These boys love their daddy (plain, simple and to the point). They ask for him to come into their room every night at bedtime, well except for one night last week when he had scared the begeezers out of them by quietly standing in the bathtub all Freddy the 13th like. They didn’t ask for him that night. Mostly because he thought scaring the pants of them was hilarious (a Revenge of the Nerds type of laugh hilarious), a view they obviously did not share. They sit on top next to of him on the couch when we watch tv as a family, follow him like attached little shadows when he wonders out to his shop, and basically think he’s the cooler one. That’s because he lets them try to stay up until midnight, or spend a Friday night playing video games, and takes them to see cool movies. Let’s be clear, I am apparently NOT cool, but their daddy is. He also drives a really cool jeep, and me, well I drive a Mini-Van. We could go on but I’ll spare myself.

Never has anyone looked better wearing the title of daddy, no one could be a better daddy to these two boys, and to quote Judy Garland “I’ve got my man who could ask for anything more?”

This time of year the big huge drum are running past Coast Guard point in Port O’Connor and if you’ve never caught a fish as big as your six year old it’s something else. It’s all catch and release and this year Z Man actually helped reel one in. These guys are monsters and masters of using the currents to help fight. We did some other bay fishing without much luck and spent a bit of time over at Sunday Beach which was deserted. The water was too cold to swim in much to the boys dismay but we walked across to the beach side and collected pockets full of shells.

We did catch a nice flounder at the dock (and by we I mean me) and Z man managed to wrangle a “robber fish” or sheep head all on his own. Both boys have gotten really good at casting their own lines out and actually being patient enough to do a little fishing. We had another little toot doing some of his own fishing too. Even some unauthorized swimming on his part.

An overdose of cute in his own right. We also made the 50 minute trip back into my hometown on Saturday to celebrate my nieces’ 4th birthday at the local skate rink. The same one I grew up hanging out at and not a thing had changed minus paying $3 for roller blades. Z Man desperately wanted to skate (I think he watched too much ice skating on the Olympics because his idea of skating wasn’t quite right) but only ended up with a sore “bum”. CaseyJ wanted absolutely no part of it after he had the skates on for .005 seconds. I tried on a pair and rolled around for a bit busting my butt only once while trying to video my nephew giving my youngest brother quite the laugh. By the time the weekend was over I had dug silly putty out of CaseyJ’s ears (he tried to make his own headphones) and iced Z Man’s hand because he decided to see if Grandma’s stove was still hot (it WAS!) but in all the boys and I had a lot of fun on our weekend!!

Seven years old….

Six years old….

It’s almost hard to wrap my mind around how old they are and how much they are growing out of being my little boys into these independent little men like beings. We celebrated their birthday with their friends the weekend before at the inflatable party zone. We had sixteen crazy, loud, sweaty, hungry, and thirsty 5-7 year olds running around having a blast! Afterwards Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Tommy, Aunt Morgan, and Mr. SweetCheeks joined us for BBQ in Lockhart before heading back home.

We had planned to take the boys out to a dinning of their choice but our AC had gone out the Friday before and our guy was coming out to fix it so we ordered pizza at home and sat out on the porch (where it was much cooler) and ate dinner. After pizza the boys were more than excited to open their gifts. Their current infatuation is robots, and not Transfomer type either, real old fashion toy robots. That was the theme for their party and I managed to find some cool wrapping paper for their gifts. It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone, usually for me their birthdays represent the beginning of a busy few months for us. They are still getting used to answering 6 and 7 to the “how old are you” question!

Both boys are doing so well at school! Zach has just adapted so well to his new school and has even gotten over having to wear a uniform. He loves his sweater (it’s been cool enough to actually wear it) and thinks it makes him look so handsome. CaseyJ’s reading and writing are so awesome and getting better each week. Zach has joined Cub Scouts (he’s actually a Tiger Scout) and both boys are playing flag football. I think we are finally settling into a routine even though someone completely forgot to pick up his youngest son today. He however caught no grief for it. However if mom is not the first person in line to pick up her youngest boy she totally gets reemed for it. Oh yeah, I’m shark bait around here sometimes.

first flag football game, little brother is catching up…

Six years ago today after celebrating the Z’s first birthday I woke up around 7am to some fairly regular contractions. After a phone call to the OB we were packing up our one year old on his birthday and headed toward San Antonio again. Yep, exactly one year later I was in a very similar delivery room with much of the very same nurses and staff from the year before. CaseyJ only waited 6 hours before making his laid back and easy entrance into our world.

I browsed through pictures of them the days they were born, their first summers, the first time they saw each other, chubby cheeks and sausage roll arms. Sleepy nap time hair-dos, bright blue eyes, covered in pudding pictures. Sometimes I really miss the little boys they used to be.

Those little boys have grown into big boys now and while some of the cuteness is gone they always do something each and everyday that makes me smile and brings joy to my heart. I know that they will grow up to be good boys and close brothers and they will never be able to forget each others birthday, well that is unless they somehow forget their own birthday!

To the two most awesome boys whom I cannot imagine my life without Happy Birthday Guys!!

On Thursday I did an update to my phone that didn’t turn out so well. We call it Paper Weight mode. It literally wasn’t even phone worthy anymore. It took me almost 24 hours to get it back up and that was after tons of hassle and swearing I’d leave it on the side of the road on the way into town. Finally around lunch on Friday it came back to life. I’ll follow up with the complete story on that soon. After work Friday Big C brought the boys home and I ran to the store to pick out their birthday presents along with some milk (I really an thinking of buying my own milk cow) and got home about an hour or so later to a semi-warm house. Huh. What’s up. The AC’s busted. We attempted to take apart the usual suspect part in the DARK but still no dice. At least it waited until a semi-cool weekend with the rain and cloud cover to go out. I pulled up my big girl pants and we toughed out two nights and days without the AC. Not really hot but seriously humid and sticky. The boys camped out on the living room floor with some fans.

Saturday we headed into town for the boys birthday party. Stop number one at HEB for some ice for the ice box. Stop number two at the downtown cafe daddy has coffee at every morning to pick up the cake. Miss Esther had made them a very cool robot cake (she also did last years cake and the year before). When we walked in she gave me a look of dissappointment. She was finishing the cake late the night before and it fell off her table. She was so upset she was almost in tears! I felt so bad because I knew she worked hard on it, I wasn’t upset and I tried to explain that to her. She kept saying how cool it was too! I think she’s going to remake it for our SeptOber birthday get together in a few weeks. Stop three was at the other HEB for cake (we got two round ones and some decorations from the bakery isle), forks, napkins, plates (all of which I neglected to remember at the first HEB stop) and some finger foods. Stop four was the shop where daddy’s phone was now in Paper Weight mode even though mommy told him not to do it for a few moments before we headed to the party zone.

The boys school mates and even their cousin had a blast bouncing from one inflatable item to the next. Lots of hot, sweaty, thirsty, and hungry little people running around. We barely had enough cake for all the hungry little folk but the boys seemed to have blast playing with their friends. After the party was over Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Tommy, Aunt Morgan and litte Mr. Aidan joined us for some BBQ out at Kreuz’s.  The boys opened up their gifts from family there (we requested no gifts at the party – they have enough already, really they do) and were excited by the two new Estes rockets and engines from Grandma and Grandpa. I think my dad had fun looking for them since he was the one who did it with me when I was kid, the boys were sincerely excited about their new rockets.

Later that eveing our good friends Brian and Renate came over to visit with their boys Ethan and Joey who are too cute and full of energy. Big C and I were reminded of what we don’t miss about having toddlers! It was actually cooler to sit outside and visit than inside with the AC still out. After church this morning we ran to Academy in Austin to get the boys each their own football to take to flag football practice. Their first game will be this Saturday if the fields are dry enough. I’m excited to see how CaseyJ will do since this is his first year. Our AC finally got fixed this afternoon thanks to a very nice family friend/AC repair guy coming out on a weekend to help us out. To top it of he wouldn’t even charge us for anything. Very cool. No pun intended… What a weekend. It’ll take me all week to recover!

More pictures from our BBQ lunch and Mr. Aidan and his ice cream cone…