This Brud's For You

This afternoon we treated G & G Brudnicki to a little family outing. We went to the near by San Marcos Aquarena and got a glass bottom boat tour. Despite it being 100 degrees out at 4:00pm, it was fun.Carson and Jensen waiting to board our boat.They were excited that we could see into the water while sitting in the boat. Carson's favorite thing that we saw was a gar, which is a snouted fish. He kept calling it a crocodile. :)We saw lots of these plants, plus fish, the gar and even some turtles, which were Jensen's favorite.Even Mason had a good time sitting on Grandma Brudnicki's lap and watching the underwater world below. We then topped off our adventure by visiting Valentino's, a San Marcos pizza parlor. I haven't had a pizza like that in a really long time- really good!

Mason is now 9 months old! Besides having some nasty little patches of eczema, his pediatrician declared him to be perfect! Mason now weighs 22lbs 11 oz, which is on the higher end of the average, and he's now 29 inches long, which is also plenty tall for his age. He still has a big ol noggin- in the 97%. Lots of brains in this one.

Mason has gotten to be quite the wiggler. Sitting in church is rather difficult because he can't seen to sit still for longer than 3 seconds. Thank goodness he takes a good nap while we're there!

He likes to say "da-da-da" and "ba" while chasing after balls. Still no "ma" but I'm not too concerned. The other two took a while with that one.

I've been noticing recently how serious Mason seems to be. He looks at things almost skeptically at first and often with a little furrowed brow. He's observant when he's playing with his toys. He even talks in a kind of serious tone, rather than a playful one.

He still loves to play with his brothers, and they still love to play with him. But now that Mason can get around, they are discovering that they don't appreciate him eating their things! Mom is also discovering that the floors need to be cleaned constantly!

Mason has learned to wave hello and goodbye. I also love his little hand raising trick. And Mason is also now a scooter. It seemed to happen pretty much over night. One day he couldn't move, and the next day he was across the room. So here's Mason showing off his little army crawl.

I've been trying for days to get Mason to do this trick WHILE I was videoing him. Sometimes he even says the "ME" part in his little high pitched squeal. Babies are so funny!

Bye bye hair that has been too long for too long. Today I chopped another 8" to donate to Beautiful Lengths. Subsequently, I also lost a couple of pounds today. :)I probably should have grown it out for another month or two to get it to my favorite length, but I was so sick of it, that it had to be done sooner. Mason has been tugging and chewing on it for way too long. Besides, it's still long enough to pull back into a pony tail, and I always get so many compliments when I have it this length. I can't tell you how happy I am not to have all that hair dragging me down. Now I can enjoy my hair for another 18 months until I decide to do this again!

Yeah, I know, "graduating" from preschool seems like a stretch to me, but it was actually cute. The kids did walk in to "Pomp and Circumstance" which was a bit much, but alas, it is the graduation song. I had to laugh at their little caps they got. Carson had his pulled down on his head so that it didn't really look like a grad cap at all!The kids sang a little song, they gave them their certificates and a bible (since they attend a Baptist program) and they had a slide show. Afterwards they had cake and refreshments. Carson told me, "Graduating is so fun!"Here's Carson and a couple of his friends from Primary who were also in his class at school. The poor kid. Practically ALL of the kids his age are girls! Good thing he gets along so well with them!And these are Carson's teachers, Ms. Letha and Ms. Belinda. Ms. Belinda was Carson's teacher last year, and she had had some of the kids in their class for 3 years straight. She was a little emotional today. Honestly, as silly as a preschool graduation sounds, I was getting a little choked up. It's still strange that Carson is going to Kindergarten in the fall. How did he get so big?

Whenever I download pictures from my camera, I always find the funniest things. Jensen and Carson love to take pictures of random stuff, so it's fun to look at the world through their eyes.

Here are some self portraits of Jensen. This kid cracks me up!Here are his "beautiful teeth." Carson has a slight obsession with trains and tracks. This was a giant train track that we built one day and he insisted that we take a picture of it. It's kinda camouflaged into the rug here, but it was pretty awesome.Carson also has a slight obsession with drawing stuff that he likes and then taping his artwork to his wall. I found this shot of his Angry Birds and Zhu Zhu Pets. He cracks me up too!
And these are just some cute pictures of Mason getting clean. I love when my babies get steady enough to sit in the bath. I just love this sweet little guy!

I forgot to post the pictures of Easter! I mean, I know I posted the cute shots of us all dolled up for church in our matching outfits, but these are the boys coloring eggs and showing off what the Easter Bunny gave them.

Coloring eggs was fun this year. We sprinkled grated up crayons over the hot eggs and watched the color melt onto the shells.The boys had fun, and it was pretty low mess, so I was happy. We only did 4, because I didn't want to be wasteful. Dustin and I don't like eggs, and although our boys eat scrambled eggs, they've never had a hard boiled egg before. The sad part was that I had to call my mom to ask how to boil an egg. (My dad was laughing hysterically when I asked…) We did let the boys try their eggs, though. They didn't like them (of course- they're nasty!!!!!) so they ended up just crushing them up and making a huge mess. Thankfully they were at Grandma Brudnicki's house for that part. :)They were pretty excited about the chocolate bunnies and new movie. If you can believe it, we don't have any "princess movies" at our house. Well, NOW we do! I thought Tangled was adorable, and my boys love it.They also had an Easter egg hunt at their grandma's house. She hid tons of eggs and filled them with way too much candy…they loved every second of it. :)

While we can, at least. April was very warm here, and during the past week we've actually had some cooler days. By "cooler" I mean in the 70's and low 80's. I know there are people who would love to be experiencing these temperatures where they live, but just remember, I have to live through the summer here, too. :)

The boys and I decided to have a picnic lunch at the park today. It was lovely. Warm, but not hot, breezy, but not too windy. My sandwiches weren't bad either. Look, I've got all my little ducks in a row!Mason particularly loved hanging out at the park. He couldn't get down and run around with his brothers (soon he will), but he had this cute smile on his face the whole time.I always think of my little brother when I see my kids smile like this. I think Eric might have had this same smile in every picture ever taken of him till he turned 9. Plus, Mason's mohawk was in fine form today!