Beach Day with the Fam!

My pictures are loading weird and only half of them load when I pick all of them and so I'm having to do all sorts of strange things with my posts. This week has also been incredibly busy--so it's taking me too too long to get these awesome posts up!

Sterling's mom Cindy, his sisters Bridget and Jenny, Bridget's hubby Cade and their twins Kai and Philip ALL came to Florida to visit us!

It was such an amazing trip. Of course, real life-traveling with kids is hard and especially with a time change, so the twins had some crazy nap times in there and my kids were up and about when everyone else felt like it was only 4 am (poor things!) so...kids make things exciting, right?!?!

In spite of that--we had such a great time! We hit up the beach, the pool, the park, the splash pad, and just generally had such fun. Oh, and they even got to be at our ward Primary Program! This was especially hilarious since Ruth and Will decided to do a duet at the mic and it was pretty epic. Haha. They did do their parts almost completely memorized and by themselves though, so way to go at not being scared or nervous!!

The day they got here was CRAAA-ZY! I had been running around for doctor appointments, speech appointments, and eye appointments the day before and morning of. Then I was trying to make a couple of meals in advance so we could enjoy time together and not have to worry about food ahead of time (thank you again, Kayli, for your taquito recipe, it is pretty much my favorite thing to eat ever. I mean, cream cheese and cilantro and avocadoes...). Will still had school so I had pick-up and drop-offs, but it worked out!

Of course, we headed STRAIGHT to the beach. And it was beautiful. I love the ocean. It was getting dark, so we headed back after not too long. Unfortunately, the wind was the crazy the entire weekend and the waves never did calm down. I guess they still got a taste of the warm water and clear water and sunshine. You all will just have to come back and try again!!!!!!

The next morning was supposed to be our clearest, warmest day--so we headed to the beach again. This day was a gorgeous beach day, it was quite wavy, but the water was still clear and pretty and the sun was shining and after Bridget and Cade left to take the boys for a nap, the rest of us just stayed and soaked in that eternal, delicious Florida sunshine.

Russ definitely got some lovin' in! Being around family is so great!

Love this daddy and boys pic!

Sisters! We wore poor Jenn right out. She joined in on the napping on several days--cute little 16 week preggo belly! So excited for Russ to have a cousin so close in age!

I LOOOOOOVE this picture. I want to blow it up big and put it on a wall.

Cutest Baby On the PLANET

Sometimes my baby just looks so adorable I can't even handle it and I spend half the morning and then half the afternoon snapping photos. Haha. Also-it's partly the outfit. I don't know why, but this little grey and white striped outfit has become my absolute favorite. Russ has a LOT of red tones in his hair--the sun hits it right and it looks red--and I've found that his grey and his navy outfits just are the very cutie cutest on him. I just die all day long. Plus, I hope I remember forever his red cheeks that are soooooo incredibly soft and warm after nursing. It's my very favorite thing about him right now.

Ten tiny toes!

I got on my blog to find look alike photos today, but I didn't blog as many pictures (probably a good thing for people who actually read this blog) when she was a baby--but this picture is Ruth. Like I literally look at it and have flashbacks to my first baby. It's crazy weird.

His adorable little mohawk. Also--his hair goes curly around his ears and neck when he gets sweaty in a blanket (just like when daddy's hair gets longer) and I am in LOOOOVE.

 

I LOOOOOOVE his little fist here!

 I'm always saying "TAKE TWO STEPS BACK and then talk nicely to the baby." Luckily--they still love him and adore him even after me having to make them tone it down.

I know that his eyes are closed and he's ready to cry, but TWINS! And his little elbow dimples and fists. AWWWW.

Teething hard core lately. That point where I feel wetness on my arm and my entire shoulder and trickling down to my elbow is drool.

I still swear his eyes are blue.

Ruthie's cutie eyes.

Sometimes Ruth is a pretty stellar photographer!

 

Today Will had a speech assessment at FAU. The girl was super cute with him and he loved building a blue house with playdough while she talked to him. It was pretty cute to listen to him put 'wish' (fish) in the pond and 'worst window' (first window) on the house and 'runt' door (front door) and basically listen to her try to get him to say his 'f's' several times over. He also can't say his 'th's', he still calls Ruthie, Rupee, etc. But she said that is actually normal until the age of 6 and he's 4 and a half, so we have some time. They also gave him a hearing test, which he did great on. It was really cute to watch him. And he was SOOO cute beforehand, he asked to bring his puppy in case he got nervous, so cute! He loves his stuffed toy puppy. He literally takes it everywhere. He carries it the entire way to and from walking Ruth to school every morning, and on MWF when he goes to school he takes it in the van and leaves it there to be there when he is picked up. Haha. And when he grows up he wants to be an architect so he can be a builder. He likes to build houses. And use diggers (the tractors that have a shovel in front?).  ANYWAY-because we took him to the University, the student has to submit all her info to a teacher before she can contact us with info. But I guess they'd do speech therapy to work on the couple of letters? I don't know yet. 

I read a thing the other day from a pediatrician that was talking about suicide rates increasing and said that kids need to have an 'intergenerational' mindset. Basically, they need to understand that they belong to a legacy. And it was pretty easy to test for it. There's about twenty questions he could ask kids and if they answered them, then they were like 85% less likely to be depressed and/or suicidal. Of course, he admitted that hand in hand with that was obviously that those kids who knew the answers were also benefiting from family dinners, and things like that because of the culture they were coming from. ANYWAY-some of the questions were about how your parents met, where was their first date or proposal, what are some family trips that have been taken, stories about what their grandparents do/work, etc. SO the last few dinners we've talked about mommy and daddy's first date and proposal and where we got married, etc. AND THE KIDS ARE SO ADORABLE ABOUT IT! They think it's so cute and funny and I've watched Ruth and Will reenacting a proposal in their play and it's soooo cute. And tonight Ruthie said "Do you know where I will get married mom?" "Uh, in a temple?" "Yeah, do you know which one?" "Well, you could get married in whichever one you wanted, whatever one you love the most." "Mom, it starts with an L?" "You want to get married in the Logan temple?" "Uh-huh!" Haha. Too cute. 

I've also been listening to the first day of the Mom Conference today and man--just the pick me up and handful of new ideas that I need to recharge a bit and get back on track and focus of what I'd like to reach as a parent. 1-How to handle my kids when they are fighting. 2-Creating a 'live' list of what your kids would like to do as a family. Like a little bucket list.  I like this because I pick a lot of our activities and get disappointed when they don't appreciate it like I think they should. But maybe if we spend more Saturday's doing the simple things that they put on our list they'd have happier memories and I'd stress less? I mean, I don't really stress about it, I just like to get out, but I can see it being a more unifying and bonding family experience. So we're going to pop some popcorn and create a list next week. It's going to be awesome.