Back to School

Who can believe that this summer is winding down and kids are back in school already?  I can't believe that next year this time Brennan will be off to kindergarten!  I'm trying not think about that!  Jace had his 18 month check up last week.  He weighed 24.6 pounds (19th percentile) and was 33 inches tall (51st percentile).  He was the first patient to get the flu vaccine at our pediatricians' office and also had to get another vaccine, poor guy just kept saying boo boo!  His daycare teachers also told us that he kept taking his shirt off on Friday!  He's something else!  Here a few pics of our boys.

How cute are these 2?

Ready for another school/work day

At Green Grove Gardens to watch Frozen, what a pretty place!

They have so much fun together!

Jace in his FAST shoes.  We had gotten Brennan a pair of these last week and Jace would put them on and just run.  Luckily Grandma found them in his size too!

Breaking Ground

The construction of our new home is underway, well kind of.  You may remember pictures of a wooded area from this spring or last fall that I referred to as our new land...after many nights spent pinning and researching we finally came up with a plan and picked a builder.  If only I could get paid for all of my hours spent researching plans, kitchens, light fixtures, etc. then we wouldn't even need financing!  Nate actually ended up drawing our colonial style house plan in AutoCad  because even with all the research that we did we didn't find one that was just right.  Our builder helped us tweak it and we are keeping our fingers crossed that we'll love our new mountain farmhouse (that's what I'm referring to it as, since I consider the look of it to be modern farmhouse"ish").  Finally, this week some trees started coming down.  We are excited to see some progress and can't wait to see a foundation and some walls going up...and I'm ready to starting picking out/finalizing siding, fixtures, cupboards and anything else, the sooner the better, please!

Early in the week

Friday, more progress but still more clearing to be done

Go figure...this pile of wood isn't worth much if anything...firewood, anyone?

The house will be about where we are standing

Thanks for the new toy, does it come with the house?

Driveway to be...

Family Fun

We had a fun weekend with the boys!  Friday, we went to the South Mountain fair and the boys enjoyed the animals, tractors, and rides.  Yesterday, we had to do some errands but the boys got plenty of play time in at the Red Run grill pirate ship (maybe the best we've done eating out in a while, thanks to the playground at the restaurant) and Misty Meadow Creamery...we better enjoy it while these types of little adventures still make our boys happy.  Today, we hiked up to Cunningham Falls, in Thurmont, MD.  It is a 1/2 mile hike up, so a total of 1 mile up and back.  Both boys walked the entire way up, and Brennan walked the entire way back down, while Jace walked almost the whole way down.  Actually, they ran most of the way.  Nate and I were quite impressed, that's a lot of walking for little legs!

Picking out some things for luau day on Friday

South Mountain fair fun

Saturday morning art

Jace's art from school and home.  

They do lots of crafts with their hands and feet, so cute!

Brennan's art from school, some of this is older...they must have cleaned out the classroom

Brennan's art from school and home.  The middle right is our melted crayon art:)

Hiking up to Cunningham falls

He wanted his picture taken with lots of big rocks.

Bubba's!  It's so fun watching these 2 and seeing how much they love each other!

They ran most of the way!

The falls, I couldn't get a good picture

My 3 favorite guys!

Headed back down!

Quick dip in the lake

These are from Saturday at Misty Meadow Creamery...they have wonderful ice cream and that's coming from a tough ice cream critic!

Even fun for big kids!

Grilled pizza, something fun we started doing this summer...we buy frozen pizza dough and grill it up with our favorite toppings.  Make sure you use olive oil on the side you put down and oil the other side before you flip and top it with goodies.

Nothing better than smores after the pizza

So maybe these don't look great in the pic, but these are so good.  If you have peppers and tomatoes from your garden here's a good use.  I don't follow this exact, I use hamburger and Italian sausage rather than the meatballs and just put the other ingredients in without really measuring.  Nate loves them, he ate 3!