These are the days I love staying home with the boys!

Imagine my surprise when I walked into pick Hayden up from school and this is what I found. . .


After my initial shock-I calmed myself down from what I knew was going to be messy-I was excited about the fun Hayden was having. For the last several weeks Hayden has had an imaginary friend-Sulley (from Monster's Inc.). Sulley goes most everywhere with us and we have been using it to our advantage, if Hayden won't do something we tell him that Sulley is doing it and it works well! On this day-he was no longer Hayden-he became Sulley and acted "in character" all day! I had so much fun playing with him and enjoying this moment.

It was a beautiful day outside today. Our friend Luke came over and we got to enjoy a picnic lunch and play outside. The boys have so much fun together. We spent all afternoon outside enjoying the warm weather!

New York City Here we Come!

I got to drive thru New York on Friday. Steve decided he would take the day off and we would go check out a granite place in New Jersey. I decided I would drive and let him handle the boys. Well. . .I didn't know I would be driving in the Bronx and in Manhattan to get there. It was so neat-the Bronx really does look like it does in the movies. We saw all kinds of high rise apartments and each of them had their own park with people outside playing basketball! Traffic was horrible but I still want to go back! It didn't take us that long to get to New York but I still think next time we will take the train in. The granite place in New Jersey was well worth the trip-we are getting new granite for our kitchen and bathroom this week!!

Henry

Henry throwing snowballs!

Hayden and Henry blowing bubbles!

Everyone who knows me knows how special this child is to me. I was so thankful to Chad for bringing Henry over on Easter. The boys got to spend time together and we got to spend time with Chad. Thanks Chad!

Easter

Hayden and Logan decorating Easter Eggs.
Christmas morning. . . oh wait it is Easter morning. The Easter Bunny and my Mother in law went crazy! The boys had so much fun.

The Easter Bunny brought Rocket to Grayson and that is all he cared about. Grayson would not participate in the Easter Egg hunt or any other acitivities for the day.

Hayden riding his Buzz scooter---but he keeps asking daddy where daddy's scooter is!

Grandpa and Hayden pretending to eat fish in a teepee at the Children's Museum.

Papa was teaching all three boys the alphabet in the old school house.

Grandma's birthday and Easter were fun. Steve and I volunteered to paint some of his parents house and we had fun doing that. There were multiple funny moments! We had fun playing with cousin Logan and seeing how big he is getting.

Kalahari

This is how excited we were to finally arrive at Kalahari!!
Hayden learning to bowl.

The Easter Bunny coming to tuck everyone in!

Steve and Hayden coming down the blue slide!!

Part of the water park!

One day standing outside of preschool my friend Monica told me about this wonderful place called Kalahari. . . I had no idea what she was talking about but she started getting all excited. I rushed home and checked it out http://kalahariresort.com/hub/ and found out that it would be on the way to see Grandma and Papa for Easter. We booked a room and now this is my new FAVORITE PLACE! Seriously, it was wonderful. The indoor waterpark was huge, Hayden learned to bowl, the boys got to play in the arcade, the Easter Bunny came to read the boys a bedtime story and tuck them into bed. I am ready to go back!

Winter Wonderland

(Picture is of the wooded area on our property)

After having unusually warm weather last week we woke up this morning to a beautiful snow storm. Steve had to go to work and the boys and I were sitting around watching TV, I decided that we would venture out into the snow and play some! After it took me 30 minutes to get all of us in our snow gear-we headed outside. It was fantastic- not too cold, no wind, and fluffy snow. We played and played until naptime and then woke up again and headed outside, this time to play with Steve!

The view off of our front porch!

Grayson is starting to enjoy the weather more and now agrees to wear mittens!

Hayden and Grayson in the woods.

Playing!!!!

Grayson laughing hysterically!

I turn around to see what Grayson is laughing so hard about and find Karaya burying herself in the snow.

Grayson playing

Hayden making snow angels!

Steve sledding!!!! After I put the camera up, Hayden decided sledding was "so fun". Hayden kept Steve sledding for quite a while! We had so much fun today- I am sure we will be able to do it again a few more times this winter!

Ringing in the New Year!

Everyone knows that I love a party! This year our friends Sue and Steve threw a party for the adults and the kids. They cooked a great meal for the adults and had a lot of different fun actvities for the kids. It was a lot of fun. The boys danced, played games, and did karaoke! Here are all of the kids with their party gear! Hayden, Grayson, Luke, Amber, Jenna, and Jordan. What a good time!

The Chilcote family hopes that all of you have a wonderful 2008! Happy New Year!

The boys were so excited to havea whole Thomas train table with the light house and the roundhouse! When Steve and his dad carried it into the room the boys were jumping up and down yelling "drop it, drop it". They have played with this everyday since Christmas!

Daddy had to help with opening ALL of the presents. Opening presents only took 2 hours!

Lesson #1 always get two of the same toy. This is how Christmas morning started out. As soon as the boys opened their stocking and Grayson realized that Santa had not brought him the same Car Hayden got he was very angry! Thank goodness in a few minutes Hayden gave up possession and realized that he had 50 other presents to open!

The boys were so excited when they walked downstairs and saw that Santa had come the night before and had brought them a lot of new toys!

We were so lucky, our best Christmas present of all this year was the fact that both sets of Grandparents came for six days. The boys had so much fun having four grandparents to spoil them and play with them non-stop. It was also very helpful to me since I was sick-the grandparents cooked and made this a special Christmas for all of us. We appreciate them so much and love having them come for visits.

Sugar**Sugar**Sugar**

This was encouraged by Daddy!

Okay, it is Christmas and I am trying to be more relaxed and let the boys have fun! Well-I would say that they had a lot of fun! After decorating cookies for Santa-they decided they needed to eat some of what they made.

Christmas Eve

Grayson decoratin cookies for Santa! Yes- that is an entire bottle of sprinkles!

Hayden decorating Cookies for Santa!