Look who's two!

More birthday posts to follow, but I wanted to get something up in case tomorrow gets away from me. My giant baby boy! What would I do without you! You are pure heaven . . .except when you're not. You're like a big loveable tornado! You're a bulldozer. You like to "cheers" everything, you like to "nuggle" with mommy and you never go anywhere without your puppies! And you are already quite the expert on Mickey Mouse and Thomas the Tank Engine. Happy Birthday, Justin Gregory Ponesse!

Purple Belt!

March?

Shirtless with popsicles in March? Scary. But the kids are loving it.

Spring at SYC

You know it's spring when this happens at the preschool:

 So much mud, deliberately made by Michael's class, but enjoyed equally by their little sibs. The only problem with the wonderful mud lake is that it leads to this:

A filthy, wet and tantruming toddler who has to be stripped down and carried kicking and screaming from his beloved mud pit.

St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day was the Day of 3 Parties. All three boys went to a birthday party at a bounce house in the morning. Then we came home and rested a bit. Then Luke and Michael went to a party at Koguryo and Justin went to another birthday party. I should have taken pictures there as it was a "littles" party for the 3 and under crowd. And Matt didn't get any pics at the martial arts party because he dumped the kids and went to Lowe's, which is his second home these days.

shamelessly stolen

From Alyssa's blog. Aren't they just so darn adorable?

Great Wolf Lodge

Whenever I go anywhere these days, my camera dies first thing, so forgive the crappy phone pics.

After we repainted, laid the paver path and gave midterms and after mommy and daddy got sick with a stomach bug, but before we graded the midterms and pulled up the carpet, we took the family to Great Wolf Lodge. It's an indoor water park resort in Mason, right next to Kings Island. It was our "rookie" trip. We had so much fun and now we know how to have even more fun next time.

 

 Wolf ears were the hit of the trip. They are still wearing them two days later.

 After swimming and dinner, Luke and Michael started playing Magiquest, a live action Harry Potter-style game. We had to buy a wand and a game, and then you get sent on quests throughout the hotel and you wave the wand and it activates things. It was pretty cool, but kind of expensive, but Luke got totally hooked and wants to go back just to play the game again. It's impossible to finish, it just keeps going. Michael got a compass, which we didn't even use this visit because it's for a later part of the game.

Then it was storytime. There's this giant tree with old-school animotronic animals and people that tells a bedtime story. It was pretty lame, but definitely necessary for the rookie trip.

Oh yeah, the water park, I almost forgot. Michael loved the hot tub. Luke loved the wave pool. Justin loved the yellow slide.

Next time, we will bring breakfast stuff and our sound machine. But we've found a new tradition.

23 Months

Justin is 23 months of TERROR! But he is also 23 months of cuteness. Today we played on the preschool playground after Michael's class and he lined up these three chairs. Then he took turns sitting on them, calling GREEN CHAIR! YELLOW CHAIR! He doesn't know the color red, but I still thought it was pretty cool.

I also got this video of him. I was trying to get him to sing his favorite song "Toby"  from Thomas the Tank Engine, but he wouldn't cooperate. I did, however, get his very Scooby-Doo-like "I ruv you too!"