Double Dose

What a week we've had. Our house is much quieter this morning, almost lonely. We've had two friends staying with us for the past week and with them gone my kids don't know what to do. We stayed busy and did so many fun things this last week. Here are a few pics. The first morning I rode the bike and Ray ran while pushing two of them, we played in the sprinkler almost every day, played at the park, pizza night twice, had a barbecue with friends twice, had a garage sale, rode bikes, went to the fountains with the dancing bunnies, Kate took her friend to dance class with her and loved it, had movie night more than once, searched for frogs at the pond and ate lots of treats! I think we might take a breather today. As much work as it was I liked having 4 kids in the house, felt full and fun. Plus we've lived next to these friends for over 7 years, our kids have known each other their entire lives, Ray has known them since high school, if not before and we will be sad to say goodbye in 4 weeks. We were glad for the chance to spend more time with them, especially when they all got along!

More zoo

We can't get enough of the zoo animals - It is a good day when we get to the zoo and we got to go twice this week! That makes it a great week. On Tuesday we went solo, just me and the kids. I think that is always fun because we can let Jack lead and we just follow him around. We even got him to ride on the horse on the carousel, he usually prefers to sit on one of the benches. Although you'll see by the last picture he had had enough!
Then we went later in the week with friends. I'm disappointed I didn't have my camera that day because we went on the boat ride for the first time this year. And at the petting zoo they have the cutest little baby goats. They are only 2 weeks old. They are about the size of a cat just bouncing around running from all the kids. Anyone local should try to go see them soon, they were the cutest baby animal I've seen there.
At one point about 10 or so goats and sheep were lined up around some hay eating. Although Jack is a bit scared of the carousel horse, the goats don't phase him. He was right there picking hay off their backs and adding it to the pile for them to eat. Then he'd run to the far corner gather up hay and bring it back for them. One of the goats hit Jack from the side as he swung around and jack knocked him right back. It was so hilarious, he really fit right in with them.
We have had fantastic weather, warm with a slight breeze, cool nights - doesn't get much better than this.

new bag

A friend of mine asked me to make her a purse. I haven't sewn much lately and it was fun to try a new project.I haven't finished the lining and I'm still deciding on what button to use. This button is just pinned on and may be a bit big. The other choice is a roughed up silver one shaped like an almond, I'll probably have her decide. I've got a couple more requests for bags at the time, new designs. I like having requests with a general idea of what they want but free to make it how I want. I'll post pictures , if they turn out ok.

Eye Exam

The kids went to their first eye exam last week. Ray did Jack's exam and our friend Jeff saw Kate. Kate had a good time minus the dilating drops. Jack liked watching a movie during the exam but didn't want to sit still for too long. He was quite a handful, just a wee bit stubborn. Ray did a great job and it was fun to see him do his thing!

Mom My Ride

This is so funny. My sister had it on her blog. It's a "laugh out loud" video to watch. Mom My Ride!

Passing Time

We are ready for Ray to be home today after almost a week away. We're trying to pass the day away quickly and this always occupies the kids for awhile. I love it when they dig to the bottom of the toy box and all the toys get played with or at least moved around.

25,000

Well an update on Adam for anyone that didn't catch it, he went home with 25,000. Pretty cool, plus I know their trip to NYC was a fun little getaway for them too. I haven't watched that show for a while but I thought his questions were really hard. I don't know if I would've even gotten that far. Good Job to Adam, Sheri had a sweet little appearance too as a proud wife!

Hundreds, Thousands, maybe a Million????

I don't have much to post about us but I do about a friend of ours. Our friend Adam Blacker will be on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire tomorrow (Tuesday night). They have kept the outcome a good secret for months now. It will be so fun to watch him on TV. Our prediction is that he goes home with no less than 100,000....tune in and see. Click here to read a story about it.

This is where I found Jack the other day. Just lounging enjoying some bubbles while watching TV.

Easter Egg Hunt

Since it was snowing today we had an easter egg hunt inside at the church. Jack did exactly what I thought he would. He found one egg, opened it up, showed a look of surprise at the piece of candy, sat right down to eat it. I coaxed him into picking up a few more eggs before he was through. Kate was one of the oldest kids and told me she had fun finding the eggs that were hidden "up high".

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)