Happy 3rd Birthday L&L

We had a great time last weekend celebrating Luke and Logan's 3rd Birthday! Then we turned right around and went trick or treating. The boys turned 3 this year, where has the time gone?? Tim and I celebrated with the boys on their birthday  and then we had a party with close family the following weekend. They boys had a blast and loved having two birthdays :) We were blessed to have so many of our family there from out of town, with my brother winning the prize for coming the farthest, from Tampa Florida (he actually was buying my dad's car, so he had to drive it all the way back!). Anyway, I have included some pictures from the party which aptly had an "under construction" theme, since the boys love anything truck related and we are still in the throes of building our house. I'll post some progress pics in the next few weeks, the outside is coming along! Tim was also very helpful in that he helped decorate the cake! All in all, we all had a great time and loved getting to catch up with everyone.

We also took the boys trick or treating the following day. We were there for the parade and got to see our nieces and nephew as well. The boys really loved getting the candy, and were pretty good little monkeys. It was definitely during naptime though, and by the end they were getting very tired. Things have been pretty normal for us, Tim spends all his time working and then working at home on the house and we hang around quite a bit. The boys can actually be pretty good little helpers sometimes too. We are not looking forward to the cold weather (wasn't it just winter!?!?), but that means the holidays are coming up, and then we are just a little bit closer to being in the new house. I'll leave you with the birthday and Halloween pics!

Happy 3rd Birthday to L&L! 

Cake decorator hard at work!

Loved blowing their candles out!

Cousins picture!

Family picture

And a normal family picture :)

Present Chaos

Mommy giving out her instructions

New chair and sleeping bag

Halloween Parade

Cousins

Two Little monkeys, looking a little tired

Papa, Grammie and their monkeys

We're Buiding a House?!?!

So, I have finally had a few minutes to get some pictures ready to show you the progress on the house! I have included various pics below, including family and friends that have helped us out and some collage photos of our progress from the beginning of June to late July. We started on June 2nd and at this point we are almost done shingling the roof. The boys have LOVED all the trucks, lifts, loaders, tractors, etc that have been over and they like to ride their bikes and powerwheels in the "new house". Tim has been super busy as almost every night he is out at the house working after he gets home from his job, and usually out at the house on the weekends as well. I have done my best to be supportive and can't thank family and friends enough for the support and help with the boys when I want to escape to a volleyball game, or spend a little time away. Overall, I'm very excited about the progress and I'll try to update you all as we keep moving along....however, I hear once the outside of the house is about done, the inside part takes a lot longer, and you don't "see" the progress as readily as when putting the walls up and roof on. Either way, I'm going to work on being as patient and understanding as possible and know that it will be over before we know it and we will be moving in! 

Luke was the best helper for Pa-Pa!

Pumper Truck

Tarring the basement walls

Pre-basement pour

Ray welding the beam

Ray 

Tim going over the plans

View from the basement window

Pants optional

Loving Uncle Jason

Luke & Adalyn

All the Clouse Grandkids playing King of the hill

Late Night Work

Ray & Tim Shingling

My boys

Front View from the Road, starting in June through middle of July

View of the back of thouse house from the top of the hill

View from the Barn Roof

Back of the House

Garage Side of the house

**April Post...2 months late!** - Update....it's still snowing

So, my last post was over two months ago and I was talking about all the cold and snow we have have had this winter....and look at it outside this morning. Low and behold, it's still snowing! Well, we have had a break in the weather over the last few weeks and spring is starting to emerge, but really??? Come one! Ok, rant over :) Ummm, yes I was going to post this two months ago...oops. Anyway, I'll post it anyways, and then I'll give another update next week on more recent topics! This is a post from April:

Onto what's been going on in our lives lately. I'll start with my favorite topic - L&L. They have been really growing up lately! Actually I can tell their legs are longer (finally getting to those 2T pants, haha) and developing their skills as well. Here are a few things they are doing at almost 2 1/2 years old:

• Talking up a storm! Finally they broke through the speech barrier and have been really jabbering up a storm. Logan will just jabber all the time now and Luke is a little more reserved, but definitely has been trying out copying many words that we say. They will make an effort to repeat most words I ask them to, occassionally giving up if it's too hard and making the sound of the object (their favorite is trucks and animals) rather than saying the word. Here are some of their favorite words and phrases:
• truck, dump truck, tractors, backhoe, bike, plane, etc etc
• kitty, dog, duck, pig, cow, hop hop, 
• more please, help, no (sounds like note), yes (sounds like yesh), mine, thank you,
• blue, red, orange, yellow, pink, purple, black, brown, green
• kitties in the barn, bad bad bad, 
• Activity...umm they are non-stop, go-go-go! Definitely high energy little guys that are constantly moving around and wanting to be busy doing something. Now that the weather has gotten a little bit better, we have been outside a lot, and they love checking out the kitties we have outside in our barn (see favorite phrases), and really like to see all kinds of animals. They are kind of afraid of dogs right now, they like to look at them, but get scared if they get too close. Of course they are not afraid of our dog, Eddie, and they continue to terrorize him, poor little guy. They also love to ride their bikes, and recently they have spent hours pulling around a few two-wheeled carts that we have outside. Apparently it's very fun and entertaining!
• Stuff we've been working on and favorite things to do: I am always trying to think of new things to keep the boys entertained and busy since we have spent so much time indoors and since they are little sponges, absorbing everything they see and hear. So here are some fun things we have been doing and working on:
• holding hands with mom and dad when we walk places (to avoid cars, injuries, etc)
• learning what words associate with certain letters - favorites are P=paw-paw, M=Mom, D=Dad, K=kitty, S=snake, E=Eddie, B=ball, H=house, L=Luke&Logan
• playing with play dough. I have made some home-made playdough and they are really enjoying using a roller and cookie cutters to play with it at the table...trying not to mix the colors can be a chore though!
• Chores
• hanging up their coats and putting their shoes away when they get home..this meet success about 50% of the time :)
• helping to clean up - again not super successful but working on it!
• throwing away trash
• Playing pretend - recently we acquired a LARGE box from Tim's place or work and turned it into a big house. now they love to play house and use that as well as blankets overtop of tables and couch cushions. They also play pretend with food and the kitchen
• playing with water and soap in the kitchen sink - can entetain for a long time if needed!
• A few other milestones and bumps in the road we have hit lately:
• POTTY TRAINED! I would say we are 95% potty-trained with only a few accidents here or there and diapers at night. It feels so nice to actually have acheieve this, I wasn't sure we were ever going to get to this point! (See original potty training post...)
• Teeth- well not a ton of progress here, but they have all but their two-year molars. They have always been late getting teeth, so I'm ok with finally having their eye-teeth in and waiting a bit for the molars
• Fussy eating - I would not say picky, becuause they are usually willing to try most things, but really lately they have just been not wanting to eat anything. They must not be growing right now, but it's driving me crazy, especially because Luke is really small! He has not even hit hte 25 pound mark yet, while Logan is almost 28 pounds
• Communication with each other - one of my favorite things about having twins is watching them communicate with each other. I LOVE to see them talking and jabbering to each other, sometimes I can understand it, but most of the time, I have no idea what they are saying. It is one of the cutest things and really tugs at my heart-strings. 
• Watching movies/TV - the boys have never been super interested in tv, but have enjoyed Baby Einstein videos. Lately, they have begun to like Elmo and their absolute favorite is watching "Ice" (Disney movie Frozen). They don't ever watch the whole thing through, and that's true for pretty much all their shows, but they do like certain parts and even have begun mimicking certain parts of the video. 
• Electronics - They also enjoy their electronics, especially the iPad. Lots of fighting goes on and usually it ends up with it being put away and lots of tears. The really love to watch Youtube videos of trucks and buses on the ipad. Which I have found we need to monitor because occassionally they click through and end up watching non-kid videos, so starts the moinitoring of what our kiddos can do!

Ok - so that's a pretty good update on the boys, and since this post has gotten kind of lengthy, I'll wait and add another post about the new house updates...here's a hint...nothing has actually started yet, but lots of things are coming soon! I'll leave you with some fun pics!

Blue shirts and trucks!

Thank you for the awesome blankets Grammie!

Doesn't even need a caption...

Brotherly love

Daddy is just one of the kids - playing with play-dough!

Jesus train on Easter

Cousins on Pa-pa's 4-wheeler!

Nothing better than on the gator with Pa-pa

Going for a ride

The Clouse's - Easter 2014

T-R-O-U-B-L-E

Logan 2 1/2 years old - new Haircut, looking so grown-up!

Luke 2 1/2 years old with his new haircut!

One of their favorite things to do...