End of school

I've found it's a little hard for me to get the pics off the camera and into the blog when I've got my little ones around so much.

We had a great end-of-year party. Ms. Watkins has a tradition of having an off-campus party from 930a-130p on the last day of school. The class walked over to Grace's friend Audrey's house. We moms fretted a bit about how we were going to keep 19 kids busy in the back yard for four hours, but two blow up pools, an outdoor play set, a couple coolers of water balloons and hot dogs and watermelon are apparently all you need (plus 19 kids happy to not be sitting in their classroom on the last day of school).


This was after the initial rush to the water balloons. It's amazing how quickly they disappear - maybe 5 minutes? Almost not worth the work to fill them, except for the joy they brought.


I just liked this picture because you can see that soaker ball that Jared just tossed it totally about to hit its mark on Ryan's back.


The addition of the Little Tykes slide was genius for one of the pools.


Acrobatics on the swings.


Lunch on the lawn.


Three great friends. We are so sad that Audrey (on the right) is moving to Houston at the end of the summer.


Once the day wore on the area next to the pool with the slide became a big mud puddle. Ms. Watkins ended up having to hose half the class off before we could walk back to the school.


The Four Musketeers with Ms. Watkins.


And now to copy my sister. First day of school and last day of school pictures.


Kindergarten went by so fast!

Milestone

If you look hard, you can see the new space in the bottom of her mouth. Grace is so happy she finally lost her first tooth. (Yes, I know this is a horrible picture, but I needed to get close up to see that hole).

It popped out at dinner tonight, after been hanging by a thread for the past day or so. And unlike cousin Joey, her tooth actually came out of her mouth, rather than going the other way.

Fun website

My favorite local blog posted today about Walk Score, a website that calculates a neighborhoods "walkability rating" from 0 to 100. It is very fun - I found myself plugging in all sorts of addresses of people I know. And old Vickery Place doesn't score too badly - we just barely made it into the "Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car" score. And from plugging in all my friends and family, only my dear sister ranked higher, and then only by 7 points.

Now the site readily admits it has it's limitations. The basics of safety, public transportation, topography, freeways and bodies of water (among other things) are not taken into consideration. But still a fun little online diversion (aren't there just so many of those!).

Kathy, I'd love to see what your old Seattle address ranks. I'm sure it's right up there at the top.

Winding down

Activities are starting to wind down for the kiddos. Alex had his last day of school on Friday, though he only has a week off before his summer session starts on June 2 (before Grace is even out of school yet). Grace had her last dance class until her dress rehearsal this coming Friday and recital on Saturday. And both kids had their last swim class last Monday.

Swim class was interesting this year. Our class started out with only three students, with two of them being my kids. It was nice that Grace and Alex could be in class together - I had to bribe Alex the first day with the promise of a new toy to get him into the pool. And then Grace was a lifesaver encouraging and comforting him the entire class. And both kids LOVED swim class. Alex would get disappointed when he found out the next day wasn't a class day.

Grace still loves swimming; in fact, she has decided that in the fall she no longer wants to take dance class - she wants to continue swimming. But by the time we hit the last month or so of classes, Alex decided he no longer liked it. I don't know if it was the addition of more kids; we went from our class of three with one teacher to about twelve with four teachers. I don't know if it was the expectation of him putting his head under water, which he really doesn't like. But he started fussing so much that for a few classes I actually had to leave the building because otherwise he would sit there and fake-cry for me while he could see me.

But we made it through the semester and had the little "swim show" the second half of the last class. Here's a few pictures from the pool.


Big girl Grace gets ready to show off her swim moves.


She's swimming so well, I can't wait to get her into the pool tomorrow to show off to Jim.


Alex was a little more interested in looking at me than paying attention to the teachers.


Alex floating on his back, with a little help.


Grace almost has the backstroke down. She's got the floating and flutter kicks, but it's hard to coordinate those arms in with it.


This is how Alex ended the session, pouting and refusing to get out of the pool and jump in like everyone else (you can see his white back and green shorts hanging on the edge of the pool). The two white rectangles are actual tables they put in the middle of the pool. Makes it just far enough for the little kiddos to practice swimming to, and gives them a nice place to rest while waiting for other people to take their turn.


Alex just wanted to put on his dinosaur costume when we got home. I think he's holding his right hand up because that is the glove with the tiny dinosaur roar button in it. I'm glad he was open to having his picture taken, because he just looked so darn cute.

Birthday parties are fun

Grace had her "Pucca" birthday party this weekend. Don't know what Pucca is? Well, you can check her out here and here. Once again my child had chosen a theme not readily available for a party, so I had stocked up on Chinese New Year decorations and hand made the rest. And the addition of the generic bounce house just tied it all together. It was insanely humid, but for the third year in a row the rain didn't arrive until the party had ended.


I have to show off my Pucca cake. I made it by looking at a picture printed off the internet, and considering my lack of experience with cake decorating I think I did a darn good job with it! Her pigtails were two Ding Dongs. Grace and Alex had never tasted Ding Dongs until they ate these, and of course LOVED them (who wouldn't?!).


Even with the good camera it is really tough to get a good photo of kids in a bounce house.




Luckily younger brother Kenny stuck around so Alex had a friend to play with during the party.


Everyone loves the Twizzler.


Gabriel seemed to not care (or even notice?) that a bunch of 6-year olds were crawling all over the car.


Waiting to play "Pin the Heart on Garu."


The rest of the waiting line. Notice how sweaty everyone is after all the bouncing. Now you can just imagine what my bandana felt like after wrapping around those thirteen heads. Yuk.


Taking a water break with Kate.


The Four Musketeers. It will be really sad if these girls aren't in the same first grade class next year.

Little Gracie Lu Who is way more than two

Just a Dr. Seuss reference there in the title.

Happy birthday to my sweet girl! Six years old now.

I would have posted this yesterday (actually on her birthday), but I was up until almost midnight working on stuff for the party today. I'll get some pictures of that up in the next day or two.

It boggles my mind when I look at her sometimes. She's just turning into this long, lanky kid, with all her little elementary school friends that she runs off and giggles with on the playground after dumping her backpack on me.

She woke up yesterday morning and commented that she didn't feel like she was six years old. I explained that since she wasn't born until 5:20 in the evening that technically she wasn't six yet. This seemed to satisfy her, and by the end of the evening she DID feel like she was six. All in all I think she had a good birthday. I came and read to her class that morning (I usually do that two or three Fridays a month), Jim was home so he got to go eat lunch with her for the first time this year, I was back that afternoon with donuts for the class, and we ended up at Chuy's for her birthday dinner of choice - pretty nice because it means that in addition to satisfying her craving for Chuy's quesadillas, Mama gets to satisfy her craving for a margarita.

I know I say this all the time, but boy do I love that kid.

What the hell are they thinking?

I'm totally addicted to the blog for our local East Dallas magazine. I can't wait to check it out every night. The magazine itself is a fun little read with human-interest stories and event coverage centered on our part of the city. But the blog gets much more in depth with local political issues. And the editor had a wonderful post about the city council's recent discussions about the downtown convention center hotel plans. In a nutshell, some city council members are recommending that the CITY build, own and operate a multi-million dollar hotel. I'll keep my outrage in check and not rant too much (and not even bring up the whole "buying overpriced land" issue involved in it too). I'll just give you the link here (scroll up if it pops you in the middle of the post):
Remember the Movie "Dumb and Dumber"?

It's a little long, but I promise by the end you will also be rolling your eyes and asking "what the hell are they thinking?" Sheesh.

Cinco de Mayo

Feliz cumplianos, mi hermana!

Beautiful day

We took advantage today of the "Target First Saturday" at the Nasher Sculpture Garden. It gives free admission from 10a-2p and has various activities for kids to do. Jim was hesitant about going simply because he couldn't imagine the kids (especially Alex) being able to keep their hands off the art. My argument was that if you don't take your children to things like museums, concerts, etc., they will never learn how to act in those situations. That was the theory behind us always taking our kids to "real" restaurants (not fancy ones, but definitely more than McDonalds or Purple Cow), and now they are usually pretty darn good about eating out in public.

Anyway, we couldn't have asked for better weather for enjoying beautiful art in the beautiful setting. High was in the low 70s with a gorgeous blue sky overhead. And with a sit down talk with the kids before leaving the house (followed by a reminder on the sidewalk before entering), they were better than we could have ever hoped for. I highly recommend taking advantage of this opportunity - once we bypassed the $10 parking for the meter on the street we had an amazing couple of hours for about 50 cents.


My little artist next to the one sculpture she had time to sketch in her sketch pad - Spoon Woman by Alberto Giacometti ("Oh Mom, it's because she looks like a spoon, right?").


Alex checking out one of the coolest pieces in the museum.


This is what he was showing me. Those are life-sized figures walking up the pole (Walking to the Sky by Jonathan Borofsky).


A shot looking out across the garden. Hopefully you can see what wonderful weather it was.



Another view of the garden.



One of my favorites (Night by Aristide Maillol). Just beautifully done.


Grace counting the headless men (Bronze crowd by Magdalena Abakanowicz). There are 36 of them.


Large Horse by Raymond Duchamp-Villon looked more like a large armadillo to Grace.


Target had a great little scavenger hunt for the kids to do with photos of details of four pieces. You had to find the pieces and write down the title and artist for each. When you turn your finished page in you got a little Target dog. Both kids have their dog tucked in closely to them right now in bed.


My final shot of Walking to the Sky as we are about to get into the car and head home.

Great day!

Boy crazy

My daughter is boy crazy.

It cracks me up. She has a rotating schedule of boyfriends - about five or six in her class that are constantly shifting in and out of her current three boyfriend spots (apparently three is her magic number). Now before I start getting comments of the apple not falling far from the tree, I'd like to point out that I certainly don't remember having boyfriends in kindergarten. I remember having boys chase me in elementary school, but can't remember the exact grade it started (nor do I remember doing much of the chasing).

One memory I do have is of liking Brian T in 2nd grade because I remember we had the same favorite song ("Wildfire" by Michael Martin Murphey; BT, remember that song?).

Grace has always liked the boys; never one for just playing with the girls. She's also gotten a little embarrassed with talking about it to Jim. She'll whisper things to me and starts blushing if I bring it up again within earshot of her dad. It's very sweet, but also a little scary. Growing up so fast!

But at least she likes the good boys. When I asked why she likes one of her favorites (Quinn), she said "Because he's really smart. He's the best one at math in the class!"

Happy Earth Day

Spring Break photos

So here's some photos from Spring break about a month ago. We had an awesome trip to the Ozarks - long drive but since the kids are older it really isn't as bad anymore. Some friends of ours hooked us up with the link to the cabins. They'd never been there, and now I hope we don't have to fight them next Spring Break for a reservation because we returned with glowing recommendations and want to go back!

Here's our fun little cabin. Actually I should say big cabin. It had 3 bedrooms - one was a loft upstairs, one was a regular room on the main floor and one was a separate room downstairs on the bluff. The downstairs one could only be accessed by the deck stairs outside, and while it had its own TV it didn't have a bathroom, so it's one we wouldn't be able to use until kids are older. The deck you can see on the back extended all around the cabin; it had a little jog in the middle offering some spaces of semi-privacy, and on the left side of the cabin had a patio with a table that would have been nice for eating breakfast or lunch on.


Our view from one of the decks.


The rock hill behind (in front of?) the cabin. Since the cabin was on the bluff, there was a pretty big drop off about twenty feet from the end of the very bottom deck (outside that solitary bedroom below). The kids were good about staying within the boundaries we set, but the dog got pretty close once or twice. And there weren't any really huge flat areas to run around on, but the kids had a great time climbing around on these rocks, especially once Alex got secure enough that he wasn't getting stuck halfway.



The living room of our cabin. As you can see, we weren't exactly roughing it. To the right of this picture was the TV with satellite reception and a dvd player. And the fireplace was gas, so to light it each night all we had to do was flip that switch on the wall to "on" and away it roared.


There was still snow on the ground the day we got there from the storm that had just passed through. Of course the kids were overjoyed about it. This picture is a little deceptive; this was at the side of the road so it looks deeper than it actually was. But my kids were just happy to have finally seen some snow this year.


Grace and her snow gun.



Alex and his hiking stick.



There were lots of hikes within a 30 minute drive from the cabins. Here's my kids doing their favorite nature activity - throwing rocks into a body of water.



Kids inside a big cave. This picture doesn't do the enormity of it justice. It was huge.



Our little artist sketching her scenic view.

Now for the yellow ones

Daytime TV

Once Grace got past the nursing-all-day stage I really quit watching daytime TV as a stay-at-home mom (except for kids TV, of course). Today I flipped on the noon news because every once in a while I like to watch it, and I couldn't believe one of the ads I saw. Between Brian Loncar attorney ads (the TOUGH Texas Hammer!) and Devry-type ads, I saw an ad for Texas Car Title & Payday Loans. Yes, if you own your car you too can get some instant cash, and still drive your car (provided you pay that loan back on time). It just doesn't seem legal to me. And since it is apparently legal, it seems like just a REALLY bad idea. But I guess there are people out there desperate (or stupid) enough to give that company enough business to run daytime TV ads.

My how things change

I was transferring some pics from Jim's computer (where the library of all our photos resides) to my laptop when I came across these two pictures:


From a visit of Kathy and her kids back in January 2001, making Emma four and Max almost two. And after looking at how cute the kids were, I suddenly noticed the actual room in the background behind Max. So THAT is what our house used to look like before we had kids! Ah, to remember the days when the TV room wasn't packed with toys. So long ago...

Also here's two shots of my irises, which are blooming profusely in the back yard. The white and yellow bearded irises have joined the purple Dutch ones. I used to have a ton of purple bearded ones (everyones favorite) that had grown next to the house for who knows how long. I had to move them six or seven years ago when we had the foundation worked on, but I don't think they survived the transplant. Unfortunately I think they ended up in a spot that the soil washed out of, exposing the rhizomes (yes, I could have said "bulbs" but then figured someone would have corrected me). So if anyone has some purple ones they are dividing and want to share, please keep me in mind!

I'm not cheap

I'm torn on this one. I needed to find some party gifts for game winners at Grace's upcoming birthday party. And being a single-income household, I needed to find cheap options. So I headed over to one of the many local dollar stores. If you've never been to one, at least in this one it was true that EVERYTHING cost a dollar. I found what I needed - kites and a jump rope, all for a dollar apiece. So six dollars and fifty cents or so later I came out with more than enough gifts.

But the entire time I'm walking through the store my skin was crawling, and all I could think in my head was "recall, recall, recall." From what I can tell, a LOT of recalled kid's products tend to come from dollar stores. How else can this stuff be so darn cheap, unless it's made in some overseas factory with little to no oversight, with god knows what level of lead in the paint? I keep telling myself that at least at 6-years old these kids won't be sticking any of this stuff in their mouth. Maybe it will all break the first time they try to use it and I'll be in the clear.

Ick - I think I just can't bring myself to do that one again. I guess I'll make myself pay more in the future and get it at Target (and probably still get stuck with a recall notice).