Worms, Mowers, Fire Pit, Swing Set, Teeter Totter, Fun Stuff!

Sorry, this is long and unorganized.  As usual. Enjoy.

The boys have a long and deep love of worms.  Here is Ben showing me what he found.  They call noodles worms, also.  They learned that we might find more worms when it rains, so when they see rain they yell, "Worms! Worms!"  Worms.

Ben looking pretty awesome

We had our yearly big trash day in April.  We offered to take some stuff for our wonderful neighbors.  What they brought over for us that day was super awesome.  This is a wagon/cart that can be pulled behind a mower.  They thought it would be great for Cody.  I knew it would be a new toy Cody would have to fight from the boys.  They like to fill it with stuff and pull each other around. Or they both get in and we pull them around.  When it is in the garage, we use it to pile all the baby trucks/buckets/swords in.  Super Fun.  It has already come in super handy.

Cody reading to the boys.  Their current favorite book is, My Momma Likes to Say.  It is really fun.  It rhymes and has sayings like, "Money doesn't grow on trees" and makes it fun for younger ages, but also explains the meaning behind it and the history of the phrase for older brains.  There are more in the series, but we only have this one so far. I highly recommend it to anyone stuck reading the same kids books over and over.

(Other favorites.  Letter: B, Shape: heart, Color: purple and orange.  All of these are true for both of them.  They are oddly similar sometimes.)

Ben dark blue Alex light blue/grey

Eating popcorn and watching daddy mow.  Ben green, Alex blue.  They LOVE mowers.  LOVE LOVE LOVE.  Repeating love and putting it in capitals does not remotely accurately show their love of mowers. 

The light/color is all wonky because it was getting dark so the flash and corrections were inconsistent.  These pics were taken at the same time.  We don't eat popcorn and watch mowers ALL the time.

I told Cody it might be fun to put in a fire pit.  Before the weekend hit, he had all the supplies and a plan.  Apparently he thought this was a good idea.  

Here is the process of leveling a pit location.  I think the number of dirt digging instruments we have is alarming considering the number of people in the house willing to dig in the dirt.  This does not even count our enviable rake collection.

Found a good place for his beer

Alex playing on the swing

What a cutie.  Where's Ben?

Oh, there he is.  Ben pushed the swing too hard and Alex rolled on to the ground.

But Alex will have the last laugh.

Our fire pit in action

Outside enjoying the fire pit.  Yes, that is a head lamp on Cody's head.  This was the night of the Pacquiao vs Mayweather boxing match.  The neighbors behind us and over one were projecting the event on to a giant screen in their back yard.  Cody was trying to watch through binoculars.  We're pretty awesome.

The boys push each other around on this push mower also.  Sometimes they sit like this behind the engine, and sometimes they sit on top of the engine.  On top is more comfortable, but when brother inevitably stops, changes direction, or hits something, the one on top tends to fall off.  Comfort vs safety.

Alex pushing Ben sitting

It has been raining a lot of days lately.  Cody was out of town for a few days, and I was going crazy cooped up with the boys, so I drug out the ole jump-o-lene.  When I inflated it, I realized there is a hole on the underside along one of the seams.  I was devastated.  So were the boys.  They watched me air up every other chamber over the course of half a frickin hour.  They remembered what to do and were jumping in anyway.  They wanted to play.  I had to come up with a quick plan.  I put everything soft I could find inside it.  They still hit their heads on the floor too many times, but it wasn't as bad as before I got the soft stuff in.

Alex

Baby feet

Alex making silly faces

My mother's day cake.  Cody has officially given up on cake offerings.  I bought this for myself.  Thanks, me!  He was feeling poopy on Mother's day, so we really didn't do anything.  

Alex had a tantrum and rolled under his bed to flip out.

Finger painting.  It didn't last long and was incredibly messy.  I found baby hand prints all over for quite a few days.  Fun.

Ben was gone before I even got my camera out.  He managed to load up his hands with paint to touch all the things, but didn't make it in to a picture.

Those were the only 2 pieces of paper used.  As you can see, most of the time was spent squirting ALL the expensive paint out of the tubes, smushing it in to an ugly mess, then touching the siding and door frames.

Cleaning up in the water table.  Alex

Conspiring

Sharing a snack.  They call it corn.  Sometimes they will say corn POP (emphasis on POP).  Close, little monkeys.   They like watching it in the microwave a little more than they like eating it.  Ben right, Alex left.

You can see all the corn POP in the grass.

I could not get them to stop turning the hose off and on.  The area near the deck had turned in to a swamp and I was tired of yelling at them, so I tried putting a sprinkler on the hose.  This was their response.  Little monsters.  Ben holding the hose.  Alex watching

Alex relaxing

Ben relaxing

Ben wrestling on top of Alex

My monster.  My little monster.  He started using his play broom to trigger the water on the fridge.  Once his broom was nice and wet, he started wiping down my fridge.  He didn't learn that from me!

I am not that thorough.

We bought a swing set.  My days alone with the boys can be very, very long.  I was hoping a swing set would distract them for a while.  Here they are playing on the slide while we put it together.  Alex blue, Ben orange.

On the swings in the garage.  They took to them better than I thought they would.

Cuties

Their first, of many, popsicles.  They found a new love.

This is the reason I chose this swing set.  My parents have one on their swing set and the boys really liked it.  

The slide was a little too much fun.  Until they learned to control themselves, they would rocket off the bottom.  Luckily, since it has been sooo rainy, the ground is very soft and the grass is very full.

Helping daddy get a fire going.

The finished fire pit.  I didn't really take any pictures of building it.  Cody put it together like 4 times.  Once at the store, once in the driveway, once in the yard, and then a final time to glue it together.  We used the awesome cart to get the rocks to the back yard.  It was a lot of work even with the cart.  I'm very glad we had it.

Here is our back yard progress.  We've got the fire pit and chairs. (I'm working on getting a seating area, but it is not as exciting to build as a fire pit, I guess.)  The swing set and cube back in the trees for shade.  Our wonderful neighbors also gave us that picnic table.  It is pretty nice back there now.  It will be even better when we FINALLY get our fence.  We thanked them with some smoked meat.  Nothing says, "Thanks for all the treasure" like home smoked pork butt.  MMMM...... pork butt.

Another project I forced on Cody: a teeter totter.  It is still a little bit in progress.  They did not love it at first, but they are really warming up to it.  This is the first time having twins has 100% benefited us.  2 kids of similar weight, size, ability, and interest.  Alex is a little bit heavier than Ben, so occasionally Alex wouldn't jump and Ben would get stuck at the top.  Funny for me, not for Ben.  We probably need to do something else with the seats to keep them from falling off the side.  I did catch a teetering baby by the leg once or twice when he should have been tottering.  Cody designed the seats himself.  On the plans they were just flat.  The boys did not feel secure enough to enjoy it that way, though.

Ben facing camera, Alex away

Cody playing with them

My new strategy in my battle with the birds.  They are STILL trying to nest there.  Weirdos.

Can't keep Ben from his mower.

By the way, a big THANK YOU to Cody for all of his fine manual labor and engineering.  He did an excellent job building all the things I schemed.  (And thank you to me because I did a lot of the work on all these projects also, but Cody always gets all the credit.)

Also, a giant THANK YOU to our wonderful neighbors for all the treasures.