Coming home

So Ryan, hope you enjoyed your month of bachelorhood. (I finally realized - hey, wait a minute - why don't you take the kids and go away for a month!?) I'm sure Ryan missed us though. We sure missed him and we're anxious to come home. This is the first time I've been really ready to leave Utah. And the first time I've seen my mom really ready for us to leave. Did anyone catch her comment a while back where she said "how fun and darling they usually are, except when teething or sick." Well, guess what? They have been teething and/or sick the whole time we've been here - so I wonder what that means? :) (Why, oh why do my kids scream and get crazy for weeks surrounding the breaking of each new tooth rather than just days?)

Anyway, my mom has been amazing as always, but yeah, we're a handful. And these babies are at such a hard age that it just wears you out. Nothing can just be fun with them because within minutes of any activity or moving to a new room, they've found exactly what they shouldn't find or are obsessed with going exactly where they shouldn't go and it's all a constant and unpleasant battle after that. And it must be time to leave because these kids look a little banged up - we've got black eyes, bruised foreheads, cut noses, scratches, scrapes, and who knows what all over these boys. We're not used to this many hazards and this many ways to get into mischief I guess.

Like every time I go to the bathroom or answer the phone or basically just turn around, this is what I come back to:
























(I think my mom is a little obsessed with her automatic pencil sharpener - I have never in my life seen so many murderously sharp pencils in one location.)












So Ryan, here's pretty much what you missed:





Wide open sidewalks and bare feet - what more do you need?
















Always accompanied by a few "guess where I'm going - catch me if you can!" glances, inevitably leading to being fetched out of the gutter for the billionth time (apparently it holds the same fascination as the toilet).






















Thank goodness for the times we had extra hands around, but yeah - we tired of that activity quickly. I always feel a little bad that my kids are getting robbed of their childhood - just being able to run around outside for hours on end, but they're just too crazy to keep control of. Maybe that's why they're so fat. :)

I love how this next picture somehow doesn't look too out of place with their build:











And don't they look like they're strategizing for their next play?
















I guess I'm just happy anytime they look like they're playing together rather than just stealing toys from each other and shrieking.







Some of your kids even picked up weird habits.




Ashton is seirously obsessed with this now - putting his blankie over his head and just bonking around the house running into things and falling down. A little hazardous. I didn't catch much of the bonking - I'm usually busy trying to keep him from hurting himself. Every time I go into his room he's in his crib doing it, crashing into the sides and falling all over the place.

But I'm sure you'll be excited to come home to these faces again!











































I should have gotten a better picture, but this was Cash's uniform the entire time we've been here - new swim trunks that my sister Julie bought him paired with an 18-24 month size swim shirt of the babies (yes it looks as small on him as it sounds). And a pair of black crocs on the wrong feet. Yeah, can't get him to wear anything else. (Thanks for that ugly spiderman swimsuit, Julie!! She even knew I wouldn't buy something like that for him so she just had to go ahead and do it! I'm pretty sure I won't ever be buying action figure wear for my kids until they're old enough to get a job and drive themselves to the store to buy it :) For church there is a lot of crying and the second we walk in the door from church he runs in the house and comes back to me with his uniform. Sometimes when a swim shirt was wet and he had to wear a different one, he carried the swim shirt in the car with us wherever we went. We even had a few nights of putting the uniform on over his pjs, since I said it was too cold in the basement to wear just shorts. Oh well, guess he was always ready for a little water action (which is somewhat ironic seeing how bad he hated swim lessons! Although he did stop crying by the last week, for the most part, thankfully).

I will say I'm already slightly sad thinking about our travels home - my sister is nice enough to take one of the babies with her just long enough to drop him off in Miami and fly all the way back home. But since she's flying standby and the flights look better on Tuesday, she'll be coming late Tuesday and we leave early Monday. The boys have never really been separated! I'm already sad missing my baby!

A million thanks to those who helped out with the kids while I was here though. It's sure nice to be around family or to go run errands while your kids are asleep and have some built in babysitters.

Anyway, we'll be home soon Ryan, so, um, brace yourself?