Easter in Pictures

 If Blogger will cooperate, I'll let the pictures do the talking. 


If

School lunch on Thursday, all the food was packed in an egg!

tissue paper craft we did on Good Friday

 

Neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt

Magic show

 

Our neighbors

The softest bunt ever, a velveteen rabbit 

 

 

 

Easter Sunday

Duch's rock at our church, it says I love God

ready for Church!

Easter Breakfast, homemade honey-wheat cinnamon rolls!

Egg Hunt!

An EMPTY egg???

 

 

Spring Break Part II

For the second part of Spring Break we went to Austin.  We stayed with my good friend, Julie.  Her hubby was out of town but we had tons of fun with Julie and Annie.  I LOVE Austin.  Maybe it is because I only ever am there on vacation, but I just love the feel of it.  It always seems like a much more family focused town than Dallas.  So many more restaurants have playgrounds, lots of outdoor activities, so much more laid back... 



Anyway, the kids were thrilled to arrive at Miss Julie's because they have a great backyard.  They were restored by free play outside- playing with the dog, in the rock box, helping with the garden.  The first morning we met our friend, Jenn, and her daughters for breakfast tacos at Taco Deli. We ate outside and then decided to hike the greenbelt across the street, well, as much as you can call it hiking with 4 big kids and two toddlers. Duch fell and got a bloody lip that swelled up pretty big and knocked a tooth loose. She soldiered on to play with the kids.  The big kids explored all over and we moms got to sit out in the sunshine and chat (and panic every once in awhile when a toddler got close to the edge of a rock!)

Later that afternoon we went to the park and had a great time.

That night Julie went to teach an infant massage class and I watched all the kiddos.  We did baths and played with play doh.  I bathed the little kids first but should have had PJs ready before we got in the tub.  Both kiddos were wrapped in their towels and I hear Huck peeing on the floor- I threw his towel under him to catch it and I heard Annie say "pee pee."   I replied, "yes, he is going pee pee."  Then she replied "Annie pee pee" and sure enough Annie was going pee pee too!  I just laughed and hurried up with the diapers. 

The next morning (Huck's birthday) we went to an environmental center.  It was super cool- they had a little classroom type set up where you can touch and explore all kinds of "found" things in nature- rocks, bones, animal skins, shells, etc.  They had a sign saying "Please DO touch"  and Bubba said "that is pretty much the opposite of everywhere else!"  Then we went outside to dig for "dinosaur bones."  and they also have local wildlife exhibits- raccoons, fox, opossum, snakes, fish, etc.  And so cool, we saw Aunt Sara and the cousins there, too! 

We left and had lunch at a fun restaurant that had a playground.

 

Then we headed home.  We stopped just out side of Waco for some ice cream for the birthday boy!  He has on a birthday shirt that says Birthdays Rock and has a rocket on it.  He refused to have his sweatshirt zipped up all day because it would cover up the rocket!

My Littles

Before I do Spring Break Part II, an update on daily life...

Bubba

  I can see him growing up right before my eyes.  The influence of his peers in showing more and more.  Some good ways, some not so good.  Like Gangum Style.  And You Tube.  I cringe every time I hear any reference to Gangum Style.  He has taken to saying it as a replacement to any exclamation- it can mean "Oh no!" or "Great!" or just randomly uttered with no apparent connection to anything except inside his head.  He asks if he can watch You Tube videos- "I promise they are appropriate, Mom!"  Appropriate in content maybe, but trashy junk as far as I am concerned so "no" is my answer.  Unless it is research of some sort.

 He was invited to a sleep over last weekend.  He had a good time even though they stayed up much too late.  The friend's parents went on and on about what a polite, respectful kid hi is when I picked him up.  I'm not surprised because I agree, but it is still great to hear.

He survived a week of school with a substitute.  By reports, she is not the kindest of ladies out there.  It was a good opportunity for us to discuss persevering with a positive attitude when the circumstances are not the best.  We got his latest reading testing results.  The difference between this time last year and now is remarkable.  He is reading at a 4th-5th grade level.  Why we need to know this exactly, I'm not sure, because to know this they have do test for it.  We know he is reading well, his teacher knows he is reading well, shouldn't that be enough?  But I guess that is a part of public school, thanks Congress and the Texas Legislature.  He does not really have trouble with test taking so I'm not going to worry about it much.  He enjoys the popular books the most, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the Humphrey the Hamster books, A to Z Mysteries, etc. I tried to interest him some more classic books without much success.  But I am not complaining because he is an almost 8 year old boy who is choosing to READ.

He has changed his mind about wanting a hamster!  Instead he wants to use his incentive chart to earn the Skylanders video game...  Peer influence at work again!  You would think I would be bale to tell you more about it since he tells me LOTS about it, but for some reason it all seems to go in one ear and out the other.

He plans to continue with dace next year.  Miss Amanda has offered to scholarship him 100% next year.  She gave him several choices of classes and he chose to continue with ballet.  She is very pleased.  She said typically this coming year (8 years old) is there time when boys quit, but if they stick it out they will often continue on for many years.  We'll see!

 

Duchess

  Ah, my girl.  Not a ton of new stuff to report with Duch.  She continues to do well in school.  She is reading great.  It sounds as if she is friends with many of the kids and talks about them all.  Here is a recent conversation that illustrates the difference between the info you get from boys vs girls. 
Duch: Mom, Kate has the same shirt as me.
Mom: Really?
Duch: Yes, and Kate shares a locker with Anna.  They are in Miss Pitcock's class.  Anna is Vivien's sister.  Vivien, Anna and Ruth are cousins.  And I share a locker with Ruth. 
It's like 5 degrees of Duch!

She had one of her art projects selected to be in a district art show.  She had a hard time understanding why she couldn't take her mask (the orange one) home with her when every one else did.  She was so proud when the whole family went to see it on display with projects from the whole district!  We took her out to diner and she got to chose- Red Lobster it was!

She is also continuing with dance.  She dances around the house and walks with her arms held in various dance positions.  She can not wait to get her dance recital costume. 

We went to see Disney On Ice last weekend.  It was a very princess focused show.  The tickets were donated for staff and patient families at work.  It was pretty fun.  Duch loved it best of all, as is to be expected.  The show was about 2 hours long and had Ariel, Merida (Brave), Rapunzel and Belle.  And the horse, Maximus, from Rapunzel.  How do two people actually manage to skate in that costume???  I made it very clear before we went that we were NOT buying any souvenirs.  I did let them get an $11 bag of artificially colored sugar, aka cotton candy.  Duch did not like it but likes the crown that came with it.  The show was over lunch so we also had hotdogs, but surprisingly a kids meal with a drink, hotdog and chips was only $5. 

She has enjoyed playing with the neighbors very much, as have all the kids.  I think it is funny that she still says she had a "play date" with the neighbors even if they just played for 15 minutes when they all happened to be outside at the same time.  I tried to tell her that is not really a play date, it is just "playing outside with the neighbors" but she didn't believe me.  One of the neighbor boys had his birthday party last weekend and they all had a wonderful time!

Huck

 



The busy 2 year old!  He is working very hard on being able to put up 2 fingers to tell you how old he is.  Many times he holds up one finger on each hand to make two.  In just the last month his speech is getting better.  Still not what I would like, but improved.  He is making more sounds and getting closer to the actual word, like "bash" means bath which is more than he was doing a few weeks ago.  We are going to hold off on the speech eval for a little bit and see how he does. 

I have started the process of night weaning him.  I have told him he can have Mama Milk at bedtime and in the morning, but no Mama Milk at nighttime.  I try very hard to get him to go to sleep in his bed.  Usually somewhere between 1-3 AM he'll wake up and come in our room and then I would nurse him back to sleep.  Sunday and Monday he would not go to sleep in his bed and wanted to nurse all night.  This Mama needs some more sleep than that!  So I started on Tuesday.  The first night he cried/fussed/stayed awake for about an hour.  Last night he fussed for about 3 minutes.  Hopefully that will continue, but I'm well aware that it may take much more work than that!  He is in that awkward phase where if he takes a nap during the day he will stay awake until 9:00 at night, but if he doesn't take a nap he is a wreck by 5:00 or so.  If he does nap I won't let him sleep longer than 2 hours or past about 3:30, because then he'll be up until midnight! 





I'm pretty sure that Huck will be the first kid to need stitches or break a bone.  He seems to have no fear.  He will jump off anything!  He LOVED the bounce house at the neighbors party.  The next day he would not believe me that it was gone until I took him and showed him.  Then he just looked heartbroken :-( 

The Bigs:
The Hubby and I decided to take out all the bushes in front of our house.  Some were dead and the others were scraggly looking.  The Hubby worked really hard to get the rusty metal edging out while Bubba and I chopped off  all the branches of the bushes.  We got about 5 of the stumps out, but one side of the house had 20 stumps!  Yesterday the Hubby was out working and a tree service drove by and offered to grind them all out, so thankfully that is all done.  Worth the money to not have to do it ourselves.  Today the plan is to go to the nursery to pick out new shrubs.  We are looking for low maintenance plants as neither of us is super interested in gardening.  I would like some kind of flowering bush, though.    I post some before and after pics later.

Spring Break

Thanks to The Hubby, I should be able to do some more blogging.  See, I am sitting at the kitchen desk at our fancy new computer!  One of the things that kept me from blogging as much as I'd like is how time consuming it was to upload pictures before... and let's face it, that is what makes it much more interesting.  So now my only excuses are a house that needs cleaning, dishes that need washing and a toddler who is demanding my attention- so, we'll see.

To backtrack a little bit, Spring Break!  Spring Break started for Bubba with an invitation to a birthday party at Great Wolf Lodge.  It was an invitation to spend the night!  We have never been there, but from what I knew about it there is a great, big indoor water park and some type of game called MagiQuest where the kids run all over the hotel on a quest for something.  There were going to be just 3 other boys along with the birthday boy and his family.  He had a wonderful time and could not stop talking about MagiQuest for days (weeks?). 

Meanwhile, those of us at home dropped The Hubby off at the airport Saturday morning to go to Florida for Hanks Open and his Grandma's memorial service.  We came back home and I started some laundry, jumped in the shower and sat down at the dining room table to make a list of what to pack.  Huck came wandering in with his hands and feet soaking in water.  He lead me to the kitchen where there was water all over the floor.  Poor Huck, I blamed him for the mess thinking he had poured water from a cup on the floor (as he has been known to do.)  But the spill kept getting bigger and bigger until I realized the water was coming out from under the laundry room door.  The washing machine had overflowed.  I was pretty sure the waste water pipe out of the house was blocked because it has happened before.  I called a plumber who could come in 3-4 hours.  We took care of a few errands then the plumber came, he rooter-ed out the drain and I could finish laundry.  I got the call to go pick up Bubba, we walked out the door and found my van had a flat tire!  We took the Husband's car to get Bubba.  I called AAA to come put my spare tire on.  It was dusk when the AAA man got here.  I went to throw something away in the outside trashcan and there was a opossum in the trashcan!  The AAA man chased him away for me.  Geesh!  We got the tire patched Sunday morning and finally were able to get on out way.


We headed to San Antonio where we were meeting my sister-in-law and nephews.  The drive went pretty well and we got there just about 6:00 ish I think.  Sara had the great idea to order pizza to the hotel room.  We were staying at a Residence Inn in a 2 bedroom suite, which was great because there was plenty of room for everyone and still a chance for some quiet-ish space. 

 

 

The next morning we got and headed to Sea World!  The weather was cool but sunny.  We saw the dolphins, sharks, and rays.

 

 

 

 

We also saw the show Aquatica.  It is kinda a Cirq de Sole type show with beluga whales, dolphins, birds and people diving a sky dancing.  It was cool. 

 

 

 

Then we went to the Bay of Play area.  It is a giant play area with climbing and tunnels and the like.  It was so obviously NOT designed with any parent input.  It was impossible to keep up with you kids and there were many exits so that your kid could end up wandering off into the park.  Even the toddler area has 2 exits on opposite sides of the play area.  The kids had fun, the moms- not so much...

 

After that we planned to leave the park, get some lunch and go back to the hotel to try to let the little boys nap.  The little boys, however, had other plans.  Since they were not going to nap, we decided to go swimming.  Everyone got changed, we walked down to the pool and it was closed!  Such disappointment! So we decided to take the kids to the Alamo.  They were not thrilled...

 

at the Alamo

We had dinner on the Riverwalk, which was fun but stressful as the kids were tired and finding a place to eat that did not have a long wait was difficult. 

 

The next day we started the morning out by swimming at the hotel pool. 

 

We then packed everything up and checked out of the hotel.  We returned to Sea World for more fun.  We saw the penguins and alligators. 

 

 We saw another show and then Sara and her boys headed back to Austin.  My kids and I headed over to see the Shamu show, which we just missed.  So we feed so flamingos and ducks, did some shopping, ate a late lunch and then saw the next show.  It was great.  Huck had a hard time because by this time he was tired, but it was still worth staying longer for. 

 

 

 We left about 5 and headed up to Austin for part 2 of the trip.  

 

I'll post part two another time.  I have jinxed myself and Blogger is not making it easy to post pictures after all.  Plus I have a house to clean and a toddler who wants my attention...