Pink eye, really?

Pink eye has been going around the boys school for the last week. I have lived in fear that they would bring it home. We were actually pretty lucky the boys didn't bring it home. I did!

I took the boys to school on Monday morning and was at the school for the first time in a week for no more than ten mintues. By the end of the day I had pink eye in my left eye. This is a picture of my eye right before going to the doctor. The doctor gave me a prescription for eye drops but pink eye is running so rampant here they couldn't fill my prescriptions for two days. By then the pink eye had traveled to my right eye. I was quite the sight, if I do say so myself.

Can I tell you getting pink eye really sucks!

Washing the car

The boys decided to help dad wash the truck today. So I got out my lawn chair to watch the show. I did help them get ready by taking off their shoes and rolling up their pant legs.

What an adventure. They both had to have a sponge of their own and they both wanted to hold the hose.

So in the end rolling up their pant legs really didn't do any good as they were soaked head to toe. But the truck was nice and clean. Plus what could be better than washing your car outside in February?

Valentines

Dave is such an incredible guy. I count my blessing daily that he is in my life. Yes he can drive me nuts on occassion, but I just love him. For Valentines Day he sent me thirty of the most beautiful tulips at work. I love tulips. Such a luck girl!

Finally made it to Brownsville!

So we finally made it to Brownsville on February 11th. I took the day off and we headed down with a heart shaped marble cake for my dad's birthday. The boys did great on the ride down and were so excited to see grandma and grandpa.

We immediately headed out to South Padre Island to see the beach. We stopped at the Sea Turtle, Inc. turtle rescue and saw all of the turtles in their hospital. They are so cool. They have this one turtle who lost three of her four flippers and they would normally have to euthanize them at that point because they can't swim. But they tried an experiment and put this prosthetic fin on her back and she is able to swim, it was amazing to see. As luck would have it the circus came to town. So we headed on over and met up with Ronaldo who is my mom's, cousin's, daughter's, son. So he and Hayden are some kind of second, third or fourth cousin, too confusing, but he is family and he and Hayden have struck up a little friendship. Ronaldo is quite fun, he loves guns, horses and spider man. All he kept saying was "Horses, horses, horses?"

So we started the boys off riding the ponies.

Then Hayden, Ronaldo, Turner and I got to ride an elephant. Quite an experience. Ronaldo kept saying, "I'm going to fall, I'm going to fall." We didn't fall, all was well.

Then on the way into the big top for the one ring circus they were painting faces. Ronaldo got his spider man. When they asked him if he wanted glitter he made this crazy face and fiercely shook his head. He is not much for a lot of word and he is a very stoic child, but a lot of fun. Turner got to be a puppy dog. And Hayden got to be his favorite a tiger. I took this picture while he was mad at me because I told him I wouldn't pay $12 for a sword that lights up. He is so picked on and has such a mean mom. The circus was okay, nothing to write home about, but the kids were entertained and they enjoyed the show.

We had another bonus during our trip, a small carnival came to town. So after the circus and after a great meal at Antonio's we headed over. By this time the only thing left on Turner from the face painting were the puppy eyebrows. We got the boys arm bands and they were off riding everything there was. They were running from one ride to the next together. Turner even got in on the action. He really liked holding his own tickets and giving them to the ticket taker (a little control freak just like his mom). There was one ride Hayden really wanted to get on. Ronaldo wasn't so keen on the idea so I decided to ride it with him. It is one of those towers that takes you really high up and then drops you. Hayden loves these things. I can't wait until he is older and is tall enough to ride on roller coasters. I need a roller coaster buddy. So we got on and got strapped in. And up we went. That is my dad with Turner in the stroller. And then we came down. We also found a dead bird in the back of my dad's truck. Craziest thing. Hayden is kind of funny about death and so he wanted to burie the bird. So we took it out to South Padre Island and dug a nice hole there for it and layed it to rest. As always it was hard to leave, but it was nice to get home. Can't wait to go back.

Turner!!

There really isn't a purpose to this post other than to show how cute Turner can be. I was cleaning up the toys and came across these silly goggles and he fell in love and insisted on wearing them. It only lasted a little while, but it was so cute I had to take a picture for those days when he is driving me nuts or years from now when though he will always be my baby, he will no longer be a baby.

Gray Hair & Too much information

This is probably going to be too much information. But it is my blog and I want to write about it. I have an issue. On the right side of my head I have a small area of gray hair. It's not really a patch as there are only about thirty hairs and they are dispersed among the darker hairs. This is the main concentrating of gray hairs (though I do have some that come in all over just not in as heavy a concentration). I digress. The gray hairs really bother me and so when ever I see them I pull them out. This sometimes means I sit in front of the mirror with tweezers. I hate to be vain but I don't like the gray hairs. Dave says I have that sickness where people pull their hair out. I really don't as I only pull the grays and I don't eat it. I really like my hair and I always receive a lot of complements on my hair, about the curls or the color. So having these grays really bother me. This is my major dilemma for the day.

Superbowl Sunday!

Like many houses across America on Superbowl (do I have to pay a royalty if I use that word in my blog?) Sunday we have a little party. Usually it is just Dave and I and as our family has grown we have included the boys. We get lots of finger type foods and all the Dr. Pepper we can drink. The only major difference from other households (other than the lack of alcohol) is we don't watch the Superbowl. We will rent movies and watch them or watch things we have recorded on the DVR. We occassionally will flip over and check out the score, but that is it. Not huge football fans in our house and that's just the way I like it.

Wonder World!!!

We had originally planned to go to Brownsville this weekend to visit my parents. But with the weather being bad here the roads were closed so we couldn't leave. Additionally they don't have a heater in Brownsville and they had to go to my uncle Gilbert's house to stay warm. So instead while Dave was working on homework I took the boys up to San Marcos to . . .

We had the best time. It started out with a train ride (always a hit with the boys) in to a petting zoo (another hit) or as they called it Mystery Mountain and Wildlife Park (a little grand of a title if you ask me, but I digress) . We bought the food to feed the animals (a racked as I paid to get in, now I have to pay to feed their animals) and we were off.

They had a pretty good selection of animals in the park and the boys were throwing them food all over the place. There were also wild turkeys, peacocks, ostriches and fainting goats. The conductor got off the train and chased one of the goats to make it faint. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. I've seen fainting goats on TV before, but this was so much funnier. I along with all the kids started yelling for him to do it again, because it was so funny. He said he could only do it one time to one goat per train ride because it messed with them neurologically if you did it to much. But watching the goat running and falling over mid stride was hilarious.

Even Turner got into feeding the animals from his hand after his initial trepidation.

This is Turner just being cute and enjoying the train ride.

The next part of Wonder World is the cave. Or as they say seeing an earth quake from the inside out. Apparently along time ago the plates shifted and caused a big gap to appear. They later shifted again and closed the gap, but because of the way it closed there were big boulders that got stuck and wouldn't allow the gap to close completely forming a "dry" cave. Dry meaning the cave was not carved out by water like most caves are. It was quite interesting to hear about and as you walked through the cave you could look up and see were the plates had come together and the huge boulders which kept it from closing back up. It was like you were walking right under the fault line.

Hayden found a couple of young friends in our group and they all went exploring. I'm not sure he got as much out of the tour as I did, but he seemed to enjoy it.

Turner was not as impressed as he kept bumping his sweet little head.

After the cave they took you up into this tower that is 190 feet tall. Luckily it had an elevator. At the top of the tower you could look out over the Texas Hill Country and see the rolling hills to the west. And then if you looked to the east you could see the flat landscape. It was such a strong visual of the power of nature. When the plates came back together the one plate rippled the other plate causing the Texas Hill Country to be formed.

After the tower was the Anti-Gravity house. It is a house built at an angle so it appears things are going up hill.

At the end were some picture taking funnies so of course we had to take advantage of those.

So we didn't get to go down to Brownsville, but we had a great time up in San Marcos and you would never have guess the day before the city was such down because of snow.

I came all the way to Texas for a snow day!

Friday morning dawned with a closing of Dave's school, the boys school and my work. In nine and a half years of working for the IRS in St. Louis I got one lousy snow day, despite the massive amount of snow and ice they received. Not even four months in Texas and I get a snow day. If I had known they would come so readily I would have insisted on moving here sooner. It was a sad cold day, the boys and I were supposed to head down to Brownsville to spend the day with my parents, but with the weather being so cold they had high tailed it to a house with an actual heater(aka Gilbert's house) and so we ended up staying in San Antonio. Which with the look of the roads was not a bad idea. Plus they closed the highways. My poor pansies which had been so pretty on New Years looked like they had seen the end. Hayden was quite excited about the snow and insisted on heading out to play in the skiff we received. He lasted about five minutes total. Turner didn't even want to try, not that I blame him. There really wasn't much in the way of snow, but it really was quite cold and there was a thin coating of ice on everything. As we had the boys home for the day and it was much to cold to head outside we built a bear cave in the dinning room. The boys had a great time hiding in the cave and having snacks and all kinds of adventures. We also dug deep into the toy box and found a couple of Hayden's radio controlled cars. The boys had the best time racing them around the kitchen floor. Turner just loved grabbing his by the big antenna on the back when it didn't go where he thought it should. After the bear cave and the R/C cars were played out we broke out the crayola window markers. I had been saving these for a special occasion and this seemed about as good as any. It was either that or I would have to put the boys outside in the cold for an extended period of time. I've decided the markers were a hit and I may have two Picasso's on my hand. There was one picture I swear was an abstract of Ben Franklin. I couldn't get a good picture of it to post so you'll have to trust me it was the spitting image of ole Ben. So all in all we had a good day together stuck inside. Luckily the it was only for the day or who knows what could have happened.

Leapfrog from Santa

For Christmas Hayden kept asking for a DS meaning a Nintendo DS. So Santa being the good Santa that he is ran right out and bought one. But then Santa realized there really aren't a whole lot of games out there for five year olds on a DS and the games and system are really kind of expensive for a five year old. So Santa in all his wisdom took the DS back and bought the Leapfrog Explorer instead. Not only was it cheaper (Santa is thrifty you know) but it was designed specifically for 4 to 7 year olds. Now in my humble opinion this has been the greatest present Santa could have bought. Hayden plays with this thing all the time. He even sometimes refers to it as his DS. Silly boy. But he has learned so much and I have seen such improvement in his letter recognition, printing, decision making skills and so much more. Santa made a great decision in choosing the Leapfrog over the DS.