They came back for more...

Grandpa Bill made his first visit to Texas last month, his first in many, many years anyway.  Being a native born Texan, I imagine it was an emotional return for him.  And not wanting to miss out on a trip to see the three grandsons, Granny G came along as well.  It's always a great time having them visit, and it came only a couple of weeks after we moved into the new house, so they put poor Grandpa to work almost the entire time he was here.  There was landscaping, shed destroying, garden planting, and all sorts of house work done.  A few moments here and there they did get out and see some of the Corpus Christi sites. 

Downtown at the Museum of Science and History, we got to see the three replica Christopher Columbus ships.  Apparently they were built for the 500th anniversary trip back in 1992.  When they were done sailing across the sea, Corpus won the bid to keep them here permanently.  Unfortunately, a barge ran into them in the bay and pretty much ended the sailing days for two of them, so now they sit rotting at the museum in pretty poor shape.  But we did get to walk on one of them to check it out.

Even Nolan came along.

And there's always Adam.

 And they went out to eat pancakes.

Nolan sat... uh, comfortably.

Paul harassed Grandpa Bill.

And we all went to the aquarium, of course.

Glad they made it, and we're sure they'll make it back again soon!

#3 is #1

Our blonde haired, blue eyed youngest son turned the big number one a week or so ago!  A lot has happened in the past year, and he's already living in his third home (not that he'll remember the others), but it would already be hard to imagine life without him.  He's the happy one, the easy one, the kid that will always bring a smile to your face.  He's just about ready to run now... walking great, and jumping up and bolting to wherever he feels he needs to be.  He loves his brothers, choosing to find and harass them wherever they may be.  He's a goofball with dimples, but really he's just our Nolan... Happy Birthday to the youngest son!

What? I'm only one year old.  How else would I eat cake?

Put on your party hat! It's a birthday bash!

This is what we're talking about... always the smiling one.

Got a book... but lost his clothes somewhere... maybe they got covered in cake.

A birthday celebration for the whole family!

And he was kind enough to share his cake with Dad... very kind indeed.

First Time Homeowners

So after a few months in the difficult house buying process, we finally got our first home! No more rent payments, finally.  Got a garage and a yard, finally.  All is good.  But... it's going to take a little bit of work to get it to where we want it to be, so we started off by tearing everything up.  Well, not everything, but a lot of stuff.  Thankfully, we have three (somewhat) helpful boys to give us a hand.  We got a lot of work done in the first few weeks, and then had to move in last week.  Now we're in continuous remodel!  Should be fun...

Climbing the ladder to success... or to fall off and hurt himself.

Adam helped keep Nolan out of the paint... most of the time.

Got the new fridge.

Did some new bedroom painting

And Nolan ripped out the old floor, all by himself... and then ate some of it.

We'll post more photos as we get stuff done, but for right now, it's still kind of a mess.  We've got room if anyone wants to come visit!

Just the Park

A lot has been going on in the past month, so it took me a while to make this post, but I'm trying to catch up now.  Before we bought the house and started the rush to get things ready to move in, we had tons of time just to hang out at the park.  Now that we're moved in and can slow down a bit, maybe we'll have more time to do that again.  But anyway, here are just some photos of the boys hanging out:

 The big first grader.

The rotten one...

The youngest one...

 The noisy one...

The happy one...

Ready to go down the slide!

Here, little brother, let me give you some help with that...

Whoa! That had to hurt... we better get out of here...

He's alive! And just a little crazy...

Once we get some "after" photos of the house done (that is, after we get some of the house done) maybe we'll get some of them posted.  For now, more work to do...

The Rest of the Summer...

The summer is gone, but it was a good one! I made a post a while back about the summer so far, so here is how the rest of it played out, once again, courtesy of the iPhone:

Got stuck in a hole.

Built some Legos.

Learned to swim.

Crawled in the sand.

Woke up.

Got ready for battle.

 Got ready for lunch!

Ate spaghetti.

Cooled off the little brother.

Took a rest.

 Ate some ice cream!

Marched on!

Raided the kitchen.

Played some football.

 Whined.

Acted like fools.

 Went to a baseball game.

Blasted off!

Got a hat.

Kicked back and relaxed.  

Ah... the lazy days of summer.  Sorry to see them go, but we'll see them again next year!

First of First

Yes, they get older, and much faster than you would ever want.  Paul turned six over the summer and started first grade last week.  We dropped him off for his first day at his new school in the pouring rain, and thankfully there weren't too many tears all around.  He seemed a bit nervous, but overall handled it as we expected he would.  There are a total of 22 students in his class and altogether the school has about 650 students from K to 4.  As long as no other unknown changes come in our lives, he'll be going to this school for a few years I guess.  The nice thing is, we close on our house on Tuesday and it's only maybe less than half a mile of a walk, so hopefully on some days we'll be able to walk over and pick him up rather than get in the mess of traffic.  Otherwise, he'll be working on reading and writing and arithmetic throughout the year, or so they say.  From what we saw at the orientation, he's already got a pretty good jump on the reading skills, so we're sure he'll be doing just fine.  Here he was on the first day:

Getting up while it's still dark outside?? What kind of nonsense is this??

 His very own locker, so he can store all of his very important school supplies.

Another picture of the first day... just can't believe how old he looks in this one.  Where has the time gone?  At least there's still two more years before Adam is old enough!  And Nolan, well, he's still working on that whole walking thing.  Hopefully it's a good year for everyone!

Our Last Day of Summer...

Technically (sort of) it was the last day of summer, though around here it sure doesn't feel like it!  September is here, the summer months are gone, the kids went back to school, and the tourists left the beaches.  We ventured out to the gulf one last time in August to wade in the waters and eat some sand.  The boys had a great summer, building castles, stepping on jelly fish, and getting the occasional mouth-full of salt water.  He's the end of August, 2013:

Beach boys.

Getting too big too fast... not walking yet, but almost there.

Found another sea shell, now I'd better eat it.

 That's it, I'm outta here!

Summer will be back soon, though it will probably never feel like it actually left...