Spring Break

I am skipping ahead to real time-

The girls had their spring break recently - March 31 - April 4.  The weekend before spring break we had our first playdate with a little girl from Audrey's class.  I am so bad about asking people to do stuff - I really prefer to just be invited all the time.  But apparently in a new area, I was forced to be the person doing the asking.  So I emailed a girl from each of their classes to see if they could have a playdate over the spring break.  Here is what a learned - EVERYONE in IL (and probably all cold climate locations) goes out of town for spring break.  However, the little girl from Audrey's class was able to come over the Saturday before.  The three of them played very well and she seemed so nice.  Her mother also seemed quite nice - sad for me, but she works so I am not sure how much I will see her.  Though she lives just one street over - close enough to walk to when the weather is nice.

As an aside - that is one great thing about going to a small, local elementary school.  Everyone in the school lives in the neighborhood.  So any kid that they want to play with is going to live in our neighborhood. Woot Woot!  (especially for us cause we don't know anyone else!)

Here is our spring break:

 We went to see Mr. Sherman and Peabody.  The girls really loved the movie. In fact I was really surprised as I am sure that they did not get any of the historical references. At. All.

 The girls at Noodles and Co with their new purses.  They are loving them....and I am loving them as they now carry around their Kindles in them when we go out to dinner.  Here is another aside...these purses came from a silent auction charity event that we went to the previous Sunday.  The girls really liked the babysitter and that went very smoothly - thank heavens they are so adaptable!  And each purse in the basket came with a mystery gift card.  What a thrill to find them all - and all were to places to eat, which is right up our alley!

 We went to the Children's Museum one day.  The girls really spent over 45 minutes at this water feature. They had an intense focus on measuring out various "antidotes."  They enjoyed the time there but I feel like they are pretty close to the upper age range for this place.

They also spent a considerable amount of time arranging all of these pieces in a pattern. They put every single piece up on the board!

We learned how to Rainbow Loom over the break!  I can not imagine how any person is able to do these without YouTube.  They started at the single chain and moved up to the three chain and then the fishtail and finally did the starburst.  That one was a challenge!

If you don't want to be grossed out, stop your reading of our spring break adventures!

Wednesday night Brooke pulled over one of our bar stools onto her big toe.  It was AWFUL and I have reaffirmed that  I am a total weenie about blood.  It was super clear that we needed to find an ER ASAP so I googled it and found the closest one. She and Darren headed out.  Overall the trip took about 3 hours.  Most of the time was spent waiting for the x-ray results which were fortunately negative. Here's what basically happened: the top of the stool landed right near the end of her big toe causing her toe nail to be levered out like a catapult and the front end of her toe to explode out sort of like squashing a grape.

Brooke was so funny about the experience though.  She came home so excited to "freak me out" by showing me her toenail....which she did.  Then she was telling me how brave she was and that she did not cry at all.  Which according to D is actually correct.  What she does not mention is that while she did not cry, she was screaming bloody murder when they gave her the numbing shots in her toe bed.  But no crying!

She has done great with it all though.  Getting the two stitches out was a bit tricky but after more screaming and tears it was all done.  Now we are just waiting on the tip to heal up.  But she is super excited that she gets to go back to PE today (4/14).

Here are the gross pics:

The aforementioned toenail that she freaked me out with.  How gross!  And look at all that unpainted nail that was UNDER the skin. 

 The toe.  So so so gross.

Getting Older....

Both me and the girls!  This post is really just some cute mis-sayings that the girls have that I think are so adorable!!  And since they are getting older - which I totally realized last weekend when we were at the mall and the girls were CLEARLY the oldest kids on both the merry-go-round and the kids play area.  and I then I really remembered when I took the girls to the mall when they were itty bitty and I had such mean thoughts aimed at the parents of the giant kids running around trampling the little kids.  And suddenly I realized that I was that parent!! Gosh.

As I was saying - since the girls are getting older, I know that these cute little mis-sayings are going to be replaced with the correct words so soon.  But not by me!  I refuse to tell them that they are wrong.  And since I am getting older, there is no way that I will remember them at all unless they are recorded somewhere.

The girls call Hershey kisses - Horseshoe kisses.

They call their underarms their under-pits.  Such a cute little combination of underarms and arm pits.

For some reason they both say Famember instead of Remember.  I certainly want to famember that!!

They also say esspossed to instead of supposed to.

Brooke especially says erways rather than always!

I am sure there are some other cute ones but I certainly can't remember them now.

Mardi Gras - Kindergarten style

Every year the Kindergarteners put on a Mardi Gras parade.  Each class has a specific krewe theme.  The kids dress up and decorate a wagon based on their theme.  The parade has some of the ROTC from the high school, some of the band, and kids from middle and high school pulling the wagons.  It is a pretty big affair.

The wagons ranged CONSIDERABLY in quality.

I will preface these pics with a few thoughts.  The girls loved their wagons and had a blast decorating them.  To them, they were perfect.  Now in real life, it is clear that I have good ideas but am a fail as far as the actual execution goes.  Audrey's Krewe was the Zoo Krewe and Brooke's was Busy Bees.  We thought - oh a cute cage for Audrey's and some flowers for Brooke (Mrs. Thorne had bee outfits for the kids at school).  Audrey rode with her friend Ella - they were a zebra and a flamingo.

To illustrate this point I will offer these pictures (though I must toot my own horn about my cute text that I added!)

So I am looking pretty good at this point. 

Now here is what it looks like with these same ideas but someone who really excels at execution:

yep.  And here are just a few others that were totally crazy....and I may be just a tad jealous!

Cutie Kids

Here are some random pics that I have yet to get onto the blog.  These are from January to mid February.

 The girls with the J's - looking at the Christmas photo book.  Maybe I'll put this pic in next year's book!

 On a free dress day, the girls decided to be twins!

 The girls with their owl Valentine's boxes....technically only Brooke was required to make one, but Audrey wanted to do hers as well.

 They had crazy hat day as a good behavior reward - how cute are they?

Valentine's Day - they really thought that the shirts were hilarious "I mustache you to be my Valentine."

 Brooke had to do a poster and presentation on a LA animal.  She selected the deer.  She worked so hard on this and did great.  They were given 4 questions to answer - what do they look like, how does their appearance help them, what do they eat, and what is an interesting fact.

 Here are the girls pogo sticking with their friend Ella.  They all got the same pogo stick for Christmas!

For President's Day - Audrey's class did shadows of themselves.  And what a sweet little message she wrote to us!!

Upward Cheer

As our spring activity, the girls decided that they wanted to do upward cheer.  I tried valiantly to get them to sign up for basketball.  But I finally relented to let them do cheer.  Then in a turn of events, they needed help coaching, so I ended up being one of the coaches.  I will pause to let you quit laughing.

It was super fun - for both me and the girls.  Their squad had 16 girls who were in kindergarten and first grade.  We cheered at the upward basketball games each Saturday and had practice once a week as well.

 How cute are my little cheerleaders???

Here they are with their other BFF Ella.

 In action during the game

 Here is Brooke with her BFF Lauren

And how else would you sit and listen after the game??

Here are some pictures of the closing ceremony.  Our group did a cheer by themselves and then all three of the cheerleader groups did a cheer together.  The guest speaker was a lady that can spin, dribble, and juggle basketballs.  She was excellent.  And more exciting - she picked Audrey as her very first volunteer.  Audrey got to spin a ball on her finger.  So super cute!!  And then Audrey won a doorprize!  It was a banner night for the Bear!

Moving On Up...

Literally.  We are moving on up to the north!! 

D found out just before Christmas that he was getting a promotion and transferred to the refinery outside of Chicago.  To say that it was a shock, is putting it mildly.  Honestly he thought that his boss was coming to tell him that his boss was changing jobs, not Darren!

We are excited to have a new opportunity - and D assures me that it is a good job opportunity - in a new part of the country.  But we are extremely sad to leave where we are.  We have made some lifelong friends and love it here. Honestly I am having the most difficulty with the whole move idea.  D is excited about his new job.  The girls are excited about the snow (they clearly have no idea just how much snow and cold there will be!)  I am less excited.  So hard to make a new network of friends.

D and I went up to the Chicago area for our house hunting trip.  Since I am still on the fence about the move, the trip was a bit more stressful than previous house hunting trips.  Apparently I brought some negativity to the trip.  Hmmm.  Nonetheless we did in fact buy a house - which was both of our #1 house.

Here are some pics of the trip:

 As cold as this looks, it actually ended up being colder than this as the week went on!

 Here I am in front of our new house!  Well technically not fully ours until we close at the end of February.  The girls like this picture cause it looks like I am holding up the house.  I like this picture cause you can see my new snow boots and jacket - purchased just prior to coming on the trip!

Here is D in front of the house.  He is also rocking out new boots and jacket.

Here is a picture of the school that the girls will be going to. I was shocked to discover that there is no air conditioner in the school.  What??? The girls are super excited to learn that they will not be wearing uniforms.  I am less excited to learn that fact. Clearly I will need to supplement their regular clothes as they really have limited non uniform outfits and I am not sure I can convince them that it will be cool to wear khakis and blue shirts.  Also interesting is that there are only 3 kindergarten classes at the school.  So the girls should know about 2/3 of the entire kindergarten!

Another fun fact - the school mascot is the FOX - which the girls love as they love What Does The Fox Say.

 

Christmas Vacation - Gatlinburg

Part 3: Cabin in Gatlinburg - For our final part of our Christmas vacation, we spent three nights in a cabin in Gatlinburg.  Our condo was super fun and had an air hockey table, a pool table, a video game with bunch of games from the 80s, and a hot tub!!  This part of our vacation was very chill and relaxing.

 The girls got to open their magic kit and did many shows for us.

 Beautiful Brookie!

 Darren and Brooke holding up the mountain

 Family picture by the mountains

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Family picture by the sign to the nation park - I was so disturbed to find out the Smoky was spelled without an E!

 The girls dancing outside of our cabin- Mountain Splendor

 About to get into the hot tub - a favorite activity for sure!!

 It snowed our last night there - the girls were so excited to see snow!

 Some 2 on 1 air hockey

 The view from our balcony

 It rained one day so we headed to the aquarium

 I would freak out if I saw that coming toward me in the ocean!

 Inside a bubble with some puffer fish

 Audrey as a scuba diver

Love me some jellies!!