McGregor Trip

Daddy flew and met us in Des Moines on Tuesday and on Thursday, we drove up to McGregor for a weekend full of family and fun.

The highlight of the trip was the boys getting to meet their new baby cousins, Layla and Carly.

Daniel was not as excited as the other two. 

Josh also learned a new card game, Trash. He played it all weekend. 

Usually when the cousins get together, it means games. Here are some of us playing Trivial Pursuit (yes, there are two boards. We play hardcore). 

A lot of my cousins now have kids, so we had to get a picture of all the available great-grandkids with Grandma- and Grandpa-Great. 

Can you believe they are still missing seven more? That's a lot of great-grandbabies and there are two more on the way!

Here are some of the one year olds. There were five born within two months of each other last year. 

This family keeps getting bigger. It's great!

Des Moines Visit

While Daddy was out of town, Mommy and the boys decided to take a trip to Des Moines. After, a pretty uneventful car ride for the four of us, we arrived at Grandma and Grandpa Weldon's late Sunday evening. It was a fun visit. We decided to do things we don't normally get to do in Des Moines, starting with Blank Park Zoo. 

Patrick spent most of the time in the stroller.

Although he did get out to crawl around in the Groundhog exhibit, 

and to watch the sea lion show with Grandpa. 

The big boys ran all over looking at all the animals.

I think the zoo was a success. 

Tuesday we took the Feuling girls with us and went to the Science Center. It is a great place for kids. A lot of hands on exhibits. We even watched a show about fire. It was pretty cool.

Of course, with Grandma and Grandpa, we ended our science center visit with ice cream. What a treat!

That evening we made it out to cousin Livi's softball game. It was a tense game, a lot of back and forth, with the Turtles losing in overtime. Liv did great though!

It was a fun visit in Des Moines. 

Baseball

Summer means baseball season. Josh is in his fourth season with the Mud Hens and they are in their first season of "real" baseball. Three strikes, you're out. Three outs, switch teams. And they keep score. It's pretty competitive and I get into it more than I should. Josh has been on the same team for four seasons and most of the kids have been the same. They are getting pretty good. 

It's still coach pitch, but they are looking into a competitive kid pitch league in the fall. There are a few kids on the team that would be very good at pitching.

He still having fun though. He loves sports. 

Here is Patrick with his buddy, the coach's third boy. We may have three Mud Hens teams going at once in three years. Then Saturdays will really be crazy. 

T-Ball

We are fully into baseball season. Which means our Saturdays are long and busy.

Daniel's games are fist thing in the morning (either 8:15 or 10:15, yikes!) He is enjoying his first season of t-ball. He has the same coach as Josh as the coach has three boys the same age (although the youngest is actually five months younger than Patrick so we will have to work some magic to get them on the same team in three years).

Daniel is getting better as the season goes on. He still complains a little going to each practice and game, but I think he has fun once he gets there. Plus he looks so cute in his little uniform with his name on it.

We still need to work on catching and throwing. He has a few years to perfect his talent. Go Mud Hens!

New Talent

Patrick's new favorite thing to do is climb stairs. In fact, just now I found him standing next to the gate blocking the stairs crying. When I undid the gate, up he went. 

Science Museum

Once a month they have a free day at the Science Museum in downtown Denver. It works well with my quest to find cheap things to do. So we headed out Monday morning for a trip through the museum. 

Mainly the boys wanted to see the dinosaurs, but we did walk around the rest of the museum.

Patrick liked any part where he wasn't in his stroller.

I especially like free days so I don't feel bad for only spending an hour there when the boys start fighting over who gets to push the stroller and Patrick cries because I won't hold his sippy cup so he can drink. 

But hey, an hour of activity isn't a bad thing. We will probably go back next month, too.

Denver Comic Con

Uncle Adam is a storyboard artist who has worked on many films (Despicable Me, Epic, and Robots to name a few). He is also in high demand. So when Denver decided to start their own Comic Book Convention, he was invited to teach a class on How to Draw Manga. He and his family came out last year for it but we were unable to join them since Patrick was just born. We were told it was very kid friendly and Charlotte had a blast. So when they came back this year, we joined them on Saturday. It was like nothing I had ever seem before and was a very entertaining event.

It's a big deal. There was a huge line to get in and was already so full at 11am they stopped letting people in. Since we were with a celebrity (Uncle Adam, artist extraordinaire) we got special treatment, which included entering side doors and skipping lines. Joe loved it.

Lots of people dressed in costume (most of which I didn't know who they were) but it made for some good people watching.

They also had a whole section just for kids activities. That is where we spent most of our time.

Making masks....

shields....

coloring balloons....

(Minion sighting!)

and building things. 

This was Daniel's favorite. He sat at this table for over 30 minutes, which never happens with anything.

The kids also got their faces painted. Josh had his eyes closed for so long while she painted his face, he fell asleep. Nothing like a power nap!

We even got to go to Adam's class. I still don't think I am able to draw but he at least made it look not so hard. 

We also made it over the hotel they were staying at for some pool time. We also had dinner at Sam's No. 3 diner which was featured on Food Network's Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. 

It was a fun weekend and we are looking forward to going again next year.