More Adventures!

(apologies for the boring titles this week...)

Tuesday, we went to Aunt Sarah's house to spend the afternoon with Grandma, who drove in from her homestead about 5 hours away.  Such fun cousin times:

They humored me this time with the birth order thing:

 All the grandkids:

Last night, we met up with some of the BG's high school friends:

 The two on the left married each other and the one on the right married a Baylor guy who was in the same club as Geoff and the BG.  Yay, connections!

The children had no trouble entertaining themselves during dinner:

After dinner, we stopped by to visit one other HS friend (who also married a Baylor guy--pattern?) and enjoyed some late-night conversation.  Gotta love the Drippin' community!

Spring Break Scenes

Our days are filled with visits, gatherings, and lots of fun...

Bunkbeds!

Puzzles!

Shooting!

Posing!

Grandchildren!

BBQ!

Reunion!

What a treat to find 16 other family members gathered for the afternoon on Sunday when we arrived.  Big D and Kathy were so gracious to host a crew of 20 for quite the Easter dinner spread!  I made sure to ignore the eye-rolling and snap some pics of proud patriarch and his progeny-- and didn't even make them line up in birth order!

 (In case anyone is wondering, it's #3, #4, PATRIARCH, #2, #1 from L-R in the photo above!  You can order them yourself in the shot below!)

Not posed at all-- I just happened to look over and loved that they were all lined up:

While the immediate family is big, it's not 20-people big.  What fun it is to have 4 additional family members here!!  You might remember this crew from our Rocky Mountain Adventure last summer!

The first day was capped off with a return to the hot tub with Kathy, who is such a kind grandmother to these hooligans!  I'm pretty sure they were in the pool 3 different times on this day, and at least 3 more yesterday!

Heading Out

Ready to go!  Oh wait-- that airplane probably isn't going to get them very far...

Our flight (which was already in the evening) was delayed an hour but there were enough airport TV giggles to keep them entertained:

The kids were so happy that the Easter Bunny (and the Donut Fairy) found them at Grammie's house, where we crashed for the night:

Then it was on the road early to drive south to see Big Daddy's new casa!   Someone was feeling a little sleepy after her late night:

We'll REDACT any pictures of her backseat companion who decided, after eating a full lunch, to lose it all over....everything.  We had a 40 minute delay in a grocery store parking lot cleaning that up.  Parenthood is fun.

But we made it-- just in time for the egg hunt!

A little pale, eh?  

The good news is that he spent the next 5 hours running around, playing, and swimming with cousins and seems to be just fine.  We might just have a kid who gets carsick.

Sure can't beat the view!

A Thought for the Weekend

Are these REALLY still a thing???  Or did we enter a time warp instead of a drugstore?

For all those celebrating Easter on Sunday, may it be a triumphant celebration that He is risen!! Happy weekend to all!

Peeps

(No marshmallow creatures pictured but it's Easter-ish and we have PEEPS over to visit!  All the activity has led to a late blog post-- apologies to my early bird readers!!)

Miss C's class met yesterday for the last time before spring break and had an egg hunt!

Did some filtering with this shot to highlight that the tree just popped out with pink buds!

When C got back from school, she found her bestie from the north, Ellie!  They immediately picked up with their playing-- first in a bus:

and then in a swing!

 Had a fun dinner out last night and then the BG came home; the kids went to bed, and we all discussed the world's problems over bread pudding!  So fun to have Anne close enough to pop down for a visit.

Miss Norah is here, too-- being tended to by Princess C this morning!

Organizing is Exhausting

We have some fun visitors arriving today for an overnight playdate and I wanted to gather some of Miss C's former threads to pass on to them.  That turned into a massive overhaul, years in the making, of going through everything and getting piles set for two additional friends, plus a Cousin Griffin pile, plus a large bin for resale and bags of stuff to donate.  Whew!   It was quite an accomplishment for this old girl!

(I actually meant ME but hey, I'm not the one who fell asleep during the project.....)

And this view doesn't even show the closet floor covered with boxes of stuff...but it does show our sweet 1970s furniture so it's all good!   ;-)

In Case You Need a Pick-Me-Up

"I'm moving my legs and spinning a record."

Weekend Report

I already can't remember what we did Friday.

Hmm.

Oh, yes, I can!   Friday night was the elementary school PTA's rescheduled Bingo Night since the original event was during "Snowzilla."  We hit that up for an hour or so and then came home and enjoyed watching the best-named-(and bearded)-guy-in-college-basketball win a big upset.  (Unfortunately, last night's game did not have the same result.  Boo.)

Saturday, we finally got the kids out of their pajamas mid-afternoon and hit the early bird restaurant circuit with dinner at 4:30pm  near our old stomping grounds.  Classic.  We had a gift card to use and enjoyed a delightful(ly full of calories) meal and then wandered over to the nearby shopping center for adventuring.  When we came out of Target, it was snowing big, fluffy flakes because of course it was-- it WAS the last day of winter, after all!

Kiddies with their "blind bag" treats (how can you leave Target without one?!).  All that white stuff out the window is snow!

We left that shopping center to go roam around Costco (and get a super cheap chocolate/vanilla swirl fro-yo there)....and that's when we learned that Costco closes at 6pm on weekends.  Crazy!

Where were we going to get a sweet treat?  Hmmmm.......I know!  THE PLACE WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE!

Everyone could pick out a dessert!  I got chocolate mousse; the BG got a salted caramel milkshake, Miss C scored a pumpkin muffin; and B-man had a donut.  Everybody wins!

I think C might have had too much sugar, however-- this is how she got back in her car seat:

 Yesterday, we continued our early eating trend by arriving at a sandwich shop for lunch at 10:30 (after church).  Since even I felt like that was a little gauche, we wandered the aisles of the nearby drugstore for awhile.  The B-man is infatuated with Magic 8 Balls:

Both at Target the previous night as well as in this pic, he asked it if I were really his mother...and both times, it gave a negative answer.

Sorry, buddy.  I think it's prettttttttttttttttttty obvious that you're my kid!   ;-)

Luck Of The Irish?

Not so sure about that.

I went into the kids' bathroom last night to turn off the water for a bath and the faucet handle got stuck.  Weird.  So I started to get nervous because the water was still pouring out and I couldn't get the handle to move.  And then it finally did move and went all the way to the "off" position...and the water was still pouring out.

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH.

Thankfully, the BG was home from his evening meeting so he could spring into problem-solving action.  There are panels in the hallway right outside that bathroom so he quickly unscrewed them (and they've clearly never been opened since the hall was painted) and was very disappointed to find no shut-off valve.  So he shut off the water to the whole house and settled in to (classic BG-- he's really the best) "keep taking apart pieces until I figure out which one is broken."

He got all the way to having just a big hole in the wall but that last piece he pried out was apparently the culprit.  A 9:00 PM trip to Home Depot later and all sanity (and water) was restored.  In fact, the handle is now SO smooth in its functionality that he said he might just go back this weekend and buy that same piece for the faucet in our own shower, since it's always been a little suspect, too.

ANYWAY.

Earlier in the day, we had plenty of St. Patrick's Day fun!

Doing some grocery shopping:

Meeting B-man after he got off the bus. I asked them to do something festive and he started to jig!

I saw this recipe for Whole-Wheat Irish Soda Bread Muffins and decided to build a meal around it.  Figured "brinner" was the way to go so I threw in some green food coloring to the eggs:

(Don't look, Grammie, because I forgot to use an egg beater to make sure the eggs were really mixed! Also, they're not quite fully cooked in this pic, either.)

Of course, nothing is ever easy so there was immediately an outcry from the boy that my "dinner eggs" taste totally different than my "morning eggs."  I knew food coloring didn't have a taste so I finally figured out he was talking about the faint hint of bacon grease I used to cook the eggs-- sigh.  So, in addition to whining about having to eat a wee piece of bacon, there was also whining about the taste of the eggs.   LUCKY ME.

But hey-- it's Friday!  Have a great one!

Tunes and Tortillas Al Fresco

I dropped off C at the preschool playground yesterday, went inside the school to turn in various items, and then got in my car to the strains of some beautiful music.  Turns out a dad at the school plays the bagpipes and was there to entertain the classes in the lovely sunshine:

All weather reports pointed to afternoon storms but apparently the line of storms fizzled and we were left with sunshine all day.   The BG had a gift card to Chipotle so we dined outside:

(Miss C is trying to show her cheek-shamrock!)

Saw a friend on the way to dinner who was scandalized at our restaurant destination.  What say you?  Are you still okay with eating there?

PS:  Grammie wants me to clarify that it was not our drum set pictured in yesterday's post...although I'm kinda digging the idea of the [silent] drums!!!

Wordless (and, thanks to those headphones, Soundless) Wednesday

Building Queen

Someone's excited about the new Lego sorting system!   Perfect for lounging around and devising all sorts of new creations:

A Hole In One

(Please excuse late posting-- Daylight Savings Time and the extra darkness it brings in the morning is no joke.  But sleeping "in" was nice!)

I can't remember if I've mentioned here that Miss C has had a loose tooth for some time.  I'm fairly confident this is right on schedule with her brother's history, although my quick blog search just now came up short for confirmation.

Anyway, I noticed over the weekend that said loose tooth had turned an unattractive color (but yogurt face is always attractive-- ha!):

Trying to talk her into pulling it later that night:

Finally it was dangling so crazily by last night that I reached in and pulled it out (slight shudder):

Then she got sad:

But this morning, she was VERY happy and hasn't let go of the dollar from the tooth fairy:

PS:  Speaking of being HAPPY, we are all HAPPY to wish Lindsay a wonderfully HAPPY birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Treats Make Everything Better

I'm happy to report that the active sickness did not rear its head at all yesterday.  The B-man is still lacking energy, however, so he'll stay home one more day to rest.  (Well, we can't stay home.  We are seriously lacking in food items and also have overdue library books.  Oh, and a sister who needs to get to school.)

I escaped last evening for a hangout session with a friend who kindly raided Trader Joe's so we could try a whole bunch of tasty treats!

I'm realizing now that I cut off the multiple dips (3-layer hummus, spinach) as well as the jicama sticks (those things that look like apple wedges) and the tray of veggies!  The fig butter plus brie on a cracker?   mmmmmmmmmm.   Everything else?  Also mmmmmmmmmm!

HAPPY FRIDAY!

She's Got Her Eye On You

And, unfortunately, she won't be seeing much of interest today.  We were supposed to have her bestie with us all day and had fun adventures planned....until big brother got sick last night (over and over).  So we're all home today, sans extra friend-- we shall see where the day takes us.  (Probably to a place of PJs all day!)