What Boston's Been Up to Lately

Here are a bunch of random pictures from the past few weeks of things Boston's been up to. It's quite the process keeping Boston and all of his energy entertained everyday, but I'm so grateful we have good friends here and a lot of fun activities close by! 

Boston had a blast at one of his friend's birthday parties and got his face painted for the first time. 

Before the party Scott took him to Home Depot again for their kid's craft/project. This time it was a cool wooden race car that they painted and put together. (You can see it a little better in the above picture.)

It's pool weather again! 

Well, it might be just a tad too cold still, but we've been to the pool a couple times now. 

We are excited to start going again regularly. Startting in May our ward has a weekly play group at this neighborhood pool. 

The kids don't mind too much that the water is cold, but I need it to be in the mid 90's before I'll get in. It's been in the mid 80's the past couple times that we went. 

We went to Minitown again and this time we got to see the outdoor play area because it wasn't raining.

Boston was thrilled to be able to ride the train.  

He was saying, "Toot! toot!"

The sad part about our Minitown trip was that Boston got his first Texas ant attack. We didn't have mean, vicious ants in Utah, but they are everywhere here. You have to watch out for ant piles in the grass here because if you step on one, they'll instantly be all over you, and they bite like crazy! Luckily they only got to his foot and ankle. We stripped him down pretty fast and made sure they were all off of him, but his poor foot looked like it had the chicken pox because there were bites all over it. It was so sad. :( I think it was more sad for me than him though. He's a tough little guy and didn't complain at all after we washed his foot off, but I wanted to cry for him every time I looked at his poor little pocked foot. 

Painting is something Boston has been doing on an almost daily basis lately. It only keeps him entertained for about 10 minutes, but it's better than nothing. I've found that painting is a better form of entertainment for Boston than coloring because crayons don't end up scattered all over the place, and there's nothing to break. Boston LOVES to break things. If it can be broken or scattered about, he will do that. 

Boston loves using the fishing pole he got for his birthday, and he had a blast one day fishing from a wipes container filled with water on the porch. 

We also tried fishing from the bathtub one day and he loved that too. I got the idea off Pinterest. 

Another idea I got from Pinterest was this little mini volcano activity. You put piles of baking soda on a cookie sheet, a little bit of food coloring in vinegar, and then use an eyedropper to drop the colored vinegar on the baking soda. 

Boston thought it was AWESOME. 

I tried doing this activity again the other day to keep him entertained while I made breakfast, but he decided, "Forget the eyedropper, I'm just going to dump the whole cup out at once." So that fun was over in about one minute since our vinegar was all gone after that. So much for making breakfast uninterrupted. Now I know this activity needs to be a one on one activity. 

 

A Camping We Will Go

After our camping trip this past weekend, we decided March might be the best time to go camping in Texas. It was gorgeous, both the weather and the outdoor scenery. We got some use out of our State Parks pass and went to Garner State Park, which was about an hour and forty minute drive for us. The drive there was full of pretty green fields and flowers, and was almost as enjoyable as the camping was. (The above picture is what we woke up to Saturday morning. It was a pretty, misty morning.)

We also had a memorable close call with a giant bird while driving there. We're not sure what kind of bird it was, but Scott described it as a two foot version of the bird from UP. We had to swerve so we didn't hit it. It was slowly walking across the road and Scott thought it would speed up before we got to it, but when it didn't speed up, I may have screamed a tiny bit, and then Scott put the brakes on pretty quick, and that's when the bird started to speed up which put us right on target to squish it since we had just slowed down (and keep in mind this bird was the size of a small dog). Luckily the bird stopped in the nick of time as we swerved around it. 

That little experience was pretty memorable for Boston. He's still talking about it. Now every time we stop or slow down in the car Boston says, "Bird in the road?" Or something about a bird. On the way to church today Scott almost didn't see a stop sign so he had to stop quickly and Boston said, "Did Daddy bonk a bird?" We got a good laugh out of that because we didn't realize what an impression that bird experience had on him until today. 

Boston was so excited to go camping that he had to eat breakfast Friday morning with his sleeping bag and marshmallows sitting next to him. He carried those marshmallows around and couldn't stop talking about putting them on a stick and sticking them in the fire. 

He was also really excited to watch a movie in the tent before bed. We brought the dvd player for the car ride down there, but when I asked him if he wanted to watch a movie he said, "No I want to go to sleep in the tent and watch Incredibles." So that's what he did later that night with a giant apple to snack on. 

I was excited to make jiffy pop over the fire. Scott had never heard of jiffy pop until this camping trip. My family has tried to cook it over a campfire a handful of times, but we usually burn it. I wanted to see if I could make some without burning it since I had heard that my family had jiffy pop success on the last family camping trip which we missed since we live clear down in Texas now. 

I didn't burn it, but I only got about half of the kernels to pop. (You can tell I had to sit pretty close to the fire and smoke to make that popcorn by my glowing red face.)

Scott's a fan of jiffy pop now! He thought it was really good. We'll have to make it a camping tradition.

Some other things we did on this camping trip were:

Making and eating tin foil dinners, 

Watching Boston collect sticks and rocks to his heart's content, 

Playing a bean bag toss game that we picked up on our car ride down, 

Bike riding both Friday night and Saturday morning,  

(Yes, we bribed Boston with a cup of cookies to go on a bike ride with us.)

And of course, making and eating s'mores.   

Boston thinks the whole fun of making s'mores is to light the marshmallow on fire. He hasn't quite figured out that it's even more fun to actually eat them. I made him a s'more, but he took one bite and got back to his marshmallow burning fun. 

It was an awesomely successful family camping trip! I thought it was fun all sleeping in the same bed even though it was a pretty snug fit on our queen sized air mattress. (It's funny to think I thought that mattress was small when just Scott and I used to share it. Ha ha.) When we woke up the next morning Boston put his hand on my head and said, "You cute Mommy, you cute." It was so sweet. That made sharing my half of the little air mattress and a sore back all worth it! We're excited to go again soon. We need to get at least one or two more camping trips in before the weather hits the triple digits!

Happy First Day of Spring!

I love Spring in Texas! The bluebonnet patches are everywhere, and it's so green and pretty this year compared to the brown and dry Spring we had last year. 

This past Sunday we went on a short walk and took some pictures of Boston in one of the bluebonnet patches near our house.  

Here he is being a boy and trying to knock down all the flowers.  

I have a handful of favorites, but I think this one is my number one favorite. Can't wait to print some of these out!

This is another favorite. Is this cute kid really ours? 

He's getting so big! Even though he just turned three a few months ago, he's the same size as most four year olds. 

This one captures his personality perfectly. 

More personality. That's what we got when we told him to smile. 

So sweet.

Now, who wants to come visit us? How can you resist that face? I'm a little homesick and our next visit to Utah isn't until July. 

Happy Spring everyone!