Air Show Pictures

I stayed at my parent's house with the boys last night because Shawn and my dad went to a men's retreat together. Since I am here, I am able to post a lot of pictures that I hadn't been able to yet because they were taken by my mom on her camera. These are some of the really good pictures my mom took at the squelchering air show about a month ago. I believe it was in the 90's and we were all a sweaty mess! Can you tell? :)

Alex's Birthday Party Part 1

Alright, so it is about a month and a half since Alex's birthday party, and I am just now getting around to posting pictures. I figured I probably should post them soon since it is almost Brannon's birthday! :) For Alex's 3rd birthday he had a Wall-e birthday party. He loves Wall-e...and Eve! We all had a fun time at his birthday, and we had a beautiful day too! It was a little on the warm side, but nice! All the kids got Wall-e masks to wear, and Alex also had a "Birthday Bot" pin.

Ok, so usually my ideas for the boys birthday party's go really well (no matter how crazy they are). This year, I guess I was off my game. If you have seen Wall-e, you know that he is left on Earth to clean up all the waste left behind by people. He rolls around, scoops trash, presses it together and then deposits a cube of trash. My idea for Alex's party was to have lots of boxes for them to stack and topple over. My boys did it a little before people starting coming, but no one else really seemed to be into it. They preferred to just play on the swing set. Oh well!

Our next activity was to make "space globes". I had put water, oil and food coloring in little Pepsi bottles and then let them put glittery confetti and stars into the bottle. Then I gave each child a sheet of Wall-e stickers to put on the outside of the bottle. SCORE! This activity was a real success! :)

Alex's Birthday Party Part 2

Here are our adventures in food. I always like to find creative food things for the kids to do, but as always, they like making the stuff but don't really want to eat it when their done. :) That's ok, as long as they had fun!


At this station (doesn't that sound like a teacher) they were making faces. I gave each child a caramel rice cake with peanut butter on top (which I think is really yummy!), and they were to use the m&m's, raisins and peal and pull Twizzlers to make a face. They turned out really cute, but no one really ate them. Maybe they just didn't want to each someone's face?

They also made fruit kabobs using strawberries, bananas, grapes and apples. They really liked trying to skewer/stab the fruit. :) And Alex didn't even skewer his hand or poke himself, or anyone else, in the eye! ;)

This is Alex opening up his first present. It was from his big brother Brannon. With a little help from mom ;), Brannon got Alex a Backyardigains DVD. As you can tell, Alex was VERY proud of his new movie! Actually, for most of the summer Alex said that he wanted a Backyardigains birthday party. Brannon was never into the Backyardigains, but Alex LOVES them. His favorite character is Pablo. He has a Pablo Beanie Baby that he sleeps with at night. It is SO cute to listen to him talk about the Backyardigains. He is very quick to point out who everyone is!

Alex got 2 musical cards for his birthday. The cards are like gifts to him! :) Nana and PaPaw got him a really funny one with those silly bunnies chanting and cheering about ice cream and cake. We got him one with Kung Fu Panda on it that played, "Everybody was kung fu fighting". He has already broken the Kung Fu Panda one because he kept opening and closing it really fast and hard. It was SO funny this year with Alex and his cards. He was really good at getting them out and opening them before he opened the present. He would open then and "read", "Happy Birthday Alex", and then shut them really fast and put them to the side. :)

Alex's Birthday Party Part 3

Here are all the kids lined up for a picture. Yes...it was crazy trying to get them all in the same place and looking the same direction!

"Happy Birthday to YOU..." This is Alex's favorite song to sing! :)

Alex's Birthday Party Part 4

Here are our darlings diving into some seriously sweet cupcakes! :) Shawn and Alex went together to pick out his cake for the party. I was thinking of a Wall-e cake or cupcakes, but Alex looked through all the cakes in the big cake book and chose a smiley face cupcake cake. It's his party, but the controlling person in me wanted to say, "No...that doesn't go along with our theme!!!!". But I was good, and didn't say anything at all. Looking back, I love that he was able to pick whatever his little heart desired! ;)

Alex is trying to eat his ice cream with the fruit kabob skewers! Crazy Kid! :)

Alex's Birthday Party Part 5

At the end of the party everyone sat around and did Alex's favorite thing...watch TV. :\ Actually, they weren't just watching anything, they were watching Alex's new Backyardigains DVD called The Mighty Knight. It has a dragon in it, which is right up both Alex and Brannon's alley.

I hope you don't mind Jill, but these pictures are SO cute! Alex has always loved Anna. Well really any little girl, even if they are strangers, Alex loves them. We tell him all the time that he needs to kiss on the cheek, not the lips. But God love him, he just can't help himself! He is really cute when he kiss, because he usually puts his little hands on the sides of your face and kisses you very gently. He LOVES to give kisses! We are going to really need to watch him when he gets older! ;) This is the picture of Alex and Anna at his party last year. He had style even then! ;)

Paleontologist

This is a conversation Brannon had with me last Sunday. :)

What did he say?

Last night Alex found a postcard with Sleeping Beauty on it. He wouldn't believe us that it was Sleeping Beauty. What do you expect, he's a boy. To him all princesses are the same. Now if it were a dinosaur, you better get the name right! :)

Can you tell what princess he thought it was?

Brannon's Drawings

Here are two pictures that Brannon drew recently. The one on the left he said is Jesus. I love his drawings! He is finally adding bodies to the heads he has been drawing for the last couple of years...yes years. I was so impressed when he started drawing these really good heads and faces when he was 3, but he hadn't really gotten passed drawing heads since then. Now, all of a sudden he is drawing bodies and hands and toes and legs and arm! The picture on the right is the very first whole body picture he drew. Now, they have evolved into bodies with really big belly buttons. :)

Joseph and his coat of many colors

Can you tell what Alex's bible story was this week? :) They talked about Joseph and his coat of many colors and made a cool coat for themselves. This is Alex and his humongous coat! Isn't he so proud!

Laptop

I am so EXCITED! We have had a laptop for a couple of years. It never has been our main computer, but it was nice to have around. We both called it our mistress because we would get engrossed in something on the internet on the laptop when we should have been doing something with the boys...you know how it is. It had one of those external internet cards that sticks out the side, and about a year and a half ago Alex knocked it off the table and broke the internet card in half. I know, big surprise that Alex ran into something! ;) Well, about a year ago Shawn bought a new internet card for the laptop, but he never could get it to work. Well, last night I was messing around with the laptop and decided that I was going to try and get the card to work. I don't know what I did, but I got it working!!! I am SO excited, because now I can use Picasa!!! Since we have a Mac, we can't use Picasa because they don't have a Mac version yet (they are suppose to be coming out with a Mac version at the end of the year...I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!). On the Mac, you have to use IPhoto, and I think that there is no comparisons between Picasa and IPhoto. Picasa is much better and much much easier! So anyways...Yeah for me!!! :)

Alex's First Day of School

Here are some pictures of Alex's first day of school. Alex is still going to the mom's day out program at Oaklandon Christian. This is the same church that Brannon goes to school at, but it is a completely different program. Alex goes to school on Wed. and Fri. It is so weird, because he is in the same class that Branon was in last year. He is the youngest in his 3's class, and Brannon was the oldest in his 3's class. Alex seems to really like his new class and teachers. I am ready for him to get in the "friends" stage where he talks about his friends at school. I remember that Brannon was about 3 when he started talking about his school friends. Alex talks about Nate, Jacob and Anna, but that's about it. These are his "pinds", as he says it. ;)

Brannon's Class

Today I stayed home with Alex because my mom had surgery on her eyes. Alex and I decided to surprise Brannon and eat lunch with him at his school. :) He was so excited to see us. It was neat to be able to meet some of the kids in his class. Big surprise...there are about 8 boys and 6 girls in his class. Brannon's teacher's name is Mrs. Cory. She is wonderful! I can't believe all that he has learned in the couple of weeks he has been there!

Brannon has his arm around one of his best buddies in class, Peyton Stinger (that is what he calls him when he talks about him). The other boy next to Peyton Stinger is Geoffrey. That is his other buddy in class.

Mrs. Cory and Brannon
He said that he wanted me to take a picture of him hugging her. :)

Shawn's Birthday Surprise

I am SO behind on so many events in the lives of the Crull family. I haven't posted Alex's birthday party or Shawn's 40th birthday party or the boys first day of school! Hopefully this week I could get caught up.

The day of Alex's birthday party, Aug. 16th, I took Shawn out for a surprise date. :) The week before, I was able to get tickets to the public open house and tour of Lucus Oil Stadium. With those tickets, I planned a whole evening of fun for Shawn and I for his fortieth birthday. Shawn drove, and I told him to head downtown and park in the Circle Center parking garage. While we were driving around, Shawn saw a ton of Colt's clad people and said, "Do the colts play today or something?". I just said, "I don't know what's going on". ;) Then when we were in the parking garage he could see the stadium and said, "oh...I just remembered something...and I hope that it is what we are doing." For those of you who know Shawn, you know that he is a HUGE sports fan. And you probably also know that he is a huge Bears fan too. So I wasn't sure if he would think the open house of the Colt's new stadium was as cool as I did. To my delight, he was very excited and impressed! :) We walked in and were VERY impressed with the stadium. We got to walk around and saw the locker room, suites and even got to walk on the field. After we finished, we started walking towards Circle Center mall. When we got to Weber Grill I said, "Here we are." I had gotten reservations at the Weber Grill. We hadn't ever been there before, so I thought that it would be a good place try. To be honest, we thought that it was OK. We are Outback and Texas Roadhouse people. They did have delicious onion straw things! After dinner I had planned on taking him to see the movie Tropic Thunder, but since we got finished with everything a ton earlier than I had planned, we had to change our plans because of movie times. We went to the Circle Center mall theater and Shawn decided that he wanted to see The Dark Knight, so that is what we saw. The whole evening was a lot of fun, and Shawn really enjoyed himself. :)

Here are some pictures of us at Lucas Oil. We made sure to take a lot of pictures of us together because we don't usually get pictures of us together! :)

The boys really like monster trucks, so we took these pictures for them. :)

Brannon's First Upward Soccer Game

Brannon had his first Upward soccer game today at our church. As Brannon would say...The good new was that he was able to see and play with all his friends from church...The bad news was that he just wasn't that into it (Brannon likes to talk about any experience by telling you the good and bad news). A few of my friends there said that their kids who played last year were the same way, so maybe it will get better. :\ Brannon looked like he was on the verge of tears most of the game. I'm not sure why. It could have been his ears (he and Alex both have ear infections right now) or he was too hot or maybe he was bummed because 3 of his buddies were on the other team (we saw him a couple of times pulling up his shirt like he was trying to change it to the gray side like the other team) or maybe I'm just trying to analyze it too much (that would be what Shawn would say). There were a few moments where he did trot a little, and he did kick the ball a couple of times, but overall, he just stood there. Let's hope that things get better, and most importantly that he has fun. :)

Here is his team. All but one of the kids Brannon has know as long as he has been alive. :)

Jaxon, Mary Elizabeth, Brannon, Simon and Brandon

In this picture Mark looks like he is really giving them an ear full! :)

One of the coolest things is that two of Brannon's coaches (Chad - Jaxon's dad and Mark - Simon's dad) have known him longer than he has been alive, and were there right after he was born. I think that kind of stuff is really cool! These guys love our crazy kid, and we love theirs! :)

The other team - a cute little girl, Evan, Carlos, Braydon, Tyler, and Ethan?

Brannon's team (the Wildcats...High School Musical anyone?) and the other team are the only teams in this age group, so they will be playing each other every week. :)

Before they started, they warmed up by stretching and doing jumping jacks. Brannon loves doing jumping jacks. :) He is next to his other coach, Bobby (Mary Elizabeth's daddy). He is a really cool guy. He has such a great cheery "kid" personality, and he loves playing with them and makes them feel special. :)

I caught Mary Elizabeth in midair. It makes her look really tall! :)

Saturdays are going to be a blast! All of our friends have kids playing Upward this year (at the same time), so we all just stand around talking and having fun watching our kiddos! :)

This is Bryce, all decked out in his soccer gear to watch his big brother Braydon play soccer. His mommy was decked out too in her "Soccer Mom" t-shirt! :) I love ya Kelly...you crack me up!!!

Here are the two teams praying before the game.

Brandon and Brannon...yes, it is confusing on the field. :)

Brannon and his buddy Simon...I'm so glad that they are on the same team!

Daddy encouraging Brannon and talking to him about playing soccer. :)

This was a cool shot of Simon throwing in the ball.

During most of the game Alex and Nate sat on my lap looking at a dinosaur book (big surprise!).

I also let them take a couple of pictures too. These are two of the pictures they took. I think the top one was taken by Nate, and the bottom one was taken by Alex. I think the picture of Nate is cute! :)

Here are the two teams giving high fives after the game.

Mary Elizabeth, Brannon, Simon, Jaxon and Brandon

Chad passing out stars at the end of the game. We were proud of Brannon because he got the "white" star. It is for being the most Christ-like. :)

WILDCATS!

Tyler, Evan, Braydon, Brannon and Will

Here's Brannon and his buddies from the other team. Notice his face. That's the face he had most of the day.

Here they are being silly. Kelly, I know you will be reading this, check out Braydon. You know those preacher's kids...;)

Here's our van. I am proudly showing my soccer mom spirit! :)