Let the ear infections begin...

...and Gabe wins the prize for the first ear infection of the school year.  He woke up in the middle of the night saying his ear hurt.  We got him to the doctor the next morning and he was so worn out he put himself to bed when we got home and he slept half the afternoon.

Too much sugar...too much fun...

Sometimes good days a great all the way to the very end when exhausted children fall asleep peacefully  - on the ride home, on the couch, in your lap, in their bed.  The key thing here is PEACEFULLY piece of the equation.

Then there are other days.  Days that start out good, maybe even have a good long run, but then at some point something goes terribly wrong.  Today, sadly, was one of those days.  We had a good morning, loaded up for a fun day at the park where the boys would get to go to a birthday party.  The boys were thrilled at the jungle gym at the picnic shelter, thought the birthday cake was the coolest thing EVER (it was a rocket ship, what is not to love?), and then they ate and played some more.

Doesn't sound bad, does it?  Well, what happened next looks something like this:

This is what too much sugar, too much playing, and an exhausted little boy still hyped up on sugar looks like.  It was a GREAT ride home.  

Marshmallow Mustache

Reece is addicted to marshmallows....

Puddles

I got these photos in an email from Doug with the subject line: "It's good to have  me as a dad..."

It has been raining for almost a week.  Everything is wet and muddy and the boys are really sick and tired of being cooped up inside.  Inside recess simply does not cut it.















Doug decided to just let the boys have fun in the massive mud puddles at school.  It was gross - and they loved it.  And yes, they roped in another kid - luckily whom we know the parents - to join them.

Catching up!

Wow, I am so behind in keeping the blog up to date!  I have not yet adjusted to life with the twins in school full time and I am really behind in everything these days.  I keep telling myself it will settle into a groove and things will be ok, but we haven't found the groove yet!

Here is a quick post about the complete cluster that drop off is in the morning at school for Doug.  The system pretty much is mediocre, but because of the complete lack of planning on the part of the folks that designed the parking and the car/bus lanes - it is a nightmare every single morning.  The kids have to be dropped off or park and walked across at least two lanes of traffic to get to the sidewalk!  Brilliant.  (Smack head.)

Because of this traffic nightmare, the school really wants kids to ride the bus - because the bus drops kids off on the sidewalk.  But here is the rub.  We live 3 minutes from the school.  3 minutes - seriously - but there are no sidewalks for half the trip. So we looked into the bus.  It is a K-12 bus. This means 5 year olds are on the bus with 17 year olds.  This is not good.  It gets better - we would be the first pick up of the morning, so my kids would be on the bus 45 minutes. And in the afternoon - we are the last drop off.  So again 45 minutes on the bust to go what is literally 3 minutes from our house by car.

So Doug fights the traffic everyday to drop them off and we pay our nanny to fight the traffic every day to pick them up. The pick up is no better.  It requires you get out of the car (with Reece in tow) go into the building, sign in with ID, go down a hall to the holding area, get the twins from the madness, then take all three back out to the car - crossing the multiple lanes of traffic.  EVERY SINGLE DAY.

And today...it was raining.  So the adults weren't outside helping unload cars and shuffling kids across the traffic!  So Doug parked the car, walked the twins in, then stood in the rain and helped unload kids for half an hour - and Reece helped.  Reece worked for permission to jump in puddles until he was soaked.

Busy Morning

Grayson headed into school

Doug continues to drop the twins off in the morning.  Some mornings they walk in together, some they get the kiss and ride lane.  Today they walked in with Doug so he snapped a quick picture of Grayson on the way in.

When did he grow up??

Reece working hard!

After the twins are dropped off Doug and Reece have about 30 minutes they can blow before they really have to be on their way to drop Reece off at his school.  I love the fact that Doug uses this time to let him explore and do cool kid stuff.  They have been digging a retaining pond on the way out of town and we have stopped wit hall the boys to let them climb the mountains of dirt and rocks and look at all the heavy equipment.  Today they were actually working on it and Doug stopped and let Reece watch.  This, apparently inspired him to get out his own tools and help!