This Week

Last week Anthony worked the night shift schedule all week to cover vacation for a coworker and as a result he had Saturday off. We had no idea what to do with ourselves! We never have an entire day just for our family. Anthony has to go to work Monday through Saturday and then Sunday is church and church responsibilities, so this was a special treat! We decided to drive to Bass Pro Shop to get James a new fishing pole for the keys and explore the store.

James liked looking at all of their stuffed animals around the store and of course, the aquarium.

After a very rough day at church Sunday where James missed sharing time because he was doing time out in the car, James was very sad that he missed "the lesson". At home I went over the lesson with him and we started talking about faith, that it is believing in something you can't see, but is real. I told him that it was like when we pray to Heavenly Father, we can't see him listening to us, but we have faith that he hears us. James's response was: "That is why I always keep my eyes open during the prayer. I always try to see God...but I never do!...Oh I know! I should look up!"

A few minutes later we were talking about what he would do in a situation where he saw a bunch of kids teasing a little girl because her clothes were "funny looking". James doesn't really get what "funny looking" means or that it would be a bad thing (the kid wears an optimus prime costume half the time). So he asked, "so she was wearing something weird like a bathing suit when she wasn't in the water??". I said, "yeah, just like that! And the other kids were teasing her and being mean to her because of it. What would you do?". After a few seconds of thought, James came back with, "I would go up to her and tell her not to wear her bathing suit clothes.". He always surprises me with the different way his brain works! Perfectly logical, but not what we were getting at :)

We've been thinking about getting a more compact double stroller that would work when we travel instead of relying on an umbrella stroller for Rett and making James walk. I've had my eye on one that had good reviews, but there was no where for me to see it in person. I happened to see a woman in Bass Pro that had one and I just had to stop her and ask her about it. I was sold! On the drive home I ordered it on amazon from my phone and Monday morning it was delivered. After we put it together, we took it for a spin. The boys approve!

James can sit, or he can stand up and hold on to the handles while he rides. He can jump down whenever he wants to, so we don't have to get him in and out when he sees something he wants to check out.

For instance, we spotted this large group of fiddler crabs so James and Anthony walked over to check it out.

My Etsy shop has really taken off! It is so exciting, and definitely not what I expected. I thought every once in awhile someone would order something, but lately I've been getting orders almost daily. Sometimes I get multiple orders in one day! Our mailman probably knows something is up because I am putting packages out for him so frequently :) I'm trying to add more "in use" pictures to my listings so that people can see what they look like on, but it is dang hard to get good pictures of the boys in theirs. I managed these two on Sunday

Anthony is always on the lookout for hawks and other animals when we are driving around. For some reason, hawks love to hang out around our neighborhood so we see them all the time. While Anthony was at work, I took James to the dollar tree to spend some of his chore money and we heard a hawk in the parking lot! After looking around, we saw him perched at the top of a tree. I took pictures just for Anthony, since I knew he would be disappointed he missed it. In another life I would have never even noticed it, but after being married to Anthony for almost 10 years I can't help but see it!

  I found some sparklers at the dollar tree, so when we got home, we played with them. James was nervous at first and would stay really still while holding it. I suggested he run around with it, but he said he was afraid that the sparks would get on the grass and light a big fire. After going through two boxes, he finally started running around with them and had a blast pretending to be a rocket.

 Rett wanted nothing to do with the sparklers, so he just played on the slide.

As a part of James' bedtime routine, Anthony will sometimes watch youtube videos of homemade rocket launchers with him. Anthony decided that he and James should work on building one together, so they went to home depot, got the supplies, and spent a few days working on it. Then we took it to the park to try it out!

 It was hot! Rett always gets sweaty at the ends of his curls, so I pushed them all up to try to get him more air to his face.

Anthony had to try out his new gopro and got tons of videos of the different launches. Boys and their toys!

While my mom was in town, we left her at home with Rett while Anthony and I took James to see the Minion movie. We brought a blanket for James and we all sat in the cozy recliners. We had fun, but about halfway through the movie James whispered to Anthony, "This is looooooong". It wasn't as funny as I thought it was going to be, but it was nice to get out together.