Happy Belated Father’s Day

This was our Father’s Day gift for Steve, my dad, my father-in-law, and my grandpa. One day these little boys will fit in those shirts.

I'm not as cool as I think I am

Kevin got a transformer toy for his birthday this year, and it was a big hit. In fact, Steve went and got two other transformers for the boys because having one toy and three boys wanting to play with it was causing a lot of grief. Plus I think Steve likes the fact that his boys want to play with the same type of toys that he did when he was little.
However, there is still a lot of contention surrounding the transformer toys. One of the big problems is that one of them in particular is very difficult to transform. So all day, I have one of the boys bringing me the toy and saying, "Make it a jet. Now make it a robot." Again and again. And I've discovered that I'm just not good at it. I pull out the instructions and go step by step and it still only vaguely resembles a jet. This morning I couldn't make the arms fold up the way the picture showed, so I just took them off. They're removable for a reason, right?
Kevin wanted to play with it next so I gave him the jet, the arms, and the instructions and said, "Good luck!" Less than ten minutes later he's playing with a perfectly transformed jet. "How did you do that?" I asked. Then he proceeded to show me. "You just follow the instructions mom," he said. So now when one of the twins wants me to transform their toy, I'm just sending them to Kevin. He's cooler than I am anyway.

On the first day of summer vacation...

School is out now for the summer and the sibling fighting has already begun in earnest. Or continued, I guess I should say. So, in an effort to keep the boys busy and therefore less likely to fight, here's what we've tried so far:

• Had a picnic in the backyard


• The twins pretended to be puppies, by using the backyard as a toilet


• Jonathan just did number one, but cleaning up after Troy required a shovel


• Gross, I know


• I wish that somehow it equated to Troy having success on the potty, but no, he had an accident later on in the day


• Jonathan threw a plastic sand toy over the fence to the real dogs who live next door


• As Jonathan says, "Doggies ate my shobel and broke it."


• Well, if you throw something over the fence to the dogs, that's what will happen


• We played a fun game where we had to follow the sound to find the missing cordless phone


• It was outside


• We may try this game again, but hide the phone on purpose this time


• Although that might just be tempting fate

And that was just day one. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?