Disney World!

 As I mentioned before, we left on Preston's birthday to Orlando, Florida for a week full of Disney World fun! Nathan, as he's grown to be an adrenaline junkie, has wanted to go to Disney World for a quite a while and has been discussing it for quite a bit. It had always been an idea that my brother-in-law, a fellow roller coaster rider and sister would join us. Well actually, the original plan began that Nathan drew a name from a hat (which happened to be my sister), and that person would get to go on the trip with us ;) We had a lot of fun and it was handy to have four more hands than those of Josh and I to help go in different directions with each child, basically. We went to each park with 1-2 parks where we spent two days. We discovered it is a better place to go for older kids, unless you do plan to just do Magic Mountain which seems to have a bit for everyone (and is most like Disneyland). Everyone had differing opinions on their favorite land. Some highlights!

On our least busy day, we went to the Medieval Times for a big meal and jousting. The kids enjoyed it!

Waiting on brothers, daddy, Aunt and Uncle

Main Street Magic Kingdom

Aunt Angie and Aaron were besties. They enjoyed the same type of rides. 

It was warm and humid some days in particular (that was my excuse)

That was Aaron's excuse too. 

The best $25 toy while we were there - entertainment while waiting for brothers on rides. 

It's safe to say we came some for the food.

Meet the Characters buffet in Animal Kingdom

Food in France

Visiting China

We had lunch at a German restaurant. The kids enjoyed the entertainment and the adults enjoyed...the beverages. 

Fun desserts

One of the hardest reservations to get - that we got lucky to get on cancelation - Be Our Guest! Eat a French meal inside the castle of Belle and Beast

Such a beautiful atmosphere inside - ceiling 

We sat in the main dining/dancing room. Snow was falling outside the windows. Basically my sister and I were in love.

This was a fun restaurant we had lunch one day : we sat in classic cars as sort of a drive in atmosphere

Toy Story land was neat, had some of the longest wait times for rides

Epcot! We liked one ride but enjoyed the different countries to experience their food.

Disney World : where donuts are as big as your face! Nathan earned Student of the Month for September, so this was a good celebration the day of the ceremony he missed 

Preson knows Mickey Mouse!

Have to try the blue and green milk in Star Wars land

Star Wars riding crew

We enjoyed the hotel's hot breakfast (where we filled up on Mickey Mouse waffles) and spent the day at the parks, but were mostly back at the hotel in time for early evening to decompress before bed and enjoy their nightly snack/adult beverage happy hour. Nathan stayed with my sister and husband in their room, which he enjoyed a lot - getting that time away from his brothers and getting a bit of independence-minus the incident where we will now not let him use a microwave unsupervised as he put his leftover pizza in a bit too long and almost caused a scene....

We came home tired but happy. Josh and I were very happy with how the kids behaved over those seven days; waiting in lines, not complaining over the walking...we're excited for our 2020 adventures! 

Preston Turns 3! And Other Milestones...

As I write this, Preston is a few months shy of being 3.5 ! :( He is growing by leaps and bounds (which I'm sure I've said probably every post!) Rather than have a birthday party, we actually (very coincidentally) left on the day of his birthday for a trip during Fall Break, so that became his present/party. Therefore, the weekend before we just went out to dinner and had a cake to follow afterwards. He is going through a Baby Shark moment so it was Baby Shark themed!

We started the birthday weekend at the Farmer's Market where he got this blown up shark! 

His actual day was not too exciting since we were airplane and airport hopping, but the week to follow was spent at Disney World! (more to follow in another post). He is familiar with some of the characters so that was pretty exciting. 

Other big things happening with Preston! We (finally) got him potty trained. I'm mostly going to put this note here for myself to laugh at down the road, but believe it or not we got the to the point where we reached out to a professional this time for help. As there are sleep experts/consultants, we discovered there are potty consultants as well. Earlier in the year Preston did not take to the training as he was scared to even sit. I looked into a consultant as we needed help with his outright refusal to sit this time around (not that he scared, now he just didn't want to sit). Josh was the first to get him to be able to do so, and once we discovered he cared for a particular potty seat to use then it started to come together. 

Preston had been at a small preschool program before that allowed non-trained kids, which was good for us, but ultimately I wanted to get him into a program with kids more his age and where I could drop him off. Once he was trained, he was good to go! All of December he went to his new program, which I'm also thankful for the fact that he seems to LOVE it. No tears, bribing, nothing. He will continue to go there three days  a week for 2-3 hours each day. 

New school

...with a new backpack!

Preston is still taking swimming lessons. He's so close to moving up another level. We took a break in December but hope to start back up in January. 

The other big thing that happened with Preston is...

...a new BIG bed!

Gone are the crib days. Preston never tried to climb out of his crib so we were not anxious to switch him out of it, but the boy was growing too long for it to comfortably sleep. We are SO thankful he continues to not get out of his bed! We were astonished that he did not try to get out. We expected, like our others, that we would have some time of playing the "put him back in bed over and over" game. We think waiting until he was 3 years old instead of 2 helped. Even now he will just call out when he wakes up. 

He is your typical, very active boy. He loves to ride his balance bike, he can balance and ride a Razr Scooter (he basically wants to keep up with his brothers). He remains a pretty good eater most of the time. His vocabulary is increasing, which is good for the most part ;) He has his moments of cuddle time. Growing to be such a sweet, smart boy!

School Year

We are now halfway done with the school year, already! Each of the boys have male teachers which has been a fun dynamic to watch. They each have good classes that they enjoy. It's crazy to think in another month we will be touring junior high for Nathan. Especially because it's the last year in which I will get to be involved with a class with Nathan (before he fully just starts growing up), I decided to be the art masterpiece guide for his class, coming in once a month to teach an art lesson. Josh went with his class in September on their Science Camp. In October, the boys' school had their yearly Fall Festival and in November their Fine Dining event. Each boy took a turn being sick for those special events (Aaron did not go to Fall Festival, Nate did not go to Fine Dining, or "friendsgiving" as I call it). It has been busy! Aaron continues to be in Boy Scouts this year. Starting in the Fall, Nathan decided he no longer wanted to be with Boy Scouts (when it was realized the added homework and responsibility it would become). He continues to do percussion with band this year, we will find out in the coming months if he decides to continue in the Fall next year in junior high. Aaron has also begun Running Club with some friends. Earlier in December, we had the school's Jingle Jog which is becoming a favorite tradition.

Jingle Jog

I was the first winner at the Cake Walk - Fall Festival. It was delicious! 

Packed and ready to go to Science Camp

Summer 2019

I swear with each year the time goes by faster and faster. Despite not having any big travel plans this Summer out of town, our eight weeks of time off of school went by super fast. Josh was quite busy on a few work trips out of town and he went with Aaron to a Cub Scout camp up north for a few days. Nathan had his first, solo camp away from us with Boy Scouts. He traveled to San Diego, CA for a week with no communication. He was busy each day, all day, with activities.He had a great time!

At home, a lot of days were spent swimming in our pool, in the city pools, doing crafts for my job, trips to ice cream, library for reading program, their Nana took them out for Summer movies, Aaron did a Lego camp for one week with a friend and they both did one camp together for a week at TopGolf. That was the only camp I could get both of them together to do. It's getting more difficult (ahem, Nathan is getting more difficult) to find things to do, things that he actually wants to do. It's even harder with the various age ranges. Preston began swim lessons which were not great at first, but once we switched facilities (or maybe it was also because he got used to them?) things went a lot better. He still continues to go once a week and has really excelled if I think back to Day 1. It helps I think that I allow each child to have "their day" of the week so each person feels like they have a say each week. 

The last day of school called for pool time and snow cones

National Donut Day is always a hit with Nate, though

At the end of Summer, I wanted to do something special to wrap up the time off. I rented 'camping equipment' to have an inside camping night. Following Meet The Teacher, we had a night of pizza, s'mores, "campfire stories", slept under the "stars". The boys got a huge kick out of it so I'm glad I did it. 

Mom-cation

Still working back to Summer posts is a post now about my getaway in May! Memorial Day weekend I got away with my sisters (something I don't think we've done since I was pregnant with either Nate or Aaron?) We traveled to Waco, TX for the long weekend. We thought a fun girls trip would consist of visiting Magnolia, the shop owned by Chip and Joanna Gaines from TV home popularity. It was a great and refreshing time away!

Besides the shopping and the eating (we LOVED one steakhouse in particular) we mostly just hung out at our adorable Air Bn B. Not much else to do in the town. It was an interesting town, run down in many parts (including houses right around us) but then others were nice, such as our adorable bungalow. Many houses are built with porches so a lot of times that's where you will find people - sitting out in their front yards.

With crazy and busy lives between the three of us,  we are grateful to get any time we can together.