Mother's Day for MiMi

Today, as I was going through my picture file looking for pictures to post about Mother's Day, I ran across this. How stinking cute is this!!??!?!? Jake and Caroline were so little and precious! Geez, did my heart melt with gladness. Then I realized it was a video with a shout out to MiMi. How perfect when thinking about Mother's Day. So, MiMi...this one is for you. We enjoyed your visit here this past week and sorry if it was a little crazy. We all made some memories and I am sure Abbi will always remember you taking her driving!!! :) We love you and look forward to when we can vacation on a sunny island with waves crashing in the background sipping on some Diet Dr. Pepper. We love you and miss you greatly! Enjoy and make sure you pause the music on the side and turn up the volume on the video.

(our old house-Patriot Park. Cee Cee, 1, and Jake,4)

Wacky Friday

It was Wacky Hair Day at the boys school today.
They paid $1 to have crazy wacky hair to help the 5th grade class raise money for their class party.
I hope everyone has a Crazy WaCkY wEEkEnd!

(Dylan, Cameron, & Jake)

Our Crazy Pug Dog

The 6th member of the Youngblood Family.
Chief.
Isn't he a cutie?
You gotta love that crazy long tongue!
He is 7 months now and finally fully potty trained.
He is pretty lazy.
Sleeps in human positions.
Loves to cuddle, and
Eats all of our veggies & fruits that are growing in our backyard.
I think he is a strawberry kind of guy.

My Boys

Not much to post about today.

It's camo and hat day at school for the boys.

When Jake was walking out the door this morning, I couldn't happen to notice how dang cute he looked. 

I think his camo gear suits him just fine.

He has such a sweet spirit and I'm blessed to be his mom.

The boys now bike to school with their friends everyday.
It's funny to see them pedal away with their big backpacks in tow and them laughing and having a good ole time with their friends.

Jake has learned to ride his bike with no hands.

I can tell he is super proud of this accomplishment.

I worry about him on his bike though.

He seems to be accident prone on it. 

We jokingly warn everyone to watch out for Jake. 

He will run you over. Literally, and not on purpose. He just has a hard time stopping and steering.

He will fall unexpectedly and can somehow manage to get his shoelace strings tied up in his wheels.(thank goodness I was out running yesterday to rescue him from his wipe out...all due to his shoelaces).

 

Cameron got a new bike.

Well, his best friend, Dylan, gave him his old bike.

So, Cameron upgraded and passed his old bike down to Jake.

We started reading the book, The Hunger Games, aloud at night.

Cameron did pretty well with reading it.

However, he stopped after Chapter 7.

He claimed he read the entire book, but after some coursing, we found out the truth.

So, we decided we would read it together. 

After a long day, we settle down on the couch and read it as a family.

It's peaceful and allows us to converse about the events that take place in the book.

I can't wait to see the movie now!

seeing things a little clearer

Well, it looks like Cameron has inherited my terrible eyesight. I knew it was only a matter of time before one of the kids would need glasses.  My eye sight is awful and Dusty jokingly tells me I should go ahead and invest in a seeing eye dog. Actually, Cameron's eyes are not that bad. He recently had a physical and failed the vision test.  After an appointment at the eye doctor, we learned that he has trouble seeing out of his left eye and that his right eye has been working extra hard to make up for the blurred vision in the left eye. Cameron was happy to learn that he doesn't have to wear them all the time. He can take them off when playing sports, riding his bike, and outside playing.      

I thought it was sweet that Cameron's best friend, Dylan, showed up the next morning at our house in his glasses.  Apparently, Dylan has the same eye issue as Cameron. Cameron wasn't thrilled with wearing them to school, so Dylan came over with his glasses on to show him that being able to actually "see" things isn't so bad! 

I got my first pair of glasses in 4th grade too.  I wish I could locate a 4th grade picture of me. Now that would be site. I think I was rocking some big round old school glasses, permed hair, and big puffy bangs. I wonder if Cameron will look back 20 years from now and think his cool TMX glasses are big round and goofy? 

the new crib

Well, here it is. Our new house.
We absolutely LOVE it!!!!
The neighborhood is wonderful, the school rocks, and our new house fits our family just perfectly.
After being outbidded on 3 other houses, we decided to take a step back and review what our family really needed. When our house hunt first began we had a list of our likes and dislikes. However, somehow in the process of bidding wars it became clear to us that we needed to up the ante and increase our house budget. The buyers market is a dog eat dog world and apparently the Youngblood's were wearing milk-bone underwear. (Comment if you know where that saying came from). Any-Who, we feel like we scored a gem of a house. It's well within our budget (So,I get to keep being fiscally irresponsible :-) lol) and our neighbors couldn't be any more awesome. I feel like we live in a time warp neighborhood from the 80's. The kids take off on their bikes and we don't see them for hours on end. They call to check in from their friends house, who has an I-phone (are you kidding me??), and we feel completely safe with them roaming the neighborhood. Needless to say, we feel like we really made a great decision. We definitely could have gone for a bigger, better, big-baller house, but after seeing this one, we fell in love and it just felt right. So far, our intuitions have proved correct. We couldn't be happier and we get so tickled just getting out of bed in the mornings, thinking about our next home improvement project.

A full grown tree was on our MUST HAVE list.  We got it, plus one in the backyard.  I get tickled every time I mow the yard, walk outside in the morning, and drive up in the drive way.  It probably is a silly request, but our old neighborhood lacked trees.  In fact, our last house had zero trees. This is my beauty. 

Marissa

My super SMART niece, Marissa, was inducted last night into the National Junior Honor Society. My brother in law sent me this picture of her and her friends. Not only is Marissa super SMART, but she is so pretty! We are so proud of her!