Today a friend of mine from church and I started feeling brave and decided to take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's. We figured we needed to go now if we were ever going to since it's not a weekend and summer isn't here quite yet. It actually wasn't that bad. I might even say I had fun. In the past, we've gone to Chuck E. Cheese in the summer, or at dinner time and it's a total nightmare with millions of wild kids running around fighting for games. I become claustrophobic and noise-a-phobic (I don't know the clinical term, but you get my drift), and it's just no fun for anybody. But, today there weren't many kids and us adults could actually sit and visit a little while still keeping an eye on the kids. It was great. The kids had a really good time, too. These are just some pictures of the day. Drew is with her friend, Emie. They were inseparable for the most part. This one of Evan and his little friend, Eli, is of them climbing off the ski-ball game after walking up to the top and reaching in the holes for the balls that were thrown up there. Alli was all over the place. She had her tokens and found the games she liked and took care of herself. She cracked me up with her independence. She had to put the "money" in herself every time, and she even found a machine that was broken and gave away tokens. What a smartie. By the way, Drew was out of school for the day because I took them to have their pictures made this morning, again, in hopes of avoiding the weekend/summer crowds, and there's only one more week of school left, so I didn't feel bad about her missing. In a couple of weeks I'll be getting a link to go online and look at the pictures and order more if I want, so I'll post it for anyone who wants to check them out. It takes forever, though. I think the general rule is 10-14 business days. I know you'll all be waiting on pins and needles!

We celebrated Alli and Evan's 3rd birthday this past week, which is still unreal to me. I can't believe they've actually been around for three years. It still seems like I should be saying they're 18 months old. But, anyways, it happened and it was a very small, informal, nonstressful event, which made it all the more fun for me, and probably them, too. There's a little girl at church who is the same age as them and her birthday is the day before their's, so on Sunday we went to lunch with them and a few other people with kids around the same age and the kids all had cupcakes and sang and the 3 birthday kids blew out candles. Then on Monday night, which was the day before their birthday we did our thing at home (I have school on Tuesday nights). They each got their own birthday cake to put candles in, because they shouldn't have to share. They're 2 different people who happened to be born on the same day, so why should they have to share everything? They shouldn't in my opinion. Plus, that way we get to buy a white cake and a chocolate cake, and then we get the best of both worlds. So, we sang again, and they blew out candles again, and we had cake and made a mess, and then we gave them their presents, which you can see them riding in the pictures. Evan's telling everyone he got a new bicycle, and Alli's saying she got a new 4-wheeler. Close enough. Throughout the week grandparents filtered in and out bringing gifts and more excitement. So, they had a few days of birthday, which was great with me, because like I said before, they got all kinds of excitement without planning a ridiculous party that they won't even remember. So here we go into the 3's. I know everyone is well aware of the terrible 2's, but in my experience the 3's come with a little more head-strongness (if that's a word) and a greater awareness that they really can say no. Mom's response may make them regret it, but they'll try repeatedly just to make sure they can't get away with it. But, along with the stubbornness comes a hilarious vocabulary. Evan came up to me in his little tiny 3-year-old voice and said, "Check this out, mom." It was so funny, but I can't believe they're already transitioning from "mommy" to "mom" (sniff, sniff). Alli was in the bathtub last night and stuck the big cup that we rinse them with on her foot and said, "Look, I have a pirate foot!" She's so witty. One of Evan's favorite phrases is "that's not fair," which he uses quite frequently and is generally followed by a nice deep growl, and Alli's conversational skills are soaring. She'll carry a conversation alone for 10 minutes as long as someone is sitting there nodding. She nods her little head and points her finger and rolls her eyes. She's so animated. Whoever coined the phrase (or word) bittersweet was so insightful, because it's so true about so many things. I'm happy that they're growing up and becoming more independent, and with twins, independence is a wonderful thing, but just knowing that they'll never be babies again makes my heart hurt a little. Wow, I'm about to bring myself to tears.

Well, last night, as the Easter Bunny was delivering little treats to the kids, his car broke down in our driveway. Not really. Seriously, though, Andy purchased a 1970 Chevelle which happens to be the most horrible shade of pink you can imagine. He's planning all kinds of changes and upgrades, not the least of which is changing the color. For now it's the eye-sore of the neighborhood. I love when the eye-sore happens to be sitting in my driveway. Anyways, Easter has been all kinds of fun. Mom and Steph and Jose (Steph's boyfriend) came over and colored eggs with us, which didn't turn out to be near as exciting as Alli and Evan had hoped. Drew is at an age where she's ok with sitting and waiting for the color to be perfect, but Alli and Evan thought they needed to be touching or stirring or something constantly. We got it done, though, and set out for the back yard to hunt eggs. They had a blast. Mom brought over a bunch of plastic eggs that she put prizes in to hunt with the real eggs, and of course when Drew popped open the first plastic egg with a prize, her response was, "Awesome!" So, Evan responded by unknowingly cracking open a real egg, and saw the perfectly round hard boiled yolk, to which he responded, "Awesome!" and popped the whole yolk in his mouth. UGH!!! Surprisingly, he chewed it up and swallowed it as I was gagging in the background. They woke up this morning to even more candy and little surprises in their baskets and had jelly beans and chocolate for breakfast before church. I didn't care because it meant that I didn't have to fix anything, and it's a holiday. They're allowed a couple of days a year to have pure sugar as a meal. So, anyways, we got everybody all dressed up in their little Easter outfits and snapped pictures in front of the dogwoods, which I thought turned out absolutely adorable, but I always think that. After church we went over to Andy's grandparents for lunch and ate way too much and let the kids play outside and torture the poor old dog. The weather is so nice today. It's warm and breezy and just cloudy enough to give relief when you need it. His grandmother has all these pretty potted flowers sitting around, so of course, I had to take more pictures. Evan ran off chasing the dog when I took the first one of Drew and Alli, and then cried because he didn't get to be in the picture (an indication of a serious need for a nap), so I had to take one of him, too. We left soon after to come home to a fake-grass, candy wrapper covered house and take a good long nap.

Finally, after a completely crazy week, I've got more pictures. Being the coach's wife is a lot more work than I realized. I've been back and forth getting uniforms, making phone calls, etc. Andy's been great about getting stuff done himself, except that he transferred this week to a new headquarters, and it's a night and day difference compared to where he was working, plus he's the guy in charge now, so everything falls on him. But, we finally got all the uniforms in with all the right sizes and numbers, and played our first game last night. The kids were so cute to watch. The first time Drew was up to bat, she was the last batter, and instead of getting outs, they just let all the kids bat and run the bases. So she got to make a homerun and she got way ahead of the kid who batted before her. She beat him home. It was pretty funny. She had a blast, though. She was so nervous yesterday morning. I usually get her backpack and everything together while she's eating breakfast in the mornings, but yesterday she would hardly eat, and when I asked her what was wrong she cried and said she was nervous about the game. It made me want to cry because I was (and still kind of am) exactly like that. I got nervous to the point where I wouldn't sleep at night. But, once she got there she was fine and had a great time. The rest of the pictures are of us playing outside. The ones of the kids flying through the air are of Andy tossing them up. They look a lot higher than they are. It's finally warming up around here. We even turned the air conditioner on today. I'm glad though. I hate cold weather, and we all got nice and sweaty today playing outside. I think the kids would have a heat stroke before they'd complain!

This is going to be a short post, but I just wanted to get these pictures of Drew at T-ball practice on there. She's so cute in her little baseball pants and cleats. Andy's coaching her team, so they're both adorable to watch. That's him standing beside her. There are 12 boys and only 3 girls on the team, but one of the girls is Drew's best friend in her class at school, so that worked out well. Andy's old high school baseball coach is head of the booster club, and he's the one that chooses teams, so he put his son on Andy's team. Andy was pretty proud of that. I don't know if you can tell in the pictures, but he found her a little helmet that has a hole in the back for her pony-tail to go through. It's so cute. There will be more pictures to come of more practices and games, and hopefully I'll be able to get up closer. These were just pictures I snapped through the fence before running off to school. The kids are so hilarious to watch, though. The ages are 4-6, and one little boy hit the ball and was running the bases, and the ball rolled beside where he was running, so he stopped and threw it in. They're all so cute. Anyways, that's all I have for now. Life has been busy!

For Andy's birthday, I bought him a certificate to drive a real, authentic NASCAR 8 laps around a real NASCAR track, and since Andy was gonna do it, his dad decided he wanted to, too, so we went down to Atlanta this weekend and watched them. It was pretty neat. This first picture is of them with their terribly attractive (kidding) jump-suits on, and it's a bad picture because men don't seem to be able to think to the future when they will actually appreciate the picture, and they were in a rush to get started. So, anyways, me and the kids had to wait for a little bit while they had their brief class on what to do and not to do. So this is us sitting on the bleachers killing time and trying not to get into trouble. I was running 2 cameras (video and still) and watching 3 kids by myself, so the people around me probably thought I had no control. Oh well. I'll never see them again. It was such a nice day, but with the wind blowing it was kinda cool, so the thought of sunscreen never entered my mind, and now my kids faces are all red. Poor Evan's head is red all over since what little hair he has is blond, but they say it doesn't hurt. Andy and his dad got to have their own car to drive as fast as they could for about 12 miles, or as fast as the professional in front of them would allow them to go. I think the fastest they would let them go was about 140mph, which was too slow for Andy, but he still had a blast. Me and the kids got to ride in a van around the track, which went about 90mph. I hate to admit that I didn't like it at all. It was way too fast for me to be in the back of a van with no seat belts and a bunch of kids jumping up and down in the seats, and there was another van right in front of us, so the driver was tailgating the whole time. If I could've been the driver it would've been different, but what I didn't realize is that a NASCAR track is like a big bowl and around the corners you go up on a serious slant and you're sort of sideways. Not for me. This picture of Andy is after a lesson on getting in and out of the cars since there are no doors to open. I think that was the funniest part - watching everyone (young, old, thin, fat) trying to climb in and out of the window of the car. This is Andy getting out I think. We missed the closing ceremony, which was just a fancy way of handing everyone their print outs with top speeds and speeds per lap and all that stuff, because Evan is my only child that still needs a nap and he was so tired that he got hysterical right as they started calling out names, so we had to step to the side to gain control and put him to sleep. It was a fun day, though, and Andy's decided he's going to save his money to go up to the 40-lap package, which will be a while since it's $4000!!!

Since my last post things were going well. Andy and I went out for Valentine's Day to this really awesome restaurant that's so expensive we wouldn't ever go more than once a year, but that is completely worth the money. We had an awesome night, and the kids spent the night with Andy's dad, which was so nice. We went to bed around 11:00, which seems to be normal for us these days, but instead of everyone popping their heads in just as the sun comes up around 7:00am, we slept until 11:00am! We were both shocked at what time it was when his dad called to tell us he was bringing the kids home. Anyways, Andy's also been working on finishing a room in our house downstairs. He's done so great. He built a wall and turned it into 2 rooms, and is putting in a bathroom. This is a picture of him sitting in a pile of dirt and concrete in the house to get the plumbing done. It was after a long day of jack-hammering and sawing and digging. I had to ask him in my sweetest voice to smile, because while he was in a surprisingly good mood for everything he'd done, he wasn't really in the mood to pose for pictures. The things I do for the sake of the blog. Last Sunday we had about an inch of snow, which had all melted by the time we got home from church. But, it was still snowing so we had to go out and play. The kids were freezing, so thank goodness we didn't have to stay out long. Falling snow just isn't near as fun as fallen snow. And, here's Alli all cheerful and pretty dressed up as Sleeping Beauty. So, after that, we got a little careless and left a pair of scissors sitting on the bathroom counter, and inevitably a child got them. Evan cut all of his bangs to the scalp and a big chunk out of the top. Andy had to shave it, which was traumatic for both me and him. He actually cried and keeps reassuring himself that his hair will be back. And after that it's been all down hill. He started running a fever Wednesday night, and Thursday I thought he was over it. I was telling everyone how nobody's been sick all winter and we dodged a bullet, and then that night I woke up at 3:00am to the sounds of big dry heaves. Thank goodness that's mostly all it was. I did have to change his sheets, but his clothes were fine and he didn't need a bath. He threw up all day Friday, and by that evening he was throwing up every 15 minutes and his fever was going up. We ended up taking him to the emergency room because he couldn't stand up and was just looking really pitiful - especially with his newly bald head. He was a little dehydrated, but not enough to start an I.V., so we came home and gave him a popsicle, which he kept down, and put everyone to bed. Saturday he only threw up once, and he ate 2 popsicles, but he didn't seem to feel any better. So, today, me and Drew and Alli went to church, and just as they were passing around the Lord's supper, Alli announced that she didn't feel good. We ran to the bathroom and made it just in time for her to throw up all of her breakfast. So, as of now, she hasn't thrown up again, but she's running a fever. I'm just praying that I don't get it. I absolutely don't have time to be sick!!!

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. We've had a busy couple of weeks, although none of it has been exciting. Just the regular millions of things to do. It's funny to watch kids grow up and start saying grown up things. Evan and Alli have started saying things like "this is delicious" and they've discovered that when they don't want to answer a question or do what I tell them, a good response is "I don't feel good." Sunday, my uncle Tom, my dad's twin brother, was at church with us, and when we asked Alli who he was (because he looks exactly like my dad), she simply said, "I don't feel good." On the other hand, Drew has picked up all these little expressions at school, but it's funny because she doesn't quite know how to use them. For example, the other day I told her to put her book bag away, and as she was getting up to do it, she said, "You can say that again." She also told me that she has a friend at school who is getting on her nerves because she keeps trying to be "popular." When I asked her what she was doing to be popular, she said that she keeps saying "Holla," which for anyone who may not know is an incredibly annoying slang version of "Holler back." or "Call me later," or something. I've also decided that being a parent drives logical, intelligent adults to insanity, not simply for the fact that you walk around singing "Elmo's song," or find yourself at the dinner table telling 2-year-olds to put their underwear back on (things you never thought you'd say at the dinner table), but because one sign of insanity is that you do the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome. My children have made me insane because I say the same thing over and over (don't play in the toilet, stay out of my make up, etc.) and I expect them to do it every time, and I actully get upset that they don't, even though they never have in the past. It reminds me of that old tootsie pop commercial where the kid is trying to find out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop, and nobody knows because they always end up biting it. Well I wonder how many times a parent says the same thing over and over before the kid actually does it on their own. The world may never know.
By the way, you can tell it's been a busy week because there aren't many pictures. This picture of Alli is her showing off her busted lip. Nobody told me there was a main artery in you bottom lip, but aparently there is because when it's hit it bleeds profusely and you'll be convinced that your child just knocked out half their teeth. This picture of the kids sleeping cracked me up. They all sleep in the same room and then the other room is a play room. Andy built a trundle bed for Evan, which people have referred to as a drawer. Poor Evan for having to sleep in a drawer. Anyways, one night I was at school and Andy got called out to work, so his dad came over and watched the kids. Evan and Alli convinced him that Evan is supposed to sleep on the little fold out couch, so he put the couch up on the bed for Evan to sleep on. And then there's Drew with her leg flopped over the edge. Pay no attention to the mutilated mini-blind in the background. This is me and the kids killing time in the car while Andy ran into a store, and then me and Drew one night when I actually took time to fix up. It doesn't happen very often so we had to capture it on film.