Brian's birthday

We had a wonderful time celebrating Brian's birthday last weekend.

It started off with donuts in the morning for breakfast, opening his presents, and then going to a restaurant after work for dinner.

Brian got a new Royals shirt and a BluRay player for our bedroom (sometimes on the weekends when the kids wake up TOO early, we let them watch part of a movie - Netflix is AWESOME)

Brian chose 54th Street for dinner and we were there early enough that we got some Happy hour deals and all just shared two appetizers.  Yummy!

This past weekend, we did some more painting around the house.  We are trying to tackle one little area at a time, mainly using nap time and evenings as our dedicated time to paint.

Colin wanted to help me trim, and as you can expect, that didn't really work out very well (I let him attempt a corner and it got messy really quickly).

But, he was happy to paint a picture for me in the middle of the wall.

Apparently the top picture is Colin and the bottom one is Maggie (notice the pigtails!)

He is so cute - we obviously painted over it, but I had to document the mural.

Kindof reminds me of cavemen paintings -  :)

We hope Brian had a wonderful birthday.  Seriously couldn't ask for a more patient and loving Daddy.  Hope #33 is a great one!

Pre-birthday cupcakes

Brian's 33rd Birthday is Wednesday, but we had to celebrate some today because I gave up sweets for Lent and didn't want to miss out on a birthday cupcake with Brian.

Wasn't that so sweet of him to agree to an extra day of celebrating?  :)

Oh, and I can't wait for Easter...Got the boys matching ties that came in the mail this past week...

So cute, they will look smashing!

And Maggie insisted on a picture of her, too, so here she is!

The kids and I "secretly" baked blue cupcakes and they helped me decorate them.

Translation - every time Brian walked in the kitchen, Colin told him "don't look" and Maggie said "cause we're making you cupcakes".  And...Maggie took an entire tub of sprinkles and dumped it on the cupcakes...it was pretty hilarious, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be finding sprinkles in my kitchen until Brian's next birthday...

Crazy kid...

Cupcake smiles

Sugar everywhere!!!

Since it was so beautiful outside today, we did some yardwork and then went for a walk after dinner to our neighborhood pool (well, the closest of the 3 pools) to check it out.  Maggie seemed pretty bummed to see that it was closed, but Colin was easily distracted by a MASSIVE pile of mulch in the parking lot.

Now, if I could only keep my focus on my school work instead of these lazy spring days...

Ordinary Days

Memaw came to watch the kids for a couple days during Spring Break.  We sent the kids back to Ms. Robin's house the other days.  She is such a great lady and we are so lucky to have her when the kids are off school.  

As usual, Memaw showed up with a tub full of goodies for the kids...

New flip flops, books, clothes, coloring books, etc...

 Love this pic of Memaw and Mags

 The kids caught the ice cream truck out front on Friday afternoon.

Mags has a scary-looking tweety bird ice cream and Colin has sponge bob.

They were in heaven, it's definitely the little things in life that are important...

Then later on Friday afternoon, we headed outside to play.

I made a hopscotch on the driveway and it was a big hit.

It's fun to watch the kids develop better coordination skills, and the neighbors had fun showing off their talents as well.

 Maggie tries hard, but pretty much just runs down the hopscotch

 Colin has it down great!

 Brian got recruited to punt a ball across the street from our driveway to our neighbors, with a bunch of kids waiting to catch it.  A few minutes later, there were about 4 more kids joining in the fun, and I'm not even sure who they were.  Brian's pretty sure he pulled his groin trying to kick the balls so high.  Gotta love it!

Oh, and since it was a bit chilly on Sunday, we decided to do some painting in our hallway.  We are going to try to get rid of all the off-white in our house, but we've got some super tall ceilings to contend with.  Little by little, we will get our house painted.

It's the same color as our old house, Sauteed Mushroom.  Mmmmmm, sounds delicious, huh?

Colin had his turn at painting and actually did a great job.

He's for hire, you know, since milk is almost $4 a gallon now.  He needs to start paying his way... :)

Cutest painter I've ever seen!

party weekend

Last weekend we were super busy, but in a fun way.

We actually had 3 parties in the span of 24 hours, and our family had it's fair share of cupcakes and cookies to bring home.

The first was Johnny's 3rd birthday party at a really fun gymnastics place.

The kids had a blast jumping into the foam pits and hopping around on the trampolines.

Can you find Colin in there?

Here's a group shot of everyone at his party...it was so much fun!

Then, on Saturday morning we split up.
Maggie and I headed off to a baby shower and Brian and Colin went to a classmates 5th birthday party at Fun Run (a huge room filled with a ton of bounce houses and inflatables)

I don't have any pictures of these really, but everyone had fun.

Maggie was doing some light reading on the way to the baby shower...

After our sugar overload, we rested on Sunday.  The weather has been pretty inconsistent lately, but we get outside as often as we can.

This weekend is supposed to be a little cooler, so we might tackle some painting in the house...

Let March Madness begin!

Books and Bikes

Colin came home with the cutest "book" that he wrote at school.

Definitely hit home, especially when he read it to us that night.

 Here I am, with Wolverine claws.

 Here is Maggie with Sai's (Ninja Turtle weapons) in her hands.

 Here is Mommy, Daddy, Maggie and me all happy.

 Here we are very sad, cause the baby went to Heaven.

 And now we're happy again because the baby is with Jesus.  He's an angel.

And...it took everything in me not to bawl like a baby.

If you didn't know, I had a miscarriage last week (15 weeks pregnant) and we had multiple conversations with the kids about the baby and why Mommy and Daddy were so sad.

I guess they really do listen.

So sweet.

But, life does go on, and we had a couple of days of beautiful weather to have some fun.

Colin insisted on riding his bike this past weekend.  He really hasn't shown much interest in it, but all of a sudden, it's his new favorite thing to do!

 I love that we live in a cul-de-sac with hardly any traffic (and if there is ever a car, they are going about 15 miles an hour).  

 Can't wait til we get a little more confidence built up.

 Brian being the coolest Daddy around

 Mags even got a turn

We had so much fun outside today.

Got the cars washed, played with neighbors, cleaned out the garage some, gave the boys haircuts, grilled outside for dinner, it was awesome.

We are ready to say goodbye to winter...hello spring!

Cousins and Concerts

 The family took a trip last weekend to Tiff and Chad's house to see the baby.

The kids were super excited to bring him things to look at...

Colin picked his stuffed monkey, Tails, and Maggie loaded a bag full of books for him to enjoy.

He slept the whole time, but Maggie didn't mind.  Colin seemed a little less amazed by the baby, but he still interacted with him more than at the hospital, so that's good!

 We even went for a walk around the neighborhood to break in the stroller some.  It ended up being a fairly warm day, so it was nice to get outside and get some fresh air.

Meanwhile...

The boys, and Maggie once she woke up from her nap, had a great time making some random huge contraption that shot out golf balls into baskets.  Once again, I'm pretty sure Brian and Chad were having more fun that the kids.  Oh, and please excuse Colin's outfit, it was hand selected by him!

After a really stressful week, Brian and I were able to get out last night to a concert at the Sprint Center.

We stayed up way past our bedtime, but had fun getting out and getting our mind off life for a while.

It was a Jason Aldean (country music) concert, with really great opening performers.

We got down to Power and Light early, grabbed an appetizer to eat, then got the tickets to the concert from one of Brian's co-workers.  His boss won the tickets and wasn't able to go, so he offered them to Brian.

Heck yeah, we'll take them! :)

Little did we know that we had Floor seats and special Meet and Great passes to get a picture and autograph from Jason Aldean before the show.  

A nice pic of the two of us before the show

And a terrible pic of us (with the intent of showing off our Meet and Great stickers on our shirts!)

While we were waiting in line for the autograph, we noticed that former KC Chiefs player Trent Green was waiting in line behind us. So, we shamelessly asked for a picture, he was really nice!

Like I said, we had great seats (other than it being SUPER loud!)

Here's a pic of Florida Georgia Line opening up the show.  They were awesome!

And I had so much fun watching all the drunk people getting all crazy, it was good entertainment, too!

Jason Aldean

It was an awesome concert, and we are so thankful that Brian's parents could put the kids to bed and hang around so we could enjoy a little night out.

We left before the show was over, but that was fine with us, as the kids were up before 7 am this morning.

The Teson's are ready to say goodbye to February and welcome in a new month.

I have my comp exams presentation on Thursday that I can't wait to get over with.

But, Mother Nature has another big snow storm planned for tonight and tomorrow - somewhere around 6-10 inches they say.

Ugh!  NOT MORE SNOW!

Snow sledding and Valentine's Day

 Maggie finally decided she wanted to play outside with the boys.

It took me about 15 minutes to bundle her up, but she went out there and did some sledding with dad and LOVED it!  She even went down by herself one time...

All ready to play

 The "track" Brian made for sledding

 On their way

 So much fun!

She only stayed out there for about 20 minutes, but had a great time.

I think she'll definitely be out there again for the next snow fall.

And typical Midwest weather...its supposed to be 60 degrees tomorrow...and now we all know why we are sick with runny noses and coughs...

But, today was Valentine's Day, and it was a lovely day.

The kids were off school so Memaw watched them for us.

We went out to dinner (all 5 of us) to On The Border and had a great dinner.

Brian and the kids got Memaw and I some flowers, and I also got some homemade chocolate covered strawberries.  They were DELICIOUS!

 The kids got a couple treats from us, but only 2, because they each brought home candy from Valentine's Day parties at school.  Too much sugar in our house is never a good idea!

My yummy strawberries!

I am so blessed to have a lot of Valentine's in my life.

Happy Valentine's Day to you, too!