Friday I had the pleasure of back to school shopping ALONE!  What a treat that was!  I haven't been shopping alone in months and months!  Brody was going to stay home with Aunt Anna, that was the plan, but then Cole got all sorts of jealous, so he stayed behind too.  He really misses Anna off to college.  He never gets to see her, so that was a treat for him.  I hit up all the bargains!  I managed to stay under $50 for supplies.  I was happy about that.  I think I went on the best week.  I hit the crayola sales.  Everything crayola was super cheap!  I picked out Cole's new bookbag, which I was able to find in Mario and he LOVED it!

I even got the thumbs up sign!!!

It was overall a successful shopping trip.  It sucked that I had to be home early because Anna had other plans, but it was so nice to shop without fussing and hounding for things!  I may have to do that again soon! 

This week has been a trying week for us... we are getting rid of the bottles and moving on to the sippy cups.  Day one Daddy totally ruined it by giving in at bedtime.  I fixed Daddy for day two... I threw all the bottles in the trash!  Ha ha ha.  He did totally fine all day long.  I knew he could handle it at bedtime.  He will be a year old in 21 days, it's time to toss the bottles!  I personally think it's time to toss the formula too, but my mom and the Dr. think he needs formula up to the year mark.  I am not sure what a difference a few days will make, but to make everyone happy I will not start touching the milk until another week or so.  This has been a funny few days.  I think he's cutting the top teeth.  He's been all sorts of clingy and fussy, which is just not like him.  I don't know if he's just that way because of the sippy, or because of the teething?  I know he had a low grade temp for 2 days off and on.  Who knows?  We will wait and see.  He has now moved on to Cole's toy story sippers.  They came from the gas station, and had juice in them.  He likes to drink out of those because they are the most like a bottle.  He cracks me up stealing Cole's drinks!  Little turd!

Saturday was such a lovely day.  My mom actually had a weekend off, which hasn't happend in MONTHS, so we spent an entire day with her.  I think she loved seeing the boys all day.  We hit up some garage sales in the morning, we put the shutters back on the house that she painted, and then we headed off to Keokuk with a pool sample.  Our pool has been very cloudy this last week.  We have treated the crap out of it, to the point the pool people told us it's perfectly fine the only thing wrong on the list is that it has too much sanitizer in it.  We were told to rinse out filter daily, Oxidize with an entire gallon and then give it time.  We came home and spent 2 hours skimming, vacuuming, and rinsing the filter.  We backwashed the hoses, cleaned out the pump and had Cole swimming while we skimmed some more.  It looks totally clean, just still cloudy.  Not too sure what we will do about that?  Give it some time to work I suppose.  I know we need a new bigger pump, and we have one in mind, but we don't want to pay $500 for one!  Till next summer we are making this one work. 

After swimming Grandpa Dennis came home and we all decided to pack up some hot dogs and head to the pond to have a weenie roast and do some fishing.  We had a lovely evening!  Dennis is the only true fisherman of the day, the rest of us caught zilch!  Cole had fun with his new pole!  Brody was so pooped from the busy day he just wouldn't give it up.  Finally when he did at 8 he was OUT for the entire night!  He's taking less and less naps lately, which really stinks because I think that has a bit to do with the attitude he gives off daily! 

Bill missed out on the fun because Keith was having back problems so Bill had to go bale hay for him to finish up for the day.  When he got home I was exhausted so I went to sleep in my chair.  I felt someone shaking me awake and I jumped up startled and it was midnight, Bill had woken me to see Brody in the chair sleeping... this was too cute.   Bill grabbed the camera and took a picture, how adorable is this....

I told ya he was pooped!  He was a tired little boy last night!