Vacation Day #5 - Adventure Time

I got to watch my boys create their own adventure in Nanner's backyard today.  I used to love to play in her backyard with Andrea and Melanie when we were little!  We used to make up some pretty good adventures of our own.  I think Andrea and her imaginary friend might have had the most fun!

They went round and round the yard pretending their power wheels was anything from a spaceship to a boat.  They would load it up with stuff and take it on their missions.  They even pretended it was broken down so they had to fix it.  They completely wore themselves out and went inside to cool off.  We'd find them jumping or wrestling on Nanner's bed and even found them in her closet with flashlights once.  My favorite was when we got ready to go and I found they'd put Nanner's makeup on Ben's forehead (it was solid pink).  All of the mischief they got into really brought back memories!

Nanner has adopted some neighborhood cats.  Big Red, Murray, and ...

Sophia

Lunch at The Blue Biscuit

Dinner at Hometown was awesome!  The food was great and we had such a good time sitting out on the screened porch enjoying the gorgeous weather.

Vacation Day #4 - Just Hanging Out

On Sunday we just wanted to hang out at Nanner and Dorsey's house.  Pops cooked a yummy lunch and then we all got to visit and play with the boys.

I like the new Lego Bricks and More sets for younger kiddos.  Ben wants to play with the small Legos now, but at 3.5 years old he can't really follow the instructions yet, and he does not have the attention span to build something large.  These sets are a nice bridge between Lego Duplo and the sets for bigger kids.  Sam brought along a few Lego sets he'd gotten for his birthday.

Lilo's pizza.  Nom ... nom ... nom.

Vacation Day #3 - Ethan's Wedding

We headed up to Holly Springs for our cousin Ethan's wedding.  We ran into a lot of rain on the way there and the way back, but they were lucky that they avoided the rain during the outside wedding that evening.  The boys weren't quite sure what to expect with a wedding, but they behaved very well during the ceremony.  They were especially proud of their new dress shoes!

We got a chance to visit with Tom and Stella (my great aunt) at the reception.

Tom and Stella with all the grandbabies, including Ethan (top left).

Sam and Ben goofing off at the reception

Mother and Son dance

Alex and Max on the dance floor.

I can't wait to play this video at Sam's wedding one day!  Not sure where he learned those moves!

Stella and Sheila watching the boys dance.

I snapped a quick pic of Ethan and Kristen on the way out.

It was a late drive home in the dark and Ben was having a great time watching movies until we got into the rain.  The sound of the rain had him asleep in no time.

Vacation Day #2 - Nanner's Backyard

Plenty of room to play in Nanner's backyard.  The boys had lots of fun riding their Power Wheels.

Purple hydrangea

Vacation Day #1 - Road Trip

Here we are on day one of our 23 day road trip vacation!  We're going to be doing a lot of driving and I hope they are all as wonderful as this first day.  We made the first trip from Texas to Mississippi in about 7.5 hours and it went by in a flash because the boys were so quiet!

I did a little research before the trip to find a little technology to help us out.  This is what we ended up with and it's working out well so far.

We got each of the boys their own iPad mini with an Aero Armor case.  We had a fun little scavenger hunt when we gave them to them.  

The GripDaddy headrest mount is built solid and is easy to use. 

The Seagate Wireless Plus is a 1TB drive with it's own wireless network.  You connect the iPad's to its wireless network and use the Seagate Media App to stream the content.  Sam was able to operate it completely on his own, but Ben still needs help to pick the show he wants to watch.  We had a little bit of trouble getting the content on the drive initially.  It wasn't extracting the metadata correctly.  It was easily resolved by reformatting the drive with NTFS instead of HFS+ and reloading the content.

The Logitech Bluetooth Headset has worked great so far.  It's even small enough to fit Ben's head.

Ben's favorites so far have been Team Umizoomi, LeapFrog, Magic School Bus, and Legos movies.  Sam has watched a little Teen Titans, Young Justice, and Legos movies, but he's mostly interested in playing games over watching movies.  Little Inferno is his favorite app so far.