00, our morning was so relaxed. We knew we had something fun to do, but weren't rushed.