My 3 Sons + One: August 2012

8.25.2012

Sweet Caroline

Ben and his buddies, Josh and Dylan, spent some time making a video, set to some classic Neil Diamond . This is by far Ben's best video. It cracks us up every time we watch it!

My cousin, Birgitta, and her two boys came to MN for a quick visit. We had a great time catching up and watching all our kids play together. James, age 10, and Jack, age 4 3/4 (he made sure I knew that!) fit in with our MN crazy crew perfectly!

Ben took many of the pictures from the visit and set them to music in an iMovie.

8.23.2012

I Love Having Boys!

We've been a family with 4 boys for almost 2 years. I haven't gotten tired of the reactions I get from people when they hear we have 4 boys. People's jaws drop and almost always they say something like, "Oh my goodness! How on earth do you do that?"

I don't know if it's the fact that 4 kids seems like a lot to many people, or the thought of 4 boys under one roof seems overwhelming, but people act like it's one of the craziest things they've ever seen or heard of.

I love it! It's busy, messy, loud, stinky, crazy, and many other adjectives, but it's great.

We were over visiting my Dad a few days ago and he snapped these pictures of our family.

Luke insisted on being different from the rest of us.

After this picture we all rotated 90 degrees to match him, but he took off.

Awesome boys!

I love Luke's raised shoulders!

Ages: 11, 9 1/2, almost 6, almost 2

8.21.2012

Swimming Pool

In typical Brian and Hilary fashion, we decided after one of the hottest heat waves of the summer to invest in a decent-sized above ground pool. We briefly considered a permanent kind that stays up all year, but my frugal side took over and we went with the kind that gets taken down each fall. It hasn't been super hot since putting it up, but we're still getting plenty of use out of it.

Getting the site ready

We had to do the jumping shot!

It took ~12 hours to fill with the hose. We haven't gotten the water bill yet.

He was the first to go in while it was filling.

Having fun!

The water looks green because of the rust in the hose water. The small filter that came with the pool wasn't going to keep up, so we invested in a larger filter that has been fabulous!

Cousin A is queen of the pool and LOVES to swim!

(Notice the clean water?!)

8.20.2012

SD Visit

My sister, Holly, often comments that despite the fact I have 4 kids and she has 2, I get more time to myself than she does. I have to admit, this is true. Brian likes to be on the go and is willing to take several, if not all of the boys on his adventures. A couple of weeks ago he took everyone but Ben to visit his parents in SD for a few days. Ben had a lot of activities going on during the week and so he and I had a few days at home alone. We spent time at baseball, piano, and diving lessons, and I was able to give the house a thorough cleaning for the first time this summer!

Brian, Matt, Adam and Luke had a nice visit in SD and came home just in time to clutter up a clean house. : )

Riding the train at the Great Plains Zoo

Having fun on the Sanford Carousel

Riding a camel in South Dakota!

8.06.2012

One Extreme to the Other

From Luke singing Jesus Loves Me to Adam singing I'm Sexy and I Know It...should we be concerned?

Adam singing

8.05.2012

Jesus Loves Me

Luke is fiercely independent, funny and certainly acts older than the 21 months that he is. He's also a chatterbox and repeats EVERYTHING anyone says!

The other night he hopped into the rocking chair and started singing "Jesus Loves Me". He then moved on to thinking about Grandma, then got distracted by the Olympics on TV, and ends the video by being his typical silly self.

Luke's Video