Grandma's Visit

Every year, when our nanny goes on her annual home leave trip to the Philippines, my mom takes the opportunity to come spend some quality time with the boys, being the nanny for a few weeks.  It works out really well for all and definitely makes the 24+ hours of travel more justifiable when you can stay for awhile. 

With grandma here we tried to do a few things that we don't normally do like get all dressed up on a Friday and head out to brunch. 

We went to a new restaurant that opened in the Aspire tower called 360. 

It's a spinning restaurant and Jaydon just loved it. 

The lunch took over 3 hours but both boys were amazingly well behaved the whole time. 

Even now, every time we see the Aspire tower as we leave home in the morning Jaydons says "Look mommy, there's my spinning tower".  It's also how we can judge how much dust is in the air since it's only a few kilometers from our house.  If we can't see it then it's a dusty day. 

And we continue with letting Tylor eat for himself. 

Nothing like a little spaghetti to make a real mess.  But he loves it and eats well so I guess we can't complain (though it sure makes us miss having a dog around...)

Carousel

We ventured out one evening for a dinner out and came across a carousel that had been put up at the pearl. 

Jaydon has just recently gone back to loving them (he went through a phase of thinking they were too scary) and Tylor has never been on one before. 

The boys had a great time riding their beautiful horses. 

And since carousels go in circles they are on the daddy list of duties (mommy doesn't do spinning). 

The next night we tried to get Tylor a bit more interested in eating by letting him go at it by himself.  Well he has a talent for making amazing messes. 

This one was so bad we had to wash him before taking him upstairs to the tub, then had to spray him down before actually plugging the bath to fill it with water. 

I think here he was showing us that he still had one spot left without any food on it.

Super heros and Scooters

It was super hero day at Jaydon's nursery.  We didn't have any actual costumes to dress him up in so instead, settled for a spider man shirt.  But Jaydon added the extra touch to it by showing us how strong he is...

I had won some gift certificates to a sports store and of course, who do you think got the new thing from the shopping trip.  We had been contemplating getting Jaydon a scooter but also knew that he had every other toy under the sun so really didn't need another one. 

Well the gift certificates were just what we needed to decided to give in on that one.

We also have another scooter in the house.  Tylor has decided that the conventional crawling style is much too simple, he likes to make things a challenge and so when he wants to get around he just scoots himself on his butt.  It's really cute to see, especially watching him play ball with himself.

But this means that we know have to keep a very close eye on him because he has a whole world now to find new trouble in...

Starting out young

You may have heard about the driving here in the middle east.  Well they key is starting them out young...

And while he's driving at this age might as well get him a beer too.

This is  what I come home to on Thursday evenings, which is the day Steve can sometimes get off a little early from work on. 

The boys all lounging in the back yard learning bad habits from their dad :)

And what better way to end an afternoon outside sipping beer then with a nice big t-bone steak.

Tylor and Jaydon are also very cute playing music together.  Jaydon is singing cheeeese, cheeese because he thinks I'm taking a picture, not a video...

Tylor loses interested after a awhile but always finds something to keep himself entertained with.

Salmon Dinner

Well now that it's getting hot it means summer time is close on it's way.  And summer to Steve means Salmon.  Every once and while our grocery store gets some nice fish in and today Steve was inspired by the Salmon. 

He bought a whole fish, stuffed it with onions and lemons and threw it on the grill.  We invited over who ever was around, set up the kiddy table and had a fun, low key dinner party. 

Jaydon, Jacob and Lina had a great time gobbling down all the yummy fish.
And Tylor had something to say about it all...

Easter

Every year the Pegasus Club organizes a big Easter morning for all the kids.  We celebrated on Saturday since we work Sunday-Thursday. 

They organized a big bouncy castle, lots of sugary treats for the kids and, of course, Easter egg hunting.  Tylor loves to explore and is very content to entertain himself. 

This is great because I can sit him somewhere - get Jaydon settled into what hes doing and come back to Tylor who is still exactly where i left him. 

The sitting and not yet mobile stage is great.  Tylor had fun with some of the others babies, here he is sharing his toys with Hallie. 

Jaydon discovered donut holes and loved them.  I think he probably had about 5 that morning because every time he saw that I was distracted he'd grab another and could fit it in mouth before I could intervene. 

This year Jaydon was in the older group of egg finders which meant he was the youngest of the kids going out with his group. 

Fortunately he's quite content to just find a few eggs and get a couple pieces of candy - some of the older kids were very conniving and quickly figured out that the adults were helping the younger kids so they would follow behind us and snatch up an egg when we spotted it and tried to show it to Jaydon (and the other 3 year olds) to get. 

Tylor had a great time with the plastic eggs, stacking them, opening them, throwing them - we definitely got our money worth from them. 

This is the best  picture I could get of the boys - Jaydon just wouldn't sit still.  Oh yeah, now I remember - he was on full sugar hyper mode. 

After the donut holes they brought out the cupcakes (which was after finding all the candy in the eggs). 

The morning ended quickly when the sugar burned out the boys had fun while it lasted.  But that wasn' the end of Easter for Jaydon. 

At daycare on Sunday he got to hunt for more eggs with all his class mates and made cute little Easter baskets to put them in.  Happy Easter.

Water Fun

It's starting to get hot enough that activities outside are much better if they involve water. 

We filled up the water table and invited our neighbor Mattia over to play.  The boys had a great time. 

Tylor decided that sitting in the table was much easier - that way he doesn't have to keep track of standing, splashing, and playing all at the same time.  And we opted to leave his jammies on rather then break out the sunscreen.

He kept forgetting to hold on to the side of the table and falling over which made him really frustrated. 

Once we sat him inside he was happy as clam - and able to even splash the big boys back a little too. 

I'm pretty sure I'm telling Jaydon how mommy is not part of the splashing game - especially when she has a camera..

Decorating Easter Eggs

Jaydon is just at the right age that is perfect for an easter egg decorating project.  We invited over his good buddy Jacob, laid out the newspapers, got everyone in cruddy clothes and began the fun. 

Steve had picked up a few egg decorating kits in the US when he was there in Feb (you got to plan ahead for these things).  The first one we tried was essentially 5 colored crayons and a pencil sharpener. 

The idea was to shave the crayons with the sharpener then sprinkle it over freshly boiled eggs that were still hot. 

The wax then melted over the eggs.  It was a little tricky to start off and everyone had slightly burned finger tips (especially the parents) but I think the eggs turned out pretty cute. 

The next set Steve bought was a special marbling set.  It was essentially the same as what you're used too, color dye tablets that you add to vinegar but for this you also added oil. 

So what's the one thing easter eggs dyeing needs to make it even more messy - oil!  We weren't very good at the marbling but had a few turn out nicely. 

In the end we settled for simply just letting the eggs sit in the cups until they were a nice color. 

Tylor wasn't allowed to play along on this activity so Steve had the job of keeping him entertained while the big boys had all the fun. 

Fast Cars

Another weekend and the boys are ready for some fun.  We went to one of the play areas at the mall. 

Jaydon has finally figured out that these contraptions actually move if your cheapskate mom puts money in them.  For 3 years I had him convinced they were just to sit in a pretend. 

I guess that's one good thing about being number 2 - the parents can't pull those tricks on you.  The boys were too cute in this car and it had 2 steering wheels which made everyone happy.  Jaydon also has a way of latching on to certain songs he hears on our i-pods.  The latest is Fast Cars by Tracey Chapman which he listens too over and over again - here's the boys having some fun dancing to it. 

The boys were also due for a hair cut,

Tylor has decided that he HATES the haircut place.  I think it's mainly the hair dryers but he has now associated the whole place with them. 

These are the only shots I got because Tylor screamed the whole time...