Spring begins

The first day of spring was yesterday and mother nature got the memo. We were blessed with a gorgeous day and warm temps, although I didn't realize it until after Thomas got home from work and clued me in. Both Stokes and Ryan were coughing quite a bit so we decided to keep them home from school to try to let them get to feeling better.

It's pretty easy for me to get work done with Ryan home from school. He's easy and content doing just about anything. Stokes, on the other hand, is not. He was all over the place and I had to answer questions on a couple of conference calls in regards to the background noise (firetruck noises, running with scissors, crying when he fell down, and it goes on and on). Luckily my colleagues are laid back and understanding! As it turns out, I don't think Stokes felt bad at all and about mid-day I was realizing that he should have definitely been in school. Hindsight....ahhhh.

Anyway, the weather was just so gorgeous and Stokes was dying to get out of the house after being contained all day without nearly as much interaction and structured play that he would normally get at school, so we got out for a family walk around the neighborhood. We had several modes of transportation for the "walk". 

Here's what our first day of spring looked like:

Stokes in the Jeep,
William on the balance bike,
Ryan in the stroller

We took over the whole street sometimes!
It's nice to live in a quiet neighborhood without
much traffic!

William got tired of "riding" his bike and hopped
in the Jeep with Stokes

Irish + Japanese

What's that??? Irish AND Japanese?

Most of the day was dedicated the Irish for St. Patrick's Day. We all wore green, we ate green dessert last night at small group, we {briefly} read about the history of St. Patrick's Day over breakfast (thanks, Wikipedia). We love it.

All my boys before work and school this morning

Stacey and I met up for a little green beer. Because...TGIF...and it's St. Patty's Day!

TGIF!

Then I picked the boys up from school and went straight over to MaSha's house to meet up with her, Granddad and Gran-O while they were in town.

MaSha playing with Stokes & William

Ryan and Gran-O

Hey Stokes!

Stokes playing cars in the grass

William LOVED Granddad's hat. Granddad was
a great sport and allowed him to wear it!

Two William Peerys <3

Cutie boy

So. like I said, most of the day was focused on the Irish.

But there was a small block of time in the evening that we supported the Japanese...well kind of. We ate dinner at Mimi's Japanese Steakhouse!

This was the boys's first time at a hibachi restaurant. When MaSha and I were discussing where we should go eat with Granddad and Gran-O, I may have made mention of the fact that dinners are becoming a little more difficult. The boys don't want to stay seated, they don't want to eat, they want to play with their food, or cry, or drop their fork/spoon on the floor repeatedly, or ask for a million refills of milk, etc. The behavior is not exactly "exemplary". So, we thought hibachi would be fun, new, cool, and engaging experience for them and may curtail some of the poor dinnertime manners. Plus, hello!, who doesn't love hibachi?!?!?!

Oooooh! Fire!

They were totally enthralled.

He loved it! He would laugh whenever
our guy would make noise with his kitchen utensils!

Onion volcano!

Granddad and Stokes

After dinner MaSha came back to the house with me to help with a quick (totally obligatory) photo shoot and for baths. That was great. I could always use help when Thomas isn't around. I realize that I forgot to mention that Thomas wasn't around for any of this fun. He got tickets from work for the NCAA March Madness tournament. Little old Greenville got to host Round 1 and 2 games for "The Big Dance"! These tickets were going for pretty steep prices, and how cool that it was here in our hometown so of course he wasn't going to miss the opportunity! So fun.

Standard St. Patrick's Day 3 leaf clover pic

MaSha with the boys

Mama with the boys

A four year collage of my 3 leaf clover!!!!!

Clockwise: 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017

And because we all need a little wisdom on a Friday...
"Here's to a long life and a merry one. A quick death and an easy one. A pretty girl and an honest one. A cold pint and another one!" - said an Irishman :)

My favorite - OUTTAKES

Ryan!!!! Put your head back on the grass!

What?

Ryan crying :(

Ryan: hands over the face

Link to last year's post (which has links to previous year's posts): Happy Go Lucky

Surprise snow

The forecast was calling for snow on Sunday, but having had temperatures in the mid to upper 70s for the last few weeks, I just didn't think it was possible. Thomas, however, had been doing his snow dance and actually brought it up a few times that he was hoping for one more winter weather event before spring officially started. Fish, fish, you got your wish...

Boys in the snow 

Although the day got off to a rough (ahem, vomit) start, everyone was miraculously feeling well enough to go out and play in the snow. After a small vom episode on Saturday night from both Stokes and William and then with Stokes losing his breakfast on Sunday morning, we opted to skip out on church, in the interest of not spreading potential stomach bug germs to Sunday school. This was just as well because it was also the dreaded Daylight Savings "spring forward" and we lost an hour and were feeling a little sleepy.

snow on a blooming azalea - you don't see that everyday! 

We got the boys all bundled up and headed outside. I knew this little dusting would't stay on the ground long! There really wasn't much snow at all, and while trying to make a snowball, the boys ended up being a little ice with a lot of dirt and mulch! They were able to get a few (small) snowballs off of what had collected on our cars in the driveway. Thomas definitely had fun making snowballs and pelting the boys. We all got a good laugh out of that!

SNOW!

Ryan with his Dada

Look at that sweet face!

Exploring!

Rolling around in the snow

Fun times with brothers

A pic with Mama

We didn't stay outside all that long. It was pretty cold out there on Sunday! And we were right - the snow was gone by the afternoon. I'm glad we took the opportunity to play in it while we could. Any delays and we would have missed it all together! 

Luckily, the vom streak ended and we survived without the dreaded stomach bug hitting our house....this time at least. 

Although the snow is gone and we don't have any more in the forecast for now, the weather is still cold and I'm missing those 70 degree days! I'm sure all of our plants and flowers are super confused about what season it is and what they should be doing right now! Now that we've gotten a little bit more snow this season, bring on SPRING!!! :)

P.S. Remember that Thomas and I missed the last snow day in Greenville because we were in Tampa cheering on our Tigers to win the National Championship?!?!?! They definitely got more snow on the ground in January, but I'm so glad that we got to experience snow with the boys this season!

Spirit Week

The boys had spirit week this week at school. The week started out with just Stokes and William's class, but Ryan's class decided to join in on the spirit week fun mid-day on Monday. This is the first of many spirits weeks, I'm sure! This one was Dr. Suess-themed. I made sure to take pictures each morning to documents all the fun dress up days this week. Luckily, they were fairly easy and didn't require a whole bunch of Pinterest, Hobby Lobby and precious time. :)

Monday was "Fox In Socks" Day! The instructions were to wear fun, silly or mismatched socks. Notice Ryan wasn't in this picture and I didn't put him in silly socks since I didn't realize his class was going to participate at this point!

Fun socks - they each have one sock
from each pair :)

Checking out their fun socks!

Tuesday was "The Cat in The Hat" Day! They had to wear their favorite hat. Sombreros for all!

Wednesday was "Wacky Wednesday" Day! This meant getting silly - wearing clothes backwards, inside out or mismatched....or all 3! We chose to do terribly tacky and mismatched!

Thursday was "Green Eggs and Ham" Day! This one was easy - just wear GREEN! For dinner on Thursday night, they got a side of green eggs and ham to go along with their daily theme and Stokes got some green greek yogurt and ham. They thought that was really fun. I have a feeling that every time they get eggs now they will ask for them to be green!

Friday was "Sleep Book" Day! They got to wear their pajamas to school.

Don't mind William's hat. He pulled that out of the dress-up
play stuff this morning and sometimes it's just easier to
let him go for it. 

This week has been fun and the  boys seemed to embrace it. Next week is going to be so boring to go back to regular clothes and no themes. Each night this week we would discuss what the theme was for the next day and pick out what they wanted to wear to go with the theme. That made getting ready in the morning a little easier!

Here are a few outtakes. Happen to notice a trend?!?! Stokes would sit patiently for a while and smile, but then when he was done, he would hop up and say, "that's enough, Mama!" HA!