Movie Night, Neighborhood End of Summer Get Together, Football

Thursday night we went downtown to Central Park for movie night (this was the second one, we unfortunately missed the first one).  We watched the movie The Lorax.  It was great seeing such a good turnout, it was a beautiful evening, the boys ate their fill of popcorn, and we had so much fun.  Our city has been putting on and trying a lot of great things for our community and we try to participate in whatever we can. 

  

 

Saturday night our neighborhood had our annual (I think this is the 4th) End of Summer Get Together.  One family takes their turn at hosting (we have dodged that job yet, but our time will come) and we have so much fun.  The main dish and drinks are provided (the developer or builder of our neighborhood always pitches in for this) by the hosts and then everyone else brings a dish to pass.  The past few times a bouncy house has been rented for the kiddos.  We also have washer and bean bag tournaments and play for trophies.  It’s pretty funny.  This year a free throw contest was also added.    We usually end the evening sitting around the fire.  We love our neighborhood, have I mentioned that before?

   

 

Everyone still awake (wide awake!) except the wee one as we make our way home….

 

 

With school right around the corner, along with it also comes fall (my favorite) and FOOTBALL.  We enjoy watching and playing it in our backyard, and even more exciting this year is Connor playing it for the first time.  He looks so darn cute in his uniform and I chuckle every time because the helmet and pads weigh more than him probably.  He looks like he’s going to topple over.  I can’t wait to watch him.  He is really pumped about it.

Neighborhood Fourth of July

We love our neighborhood.  Tuesday night we celebrated the 4th with our neighbors by getting together to grill and do some fireworks.  The kids all went swimming in one of the neighbor’s pool and inflatable waterslide, while the parents were in the house talking, eating, and watching the Twins.  When it got dark we had our own fireworks show on the street.  There are a lot of boys in our “hood” and our boys love that. 

  

It wasn’t too hard to get them to go to sleep this night.  ;)  We didn’t realize how late it was until we got home and everyone zonked in about 2 minutes.  Everyone also slept in Wednesday morning which was even better. ;)

3rd Annual Neighborhood party and Vikings game

Saturday we had our 3rd Annual Neighborhood "End of Summer" Get -Together. I love our neighborhood. A different family has hosted this party every year. Meat and some drinks are provided, everyone brings a dish to share, there has been a bouncy castle for the younger kids, and there are yard game tournaments with trophies. Yes trophies. I think all but 4 out of about 22 families had someone representing.

We had lots of great help with the boys.

Look who played too hard and had too much fun......

While the younger three boys and Matt and I were at the party, Connor was invited to go to the Vikings game with a friend and his family. He took the old (notice the yellow in the pictures) camera with.

What a fun day we had with great people all around.

Busy Weekend ….again

I did this a little backward with posting about Connor's party first, so hope you can follow. Wow did we have another busy weekend. I do not feel ready for school tomorrow and better get my act together.

It started off with Friday night Matt helped Natey and Dinae pack up the moving truck. Yep, they’re moving….and the best part….moving to our town. I am super excited that we will ALL be in town together. I know that it’s not for everyone, but I love that my family lives in the same town. Not sure how they all feel about it, but… ;) ;)

Saturday morning Connor had football clinic for first and second graders. He LOVED it. Can’t wait to go back next Saturday.

The rest of the day Matt helped Natey and Diane move again and we met up with them at their house. Didn’t really help with much, but it was fun seeing it all. They have a cute cute house. We got to keep their dog Chloe for a couple of days during the craziness and we enjoyed having her around.

Saturday afternoon and into the evening our neighborhood had a get together. We have an awesome neighborhood. The night was full of yard games, a bouncy castle for the kids, food, visiting, and a bonfire.

Today was doing some cleaning and Connor’s birthday party. Now it’s time for Monday ….

What a great day

We had a wonderful Sunday. We went to church (right now Connor is in Sunday school, Jacob comes to mass with us, and Nolan goes to the nursery. Things are good right now and everyone seems happy finally. Jacob wants to be a big boy, Nolan is finally not crying when we leave him to play, and Connor is doing great in Sunday school. In fact, today he said the Our Father for the class for their opening prayer), after church we went to breakfast at the Elks (incredible breakfast), and then Grandpa and Grandma came over for the day. Matt had a basketball tournament in Rochester. Grandma and Grandpa played everything and anything with the boys. Here Connor and Grandma are playing a new Guess Who game we got for Christmas. We LOVE Guess Who and this new version rocks!

Our neighbors always have a tree burning after the holidays and the whole neighborhood comes and hangs out for the night. The fire gets huge sometimes. They have a big trailer sled hooked up to a snow mobile for the kids and it's just a great time visiting with everyone- especially in the winter when we don't see everyone very often. This is the first one that all five of us have gone to. In the past it's been Matt and Connor, or Matt and Jacob and Connor because it was so cold and Jacob and Nolan were so little yet. We have such a great neighborhood.

Treasures

For having no plans originally this weekend, we were very busy.
Saturday we had Connor's swimming lessons and then went to the Huskies baseball game. Uncle Mattey coaches and Connor is really getting into baseball (learning and yelling foul ball, cackling the batter, etc...). However, he still loves going to the park a little more, there's no flinching when I ask if he wants to go play. Sunday we went to church, to a pancake breakfast, to the OHS carnival, and then played outside with the neighborhood kids. The boys had fun at the carnival and won lots of lovely TREASURES that might accidentally disappear one of these nights soon. We already have a treasure (A.K.A junk) drawer that is overflowing with things with no where else to go. I try to throw them out every once in awhile, but wouldn't you know it's always the McDonald's toy that I threw out that someone is looking for. We came home today with cans of pop (which they thought was the coolest because we hardly ever drink pop around our house - and to add to it grandpa won them a 2 liter playing bingo), lovely bugs that stick to the wall when thrown, suckers, pencils, frisbees, pencil toppers, and these lovely kazoo lips and glasses that you see in the picture. They kept the boys entertained for a good 30 minutes.

There was one of those jumping castles at the carnival and the boys used many of their tickets for it. Jacob was one of the smallest, but held his own. He just flopped around, or more like got flopped around, doing belly flops, trying to get his little legs to jump and stay steady. It was hilarious. When we got home and played outside the boys jumped on the neighbors' trampoline and they were all laughing at Jacob just getting flopped around. They were all concerned and worried about him, yelling at the other kids to be careful. I just sat there laughing thinking to myself that Jacob loves it. They must think I'm an awful mom because they were following him around everywhere - up the ladder, down the slide, climbing into the trampoline, and I just let him do his thing (obviously keeping an eye on him). They don't know Jacob too well yet! ;) His no fear is a little scary.