Judgement House

I wish I had pictures or movies to explain this to you better.
Every year at Halloween our church puts on a production entitled Judgement House. This is the opposite of a Haunted House but still give youth something productive to do. JH is a room to room skit usually going through 9 or 10 rooms of our church, in which you follow a day in the life a youth. This youth has had a trumatic death occur in his close group of friends, and you get to see how he deals with it.
OUr church first started doing JH in 1996. I was able to be one of two non- youth workers that was allowed to do it. My friend Amber and I played suffering people in the hell scene. For the first three or four years that is the scene I always worked in. It was labor intensive, but so much fun. As I got older I started doing other parts, and was able to see how much JH impacted other peoples lives. When I got into college, I helped with set up in a couple of scenes, but wasn't nearly as involved as I had been in years past. Then when I got married and had kids- it was all I could do to go through JH!
This year I was asked to be the "director" of the Judgement and Hell scences. These two scenes are attempting to give you an accurate dipection of what happens after death (judgement) and what happens if you aren't a Chrisitan. These two scenes are VERY labor intensive in setting up and getting everything prepared. Luckily, I didn't really have to do anything to the hell scene. Judgement on the other hand- took me about 24 hours over three days to get ready. I had some very very good help.
As it is every year JH was a huge success. I forget the final numbers, but I believe a little over 1,000 people came through during the six nights. It was amazing, humbling, and a huge blessing to be able to be involved on the level that I was. I am thankful to Brandon and my parents for watching the boys as much as they did, so that I could make the church my second home for a couple of weeks! I can't wait until next year. I've already started brainstorming how to decorate it better.

Fun Weekend with Friends

This weekend was an exciting weekend in the Howard House. Our good friends Derrick and Megan came and spent the weekend with us. We haven't seen them since my crazy birthday weekend, and they've never met the boys.
It all started when Megan invited us to come up to Kansas City in November for the Zac Brown Band concert. We started talking about Halloween and how when we were in college we loved going to the corn maize out by Aurora. Since it's been a good six years since Brandon and I have gone, I thought it might be a fun thing to do to relive some good memories. They were just as excited about the idea as we were. Plus since they had never met the boys, it was a good time to come down and visit.
They came down on Saturday, and came into a house of craziness. Since the weather is still very warm, we decided to grill some steaks and have a somewhat college meal. Steak, potatoes, & chips and dip! A little bit a class and a little bit of cheapness! After dinner we got the boys packed, dressed in their pj's, and loaded up to take out to my parents house.
We headed to the maize about 8:30. Not truly realizing how long it would take us to get there.... we weren't in a big hurry until we looked at the website and saw it closed at 10. It took us over a hour to get to the middle of nowhere. We met up with some more of Megan's friends, waited in line for a while and then entered into the maize. It wasn't as creepy as I remember, but I still wasn't all that crazy about it. I hate scary things. When Brandon and I were dating we went to watch a very creepy movie and I still sleep with a night light in my room, unless he is there. I don't like things jumping out at me. I don't like clowns. I questioned myself a couple of times, as to why I of all people thought this was going to be fun. I stayed in the middle of our group for the most part. It wasn't until almost midnight and we were still in the maize that I started to get in the front of our group. At one point Megan and I went the opposite way as everyone else, and got one of the security guards to mislead everyone else, while we hid to jump out and scare them. It was pretty funny.
On our way back, the boys wanted to stop by their old fraternity house and relive more fun times. We didn't think about it being fall break, so they wondered around an empty house. We finally got headed home only to find that Derrick and Brandon had fallen asleep in the backseat!! We passed out as soon as we got into the house.
Sunday afternoon we ordered pizza and stayed in our jammies well into the afternoon. The boys returned from a fun night at Mimi's and morning at church to play with their new friends. Megan played Backyardigans songs on her Iphone, so they pretty much think she hung the moon.
It was a great weekend. It went by too fast, but Brandon and I are excited to go to Kansas City for a weekend next month for visiting and ZBB!

Movie Day

Have I ever mentioned how much I love these little boys?! Today was a lazy day around our house.... sometimes I feel like we are starting to have too many lazy days! We sat around and watched movies and ate popcorn..all before lunch! They are going through a superhero kick right now, so we watched Iron Man before lunch and Iron Man 2 afterward. They snuggled up and enjoyed yelling everytime they saw Iron Man!

We don't normally let them watch these kinds of movies, but we selectively edit what they see. They mainly get to watch Iron Man building his suit and flying around, they don't know that they are missing out on the rest of the movie!

Cousins

This summer the boys were so excited to have their cousins over for a play day. My cousins are three of the coolest, well behave boys I have ever met, so I was so excited to have them over for the day too! I decided since water toys were such a hit on Memorial day, that I would bring them out for a while again today. I didn't think about the temp or the sun beating down on us, but we had a great time. We started out with the slip and slide and then filled up the pool. I looked a litte crazy out in the front yard with an inflatable pool, six kids, two dogs, and myself sitting in a folding chair spraying them down with hose, but we were having a blast!
We played for a few hours, ate some homemade pizza for lunch and then headed back out. The older boys were showing the younger boys how to jump in and do all kinds of crazy things. Funny story of the day:
It was almost nap time for the little guys, so I took Greyson inside to get him changed while I left the twins out with my cousins. After a few minutes of changing G, taking him potty and getting him ready for bed, I headed back outside. I forgot that I had let the dogs out in the process of taking care of Grey, so I paniced when I went out front and couldn't find Daniel. Taylor found him about ten seconds later in the back part of our yard standing next to Maggie(our pug). I ran out back (we have a half acre) to find Daniel beat red standing next to Maggie attempting to do a #2. I quickly picked him up and ran to the front door only to not make it to the potty in time. As I was running up the front stairs, it happened. We were all laughing so hard. I was trying not to panic, and keep Daniel calm, but it was too funny.

I put the boys down, and the big boys and I played Wii and talked. It was a good bonding time! I can't wait to have them over again.

Not So Crafty

I've always tried to be crafty. But OCD, craftiness, and three small boys don't work together very well. I've tried several things, Brandon has even pitched in, but it's just not working out for me! I've just come to the conclusion that I am nowhere near as crafty as dear ol' Martha Stewart! I thought I would share in some of the items I've made......

When the twins were born, I lucked out and found two foot/hand print frames at Kirklands in Springfield. 10.5 months whenever Greyson was born, I couldn't even think about taking another set of foot prints, so poor Grey didn't get a copy. It wasn't until Christmas ( he was 8.5 months old) we headed to a local paint and glaze shop to make a cute present for the Grandparents- that we decided to make a painted footprint plaque. After we got it back, I added his name to the bottom.

This summer, I attempted to make the boys hand prints in plaster of paris as a cute decoration for our pitiful looking flower bed in the front. Key word here is attempted. Brandon was a good sport and tried to help in the craziness. He didn't know what to do- truth is, either did I! I don't know if I mixed in too much water, didn't time it correctly, or just didn't do it right but here's the pictures:Greyson was being a good sport too!I let the boys put in little colored marbles.....

We all got a little frustrated, so Brandon got out that hose, and started spraying them down!After letting the pie trays dry, they all cracked. It was so frustrating. I eventually just through them away. We'll try that again next year!

After that "little" project, I'd had enough. No more crafts from me until.... I realized that the boys had to have wall art to match their new comforters. When we moved into our "new'' house as the boys call it, all three boys had the exact same bedding. Since they had always shared the same room, it was just the easiest thing to do. In order to encourage Greyson to stay in his own big boy room we too him to Target, and let him pick oout some new big boy bedding for his new room. Greyson picked out a Spaceship/astronaut print. It's super cute, but my favorite store Tar.get didn't carry ANY wall decorations to match the bedding. Before I could stop it from coming out, I had convinced Brandon that I could make boyish artwork cheaper than we could buy it. I started brainstorming and all the ideas were super cute in my head, and wouldn't you know that it would be a LOT harder to produce!

After making our first ever trip to Hobby Lobby ( go ahead and tense up, it was kinda stressful) and $60 later, I had all the items needed to complete the three pictures that I was going to make for G's room. While they aren't the best looking things, to myself the perfectionist, Greyson LOVES them. Everynight while saying his "thank you God" (night prayers), he thanks God for these three pictures. It melts this mom's heart!

For their birthdays the twins wanted new big boy bedding, so we went through the same process. Trip to Target, me talking without thinking, and another costly trip to Hobby Lobby. The Hobby Lobby trip was just as stressful. Greyson was potty training, and didn't tell me he needed to potty until he had already peed in the middle of the is isle. Talk about EMBARRASSING!

I put off making the twins artwork for as long as I could. They didn't ask for it, and I couldn't completely make up my mind on how exactly I wanted to do it. They had picked Robot bedding, and there isn't a whole lot of boyish stuff you can do with robots. But this is what I came up with:

I bought six 8x12 pieces of canvas. I also bought thin wood letters spelling out robot, and the little robots. I decided to get paint colors that matched their bedding, and went crazy painting! I hot glued the letters and robots on, and was completely done with this project in a couple of hours. I am SO proud of this! ( the color looks like yellow, but it's really lime green) While I was at it, I also painted about 10 picture frames to match in their rooms. ( I would not recommend this!)

No more projects for me anytime soon!

It's Finally Fall..... sorta

I love fall. I love the changing colors, high school football on Friday nights, the cooler weather. Since becoming a mommy and living back in Ozark, I am now greated by a new reason to love fall. MOPS! MOPS is for Mothers of Preschoolers, and we have a meeting once a month at our church. We meet on the first Thursday of every month for about 2 hours. Childcare is provided, so I get to go and sit with other moms, chat for a while, do a super cute and easy craft, have a yummy breakfast, and have a quick small group time. As Tony the Tiger would say, " IT'S GRRREEAT!! While getting ready on those Thursday mornings are a little stressful, I love the time out and with other ladies.

Another fun fall activity is our trip to the pumpkin patch. For the past two years Brandon and I've taken the boys to a huge patch in St Louis, but this year we were able to go as a field trip with the twins preschool class. Greyson got to come along as was treated just like one of the big kids. They all had a good time. I must admit that out of all of the things I've taken the boys to do on my own, this was by far the most stressful! But atleast they were having a blast.

There was a new Pumpkin Patch that opened in Ozark, right by the preschool. We rented it out for a hour or so, and let the kids do all the activities. They were able to watch two calfs be fed, pet the animals in the petting zoo area, go on a 4-wheeler pulled "train ride', go on a hayride, paint pumpkins and play in a big corn box. The only down side to our trip, the weather. It hasn't cooled off yet in Southwest Missouri, so it was about 80 degrees and this momma forgot to bring some water! We were so hot!