Day 12: HBD, Mommy! Celebration in Pittsburgh!

Today was my birthday and we celebrated in Pittsburgh along with the Spieler and Strudthoff families.  We started our morning at the Monongahela Incline, which was very cool!  We were able to see the beautiful city of Pittsburgh (yes, I said it and I mean it)!  The views were outstanding!  We then had lunch at the famous Primanti Brothers downtown.  They are known for their huge sandwiches, all of which include coleslaw and fries on the sandwich.  It was pretty amazing.   After naptime, we went to Bryce's second birthday party!  We had yummy food, cake (even and ice cream cake made by Angela for my birthday), and even went swimming.  All of the boys had a great time and they were definitely exhausted at the end of the day.  Thankfully, Bud, Jess, and Austin volunteered to put the boys in bed so Peter and I could go out and celebrate my birthday with adult beverages!  Check out the pictures of our awesome day!

Day 11: Zoo with Jess

In an effort to keep the boys awake before we left at 2:00 p.m. for our trip to Pittsburgh, we went to the zoo and Jess came along, too!  It was REALLY hot so we didn't do a lot but we did see the elephants and giraffes this time as well as ride the train and play in the children's zoo.  We also met up with the Jeni Henz and Gabby and Lottie, too! The best part of the day was the monkeys.  They were louder than I've ever heard them and they carried on like this for almost 20 minutes.  Check out the video below.  Reminds me of one of Grant and JT's little yes...no...yes...no arguments!

Day 10: Gigi visits

We don't have a picture for today because the boys just wouldn't cooperate!  But, today we went to our usual Movers and Shakers story time at Covedale Library and then we picked up Gigi.  She came over to the house and played outside with us for a while.  Then, we had a yummy lunch.  The boys really liked having Gigi over to the house and we said we'd do it again soon!

Day 9: Homemade Sidewalk Paint, Red's Game, Orange Leaf

Lots of fun today!  First, we did some arts and crafts outside. I chopped peppers this morning for dinner and of course had the tops to spare.  So I thought it might be fun to get out some paint and do some "pepper painting/stamping." Grant was the only one who wanted to appease me so he participated for about 3 minutes! Thanks, Grant!  The real fun and creativity was in the sidewalk chalk paint that we made.  Just mixed cornstarch, water, and food coloring until it reaches a glue-like consistency and then paint!  The boys really had fun with this!

Later in the evening we went to the Red's game. This is the boys' first game of the season and the weather was perfect.  We even stopped for a little trip to Orange Leaf (our first time there) and it was delicious!  The boys didn't stay for the whole game but they had fun while they were there!

Day 8: Jump Zone

 Back at the twins' 2nd birthday, Grammy bought the boys passes to Jump Zone in Florence. I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about taking them there, especially because of germs and all of the negative reports that I heard regarding bounce houses.  So, Grammy came with us to try it out.  And, it was actually a really good time for all!  As long as we were cautious and made sure the boys weren't jumping in a bounce house with older kids who were too big and too rough, we were fine.  We had to go in the first few times in a new bounce house to help them learn the way but that was fun, too.  The boys really enjoyed the big slide, seen below, and truthfully, so did mommy! I got to take them up the first few times to make them feel more confident and comfortable.  It was steep, fast, and FUN!  We can't wait to do it again!!!

 Grant said he was "running circles!"

 Climbing up the firetruck

 The firetruck slide

Day 7: Rainy day fun

Well we knew it would eventually rain...and today it rained all morning.  So, we decided to stay indoors and have our own kind of fun. We made a color book (I cut out pictures from magazines and the boys told me what color it was and we glued them on the same color of paper).  We also made name stegosauruses and finally a sentence strip road.  I've had these sentence strips lying around for five plus years and can't believe I didn't think of this before!  Thanks to Pinterest for the inspiration and to my brain for remembering I had the materials!  The boys loved driving around their Chuck trucks on the road.  I thought of the tunnel but the smaller boxes were garage doors, and all their idea!

Day 6: HBD Aunt Hannah!

Today we celebrated Aunt Hannah's SWEET SIXTEENTH birthday!!!  Her birthday is really tomorrow but all the fun was today :)  We swam, had dinner, and finally enjoyed a Resse's ice cream cake.  Here's a sweet shot of the boys with the birthday girl!