Masters week at Grandma and Papa's

Dan and I rent out our house every year for Masters. Since my parents live in town it is very easy for us to do this. It takes a lot of work to get the house ready but I use this as my motivation to do some spring cleaning. Ever since we have had the boys we have had to start the clean up process earlier and earlier. The renters don't show up until Wednesday, but we move out on Sunday so that we have several days to clean before they come. It is really impossible to do unless the boys are gone, because they can very quickly undo everything that we have done. :)

So my mom offered to watch them Monday and Tuesday so that I could clean. To make matters even crazier I worked Saturday and Sunday night so that I could enjoy hanging out with my brother and his family when they arrived later in the week. After sleeping on Monday til about noon my wonderful sister and niece came over to help me clean. I couldn't have done it without them. I was really happy when I finished cleaning on Tuesday night- I was ready to relax at my parents for the rest of the week.
But things rarely work out the way we plan them in our heads. Tuesday evening a big storm came through knocking out my parent's power. The big problem about a power outage at my parents is that they have a well instead of city water. So when the power goes out it means no water and no electricity. Needless to say I was not very happy. It took two days for the power to come back on...Dan and I kept wondering why we were renting out the house with electricity and running water while we were roughing it out at the parents. But we survived, and according to my mother we "made some memories".
By the time Tim, Leia and Claire arrived the power had been restored and the fun began. Here are some pictures of that week.

Isaiah helping Grandma clean up after the storm

Nap time!

The boys found a caterpillar, this provided about 20 minutes of entertainment for them.

Apparently the only one concerned for his safety is Isaiah...Dan took them for rides down the hill

Ready for another trip down...

Isaiah and I

Aunt Leia blowing bubbles

Atticus and Isaiah, tree huggers

Atticus at the playground

Dan being a big kid....

Katherine

Isaiah

Thomas

Tim and Claire

Atticus hunting for eggs

Isaiah

Playing with Guys

One morning Atticus decided to set up all of his police guys. Isaiah was not around, so it was easy for him to accomplish this very quickly. He was very patient to stand them up one by one.

Isaiah came in the room. But we were able to convince him to play with the guys instead of smashing them.

This did not last very long. Isaiah asked Atticus if he could smash the guys. Atticus said yes and they both took out an entire police force in about 2 seconds. This is a very basic illustration of how these two "forces" are very quickly destroying our house.

Visiting Aunt Allie

Once again I have fallen behind on blogging. So I am going to do several quick posts to try to catch up. At the end of March we went to visit Dan's sister Allison, and had the pleasure of meeting her boyfriend Jason. He's a great guy and we enjoyed getting to know him better. We told him a few funny stories about Allison, so I think that he really enjoyed that. I am not sure if Allison will invite us back or not, we may have given away too many of her secrets.

We all went to dinner on Saturday night at Captain Woody's- one of Allison's favorite spots.

Here's a shot of Allison playing Miss Mary Mack with Isaiah while we waited for our food.

Allison and Atticus hanging out

Jason and the boys were all wearing green shirts with alligators on them. I really wanted to get a picture of them all in their shirts. Here is a shot of Jason trying to convince the boys to take a picture with him.

They were not buying it, so we tried to sneak a picture by putting Dan on the couch with the boys and having Jason sit down at the last minute....that didn't work so well either.

I think that Isaiah is actually saying "No picture mommy!" and Atticus is trying to get off the couch. Oh well. Jason was a good sport about it.

We went to church with Allison on Sunday and then to a taco lunch that her church was holding to raise money for a mission trip to Jamaica. Jason is going on the trip so he was there working. Here are a few pictures we took right before we said goodbye. It was a fun but short weekend. We will have to do it again soon.

Isaiah once again not cooperating for photos....

It is so challenging to get a good group photo!