Leapin Lizards!

I watched Annie 3 days ago with the kids and I still have “It’s a hard knock life for us” stuck in my head. I do love that move with it’s blasted catchy songs.

I must admit a small(big) part me wants to run around from room to room swinging off the bed frames singing the entire soundtrack every time we watch it. 

Watching movies I loved as a kid are just one of the many perks of being a parent. 

What are your perks?

Count down

I may have mentioned before that Yuliya is a little excited about going to school this year. 

Being a kindergartener! 

Most thoughts on her ever expanding mind consist of princesses and kindergarten lately. 

Last weekend we set out to find her a backpack. After a good half hour in the back to school section she was able to walk away with the first place winner and we decided we would get a neat zipper pull to go along with it since she was oh so accomodating by picking a jansport(lifetime warranty! woot!) Poor Cash the entire time wanting to pick out his backpack and school supplies too. This kid, when you ask him how old he is will tell you "five." He desperately wishes he could go to school with his big sister and do all the big kid things she gets to do.

   Fast forward to Monday where she is frantically running around telling me what we need to put in her backpack. "Banana, crackers, granola bars, a sandwich, cheese....wait no not cheese it will go bad. Mom there's only one banana left, please hide it so no one eats it. I need it for the first day of school. Please make sure no one else eats it. "

I keep trying to stress that school is still a month away. We wont be there until the end of August....there's just no stopping the excitement.

So today we made a First Day of School paper chain.
(taller than myself)

The idea being she can rip off one link everyday until the first day of school. Hopefully this will help with the concept of a month. All I have to say is I am glad I didn't think of this when we had three months to go! It would have wrapped around the living room.

Now time to shop for cardigans!

Growth

For 5 weeks now Keith has had a side project he has been working on while staying at home with the children.

 His beard! 

Always working in an environment where shaving is a requirement, he decided to grow it out this summer. 

And I happen to think it was pretty dreamy.

 But our company does not, so on Sunday it all came to an end as it was time to return to work. 

Strange how after only 5 weeks it was shocking to see his clean shaven face again.

I will miss you summer beard!

What did you do this summer?

Views on the road

Then maybe a twister

At first I thought Italy came to houston

Turns out it was a gigantic boot.

(LOST)

Being one with your toys

I was going through old pictures today and ran across these two. It cracks me up that Yuliya loves to incorporate herself with her toys. Playing with them isn't enough, she needs to be them. Zen.

In both of these she took every toy out of the box, jumped in and then put all her toys back. Silly silly kid.

Also ran across this one, Cash looks just like her!

Blue bells

As our stay in San Antonio ended we packed up the car again, this time with one more person (mimi)and headed back.

Just one more detour planned before we could get home....Blue Bell!

(I have been waiting to do this all summer!)

Unfortunately Yuliya inherited my propensity to become ill in the car. So we had to pull over a few times so she wouldn't be sick in the car. She was as white as a ghost and I felt for her knowing the never ending nauseousness that is attached to car sickness. But soon a dose of Cash's trusty crackers cured her and she was ready for ice cream again.

She looks to be feeling a lot better doesn't she?

We were able to show up and take the tour pretty much immediately. I thought it was very fascinating seeing all of the working parts, ice cream being made and put in tubs, Popsicle being dipped, ect. I loved every part of the tour and I think the kids did too.

At least I know they loved the end where they each had a free scoop of ice cream :)

Look at the excitement

The classic Blue Bell delivery truck(the children desperately wanted to drive it)

Blue Bells! The company was named after this flower!

U day Unbirthday's

Alice in Wonderland:


Statistics prove, prove that you've one birthday, 
one birthday ev'ry year.
But there are three 
hundred and sixty four
unbirthdays.
That is why we're gathered here to cheer.
A very merry unbirthday to you, to you. 
A very merry unbirthday to you,
It's great to drink to someone and 
I guess that you will do.
A very merry unbirthday to you 

Earlier this summer Jack picked up the classic by Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland and tore through in about a day. So what could we do on U day? Well we could watch the movie and have an Unbirthday for ourselves in honor of the scene where Alice has tea with the Mad Hatter. We celebrated with decorations and cake for dinner. We ended up with leftovers which we shared with neighbors for their unbirthday. It was a success. Even Soldier celebrated with a long walk around the neighborhood. (to burn sugar)

San Antonio again

Believe it or not we did more while in San Antonio

We tried to spend most of our days out of the house only returning for dinner, relaxing, playing in the yard and sleep. We were successful most days.

One day we even went to the snake farm. Where we were able to tour the indoor facilities to check out all of the snakes. Rooms and rooms full of snakes all side by side.  So many of them venomous as well....Yikes!

I had a hard time watching this adorable little mouse clean himself up for a big date to be eaten.

So eventually we made our way outdoors to see the wildlife.

Dreamy Mr. despite the glasses :)

This little critter looked to be baking in the afternoon heat and hardly bothered about it at all.

And then there was the petting zoo, where Sam promptly lost his bag off feed to a bandit goat. Who simply grabbed the bag out of Sam's hand and struggled with him in a tug of war until the bag burst open and his feed was at his feet for him to devour in triumph.

 As soon as Cash was witness to this his arms shot up in the air and he started carrying his bag of feed above his head. (the way soldier trained him to do as a baby to keep from having snacks taken by the dog) He told me " I don't want to feed that bad goat, he's bad!"

Check out how often you see him with his bag above his head

Finally when everyone had exhausted their rationed feed bags(or bandit goat had taken it) we looked around and saw Cash with his bag still above his head, still completely full.

We found this little tiny pig Collin was petting and we watched as people tried to feed the baby and his momma knocked him out of the way so she could eat his food.(not very motherly if you ask me) So we lured the tiny pig into the far corner and dumped Cash's entire bag at his tiny little hoofed feet.

I think he was a happy pig :)

Rivers of smores

While in San Antonio we took a trip to the river for some tubing.  Keith has had his heart set on this all summer, but I half expected at least one if not all four of the children to back out.

We gave them the option, stay and play on the playground or go tubing.

It was unanimous everyone wanted to go tubing.

We could save the playground for afterward.

 This actually surprised me a little since my ever cautious child, Yuliya…you know the one that, until the age of 2 hesitated at cracks in the side walk before making a gigantic side step over them wanted to go tubing.

But the girl was adamant.

So we rented our tubes, we bought our floaties, filled them with air, safely stowed our keys and shoes, and set off for the river. As we descended the stairs to plop our floats in the water Yuliya suddenly realized what she had agreed to and no longer wanted to go in her own tube. Sam, Yuliya, and yours truly all had tubes with bottoms though so we decided she was alright on her own.  Cash sat in my lap as we lazily drifted with the current occasionally needing to paddle so we wouldn’t bump a floating log or two. We went in groups with our tubes tethered together and had a great time. While Sam was drenched head to toe from flipping his tube(attempting to get an angry bird toy in the water and effectively almost drowning Uncle Scott) Yuliya, Cash and myself all remained dry as a bone. It wasn’t until the very end after handing off all of the children and attempting to evacuate the river myself that I missed the step and fell in up to my neck!

Figures...grace has never been my strong suit.

 We gave the children the option to go again or play, the 5 year olds chose play, Cash was ready ready ready for more river action and jack was content to do either activity.

Being back home in Houston Sam says he is eager to go again as is Cash, Yuliya is now unyielding in her choice to avoid the river any time in the near future.

Later that night Papa D made us an amazing Chilean Sea Bass for dinner while Keith and I made smores over the grill for the children...Only we tweaked the recipe a little (thanks to pinterest)with snicker doodle cookies we had made the night before as a replacement for the graham cracker. I now believe that a smore was never in fact intended to join forces with a graham cracker at all, it was always the snicker doodle.  That night, in that yard, next to a remarkably tasty fish, a truly extraordinary smore transpired.

But the sun was in his eyes so I had him turn

Now the sun was on his smore...hold it up please!

Does it look like he's struggling not to eat it? They smelled so yummy.

The kids agree.

Except Cash, he just wanted the bar of chocolate…hold the marshmallow and cookies.

Note: No pictures of Sam with a smore, it was in his belly before the camera shutters could snap.

Did I mention the Sea Bass was amazing? 

Because it really was :)