Caterpillar to Butterfly - Brady's Birthday present

Brady has been after butterflies for quite some time now. He LOVES them... i mean REALLY LOVES them. A while back, Brady even decided that he needed a butterfly bush in the backyard so it would attract more butterflies! We went to NorthHaven gardens as a family and Brady carefully chose the right bush. At home, he and his dad planted it in just the right spot. We chase butterflies in the backyard and when we go to parks, but he wanted his very own. So, for his birthday, his grandparents brought him the most wonderful gift... Caterpillars! Brady took care of them and watched them change from caterpillar to chrysalis to beautiful painted lady butterflies. After they had been flying around that little net cage for a few days, Brady decided it was time to let them fly free.

Brady's Butterflies set Free

It was Brady's decision to let these little guys fly free... Brady is such and animal/insect lover. He's so kind and gentle with all of them. Lucky for Brady and Breck a couple of the butterflies hung around them for about 20 minutes and this was pure heaven for Brady! He released them right next to the butterfly bush that HE chose to plant a couple of months ago. This was a pretty cool process to watch start to finish and Brady relished every minute of it! I think we'll be ordering some more caterpillars... I definitely recommend this to other moms!

Father's Day & Kristin's Bday at my parents house

Big goings on at the Healey house with Father's Day and Kristin's Birthday celebrations. The usual crowd gathered and talked and ate and sang little diddy's... The cousins played and all was right in the world. Happy Father's Day to MY DAD! Love you.

Happy Father's Day Brian

The kids sure do love their Dad and gave appreciation in the best way they knew how.. which was to make something yummy... a cake! I gave Brian free time ... and he chose to clean the garage! Men are funny! I appreciate it though.... especially when i think of how i would have head straight to the nail salon or the mall. I think it was a good day....and hope he felt the love and appreciation we have for him.

Summer playing

paper mache, painting, popsicle stick houses, building & exploding volcanoes, fishing, swimming, slip n slide... these are a few of the things the boys enjoy doing in the summer.

Family Birthday party for Brady

So, on Brady's true birthday, we had family over to celebrate. Brady is a lucky boy... he had both sets of grandparents, cousins, uncle.... and us! Really, all Brady needs to make a party are two of his older cousins, David & Aaron. Our boys think they are the GREATEST! We had a fun time making the day special for him...and I think he enjoyed himself big time!

Smack that Pinata!

Boys love to hit things... and hitting things with a bat is even better. Man, I thought the pinata would go down a lot sooner... but old sponge bob received many rounds of beatings! Breck was a loose canon with his one armed swing. I believe the bat went flying off a few times... then there was big cousin David ,who really knew how to get down to business! I've already been asked to provide a pinata for the next birthday party!

Brady's 5th Birthday Party with Friends

For Brady's 5th Birthday, we held his party at a place called The Lab at Lakewood. It's a super cool science place for kids. Anyway, He had a blast looking at all their cool lab critters and then getting to play with dry ice, insta-snow, water beads, crazy bubbles, and mixing up bubbling solutions. I think this will be one he remembers:)

My 3 loves

Man, as wild as these 3 can be, they sure do have their sweet moments! Boys are something special..... not even sure how to describe it. I feel so lucky to have 3... just always pictured myself as a 'boy mom'. They love to do the stuff boys do... run, jump, throw, hurl their bodies into a tornado, yell, get dirty, ride bikes, climb stuff, find bugs, toss rocks into ponds, fish, swim like fish, make forts, create, build, fly with super hero capes on, do karate moves, roar loudly, make funny faces in every picture, .... but they also love to snuggle with their mom and dad quietly at night, read, sing songs, and whisper their prayers and i love you's. Boys are Awesome.

The Healey Women

How fun is this? Lunch with the ladies! I think we all agreed that we need to do this again and way more often. Now that we are being overwhelmed with the male population we've been producing, it's OH SO important to keep the women folk happy!

May play days

Here are the boys being boys. They love being outside.. so what an awesome time of year... dawn til dusk we play out! We have a ton of bricks lying around and cement chunks (from the sidewalk Brian jackhammered in our backyard) so they build houses and forts and 'work yards' for their trucks. We have a lot of mud ... so it's a boys dream in the backyard right now... but not so much my dream.

End of Year for Brady

My first Baby finished his first year of PreK! He also received his 'Birthday Blessing' along with the other summer birthday children. He LOVED his teacher, Mrs. Shellenberger! She was really great with the kids and he talks about her often even though school ended well over a month ago!

911

Look how joyous and happy everyone looks here! I think these firemen thought I was a bit Crazy... I'm sure they nicknamed me 'freak mom of the year' as soon as they hopped in ... not 1, not 2, but 3 enormous firetrucks, followed by the chief car and 3 more police cars. Let me go back.... I ran out of the house and left my mom with the boys. They were upstairs playing, but I smelled burning plastic the second i walked in the door. I ran upstairs, panicking (since our house was newly under contract, yet we hadn't signed it away yet) and searching every outlet I could find. I looked in the attic... Nothing. Felt walls... nothing, just that strong smell of something burning sent my nostrils and brain into a state of mild alarm. My mom smelled it too.... so after an absurd call to my husband at work, begging for answers, I hung up and called 911. Now, I didn't say we had a fire... just that i smelled something burning and apparently it's protocol to send an army of hook & ladder trucks and police cars. They all trooped in with their axes and gear... searching high and low. As least I wasn't a complete fool because they smelled it too. Eventually, they looked in a sconce under our loft and found a tiny burning nerf ball that was ejected from Breck's gun about 20 minutes prior. I sheepishly said, "sorry guys... sorry for wasting your time... but ya think i could grab a quick picture to remember this moment?" That's where the crazy steps in. They all so kindly posed out front for several pictures. How great is that?! The boys thought the whole spectacle was stupendous!

Where am I?

Sometimes I wonder... Where do I live? Is this Texas, or the North Pole? I mean really... This amount of snow is completely unnecessary in my opinion. The boys had fun for a few minutes until their toes froze solid since we apparently do NOT have the right snow gear. What made it really interesting is the thick layer of ice we got the day before , nicely hidden beneath inches of snow. I enjoyed a swift ride from the upright position immediately down to my butt with baby in arms. My tailbone was not so appreciative.