The game of LIFE

Recently I taught Jaden how to play the game of LIFE.  Immediately, he was hooked! (Probably because it involved money!  He loves money!)  So one Sunday afternoon Jaden asked if we wanted to play.  He'd been waiting to play it with Dad too.  The game was hilarious.  Never thought you could get so much out of it!  Jaden asked SO many questions. He debated with himself before the game started whether or not he should just start a job and get paid, or go to college and wait to get a job AND get fake money to pay back! That alone was pretty funny. Then there was the discussion about what the different jobs were.  (He knew what a doctor was.)What's a lawyer, what's a veterinarian? What does it mean to sue? Then when Dad didn't choose the "family route" later in the game (because he was losing and wanted to try and win) Jaden says "What? You don't want kids?!"  Side note from that, Jaden was landing on ALL the kids ones!  He had 7 kids!  And named them too! (Yes I asked him if he wanted to name them...but he didn't say NO! :))  Oh, you wanna know what he named his kids?  Here you go. His oldest was a boy, Jack.  Then twin girls, Abby and Malia.  Then another girl, Nicole.  Twins again, this time a boy and a girl, Phoenic (sounds like Phoenix, but with a hard K on the end) and Bradney (that was the girl)  then a boy at the end, Garrett.   Seriously the most fun game of LIFE ever!  And it was so much fun explaining so many things to Jaden about things that may or may not happen in real life!  Like how it sucks to go to college and get an awesome job, only to land on the "loose your job" space 2 times!  Yes, so many parallels to real life!  I'm sure we'll be playing it again sooner than later!

Beckam

I don't do it every time we go grocery shopping, but I did love that my mom got us a candy bar on shopping day while I was young.  So I got Beckam his first TWIX.  Some of the picture are blurry, but I just love how much he LOVED it.  Had to lick every last bit off!

Beckam LOVES books!  You ask him if he wanted to read a book and he'll run straight to his room and start pulling them off the shelf.  He grabs one at a time and sits with it, turning the pages so kindly, then leavs it there on the ground.  He stands up, walks over to his books, grabs another and starts again!  I didn't arrange any of these around him.  This is just what it looks like after 5-10 minutes. LOVE!

He wants to do everything his older brothers do.  If they are playing ball in the front yard, he better bet Beckam will figure out a way to be included.  He walked up the driveway and got this mitt out of the garage all on his own and came back ready to play!

I love how he just holds his hand up and rests the mitt on it!  What a doll!

1st Day Pre-K

Monday September 10th Kyler had his first day of Pre-K.  Once he was all ready to go, I asked him if I could take some "I'm ready for school" pictures.  This is what he gave me!

 Apparently he wanted to be a ninja!

 I said, can I just get 1 nice, happy face one!

 He gave me 2!

 Then, of course, he wanted to do some silly ones.

Mrs. Clark, here he comes!

DATE NIGHT!

We have some friends in the ward who asked if we'd be interested in a babysitting swap!  No brainer!  This weekend it was our turn out. (And let me just say I think we're getting the better end of the deal in that we drop off 3 kids when we go out and they just drop off 1!) :)

So first we headed to Fadis for dinner.  We were going to try something new, but we were both SO hungry and knew we liked the food last time and there wouldn't be a wait! (Fadis is more of a cafeteria style restaurant.) And again it was FANTASTIC!

Then we headed to the Miller Outdoor Theater near the zoo and saw some Dance and culture from India!  Love this!  I'm sure we'll be coming here more in the future!  I have NO idea what each dance was called, so just enjoy!

After this we headed to a Water Wall that was said, in a book we got about touring Houston, to be THE most photographed place in HOUSTON!  We were so excited to see the 191 lights illuminating this amazing 60+foot wall!  Unfortunately when we got there, there were no lights, and no running water either! :( Guess we'll have to look more into that one and try it again another time.  Even without it though, the night was great.  Looking forward to more swapping! :)

Stake Volleyball Tournament

A couple of weeks ago I signed up to be in the Stake Volleyball Tournament!  We've been practicing every Wednesday night at 9!  Saturady was the the big day!  Our ward had enough ladies who wanted to play that we had 3 teams!  So we registered a "competitive" team and 2 "fun" teams.  I was on one of the fun teams.  It was double elimination!  Best of 3 games, played to 15.  Needless to say, we played a LOT of volleyball!

Our "competitive" team did so good!  They ended up taking 3rd overall!

It was so much fun!  Even though I'm so new in the ward I've felt so welcomed!  (And there are even more newbies than us now!  SO many new people all the time.) I'm going to miss our late Wednesday night practices.  Maybe we'll have to keep them going! :)

Pre-K

We FINALLY found a Pre-K that had 1 more English only spot!  Friday we went in and got him all registered.  This is him excited!

And now a sad face! (Don't know if you can see a theme in the Kyler faces lately.  He usually wants to do a couple poses for the camera!:))

I think it'll take a bit to get used to the long days (he'll be in school as long as Jaden), but he seems really excited to go to school!  And I'm excited for him to have some structure and play with other kids!  Win win! He starts Monday, so we'll see how it goes!

3 boys!

All 3 of our boys are so different!  I just love each of them so much!  Beckam enjoyed feeding himself spaghetti!

 I think his 2 bottom molars are coming in, because he's almost constantly like this!

 This is a new favorite face he does when we say "cheese." LOVE scrunchy nose pictures!

 I had Jaden do his reading to his brothers the other night while I was getting dinner ready.  He's the best big brother anyone could ever have!  I love it when they all get along and are happy! :)

 Kyler helped me make some brownies for our friends Brinley and Ellie across the street.  Here's his silly face...

 Now a happy face!

 1 more silly face mom!  Love this guy!

 Kyler seems to enjoy seeing things work.  We had fun with these gears one day while Beckam was napping.

 Faster, faster, faster!!!

He also loves seeing things fall apart or break! :)

Kyler was having so much fun flying with Beckam in this box. (airplane)

 Put your hands up! We're flying!

Galveston Beach- Day 3

Saturday morning we headed to Galveston.  Check out some of these castles, I mean homes, we saw near there!

 Grandpa really liked the statue in the middle of the road.  "They just don't build those anymore!"

 Pleasure pier...pleasure island!?  Maybe we'll have to try that sometime.  But today was all about the beach!

 When we pulled up, Jaden says "Oh, I didn't know the ocean was like a wave pool!"  He's been so nervous and asking so many questions about what the ocean (with sharks in it) is like.  He was very excited to have his questions answered and so happily too!

 Now this is a beach!  Usually Memorial weekend it's pretty crowded (the lifeguard told us) but because of the hurricane it's scared off a bunch of people.  YAY, more beach and waves for us to enjoy!

 Grandpa loved helping Beckam get to the ocean for his first time!

Christian ran in with Jaden and Kyler!  Yay for the wave pool! :)

Beckam was hesitant to get very far into the water, but enjoyed watching it come up and go down.

A nearby girl gave him a boat to play with!  So sweet!

Kyler loves to be thrown into the waves.  You gotta wait for a good one though.

Cute boys!

Beckam enjoyed scooping mud onto my leg.  It's good for my skin right?! :)

Everyone had a great time at the beach!

Christian could have talked with Grandpa about school all day long!

Eventually I did get a couple minutes in the water with Jaden and Kyler as well.  The temperature was AMAZING!  Hopefully we'll have lots of days at the beach while we live here!
Later that night we played chutes and ladders! Beckam was grandpa's helper!

We were so glad to have these 3 days to spend with Grandpa!  Love you dad!