Mother's Day, Trucks and Cousin Love

I don't have anything specific to post about but lots of cute pictures of my kids on my phone, so this is just randomness/what we've been up to lately.

Summer is soooo close. 12 full school days left and two half days but who's counting? I'm so ready to hang out with these guys 24/7. SO SO READY.

Family selfie game strong

We are teaching summer school, but that's only the month of July so as of 11:55 on June 13, WE. ARE.DONE. (but again who's counting?). I don't know if it's these fun ages or the warm weather or the imminent arrival of summer, but saying goodbye to the boys each morning has been extra hard for me lately. On further reflection, it's probably the warm weather, because summer is not quite imminent enough yet for my taste and I say the same thing about how much fun this is about literally every age so far.

This is how I feel when the alarm goes off for work every day.

Not to brag, but, I have literally the perfect summer coming up. I have 3 different kinds of trips planned.

• The Poconos: our first ever family vacation!
• Dominican Republic: wedding/romantic trip with a big group of friends and NO KIDS
• D.C.: girl's spa weekend yaassss

As you can see, I have the trifecta of one example of each type of trip, to make for the ideal travel situation. We are also aiming to head to Rochester to see my family at some point. My sister, brother in law, niece and nephew came to visit this past weekend and seeing all the cousins together was absolute heaven. CUTEST EVER.

Everyone except Royce is now asking for each other (and I'm sure Royce is too, he just can't verbalize it). Dalton was obsessed with Harrison, who's four and a half. He just followed him around and copied everything he did. Adorable.

LOVE these four so so much.

We went to the zoo with them. Did anyone know the zoo serves beer and wine? We sure didn't. Game changer, right there.

It's really hard to get a picture of tiny children and baby animals where everyone is actually looking and has their eyes open and isn't eating. Impossible, you might say.

I think we live in the best city in America, parent wise. About ten miles from our house, there's an annual "Big Truck Show", where just about every kind of truck and boat parks for a few hours and the kids can climb in and "drive" and beep the horn, turn the lights on and off, etc. This is Dalton's DisneyWorld. He's a cheap date, which works out well for him, having teachers for parents and all. This year, it was kind of grey/rainy/cold during the event. It seemed to keep a lot of people away, so most trucks had little to no line, and Dalton got to try a ton of them. His favorite was the fire boat.

Splashing in puddles.

Royce was less impressed.

Fire boat anchor

I love the little hat and vest!

He was too busy being amazed to smile.

We also celebrated Mother's Day, as people do. Last year, I was in the hospital and Royce was about 36 hours old. While that was certainly special in it's own way, I was excited to get to go out for an actual, non- hospital cafeteria brunch this year. I actually begged my doctor to release me in time to be home for Mother's Day last year - as they were prepping me for surgery - at 6:30pm the Friday night before. She was like ummm well that's doubtful and maybe you should just go ahead and have the baby and then we can reassess? And then everyone laughed at me Sunday morning when I still required a full grown man just to walk me to the bathroom.

Anyway, as much as I love snuggling up with a brand new fresh baby, this year was more fun for the whole family. We did brunch with our good friends, who have two little boys as well. Their oldest is just 9 days younger than Dalton, and their baby is five months. The place we went, Iron Rooster, is our new favorite restaurant. Everything on the menu is delicious, they have a nice little playground attached to the restaurant so you can actually enjoy yourself instead of dealing with your kids going nuts trying to sit and wait for their food, and they have homemade pop tarts which are out of this world.

He was a little excited.

His face when he thinks someone is trying to take his food.

Playground! It even has the nice soft rubber floor!

It was a beautiful day, so after brunch/naps we just played outside.

Utter focus. 

We got frozen pizza for dinner. #winning. Dalton was completely obsessed with the reusable ice cubes my dad got us.

#buythemnothing

Other than that, just currently pushing through hump day, trying to make it to Memorial Day weekend. This is the first full school I've worked in the past 3 years, and it sure is rough not having that sweet (waaay too short) maternity leave break. We don't really have any big plans this weekend, probably just some playdates and grilling and sleeping in, which is clearly living my best life.

Further randomness: I feel I want to write more focused, topic driven posts. I like the photo dump for my own personal files, but it's not really "writing", and since I'm not sure I'm getting around to writing that novel in my spare time anytime in the next few years, this is all I got. If anyone is even still reading, please feel free to share topic ideas!