Trip to his motherland

A few weeks ago we tagged along with Br on his work trip to Houston. We made a short pit stop in DFW just long enough to meet up with my mom for dinner and then check out the Fort Worth science museum the next morning.

Immediately after that we got right back the car and finished our trek to H-town. For the most part, we just spent quality time with Br's family, but the kids and I took a few "field trips" to keep the kids from completely destroying Jojo's house. We went to some fun parks.found a place where we could bounce off the walls.went to the aquarium where we visited the swamp, found buried treasure, dove down under the sea, went on an adventure like "Bindiana Jones", touched sharks and rays, visited the tiger (twice), rode the shark train and carousel (5 times), tried our luck at a boardwalk game, and watched E soar high in the sky.
Then at the children's museum, we pretended to be a mechanic, vet, short-order cook, artist, and grocery clerk

But before we left town we were sure to help Jojo in the garden.

Silly me...

...for thinking I could spend more than 45 seconds using the bathroom. I just emerged to quickly put the kids to bed and found E naked in his bathroom sink (potentially preparing to give himself a bath?) and A half-naked actually bathing in the toilet. Needless to say, they both got what they wanted and are taking an actual bath in the tub. I guess I'll have to wait a little while longer to get some me-time tonight.

My backseat thinker

One of my favorite lines written by Dave Matthews is "funny when you're small. The moon follows the car". Which is why I got a huge smile on my face when I heard E in the backseat say, "Mom, why the moon following me?" Although I do most of my best thinking in the shower, and unfortunately right before bed, E does his best thinking in the car. Driving to or from anywhere there is never a shortage of why's or 4-year-old philosophy coming from E's seat. He discovered that at certain times of day the lighting makes his "ghost" appear floating over his head in his reflection in the rearview mirror. My most recent favorite episode came this weekend. E suddenly said, "Mom. I need to tell you something. I have water coming from my head. It's coming from my head. Then it drips down my face by my eyes." Ahh, the sound of my son discovering he sweats.

A big fish story...

... Well, I guess it is more of an average fish story. After YEARS of asking to go fishing, and I mean all the time, we finally took E fishing. We met up with his "big friends" and did a little fishing.

Miss A was super excited as well, although she really wanted to do it all herself and nearly hooked half of her big friends trying to wrestle the pole away from anyone who tried to help (which freaked me out given my history of hooking people/myself).

It was almost comical how fast everyone started catching fish. I'm not exaggerating when I say fishing went exactly like this:

put a piece of bacon on the hook, cast, short pause,
bobber bobbing, reel in a fish,
have daddy take it off the hook, throw it back and then start it all over again. And it wasn't even the same fish being caught. This happened over and over again. I'm sure the fact that the water was super low due to the drought helped our cause. I'm pretty sure E isn't going to be in for a rude awakening when he finds out that fishing is usually more of a test of patience than immediate results.
In any event E caught a few. Miss A caught some too. In fact, she caught the biggest fish of the night on her first cast. The night was so much fun, it was worth ruining a few pairs of shoes in the process.

Wish you could see what we see

A couple weeks ago E went to get the mail but urgently called me over as soon as he got to the box. He said, "Shhh, I hear something". I almost passed it off because all I hear was birds chirping which isn't uncommon in or neighborhood in spring. But then I realized that the chirping was coming from inside the box, or I guess under the box. Somehow a mother bird managed to fit in the small crack between the box and the brick that surrounds it to build a nest for her three or four chicks. I tried to take a picture of it, but like I said it is a SMALL opening so you'll just have to believe E if he tells you his mailbox chirps.

(by the way if you look closely you'll notice my son likes to accessorize too)

Proof I let my daughter be girly

Yes, my daughter is very rough and tumble. She lived in a house for a year without any "girl" toys. I AM guilty of buying her a basketball hoop for last year's birthday when everyone else got her babies, strollers, purses, and accessories. And yes, it took me a LONG time to buy her a pink article of clothing (and she still doesn't have that many) but here is proof I let her be a girly as she wants.Ironically these were taken at a house full of boys.

The hunt was on

The cousins stuck around long enough to celebrate Easter with us. We started the celebration on Saturday at a neighborhood party where we met the Easter bunny (and his sidekick?),
Rode ponies, (miss M looked horrified the whole time but her little brother got off with a little giddy up in his step)

and saw balloon and caricature artists and face painters.

Oh and we had an egg pickup... um I mean hunt.

Ready...set...Go...--Random side story, E ate his chocolate bunny in the car on the way to lunch and got it all over his hands. When we got him out of the car he was quick to clarify to EVERYONE (including perfect strangers) that it wasn't poop.

Later that afternoon we had another hunt in our backyard with eggs filled with the goods my mom brought up with her from TX.Miss A loved filling her basket so much that she spilled her basket over and over and over again. Seriously people, it was pretty ridiculous how many times she tripped and dumped her entire collection. It's a good thing we only hunted for plastic eggs.
Unfortunately, everyone had to get on their way for the actual Easter Sunday so we just went as our little family to church to reflect on the real reason for the holiday. But the kids especially loved spending at least part of the holiday with a little bit of family this year. Thanks guys for coming!