Zoo Time!

Just a little catch up. Back when school was still in I chaperoned Sadie's Kinder field trip to the zoo. Our zoo is very small so we saw almost everything in less than two hours. Good thing too because my kids were complaining about being hungry less than an hour into it! We saw the animals, fed the giraffes, and rode the zoo train. Then we walked to a park to eat and play on the playground. Sadie liked the otters the best. She thought their swimming tricks were pretty cool. And she was so worn out that she laid in my lap and slept the entire bus ride home!

 Sadie at the lunchtime picnic

My Group - all but one were extremely well-behaved. I was pretty lucky.

Feeding the giraffes

and the end of feeding the giraffes.

Our first summer fun

Yesterday we went to a water park in town. Neil's work had bought out the park for the day so we got cheap tickets, free tubes, and lunch for everyone. The kids had a great time. First we headed to the kiddie splash pad and discovered that the water was freezing! Funny thing about living in the desert - if it's not over  100 degrees then the water is too cold to swim in due to all of the evaporation. Poor little Madoc went down a slide that was a bit faster than he anticipated and he went right under. He did not want to go down that again! He was shaking like a leaf for the next half an hour. 

Next we went to the wave pool. After the first few waves hit Madoc decided he didn't like it. Sadie however loved it. While the boys went on the water slides I sat in a tube on the edge with Charlotte and Sadie took off into the waves all on her own. She had the biggest grin on her face as she bobbed up and down. But at the end of the day we made Madoc get in the wave pool again and he liked it so much that it became his favorite thing.

Mother's Day

I haven't a single picture of Mother's Day because I'm the one who takes the pictures around here and I'm the mom so it was my day off. But despite the lack of pictures I think it was one of the best Mother's Days I've ever had (not too hard since there's only been six, but who's counting?).
I got to sleep in until 7:30! That's unheard of! I'm usually up at 5:30 now that the sun is making an early entrance. Then I played the waiting game. You know, the one where you're not sure if you're supposed to stay in bed because there are festivity plannings downstairs or if you can go ahead and get up. I got the option of breakfast in bed or at the table and I opted for the table. Who likes crumbs in their bed? Or eating by themselves? So down we all went to have Belgian waffles with strawberries and cream. Oh yum. And then the showering of gifts began! Lovely cards drawn by my lovely kiddos. Flowers to adorn my window. And this:


From The Vintage Pearl of course. And oh how I love it!

The kids were amazingly well-behaved all day. Sadie was really into the whole celebrate mom thing. I kept receiving drawings and crafts all day. From Kindergarten I got a juice can vase full of silk flowers and a pink peony broach that went perfectly with my skirt for church. And there were lots of hugs.
At church the women got cds full of instrumental hymns and primary medleys and mine now hangs out in the car. And the men took over so we could all got to Relief Society! Yippee! The only sad thing was when Sadie refused to go sing with the Primary kids without Madoc (her security blanket) who was asleep on Neil's lap. Oh well.
And after church we had another family for dinner. Neil made fabulous grilled chicken. That with roasted potatoes and cranberry and almond salad made my day! And our friends brought chocolate cake with pb frosting! Anyone who know me should realized that I could have had just the cake for dinner and been completely happy.
What a lovely day it was. Too bad it doesn't come twice a year!

He's just being nice

Madoc has this yucky little habit of sucking on his blanket and Charlotte sucks on everything these days so they were sharing.

I gave Madoc some rice and kitchen utensils to play with last week. He had a good time and made a great mess. And don't mind that pile of recyclables. They were soon taken to the curb.

Sometimes eating makes us sleepy...

Charlotte generally eats as soon as she wakes up from naps. This particular day last week she woke up from a long nap, ate her lunch, and promptly fell asleep again. I didn't know eating was such hard work.

My Boys Have Been Here

Neil cut out some dead bushes from our front yard on Saturday. But he can't just throw them away like a normal person. No, he has to stack them in the middle of my patio so he can burn them in the grill. Then Madoc commandeered them, added some grass clippings, and made a pretend fire.

Happy Easter

We had a wonderful, quiet Easter at home this year. In years past we have invited friends over for a big Easter dinner but the holiday sneaked up on me this year, as everything is lately. I can't seem to plan ahead with a baby in the house and Easter sort of surprised me. So we did without the big dinner in order to lessen the stress of the holiday and celebrated by ourselves.

Sadie found a recipe for Bunny Buns in the Friend magazine so I made those for breakfast. I was up at three in the morning starting the dough so that we could actually eat them for breakfast. Charlotte was a good alarm clock! Neil made some bacon and cheesy eggs to go with them. It was a yummy breakfast. Oh, and the buns were just orange rolls. You can find the recipe here.

The kids baskets were filled with new books, bubble refills, pencils, and new sand buckets. It seems that every Easter my kids get new sand toys because the heat and sun here make their old toys brittle and they all need replaced every year. We passed on candy this year and instead I made Rice Krispie treats shaped like tulips, bunny heads, and butterflies and decorated them with colored sugar.

Charlotte seemed happy about her first Easter basket. Or maybe she just liked being outside.

The girls had matching yellow dresses with white polka dots. I made Madoc a yellow tie with blue and green polka dots to match the girls.
We dyed eggs the night before and filled some plastic eggs with coins. And for the first year here we had our egg hunt in grass and not rocks!

Sadie and Madoc had a good time finding their eggs. Madoc had a little help finding the last of them. Sadie had beat him to all the most obvious ones and so we pointed out the ones hiding amongst the tree branches.

All the loot!

We have late church (not over until five!) So we had the ham in the oven on a timer. When we got home it wasn't long until we were eating a fabulous dinner of ham, potato casserole, carrots, salad, and deviled eggs. Yum!