Lately

A little about Sam. Sam is growing up. He'll be five in two months! Sam doesn't like jeans, but he loves track pants and comfy pants with elastic waistbands. And shorts. He likes shorts. Sam has been into playing with Dan's old Construx and making helicopters, airplanes, and cars. He's moved on from making up silly fake words and now uses real words in silly ways. "You're a banana pumpkin head!" Oh, what fun. He's figuring out what types of things are okay to say, "Hey, daddy dooboo." (Okay, so dooboo is a made-up word.) And what types of things are not okay: "You're not smart."

He's gotten more sassy lately and tries to talk back more often. He eats PB&Js for lunch 90% of the time. A few days ago I bought him new shoes that light up when he walks. Now he always looks down when he walks to watch his shoes. He like Looney Tunes and slapstick humor. He does "lessons" from a pre-K book everyday and is working on reading a little bit, too. He is sweet most of the time and we love him so much.

Afton, our sweet little snuggley diva. She loves to be held even though she's two and half and over 30 pounds. If I can't hold her, she's holding my hand, sitting on my lap, or walking immediately behind me, it seems. A lady at a ward party last week called her my little shadow. She's right. Afton loves babies, dolls, Minnie Mouse, playing, swinging, and "Curious George Goes to a Costume Party." (They both have most of that book memorized.)

She's a great napper and usually just plays in her crib until I come and get her. She loves "big girl nursery" and has gone potty in her toilet quite a few times. I think I'll potty train her after I'm done watching my nieces in a few weeks. I bought her a bathing suit on clearance this week and she wanted to try it on.

Dan, other than being hunky, is busy with work, church, and dreams of rock climbing. He goes climbing at the gym every Saturday for a few hours and usually one weeknight each week. He's also busy building us a breakfast table. He's made a bench for one side as well as the table base. He's going to do the top this weekend. So far it looks great!

Here's Dan at our ward "Cajun Cultural Appreciation Day." (AKA a crawfish boil.)

 And here's Dan with his crawfish peeling mentor, Donnie, without whom, Dan would not have consumed 40 or so crawfish.

And speaking of the crawfish boil, here they are before, while they were being "purged." (Getting the poop out.)

So gross looking. Here they are after.

And here's our awesome crawfish boiler, Barry.

Despite how much he had at the party, Dan brought home another 10 pounds or so (which, once peeled, isn't as much as it sounds like) and I am crawfished out.

I am busy with the usual. Watching kids, reading, wasting precious nap time, and going to the gym. I'm training for a half marathon with Candice and Aunt Colleen. We'll see how it goes!

Rodeo Time!

March in Houston is synonymous with rodeo time. I got a free ticket through preschool so off we went!

Wednesday are "value" days so kids are free and rides are cheaper. That also means there are lots of school groups (and yes, it sounds hypocritical to complain about school groups when that's how I got my ticket) and lots of crowds.

Riding the tram from the parking lot

We tried going into the big indoor arena with animals and things but it was too crowded. So after seeing a few cows, we went outside and met up with the preschool group at the mutton bustin'. Sam is two months shy of being able to participate. Maybe next year! After that was over, we met up with Dionne and went to the "farm."

Making a corn angel.

 Proof I was there.

We ate lunch right by our next stop - the kids' pedal tractor pull. We got Sam and Harrison signed up (for free!) and watched the action. The kids had to pull certain amounts of weight in the back of their tractor. Since Sam is 4, he didn't have to pull any weight. The kid he competed against had to pull like 100 pounds. Let's watch the video to see who wins.

YAY! So Sam advanced to the next round, during which they increased his weight to 50 pounds. Couldn't make it very far, but it was still exciting. Here he is with his prize.

 Harrison and Sam.

Sam used some of his allowance to buy tickets for rides. He did the big slide, some obstacle course two times, and rode the caterpillar ride with Afton. Afton rode the caterpillar ride twice.

 After the rides, the kids asked if they could go feed the animals. I forked out $5 for two ice cream cones filled with animal food and we headed into the petting zoo. Afton started screaming bloody murder because all of the animals were right up in her face. So I gave Sam the food so that I could pick up Afton. Then Sam started crying because some animal nibbled on his hand and then a deer started eating his shirt. It was pretty hilarious, but we lasted like one minute in there. Money down the drain. I wish I had caught it on video.

We went through the farm one more time b/c the kids wanted the snack they gave out at the end. Then we headed home - tired a cranky. Despite that, I thought it was really fun. I really like the rodeo!

A walk and a bathroom

My least favorite time of day is from about 4-6:30. That's the post-nap-but-still-have-two-hours-until-Dan-gets-home time. Most days that's when I go to the gym. Fridays, however, the gym doesn't have classes at that time (I'm all about the classes) so this Friday we took a nice walk to kill some time.

First I took some pics of our azaleas. I'm glad I did because it got down to 33 degrees last night so the flowers might die.

 This pic is out of order and I am too lazy to fix it. That's my gnome. His name is Marty.

 "Cheese!"

We stopped at a random little nature spot which is just a raised platform and a few benches looking off into the woods. I wanted to take some pictures of the redbuds that are beginning to bloom.

And the kids goofed off for a little while.

This is obviously totally overexposed, but I like it for some reason. Maybe because I'm partial to the subject.

 Sam showing off some sticks he was playing with.

 I also took a little video. It's nothing too exciting, but I thought I'd post it anyway. Afton thought I was just taking her picture so she kept saying "Cheese!" And I'm really bad at manually focusing the video.

In other news, we recently finished our powder room. Here's the before with some funky paint action going on. The color at the top of the room is the original.

After:

Dan's mom gave me a few doilies from Ukraine like 7 years ago and I never really knew what to do with them (I mean, I know what they're for, but I wanted to use them in a cooler way). So after I bought a new towel, I bought orange fabric to tie in w/ the orange on the towel and used it as a backdrop for one of the doilies.

I'm not sure I'm sold on the orange, but it's just cheap fabric and a quick fix if I decide I want to change things up down the road. When we were painting we discovered that the mirror was glued to the wall. When we took it down, the huge glue globs were was all funky on the back so we bought a new mirror and Dan framed it and stained it.

The end.

Zoo time

Yesterday Gretchen and I hit up the zoo. It was cold out - 50s? - so for the first hour, we literally saw no one else other than workers. Then it picked up a little with other moms and school groups. I just LOVE all those kids running around pushing my children.

Anyway, back to our good time. We started w/ the elephants.

 Then it was on to the African section.

 And chimps. Most of them were huddled in this little room to keep warm.

 This was taken after literally 20 kids bombarded Afton and tried to push her down the slide and out of their way.

 And no trip to the zoo is complete without a ride on the carousel.

P.S. Last time G and I went to the zoo, we saw a bald eagle in the parking lot! It was awesome.