Back to life

We all start back to school tomorrow. I didn't think I was ready until about 3pm this afternoon when the kiddos started fighting and complaining and whining. I think they need to be back in the classroom and I probably need to be back at work. The only thing that saved us this afternoon was a late play date with Sydney and Lila. The kids all had so much fun jumping on their trampoline and spraying each other with the hose outside.

I think my favorite day of Spring Break this year was Thursday when we discovered a new to us hiking spot. Jake's teacher recommended it and we loved it. The kids didn't complain too much about the hiking parts and they absolutely loved hanging out at the river throwing rocks and trying to catch fish and bugs. We will definitely be going back to McKinney Roughs Nature Park very soon. In fact, I wish we lived closer so I could try to get a job out there. I totally felt back in my element.

Currently my favorite picture of our big yellow dog. Brady is in paradise whenever we find a body of water to play in.

Hank enjoys our hikes as much as the rest of us do. The only difference is that he never gets tired like the rest of us do.  I think he might be a robot.

This is currently my all time favorite picture of Emma Mae Flinn. If she had ringlet curls she would remind me exactly of a little girl I used to know! I love that she has jelly on her face. It is just SO Emma. Also, please note that she can even go hiking in a pretty girly dress. No pants for this little girl thank you.

I was experimenting with water reflections that day.

I'm pretty sure he has that nasty vulture feather in his bedroom somewhere. I'm going to pretend I don't know about it and not think about the possibilities of getting bird flu from a feather.

Emma's big day

Emma Mae turned five years old on Wednesday, March 12th. She looks so big to me now. When did she get tall and lose all of her baby fat?

She decided she wanted to have a Frozen birthday party approximately 30 seconds after watching the movie for the first time. I may have mentioned that we decided to have the party at a local bounce house because I was still so traumatized from the chaos of Jake's last birthday party. Best. Decision. Ever. I didn't have to clean our house before or after the party. I didn't have to come up with any games or entertainment ideas. And best of all I didn't have to worry about the kids being too wild because that is totally expected in a bounce house.

The kids had so much fun and Emma declared it to be the BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!

We started her off with some birthday donuts for breakfast. I mean she was gonna need some energy for all that bouncing later, right?

 

When we got done with breakfast we gave her the biggest birthday present we could think of. What little girl wouldn't want a huge doll house for her barbies to live in?

 

Then we braided Emma's hair to make her look a little like Elsa from Frozen.

I also decided not to go through the stress of making a birthday cake this year. Praise God for Costco. I finally managed to procure some tiny little Frozen figures from Amazon to put on top of the cake. Let's not talk about how many tries it took to make the rock candy that we used to build an ice castle on the cake. Ok, let's talk about it. Three tries. And of course I didn't start trying until the morning of the party because that's how I roll. Praise God for Mike. He made the third batch and finally got it to be a bluish green color instead of the mutant ninja turtle green I was getting.

Let's not talk about how many times we had to light the candles for her to blow out. Okay, let's talk about it. Twice. Because the first time the cute little boy beside Emma blew them out for her. You should have seen her face. Bryson is going to have to work extra hard to marry her now.

On the ride home eating their marshmallow snowmen party favors. Why not eat marshmallows after birthday cake?

Mike's dad bought her a pretty new princess bicycle for her birthday. I think she likes it.

 

My sister and nephew came down after the bounce party to have dinner with us. We went to a Mexican restaurant because I didn't let Emma choose where she wanted to eat. I'm mean like that. Cheryl and Tom brought her an adorable pink CD player with a microphone that she can use to scream, I mean sing, at the top of her lungs. She really likes doing it early in the morning. It's almost as if my sister doesn't like me or something.

All in all I'd say this really was her best birthday ever. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if all of her grandparents could have been here with us. Love you all!

Day 2

We had another fun day today. We took the kids and Jake's friend Leo to the Austin Aquarium for a little while this morning. They had more exhibits this visit and the kids had fun. However, I am still amazed that Emma's favorite thing to do at the Aquarium is to play on the play scape. I mean really. What about looking at all of the cool fish? Touching a sting ray? Feeding a shark? Nope. Little girl likes to slide down a plastic green slide.

Trying to touch stingrays.

Pretty fishies.

In the hurricane machine with wind gusts up to 80 miles per hour. Good thing Emma had underwear on!

Petting a cute wittle snakey.

I think the kiddos all had a good time. We finished the morning off with lunch at Sonic. After a couple hours of resting at home we played with our neighborhood friends and went to the park as well. All in all a good second day of Spring Break. Now let's see if I can get Emma Mae to go to sleep tonight knowing that when she wakes up in the morning she will be 5 years old!

Day 1

Yay for a fun and really stress free first day of spring break. This is what I was hoping for. First, the kids slept until 7am which is almost unheard of around here. Mike was home this morning and we all took the dogs on an hour long walk around the neighborhood. We got back just in time for me to shower and get Emma to her "play date" with her favorite preschool teacher of all time, Ms. Jill.

 

She was actually smiling way bigger than this until I snapped the picture. Of course. Leave it to me to ruin the moment by trying to capture it on film. Or digital media. Whatever. She had such a great time seeing Frozen with Jill. She was also spoiled with popcorn, lemonade, m&m's, skittles and a kit kat. Awesome. I'm so glad she had a teacher that loved her enough to do that for her. She will always remember this day. She is also talking about Ms. Jill taking both her and Jake to see Mr. Peabody next. Not sure Jill fully knew what she was getting herself into!

After we picked Emma up from her fun I took the kids to a local park to play for awhile. Then we headed over to Target because why not? I purchased my last decoration for the Frozen party on Wednesday. What we have now is just going to have to be good enough. Tomorrow night I get to stay up after the kids go to bed and put together "build your own snowman" party favor bags with marshmallows and pretzel sticks. Good times.

We ended the night with some yummy chicken and dumplings. Finally, a pinterest recipe that tasted good! Then we read and played "don't let the balloon touch the ground or you die" again. All in all a perfect day in my book. The best part? I didn't feel tired or stressed out today which hasn't happened in a very long time. Looking forward to day 2!

Spring Break!

Yay! I don't think I've been this ready for a spring break since I was in college. I am just so looking forward to some time with the kiddos and my hubby and sleeping in and not waking up to an alarm. Can't wait!

We started the break out right yesterday by going to a roller skating birthday party for our friend Sydney. This was the first time for me to take both kids to a skating rink. Jake and I went once when he was little bitty but Emma had never been. They had so much fun! They both want roller skates now. I thought Emma was going to either kill herself or me at first but eventually she got the hang of it and even shook off my help at the end telling me she could do it all by herself. How I come I think this is not the last time I will hear those words come out of my daughter's mouth? And how come music I don't generally like becomes so good at a roller rink? Emma and I were dancing as much as we were skating. So much fun.

Today we hung out at home a lot but managed to have some fun before bedtime with a rousing game of "don't let the balloon touch the ground or you die." If there is one thing we know how to do around here it is have fun with balloons.

We're going to try to have at least one thing to do with the kids every day this week. We'll see how that works out in reality. Tomorrow, Emma Mae is supposed to go see Frozen (for the third time) with her pre-school teacher from last year, Ms. Jill. Emma loves her some Ms. Jill. She is beyond excited. While she's gone I will be busy trying to pull together the last details for her Frozen birthday party on Wednesday. Yes, she will be 5 on Wednesday! Can't believe that. I also can't believe how nearly impossible it has been to find plates, napkins or really any Frozen birthday decorations for this thing. Luckily, Emma was ok with blue plates because they will "look like ice mama!" And I did manage to secure some little tiny Anna, Elsa and Olaf figures that I can put on her birthday cake to Frozen it all up for little girl. This year we are having her party at a bounce house because I am still so stressed out over Jake's birthday party chaos that I don't mind paying good money to invite people somewhere other than our house to celebrate this time.

Now if only I could find her a Frozen dress to wear. Especially since she cleaned out her closet today and brought me every single pair of pants in there and said she wanted to give them to her friend Caitlyn who lives across the street. Because according to Emma she will no longer wear pants. She wants a closet full of dresses from now on and that is final. And I guess Caitlyn still thinks that wearing pants is totally acceptable. I told Emma that I thought we should go ahead and leave her pants in her closet in case she changes her mind in the next year. And she told me that was NOT going to happen. But I slipped them back in there anyway.

Here's hoping for a restful but fun filled Spring Break!

Makeovers

We're almost halfway through this semester of school which means I am about to start a long slow descent into going out of my mind. Mike is only home two nights a week and I am running on fumes here. So is Mike. We are exhausted. The kids, however, are not. Weird.

Anyway, last week I told Mike that I just needed a few hours to myself on Friday morning. Jake would be in school and Mike would be home for the morning to watch Emma. I wanted to go shopping for some new clothes. I almost never want to go shopping for new clothes anymore but my closet was begging me for something cute. When I look at the clothes in my closet I am not attached to anything. I don't have any outfits that I just love. I mainly have clothes that either don't make me want to puke or clothes that I think I might look okay in if the lighting is dim.

So I took my leftover Christmas/Birthday money and headed out by myself to do some shopping. I have no idea where to shop these days. I started off at Nordstrom Rack because it seemed like a place a 40 something could go into to buy clothes that don't look like they were made for teenagers at a reasonable price. Well. Let me tell you that I did not understand Nordstrom Rack at all. It was a very confusing place for me to be. I just kept thinking "I wonder where the rack with the cute things is located?" I never found it. I looked at every rack of clothing in that store and didn't find one thing that I thought might not make me want to puke. The prints were weird, maxi dresses abounded and even the clearance rack had shirts for $49. A $49 shirt is not a clearance item my friends. I even saw one dress that looked just like a wet suit. A wet suit. Same material and everything. Who would want to wear that? I mean, maybe if I thought I would be involved in some sort of international spy stuff where I had to leave a fancy restaurant in a hurry and escape by jumping into the ocean to snorkel out of harms way. But that would almost probably never happen. I finally left there with a soy vanilla candle that only cost $2.99.

Then I headed over to my old standby. God bless Old Navy. Look, I know I'm probably too old to shop there and that the quality of their clothing isn't up to par with Macy's or anything. But you know what? I almost always find something I think is cute there and I can almost always afford to buy it. So I walked out with three cute shirts, two pairs of pants and a dress. I spent all of my money and am seriously thinking about going back to get another pair of pants for spring. And now when I look in my closet I see two or three outfits that I think "hey, that's cute!"

In other news, Jake also got a makeover recently. Here he is:

Well, with two practically blind parents I think we all saw glasses in his future. They seem a bit big to me but the helpful staff at the place I took him to told me he would "probably grow into them." Awesome. Odds are good that I will "probably" not give them a good review online later too. Jake loves them though for now even though a Kindergartener at the bus stop this morning told him that he looked like an old man in those glasses. And then a kid in his class told him his eyes look weird and like they are spinning around and around. Wow. Kids are jerks. Jake said everyone else was supportive though so I don't think he let those two kids get him down very much. He also said that as soon as he put them on he "felt very serious." So he thinks the glasses are changing him. Who needs Spider Man when you could be Serious Boy instead? I think this weekend I'll put on a new shirt and new pants and have Jake put on his glasses and we'll go out and conquer the world. At least until someone makes fun of me for wearing age inappropriate clothing and Jake for wearing old man glasses.