Uncle Dillon

My younger brother Dillon came for his spring break. He is such an awesome kid. He's student body president at his high school, valedictorian, plays basically every sport available and is involved in all sorts of different clubs. On top of that he's super spirutual, super smart (obviously), very friendly, very fun and very helpful. We were so glad he came to visit us for spring break. On his second day at our house, Luke challenged Dillon to a puzzle contest. They each had 100 pieces to their puzzle. Game on! They worked fast and furious and Luke finished a few minutes ahead of Dillon. (granted, Luke has done these puzzles quite a few times so he had an advantage for sure, but he is 4 and Dillon is 18...you decide) Luke was so excited when he won, he was doing all sorts of trash talking and also saying that he wants to join a puzzle team and if anyone asks if they can "borrow him" for a puzzle, that we should let them. He kept going on about being the champion and then finally consoling Dillon and giving him pointers. It was hilarious!

Dillon is really into weight lifting. Austin took him to our YMCA while he was here. The boys wanted to dress "just like Uncle Dillon" so we got out a tank top for each of them. Dillon loved showing off his "guns" to his nephews.

This little lady got to meet her Uncle Dillon for the first time. She won him over with her long eyelashes and beautiful smile. Dillon's nickname for her was "Baby Eyelashes".

Austin bought the boys Candyland the other day. In fact, they got it the day Dillon arrived so, as you can imagine, they played it a number of times while Dillon was here. I think Jensen won most and Luke had to be comforted most.

This Japanese structure and garden is on the outskirts of Downtown Des Moines. It's really a neat place though we never figured out why it's there.

Another activity we did while Dillon was here was a group date - and by "group" I mean we got Dillon a date and we took the kids too! The girl was a good sport about it and we had a lot of fun. The bowling alley we went to wouldn't let us use the bumpers but let the kids used a ramp instead. The ramp was totally unpredictable and half the time the kids gutter-balled it and the other half of the time they got a strike. They had fun either way.

In our tour of downtown Des Moines, we also went on this suspension bridge. Pretty cool. Some of the bridge was glass so you could see down into the water. Pretty trippy.

The Iowa Historical museum had a lot of interesting information, as well as this lego construction of the tallest building in Des Moines.

The sculpture garden is always a cool place to show people. Dillon got really "into" it.

Thanks for coming Dillon! We really miss you!

100 mile club!

How is it possible that Eliza gets cuter every week? "She is so awesome," as Austin says.

Austin started swimming pretty regularly in the beginning of December. He decided to take the 100 mile swim challenge at our local YMCA. Most people take a year or more to complete the challenge, Austin did it in 3 months! Upon completetion of the challenge, they gave him this great shirt. There are very few people that have completed the challenge at our YMCA. I'm pretty proud of this guy.

I can't believe Eliza is almost 5 months old! She started eating cereal this week. She's been eyeing everyone's food for a week or more now. She was very excited to try cereal and actually seems to really like it and I like to watch her eat it. She is so cute whatever she is doing.

Is it embarrassing to admit that my boys had never made paper snowflakes before today? They checked out a book from the library last week about making snowflakes. It was so fun to see how excited they were when they unfolded their snowflake! Can't believe we didn't do it sooner. (Jensen's snowflake is hung up on the wall behind him. Kind of hard to see I guess. He's holding the snowflake book.)

Luke got a little button-happy with our camera this week. The shots didn't turn out as bad as I thought they would be...

We got these breastplates at the dollar store as well as the plastic sword in Luke's hand. Gotta love the Dollar Store. Months of entertainment (we've had them 3 months and of course they are all falling apart) for $2. Not bad!

Luke is addicted to puzzles. He does a few a day. He doesn't do the 12-piece ones, he does the 100-piece ones. He's starting to get pretty bored of the 15 puzzles we have, so he just does them all at once!

Ironman, stay away from MY man

Poor little Jensen has another cold sore on his mouth. This is his second one and he is only 2 years old. Austin and I both get cold sores, they are so, so painful. Poor kid.

Eliza has been sick this week with a slight fever and a bad cough. She'll cough so hard that she throws up. She is still so cute and pretty happy considering.

Look at her runny nose in this picture. She looks like one of those cabbage patch kids we had when I was a kid - does anybody remember those? They looked like they had snot coming out of both of their nostrels. Weird.

Austin also has had a cold sore for the last week. When he gets a cold sore on his face, he doesn't shave because it would spread it all over his face. Anyway, he finally cut off this gross beard after Luke and Jensen tried to rip out the hairs from his beard.

This is what I found one morning!! I leave my bed for two minutes and come back to find I'd been replaced!

Austin was a little surprised when he realized what was going on.

But he was pretty tired so he went right back to sleep.


Luke and Jensen love to wrestle with Austin. I can't imagine how crazy it will be when they are teenagers. Luke loves to trash talk. If you listen, you'll heard him saying stuff like, "you ready for the kick out, little baby?" to his dad.