Kung Fu panda

While I was at my class this week, Nana and PaPaw took the boys to see Kung Fu Panda at the new IMAX theater. Needless to say, they enjoyed it! When Shawn gets back, we are going to take them to see Walle (sp?). They can't wait! Neither can I!

Alex the Duck

One of the things we had in the garage sale was a duck costume that Brannon wore a couple of years ago. Alex never wore it for Halloween because size wise, last year would have been his year (the boys were Batman and Robin last Halloween). So he decided to try it on, and here's what happened when we tried to get him to quack like a duck. :)

What did your child have to eat?

I have decided that one of the easiest ways to make food interesting and fun is to change its color or shape. My boys LOVE for me to put food coloring in their food. Last night, Brannon decided that he wanted green mac n' cheese, and Alex wanted red grits. Usually, I just put a smiley face with food coloring in the grits or just change the color, but green mac n' cheese was new for us! Doesn't it look disgusting! They were perfectly fine eating food that looked like it had been left out for weeks! :P This summer, I have also started using my cookie cutters more too, to make cool shaped sandwiches! I love summer vacation!

What we've been doing

Well, the last 2 weeks have been pretty crazy! Here is a list of the things that we have been doing, and some pictures to go along with some of them. :)

• Brannon and I started working more on his letters and writing his name.
• My mom and I priced and organized everything for the garage sale.
• Brannon "washed" the van while we were setting up. I am still trying to get the streaks off the windshield so that I can see clearly through it! :\
  
• I had a garage sale where I sold a lot of baby and toddler cloths, toys, and "stuff"!
• Brannon has been going nap free almost everyday, so he has been getting to sleep a lot better at night. This makes for a VERY LONG afternoon and evening!
• Shawn got his haircut into a "fow" (sp?) mohawk for YoungLife camp.
• Shawn left early Sunday morning for YoungLife camp in Michigan, and won't be home until late Saturday night. The boys ask everyday about when he will be back.
  
• I went to a conference at Purdue Monday and Tuesday on teaching gifted kids. It was good. I stayed there Monday night, so mom and dad watched the boys for me. :)
• On Tuesday before I came back from Purdue, I ate at Dog N' Suds...yummy! You know...the place "where everything's so doggone good!" While I was there, I noticed that you can buy a 4 or 8 pound bag of their yummy coney sauce. I got a 4 lb bag, not knowing that it came in a frozen block!
  
• AND...the most important and monumental thing that happened this last week, is that Alex is POTTY TRAINED!!!! I can't believe how easy it has been. We started putting him in underwear last Thursday, and now he is pretty much potty trained (no accidents in 3 days)! The first two days were horrible! He kept on peeing all over the place! But now, he is going on his own to pee AND poop! HALLELUJAH!!! We told him that when he peed in his underwear, he had to apologize to Nemo or Spiderman or Hulk (whoever was on his underwear). It was so funny having him hold up his underwear and tell the characters he was sorry. Now, everytime he goes potty in the potty, he says, "Hulk (or Spiderman or Nemo) is SO proud of me!" And I tell him that I am even more proud of him! :)
  

Play Group 6-17

Here are some pictures of the boys at the park last week. Alex was really into getting his picture taken, so I have a lot of him. When we left, I let the boys jump off the picnic table until I got a good midair shot of each of them. Brannon's turned out really good!

Breakfast

Dave had an interview in Shelbyville (sp?) the Friday they were here, and we just found out last week that they offered him the job! :) We are looking forward to hopefully have them closer by us soon! :)

Here are some funny breakfast/morning pictures of the boys.

I really don't ever let Brannon drink out of the milk jug (I don't think that he had ever thought about doing it), but there was only a little bit left, so I asked him if he wanted to. He thought it was so cool! The zipper of his pjs looks like he is spilling the milk all over himself.

The boys were playing a file folder game I made back in college. They thought it was cool to see themselves with weird eyes.

Storms

The Friday night after the museum, we had another one of our storms we have been having every Friday - Saturday (it has been hard on Shawn's softball and Brannon's t-ball games). It was SO cool to watch the storm come in and then watch it roll out and have the beautiful sunset afterwards! I just had to take some pictures.

Dave, Jennifer and Jacob's Visit - The Children's Museum

Last weekend, Shawn's best friend Dave and his wife Jennifer and son Jacob came to visit. We all had a great time. On Friday we took the boys to the Children's Museum. Here are some of the pictures I took there.

Brannon and Jacob running to get to the museum.

The boys playing with dinos...what a surprise! ;)

This time at the museum, Alex was really into the trains. If I would have let him, he would have stayed all day watching the trains go around and around.

After I got Alex away from the trains, I found Brannon in the oceans room on the computer and wearing a shark costume around. :) I think sharks and lions tie for his second favorite animal. His first favorite animal would be any type of dinosaur...of course!

Alex in the water...he LOVES water!

Alex also was totally glued to this contraption. I can't remember what it is called, but it is in the Dow Sciences section on the top floor.

Here are the boys being boys.

By the end of the day, the little cherubs were getting REALLY tired and grouchy. Not that you can't tell from Alex's face! :) But they did have a good time in the new superhero exhibit. We will definitely be going back and playing in that part first next time.

Alex was SO tired! His legs aren't really that long, the costume was way to big for him.

And here they all are at the end of the day. They are watching Night at the Museum (the boys FAVORITE movie). From this picture, you would think that they all were just laying back, taking it easy, relaxing and watching a movie. No, minutes later they were all up running around acting like crazies again! Oh well! They did get to bed early. :)

Batman and Superman Dog

This week, Brannon and Alex ran into the room I was in and said, "Look at us!". I said, "Ok, who are you guys?" Alex said, "I am Bytmain (that's how he says Batman)!", and Brannon said, "I am Superman Dog!" They were SO cute that I had to take a picture of them. They were SO proud of themselves!

Summer Time - A Day in the Life of the Crull Boys

I LOVE the summertime! On an average day, we wake up at about 7:30 or 8:00 and eat breakfast. Then by about 9:00 or 10:00, we go outside and start playing in the pool (yes this includes me - when it is hot, I will take a dip in the pool and splash around as well...I have no shame!). By about noon, I get lunch ready, and we eat outside. Then when they are done, they play some more in the pool and the yard until about 1:00 or 2:00. Then they strip down and put some cloths on and go upstairs to take a nap (and some days, I do too). At about 4:00 or 5:00, they wake up, eat a snack and go back outside and play in the pool. At about 6:00 or 7:00 we eat dinner, and after dinner we take a wagon ride around the neighborhood. At about 9:00 or 9:30, the boys go down for the night. Alex will go right to sleep within minutes of his head hitting the pillow. Brannon, on the other hand, will talk, play, roll around, and do who knows what else in his bed until 10:30 or 11:00 before he finally falls asleep (we have been thinking about taking his afternoon nap away to see if that will help). So, that's our life over the summer!

I LOVE summertime!

These two pictures are of Brannon when he was about a year and a half. :)

Brothers!

We seem to be doing a lot of peeing this summer! I always tell them to go and pee on this tree. I figure it will either help it grow or kill it. :) I will say that the grass under this tree is very green now! They were trying to pee together, and then Alex would get mad because Brannon would pee on his pee. Boys!

This is our favorite lunch place now and then (summer of 2006).

Father's Day 2008

Here are some pictures from Father's Day today. We had a nice afternoon at my parent's house celebrating Father's Day with my two favorite and most special men! :)

I was excited to be able to use my mom's computer to do this collage on Picasa. We got a Mac a few months ago, and they don't have a Mac version of Picasa yet. It would be SO much easier to use Picasa to blog with!

Kitty Kitty

Ok...this was SO funny this evening! Our neighbors, the Henderson's, have a son who just bought a kitten. Well, tonight they brought the cat outside with them as we stood around talking and watching Alex and the dogs play in the water. I was encouraging Alex to pet and hold the kitten because he has never been around cats before. Now, before this all happened, Alex was playing on the slip and slide and the dogs were kind of playing/licking the water. We were trying to get the dogs to get in the water too. So, check out the video of Alex and the kitten (Eve...or as Alex was calling it...Kitty Kitty). Notice at the beginning of the video, he almost picks the kitten up by its tail!

Mr. Brian, Alex, Eve, and Buttercup

Alex, Eve and Winston

Poor Kitty!

Well...he is persistent!

This is Alex trying to drink out of the pool of water like the dogs...delicious!

Below is a picture I remembered that we had taken when Brannon was about a year and a half old. He was trying to drink out of the sprinkler like Buttercup. :) I am pretty sure we have video of Brannon drinking out of the pool like Buttercup as well!

Guess what else Alex did...he came up to the camera when I was taping and spit a mouth full of water in my new camera! As of right now, it is not able to focus on anything because the lens is full of water! Below is a video of this.

Play Group 6-10

Here are a couple of pictures I took at playgroup this week. :)

I LOVE this picture of Cora and Brannon!
Is that not typical or what!

Jaxon as Spiderman!

My Recollection of Friday, May 30th - The Tornado

Friday, May 30th, I took the boys with me to finish up cleaning out my classroom. That afternoon/early evening, we let the boys play in the sprinkler, eat dinner and then they went to bed early. Shawn was suppose to have a softball game in Noblesville. He got there and as soon as they went to take the field, lightning streaked across the sky and the umpire said the games were off. Shawn came home and chilled out awhile and then went to bed about 10:30ish. I stayed up watching TV and the weather. At about 11:00, almost out of no where, all heck broke lose. I had been watching the news, and I was surprised that they hadn't had any severe storm warnings or anything in Hancock county, but I obviously knew it was coming our way. In an instant, as I was looking out our sliding glass door, our grill was blown over, all the trees (that I could see through the rain) in our neighbors backyard were bending almost completely over, and then the sound of what sounded like rocks being thrown at our house. I immediately went up to Alex's room, because the hail was being blown directly into his side of the house. I got in there just as he woke up crying. Poor scared guy! Of course the power was out by this time. We all gathered in our room cuddled together in our bed. It didn't last long, at the most, 3 - 5 minutes. Soon, we could hear Shawn's cell phone ringing from downstairs. It was my mom calling to tell us that we were under a tornado warning. We never heard any sirens, not that we could have heard them through the wind, rain and hail. But now, looking back, I don't remember hearing them even after things settled down. Maybe it was because the power was out? Anyway, we made our way downstairs to the half bathroom...the cow bathroom. This is where we stayed for about 30 minutes. I played with my camera and the boys laid on pillows listening to Shawn's phone play songs. We all slept together in our room that night. It was probably about 1:00 before everything settled down enough for everyone to get to sleep. The next morning, we had quite a few surprises, the biggest was that our power was still out! Two sections of our neighbor's, the Henderson's, fence had been blown down. They also had 2 trees almost uprooted/blown over and (from what we can guess) the wind had picked up their glass top table and blown the glass out and shattered it on their fence. We didn't really have anything major broken or damaged. Our grill was fine, but one of the knobs wont work now. This was interesting, the boys little play "thing" (which is very heavy and has collected water in the bottom of the slide over the years) wasn't tipped over, but dragged across the yard by the wind! There was also an area of dirt that I had piled up for the boys to play in with their cars that was wiped clean. Also, the hail left a few small holes in Alex's screen, made dents in the air conditioner, and tore up the leaves of our daylillies. Later Saturday, we drove around our area, and took pictures of some of the damage. We were very blessed to be as safe and damage free as we were! We stayed at my mom and dad's house most of the day. By Saturday afternoon, since the power was still off, we decided to clean out our fridge and outside freezer and bring it all to mom and dad's since they had power. It was a nice opportunity to really clean out our fridge and get rid of a bunch of stuff! :) Since we would be staying the night at my parent's house, Saturday night we went back to our house to get our stuff for church. It was really weird! It was about 10:00 at night, and already very dark. As we drove into the neighborhood, we could see some people sitting in their driveways with fires going in their fire pits. When we pulled up to our house and turned off the car, it was pitch black and very quiet all around us. We could hear some people outside talking and a generator running in the distance. After we got everything we needed, and started back down our street, all the power came back on in the neighborhood. Our neighbors said that they could hear everyone in the neighborhood cheering. The power was out for just 30 minutes shy of 24 hours! What an experience!

Here are some pictures from the tornado.

Waiting in the cow bathroom.

I was trying something different with my camera. I was trying to take a picture without the flash. Go figure, nobody stayed completely still for the few seconds it took to take the picture! :) I thought that they were still cool though.

Brannon talking about the storm.

This is a flagpole a little over a mile from our house. It is bent in 2 places!

This house is right outside our neighborhood! It just missed their house!

This is in our neighborhood.

These next few pictures are taken from the car driving down the road less than a mile from our house. It is the road we take to go to Wal-Mart.

These two pictures are of the same tree uprooted. It was a huge tree!

We were told that a huge tree was across the road and knocked down this power line. This is right down from the entrance of our neighborhood. We were also told that there were over 50 power lines down in our area. That is why our power was out for so long. We have always had power that would go on and off really easily, but over the past couple of years, it has gotten better!

Brothers

Two boys...22 months apart. Looking back, I don't know how we did it, and I am sure in a couple of years I will say the same thing looking back at this time in our lives with headstrong 2 1/2 and 4 1/2 year olds. But I am SO thankful to have two boys so close together. God knew the blessing that we couldn't quite see when I was surprised to find out that I was pregnant that cold January morning. We look at Brannon and Alex and see how wonderfully blessed we are to have 2 healthy, happy boys who love each other dearly! Here are a few pictures of our precious boys. They are, and hopeful will always be, each others best friend.

New box :)

These pictures are from the end of our Forum zoo trip a couple of weekend ago. They were SO winy and tired! You wouldn't know from these pictures, but they did not want their picture taken, especially with each other. They were arguing over who was going to sit by the big lion on the back of the bench. Brannon finally said, "Let's just act like we like each other!" They did a good job "acting". :)

Before and After - The Flowerbed

A few weeks ago we worked on finishing up cleaning out our front flowerbed and putting down mulch. I love how mulch just seems to make everything look nice and clean, and how it covers up all the weeds that seem to continue to come up even after we spray and pull them up! Our poor front flowerbed has been neglected for about 3 years, because of small children, babies and pregnancies. I have spent many days through out the summers weeding it, but that's about it. Last fall we took out most of the plants and decided to keep it simple. It feels good to have it really completed. :)

Last Day of School

Here are two pictures from my last day of school, last Wednesday (5/28). :)

Last week, Shawn was awesome! He was very flexible when it came to the time I needed to spend cleaning up my classroom from a school years worth of collecting clutter. When I got home last Wednesday, I came home to my 3 favorite guys playing outside.

As much as I love teaching, it doesn't hold a candle to my job as a mom. I live for the summers and the time I get to spend with my boys (and Shawn). I have always said that I am so lucky to have a job that allows me to have so much time at home with my boys. I think that teaching is really the best job for a working mom. I am also SO blessed to have my mom watch the boys. I have never had to worry about my boys during the day. I feel that what my mom does with the boys is the same as what I would be doing with them (with a lot more patience).

Memorial Day Fun

On Memorial Day, we just laid back and played outside. Here are some pictures from that day.

The boys played in the slip and slide.

Brannon needed to "go".

Alex and I cuddling. He is such a cuddle bug!

We had hamburgers at mom and dad's house for dinner. They were delicious, as always!

Here's Alex climbing a tree (and almost falling out of a tree) in my parent's backyard.

Before and After...the swing addition

Ok...so I love before and after shots of things, and this was a perfect time to do some. About 4 years ago, I got this really cool swing for the backyard for my birthday. It has reclining seats, a storage table and a place for your drinks. Four years ago it was so nice to sit out and swing and watch Brannon, and then Alex play. Now, it is DISGUSTING! It has turned green and gritty with sludge in between the seat cushions! I decided to try and clean it with my mom and dad's power washer. I also randomly mixing together a bunch of cleaners...CLR, dish cleaner and Oxyclean. Well, with a good scrub brush and this strong mixture, I cleaned (or just bleached out) the crud and grime. Look at the improvement! I don't feel gross and dirty every time I sit on it now!

BEFORE

HALFWAY THROUGH

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER

Better Batter Baseball!!!

I know I have mentioned this before, but what is with my son's posing? Does anyone else have a son that poses like this? ;) Since he was wearing his Batman shirt, he said that he had to wear his Batman hat...his winter Batman snow hat! He looked so funny, but he was so proud of himself! And, of course a few days later, guess who else decided to accessorize with the Batman hat...Alex.

I thought they looked so funny taking turns riding on top of the car. Look at Alex's foot in the picture on top. It looks painful, but I don't remember him crying. On the bottom picture, look at Brannon's ears...they look so funny sticking out the sides of his hat. :)

Alex likes to play with his brother's Better Batter Baseball set. He likes to play with it, but LOVES to say it. :) I think it is quite funny too! I wish that I would have taped a few seconds longer because at the end, he just stops and says, "OK".

Where have I been?

Well, it has been a crazy 2 weeks! Last Wednesday was my last day of school. YEAH!!!! I really liked this group of kids, so it was a little bitter sweet. I am REALLY excited about next year though, because we will be clustering our students and I get to teach the high achieving kids in second grade. :) I am planning on changing a lot of what I do to challenge these higher kids. I am taking a gifted and talented workshop this summer at Purdue, so that should be interesting. Along with cleaning up my classroom, we have been to the zoo, had fun over Memorial Day and had a really bad storm roll through last weekend! Of course I have pictures of these events and much more! :) I am obsessed with blogging. ;)