The good ol' warm weather

We've been having snow all week but we did get in a few more zoo trips before the weather changed. I'm no expert on animal behavior but I thought I always heard how mean Kangaroos can be yet at the zoo they aren't behind any fence. It's obvious that they are fine this way I'm just amazed at how docile they are every time we go.Where do kids learn to eat their boogies? This is one place. See that finger in the gorilla's mouth, you can guess where it was previously! This one is right after the gorilla finished eating his vomit.... the kids thoroughly enjoyed this trip. It will be so funny when Jack understand what he's doing, I know he'll get a kick out of it.

Poor Jack.....

Jack was in the childcare at the gym while Kate was in dance class and another little boy wanted to know what he tasted like! He bit him and he bit hard. It's been 2 days and the marks are still there. They handled the whole thing really well, had to fill out a first aid report etc etc. I felt so bad for Jack, it was purple and blue and he was so sad. Here is a picture after it had gone down a little. He got a lot of sympathy from me that day.

Dress Up

This is what happens when you're the only boy left with girls who LOVE dress-up. Looks like I need to get some boy dress up clothes!

Check this out

I just checked out a great site. Go and have a look for yourselves lunchbits.com You can buy lunch bags with things to do, facts to learn or puzzles to figure. It's really cute and it was started by my amazingly talented MOM! She has done a great job creating all these lunch bags and they are online now. So I thought I'd spread the word, of course spread to anyone who might be interested. I think it's such a fun idea to have something interesting on the plain old lunch bag. The little ones have loved having something to color on the bag.

first zoo trip of the year

We went to the zoo yesterday afternoon. Once Jack was out of the stroller he was on the run for the next 45 minutes. It as fun and exhausting. I'd have to say his favorite animals were the ducks. We briefly stopped on our way out at the pond and he puts both hands in the air opening and closing his hands saying "Quack Quack" over and over and over - it was cute. Kate is a good sport to follow him around wherever he leads us. You can see him here running away. This is his "Cheese" face. I don't get pictures of the two of them together very often. I figured if I put him up where he couldn't get down I could get a picture. I did get the picture but it didn't keep him from diving off a second later and running - whew we were all beat by the end. I've never seen a trailer/wagon like this. It's called the T-3. I thought it was cool and didn't want to forget about it so the lady let me take a picture. I like it because the kids can get in and out easier than a wagon, it's lightweight and has the umbrella. She said they took it to Disneyland and it worked great, even checked onto the airplane ok because it folds down.

For Chris

I forgot to include this with our trip synopsis. I don't know why exactly but we thought of Christopher(my bro. for those that don't know) when we saw this. Well I guess there are a lot of reasons actually. But mostly because I truly believe this would be his dream vehicle. I couldn't believe it when I saw it, Ray quickly drove around so I could get a good shot of it and we couldn't stop laughing at how much we thought you would like it. It was somewhere in the Tri-Cities area during our trip. I thought Chris would enjoy seeing this and maybe you can track it down someday and make him an offer for it!

Early Easter

What kid doesn't love opening presents? Probably not many, Kate tells us on a regular basis how much she loves opening presents. Well for St Patty's I got the idea from my sis to leave a trail of green paper around the house from the Leprechauns and then have something at the end as the pot o' gold. Kate LOVED this. There was a fun little game for her called Cookin' Cookies. It comes in a cute little lunch pail and is very simple and fun - I recommend it to anyone with kids around 4yrs. That was fun but she wanted more. So I thought I would tell her about Easter as the next holiday, we could get excited about the easter egg hunt etc etc. Well for the next day and a half she would tell us every few minutes (with her head tilted back in agony) that she absolutely could not wait for easter. Maybe I should have held out and made her wait but for my own sanity we bought easter eggs today. She dyed 4 of them which was fun but I think even more she liked smashing and peeling the shell off of them, much like she enjoys peeling dried glue off her palm. She sits there so quietly concentrating on peeling! And we hid plastic eggs around the house all day. It was a lot of fun and why not celebrate a holiday each day. Although I'm sure she thought it would involve presents, that at least is a good lesson to learn.

Back Home

We just got back from an incredibly fun trip. I don't think the kids could've had more fun with their cousins. It's amazing to me how different our two kiddos are. Jack has no fear of any of the animals on the ranch but Kate prefers to stay inside and insists on being carried while outdoors - she says just in case the animals get out. So my hopes of getting her up one of hte horses will have to wait until later. Pretty comical how different they are. Here are some pics of our fun trip. We went sledding, had a birthday party for Kate, she also got to attend Lonnie's dance class, played outside a lot, and visited the children's museum where they went shopping, pretended to be vets and make pizzas etc! I even got to go skiing for the first time in 5 years and we tried the mini skis - lots of fun.

Chilly!

The temps were zero and below earlier this week. We've stayed inside so much that it doesn't seem so bad. However after another good snowfall we couldn't resist braving the temps to play a little. After an hour outside they were crying to come in! I didn't get any great pics but here is what I did catch of them playing in probably about 10 degree weather! (there was no wind and lots of sun though)

Sequel

Well this one only took a day to read because I couldn't stand not knowing what happened in the end. Now I can hardly stand to wait for the third. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn't read it. I'll just say by the end I felt their world was so real, that these characters were so real to me - she's an amazing author. I am now going through withdrawals and need to talk with someone about this book.
The next few books on my list are Angels and Demons by Dan Brown and Small Steps: the year I got polio by Peg Kehret. I think I have already read more books this month than I did all of last year. I know that is really sad I didn't read much - but true. I'm on a new path, maybe I'll even join the book club I've been thinking about joining for 3 1/2 years now - maybe.

READ

I have spent a great deal of time over the last 4 days reading. Although I am completely unqualified to critique or analyze any book I can at least recommend it. For those of you who read it, loved it and peeked my interest - thanks. I've been carrying it around the house to read whenever the kids were preoccupied and honestly even when they weren't. I finished it at noon today and I'm 200 pages into the sequel. I love not being able to put it down and falling in love with the characters. I can't wait to find out what happens in the next one, I hope it's what I'm wishing for. Oh, I guess I should tell you the book. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. The next one is New Moon. I'm off to read more before forcing myself to sleep!

Silly Silly

snow fort

We had our first real snowfall Sat night. The kids loved it. In fact two days earlier Kate and her friend were excited about this snowfall where they had to go to the gutter to get enough snow to shovel, imagine their excitement two days later! When Ray was a kid they piled up the snow around their trampoline creating a snow fort. They even created little areas to hold candles inside the fort around the edge. Seems like he has many fond memories of making snow forts. So this was our kids first. We had to pile the snow up but it was well worth it, Kate thought it was so neat. I don't have a final picture since Jack and I went in to make cookies while they stayed out to finish and made it even bigger. It's still standing 2 days later and I'm sure we'll be out every day until it melts. Ray hollowing it out. Jack would only peer inside. Notice Jack is wearing pink gloves. They were the only ones I could find and now he is attached to them, carrying them around with his snow pants banging on the door to go back outside - funny kid!

This week in pictures

Fear is not a Factor

We were at our Science center yesterday. We got there just at the right time as they were starting their animal/insect show. Kate sat for about 20 minutes looking at tarantulas, mice, caterpillars, centipedes and even touched the Madagascar hissing cockroach. It was fun to see how interested she was. After all the kids eventually wandered off she sat with two other kids and the guy teaching looking at petrified insects in glass containers for quite a while. I'll have to let her go dig in the dirt a little more often. Jack also liked the insects but mostly just wanted to shake the cages. This is the best picture I took of Jack - always on the go!

More Sunshine

We had a fairly warm weekend. Warm enough to go have some fun at the park.

Lizard

One of Jack's toys for Christmas was a growing lizard. He liked it before and he liked it even more after. This is one of those things that little and big kids like, or at least we hope so because we sent one to our 21 yr old nephew. We hope he had a little fun too.

"BEFORE""AFTER"