(I've Lost My) Marbles Field Trip

Last week, I was lucky enough to help chaperone Will's field trip to Marbles Museum. As usual, it was a crazy day!

Playing at the water table.

Ahoy, Matey!

Will's favorite thing about Marbles is building and racing cars.

Gigantic Legos.

Score!

Unfortunately, my little guy started feeling bad. He had an awful headache and spent pretty much the 2nd part of the field trip in my lap.

Instead of going back to school, he came back to the office with me while I was on a conference call and then packed up.  He had a snack, drew me some cool pics and then poor guy took a nap on the floor.

Thankfully he was feeling better the next day!

Snow....sorta!

We had our first snow of the 2012/13 winter season this week.  Now it wasn't an impressive snow and the children unfortunately never even saw the snow fall.  But they woke up to a thin blanket of icy snow and it was just perfect for sledding down our hill.

 Some neighbor friends joined us and away they went!

 Wheeeeee!!

Even Sunshine got in on some of the fun! Although Avery was upset Sunshine didn't have snow clothes!

Avery enjoyed eating the icy snow, which was full of grass and dirt, as evidenced on her face!

 The snow was quickly gone as soon as the sun came out. Ironically, there was more frost on the ground the next day than there was snow on the snow day!

Just Us in January

As I hoped, we have kept a pretty low key January so far. Hanging around the house, eating in, getting young little minds back into a normal routine......it's been good.

We've played a few games.....

Played snack shop.....

 
Watched movies.....

Played outside, played with friends, It's been fun!

Mary Lou Retton-esque

My Olympic gymnast reference probably dates me. I know it dates me.  Whatever.

Avery has recently shown an extreme interest in gymnastics. Extreme to the point where before she even opens her eyes in the bed in the morning she asks if she can go to gymnastics that day and when I say no, her response goes something like this: "I have been waiting my WHOLE life to go to gymnastics and I am tired and tired of waiting and not going to gymnastics is ruining my life." No lie.  She's cried. She's stomped. She's screamed.  Repeat.

But remember, she's had this same burning desire to participate in ballet and soccer. And well, we all know how those turned out for her.

I did some lunch time research and found a program for 3 year olds just a few blocks down from our house.  And it isn't on a Saturday which is important to me because between now and spring sports, I'm feeling pretty stingy about my Saturdays.  They even let us do a free trial class this week.

The class was an hour long and honestly I was surprised at 5:30 at night they could keep her engaged and entertained the entire time. But she was beyond enthralled. Her little tongue stuck out with her fists clenched is one of her tell-tale excited signs. And she was like that the entire hour.

Well, almost the entire hour. You see, after about 45 mins of constant flipping, running and jumping, she was doing a flip on the bar and puked up her after-school snack mid-flip! Ha!!!  What a way to make a first impression!  The only reason she was upset is because she thought they were going to make her leave.  The teachers cleaned it up quickly and said "it happens".  And she was right back out there.

Will was entertained for a good portion of the hour with my phone (the other 5 mins were spent between a book (1 min) and using a padded support pole as a punching bag (4 mins)).  He even snagged a few pics through the glass.

Come on in, 2013!!

Welcome, 2013!

We started the new year away from the kids, which was actually a hard struggle for me. After a stressful year in general, 10+ days of non-stop kiddos “sick” with the Christmas Crazies and the busy-ness of the past few months, a couple of days away from the kiddos was an awesome break!  Matt and I had dinner out without worrying about getting home to a sitter, slept in (sort of), and cleaned the house without it getting messed up 5 mins later (unless you count Matt and his gum wrappers!! Love you sweetie!!!). But on the flip side, I missed them terribly and after the stressful year, a HUGE part of me just wanted to be kissing their sleeping cheeks at midnight instead of at a concert. But it was The Avett’s so….. 

We had lunch at a barbeque restaurant when we picked them up. Will, who was sitting across the table from me, looked like he had aged 5 years in the 2 days we were apart!!  It was awesome to have the “what have you been doing?” conversation with him and hear all about his adventures and listen to his animated stories.  And he and Avery both loved hearing about all the things from the concert because they, by default if nothing else, are Avett’s fans too! And Avery was of course glued to me as she missed her mama!!

To keep our tradition going, we had the traditional New Year’s Day meal with Jessica and Kyle. It was our year to host and it made for a bit of crazy day as we were traveling back to Greensboro from our concert the night before, traveling again to pick up the kids from my parents and then getting home to cook. But I think deep down I thrive on chaos so it was just fine to me!

Unfortunately the kids behavior was WAY less than stellar that evening but I still managed to get a few pictures. I wish I had taken more (I think that might need to be my resolution for the year) because there were some funny moments where they were pretending to have “big tummies” like pregnant Aunt J and then just general silliness with Uncle K.

Nice to meet you, 2013!!!

NYE 2012

I think NYE 2012 might go down as my best NYE yet.  Matt and I went with G&G to see The Avett Brothers play a NYE concert in Greensboro!  The Avetts are by far my favorite band……..and I think they are pretty high up there for Matt too. This was really a dream come true for me.

We headed up late afternoon after the NCSU bowl game debacle, picked up a quick dinner and headed to the show.

A pic in the hotel lobby before we left (courtesy of Greta!).

Enjoying the show. The first is my attempt to not have a double chin in the pic!!

Awful shots of the stage but oh well….had to include them for nostalgic purposes!

What a great way to end a less than stellar year!!