Free Range Family

We finally celebrated Aunt Ariel's birthday this weekend. It has almost been a whole month since her actual birthday, oops! We took her to Geyser Park for a little party with Alan, Anna, Grandma Melanie and Uncle Kalvin. It was a lot of fun, Aunt Ariel and everyone had a blast! We played in the arcade, rode on the bumper boats, drove the go carts, played in the tunnel system they have for littler kids and even played some games of lazer tag. There was so much to do! Alan, Aunt Ariel, and Uncle Kalvin all won a lot of tickets and each picked out several prizes. We had pizza for dinner and I spoiled the kids with scoops of ice cream for dessert. I bought each kid one scoop of ice cream for $1.50 and the ice cream filled the cup! We got so much more for our buck! The kids could barely finish theirs so Grandma Melanie and I had to help them finish. :) It was definitely a good deal! Three kids in cars lol. Classic! Uncle Kalvin doesn't look too impressed. ...

I have had quite a few of these lately and I have mixed feelings about them. On one hand, fleeting moments are so very beautiful and special, yet on the other, I sometimes wish they weren't so... fleeting. Does that make sense or am I just crazy lol? I have shared these moments with both children lately, each moment being as different as the last one. The reasons for these moments are most often the same however. With Alan, these moments are usually fleeting because he is now getting older and needs me less. Things like helping him play golf and kissing him goodnight on the lips and teaching him to ride his bike. These moments are fleeting because soon, he will not need me to do them. I cherish every one of these with him. Alan and I got the chance to go to Geyser Park with Grandma Melanie and Uncle Kalvin today. We had pizza for lunch, went mini golfing and played a bunch of video games. Afterwards, we ran to the bank. Once again, Anna stayed home with Lon. It was nice to have...

This weekend we went to Geyser Park with Grandma Melanie, Uncle Kalvin and his friend Gabe. It was a overcast day so we didn't want to go to a park or any outside place, so we were thinking of taking the boys to the Reef, an indoor water park on the west end of town. But after asking the boys, they decided that Geyser Park would be more fun. Once we got there, Grandma Melanie took Miss Anna for their grandma and granddaughter bonding time lol, and I took the boys to play. We tried to keep them inside as much as possible so we bought a bunch of arcade tokens and set them free. Alan only wanted to play the big kid games that didn't win you any tickets, so I cheated and didn't put in tokens for those games lol. :P Instead I used his tokens and played the games with tickets that were next to him. I know, I know, bad parent alert lol! But I knew he would get soooooo mad if the other boys got to pick out a prize and he didn't so I had too.  After a while, everyone...