Today we went down to my mom's to swim at her neighborhood pool. The kids were so excited. Evan kept saying we were going to the beach. Drew, as usual, was a little fish. She's always loved swimming. Evan and Alli were much more cautious. Evan spent most of the day throwing things in the pool and then whining because they were in the pool and he couldn't get them. Alli really wanted to be in the pool, but she was just so nervous. When I was in there with her she squeezed me to death, but I eventually got her to only hold my hands and float. Evan wouldn't stay in long enough to get used to it. There were too many things laying around to throw.

This is Drew discussing field day.  I had to cut her off at the end because the video can only be about a minute long. 

Alli has a little cold today, so she's not her usual nutty self.  I know this sounds awful, but the only time she's really calm enough for me to sit and hold her and love on her is when she doesn't feel good, so sometimes it's nice for me. But only sometimes.

Here's a short clip of Drew reading.  She's such a book worm these days!

More Video!

I'm so excited about this video thing!  This is just a little clip of Evan and Alli riding their bikes.  Beware, though, because Evan has a little crash.  Nothing serious.  I didn't mention this before, but all you have to do to watch the video is click on the picture.  And, for some reason the picture is a little behind the sound.  Enjoy!

Yeah!  Thanks to a brilliant friend of mine, I figured out how to post videos!  This one is kind of dark, so I'll have to do more in brighter settings I guess.  If you can't see it, at least you can hear them!

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!!!