The Beach

We have the luck that Jason has weekends off. So Saturday we decided to head to the beach. A Lake Michigan beach that is. It was so much fun and within our budget, aka FREE. Benton was not a fan of the sand when we first got there and insisted on being carried. The boys spent most of their time in the sand.Jason spent the first half of our time there playing with the boys in the sand.
While I hung out with Paisley.See, she was there spending most of her time hiding from the sun. I should have spent more time hiding from the sun as I somehow managed to forget to put sunscreen on my chest and have a lovely red sunburn there. EeekkAnd more playing in the sand.Benton spent a lot of time throwing sand at the water. With every handful he let out a "whoohoo".I took a turn playing in the sand with the boys too. I convinced Tab to let me bury him.A picture of the lighthouse that was there. I don't know what the draw is, but Jason and I love lighthouses. They are so beautiful. Looks like Michigan is the right place for us.Leaving the beach. And yes I'm well aware that it should be illegal for me to be in a bathing suit for at least another 6 months. Alas, summer won't wait.

At our Grim Court North House

We knew that this move was going to be particularly hard on Tab and so I decided to try to do what I could to make it a little bit easier on him. So I am making him a little "scrapbook" about Kirksville. I took pictures of him in front of some of his favorite places. Since he calls where we lived his Grim Court North house, it will be titled like this post. So here are some of the pictures that will be featured.

Tab in front of the Kirksville sign as you enter town from the south. The town slogan is "Where people make the difference." A few days before we moved my neighbor mentioned this and we talked about how true it is. If it weren't for all of the fabulous people there, Kirksville really would be just a po dunk town with just a walmart.
The Aquatic CenterThe Library
RedBox...lolHyVee... he loved and I hated these car carts. This is the sign in front of his Preschool.
In front of the TCC, aka the gym.Tab loves elevators and this is the one he knows best. It is in "Daddy's school" This elevator has gotten him and a few of his friends in quite a bit of trouble in the past...In front of the "commons" entrance at "daddy's school". He loved to go and hang out here and eat lunch with Daddy.Pointing to the sign in the commons.Tab loves watertowers. He points them out wherever we go. This is one of 4 water towers in town.At Kum & Go. This was daddy's watering hole. Tab called it the Candy Store because every couple of Saturday's Jason would take the boys with him to fill up his soda cup and buy them each a laffy taffy or sucker.One of our favorite places in town was Truman University. They had a lot of different events that we took the boys to. I've blogged about a lot of them. As soon as the weather started to warm up we would go for "bike walks" there. One of the places we always stopped at was the bells. The boys would walk up and down banging on each bell.This is Tab in front of the clock tower at Truman. He called it the ding dong bell. He always got so excited when we happened to be there when the ding dong bell clanged.
Our Street
And finally, our Grim Court North house. We miss you already...

Stitches...almost

About 3-4 days after Paisley was born Benton dared to stand in front of the TV while Tab was trying to watch something. After Tab yelled at Benton to move with no response I heard a loud thump, followed by screaming and I went running. Tab had pushed Benton and he hit the coffee table and then fell back and smacked his face on a toy (This is all according to Tab, so I'm not sure how accurate it is.). I gently guided Tab toward his room as any good mother would. Ok, so I'm not a good mom, I shoved Tab toward his room and yelled at him not to come out until I said so. Then I went and picked Benton up off the floor just to discover that he had a pretty good cut that was bleeding more than I would have liked to have seen. So I tried to calm Benton down while I called Jason to come home to help. Jason took Benton in to the dr's office and I snapped this picture right before he left. It wasn't bleeding to bad at this point.Luckily he didn't have to have stitches. It wasn't very deep and so they were able to just glue it shut. He now has a nice big pink scar on his cheek. Luckily boys don't tend to care about scars too much.

For pretty much the rest of the day Benton wore his bike helmet. Perhaps he thought it was going to save him from future pain.

Missing Friends

Tab has been missing his good friend Jackson, from back home a lot lately. He has been asking about him and talking about the transformers he has vs. the ones that Jackson has. He colored a little picture that we will be mailing to Jackson. Here are a few pictures of the boys the day before we packed our moving truck.

These boys are such goofs.

A late Happy 4th!

For the 4th we had some of our best friends from Kirksville over. They moved about two hours away to another city in Michigan. First we hit up a parade which I forgot to bring my camera to. The kids all rode in our van (more on that later). It was fun to listen to them chatter back and forth non-stop. I guess you have a lot to talk about after a few weeks apart. They had to catch up on well, you know the typical stuff...poo and "firing" each other in half. We hung out and ate and then went to some more festivities. They had a funny kiddy carnival type of thing and we let the boys play a few games.We watched some skydivers.Benny thought that they were awesome.
They also had some bouncy things.I swear we got a pictue of Paisley and Keturah together, perhaps that was on Sarah's camera. hmm..

The most fun was probably watching the kids wrestle while we waited for the fireworks to start. It was absolutely hilarious.
Here they are all attacking Sarah.Here is a video of them wrestling. I'm sorry for the gay laugh. I never realized how gomer my laugh sounded until now, so I apologize for all of those who have had to hear me laugh.

The men hanging out with the babes. Nice face Matt.Me and SarahThey stayed for church and most of Sunday. Here the kids are all together right before they left. We were telling them to smile for the picture but they didn't think there was much to be smiling about, especially Tab. He had had his hands over his face because he was whining about not wanting them to leave.And Tab after they left. I was holding him and he cried as they pulled out of our driveway.

Paisley's Blessing

We blessed Paisley in our new ward here in Grand Rapids two days after we arrived while we had our parents in town. (Thank you all for the time and effort that you put in to come help us).Gotta have a pic we just me and my little girl.My parentsJason's Parents
Friends, Jennie and BryceMy dad with Paisley. Note the smile. My dad rarely smiles. You're lucky to see a smile out of him one or twice a year. I'm glad that we could be there to document it.
And last but surely not least thanks to my mom for making Paisley's gorgeous dress and blanket. I will post better pictures of the dress when we get them taken. And thanks to Jason's mom for finding the lacy butt tights.