Lovin' the Grandparents

I'm a bit tired tonight - with March Madness and all - but felt the need to show some Grandparent love after chatting with both families today. Our boys just love their grandparents. Also thought it was a good chance to share more pics and less commentary (a bonus when I'm tired).

Granny (Paul's mom) was here in January for a visit and the boys love to go check out museums and monuments with her. We switch up which museums we visit, and this trip realized that the boys have never been to the old Air & Space Museum on the National Mall. We always drive out by Dulles Airport to the new one (called Udvar-Hazy) which is built inside a hangar and can display much larger craft - like a Concorde as well as one of the space shuttles. Anyway, we figured it was time to take them to the more vintage museum and, of course, they loved it...



For Christmas, Grandma & Papa Pete (my parents) got the boys a subscription to a kids magazine called "High Five" - a mag for a slightly younger audience than their sister pub "Highlights". The boys pour through the magazine each month and they were intrigued by a recipe they saw for "Breakfast Banana Split". So taken were they by the thought of this in the morning, the day they knew I was going grocery shopping, T.J. carefully wrote down each item shown on the magazine's list of ingredients for me to take to the store. With so much effort on their part for me to buy the makings of the dish, I had to do it. So, Friday night I prepped the materials and Saturday morning before hitting swim lessons, they helped me make their special meal - it was a hit!



Austin loves his grandparents too - some of the very few people he'll still let cuddle with him as he enters into his super independent phase. These aren't shots of him with his grandparents, but they are gratuitous shots of him just being cute that I felt necessary to include.


And not to be ignored, Reilly at age 9 still scampers about vying to pull some of our attention away from her 3 brothers. And while Austin would rather roam around freely than cuddle with us - he's more than happy to snuggle with his best friend: his yellow, slobbery, tolerant pooch! Most of the time, she returns the love - though we're not sure if it's because the adoration is mutual, or because Austin's the most likely Dean to have the time to truly dedicate to her and these days she'll take what she can get!