DYI Shutters and Window Boxes

On father's day, Jimmy built me these fabulous shutters and window boxes. Those two windows are the windows to the garage and looked so plain and bare in the backyard. They can be seen from almost every window in the house and I wanted something prettier to look at.

Sorry about the crocked picture.

I had actually seen this done by Thrifty Decor Chick about a year ago and I filed it away in my memory because I thought it was a fabulous idea. However, I didn't know where I would put them, that is until I noticed how plain these windows looked.

It was ridiculously cheap! We used fence slates just like Thrifty Decor Chick did and the total cost was about 12-15 dollars for the wood. I already had the black spray paint, and the flowers were a pack of 12 for 10 bucks at Lowes.

 Ignore the old push mower in the back ground. Karter insists it stays and that it is his. He actually pushes it around the yard "mowing."

Now every time I look out any of my back windows I see this.

There where some problems we encountered though. The boxes are super heavy and we had originally wanted to use some window box hangers, which you can see pictured in the above picture.
It was all good until, while outside sitting on the screened in porch, I heard a loud thump. The thump happened to be one of the window boxes crashing to the ground and spilling both the flowers and the dirt. So, we had to screw the boxes into the brick. I say we, but I mean Jimmy. After doing that, we've not had an issue with them falling down.

Happy 4th Birthday My Baby Boys

These will be the last pictures of my boys as three year olds. They are not real good pictures, but are the best I could get as they went out to play in the sweltering heat.

Today there will be a Toy Story birthday party, to celebrate their new age. In exactly a month there will be a new milestone. School. How did that happen so fast? I remember on many sleepless nights, while I was so tired, thinking that this stage would be over soon. At the time I was begging it to hurry up. I was dying from no sleep and worrying about having two preemie boys at home with me along with all the medical equipment and issues that accompanied that. Now I would like, just for a few hours, to snuggle those tiny little boys again.

Now days they are much too busy for cuddling, but every once in awhile one or the other will makes his way over to me, give me a kiss and say I love you momma.

I may have begged for the days to pass quicker when they were so tiny, but now would be a good time for it to slow down a bit. Four is a good age to stop time for awhile, don't you think?

Happy Birthday Kolton and Karter! You makes our days, happy and hectic and on the rare occasion down right awful, but your dad and I wouldn't change it at all.

Engineering

 Karter

This little boy is going to be a computer guy or some sort of engineer. He has always loved all things electronic. If it has cords and holes for things to plug in than that's even better! Jimmy has tons of electronic stuff around here. He even has a collection of "vintage" ,that's what he likes to call them, computers. Karter loves getting these out and pretending to hook them all together.

Daddy, I think is a bit proud of this and lets him drag all kinds of things out, much to my dislike. However, Jimmy claims how else will he learn. I mean what 3 year old has seen an Atari, much less played with one? Not to mention all the other "vintage" computers. He's talked Jimmy into plugging every single one of them in, they've all worked and he's played games on all of them. Tell me who else has had an old computer plugged into their 50 in TV? I imagine that's not a common occurrence, that is unless you live at our house!

He brought every single one of these into the living room himself and plugged them all in.

This is the Atari that the boys are allowed to play with. Jimmy has something called a "heavy sixer" hidden in a closet so that Karter cannot drag that out. 

Funny side story. When Karter found the Atari he asked what it was and Jimmy told him it was a computer game he has as a kid. Karter then began to call it "daddy's kid computer", which was then shorten to "kid computer" when he took it over. He tells everyone who will listen that this is his kid computer!

I am forever picking up random computer parts up off of the floor and digging them out of toy baskets. So tell me, do any of your children play with any "vintage" things in your house?

Dinosaurs

In May we also went to the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. The kids are kind of getting into dinosaurs, so we decided to take them to see some real dinosaur bones. The only part that held their attention was the dinosaurs, all the rest they could care less about. I would have enjoyed browsing around a little more and to actually read the plates with some of the exhibits, but this was also not too far from our house, so maybe Jimmy and I can go some other time with out the kiddos.

It was neat to see dinosaur bones among other things that had actually been found in Oklahoma. I mean when you think of Oklahoma I'm sure that dinosaurs don't even come to mind, but non the less they were here and I find that neat.

High Time

 I thought it was high time the blog had a new look. I've been neglecting it for awhile now. I just lost motivation to keep it updated. I wanted to but every time I sat down to do it, after the boys went to bed, I didn't want to.

I started 4 years ago with this post. Four years is a long time. Some of you have been reading since the beginning, some of you have left, and I supposed every now and again someone new comes upon it. I've never really had a large number of readers and that's ok because the blog is really just to record some crazy crap that goes on in our house every now and then. It also records the not so crazy stuff at times.

Our lives have changed so much since that first post on July 6, 2006. Some of it has been sad, but it all lead us to the crazy happiness we all feel now. That's all I can really ask for, that we are all happy and of course healthy.

And we are!

So, I can't promise a new update everyday, or every week for that matter, but I will continue to document moments of our crazy, wacky, happy lives.

Pops

In May we went to Pops, which is on the Historic Route 66, not too far from our house. It was a neat place that was filled with any and every kind of pop you could want. It also has a restaurant in it and the foods pretty good. The grounds are gorgeous and it's right next to a tree farm and just down the rode from the historic round barn where my sister got married.

The kids loved it especially the pop! We hope to go back sometime soon, preferably on a weekday as it was a weekend when we went last time and it was quite busy.

July 4th 2010

We had a wonderful 4th of July. We celebrated at our house with a BBQ and lots of family. All the grandparents, parents and great grandparents were there along with tons of cousins. It could not have been more fun. It did rain a bit but we didn't let that stop us.

 As it got dark we popped all our fireworks and then watched all the surrounding neighbors.It was crazy how many fireworks were going off around us. Literally every direction we looked we could see huge, loud fireworks. It was awesome!

I was too busy talking and visiting and stopping the kids from drinking too much pop and eating too many cookies to get any pictures. I would normally be bummed about that but it was nice not worrying about my camera.

The kids LOVED the fireworks. This year they had no fears at all, which was both good and bad as I had to tell them several times that it was fire and they needed to not only be careful while holding their sparklers but also not to run up on any fireworks before, during or after they were popped.

It was the best 4th of July I can remember. At least since I was a kid and we used to have tons of friends and family over for burgers and fireworks.