2012 Week 17

This week saw the last few days of Gma Jackson's visit, which were kind of low key.  The kids went off to school as usual, and Sam and his mom were able to spend a day out and about together on Monday, leaving me at home doing my usual Monday catch up/marathon.  Tuesday saw Sam back and work, and the two of us girls left at home pulling out hairbow making supplies.  And Wednesday was the trip to the airport.  It was a lot of fun to have Gma here for a visit but there always comes a time when we have to go back to regular life.  By the way, Tyler talked the ENTIRE ride to and from the airport.  Non-stop.  That kid has turned into quite the chatterbox!

Thursday saw me running errands and picking up an armful of plants for the yard (finally - perfectionism strikes again and it took me forever to commit to what I wanted to add to the yard this year).  The weather was up and down all day so I didn't get around to planting anything until the kids were home.  The kids were quite the little "helpers."  (If you are a parent you know what I mean - it always requires lots more time and patience when doing anything with kids helping out)  And that completes my spring yard work - woohoo!  Now I can sit back and just watch it all grow (fingers crossed the grass in the back yard kicks it in gear soon!)

We were out of energy this weekend.  Skipped the Fort Bragg Fair (too expensive).  Skipped the Dogwood Festival (didn't sound like our thing). Didn't want to make the drive to the zoo.  So instead we loaded the kids in the car for a mini shopping trip (and dropped off the rest of the stack for Goodwill - yay!  It had been taking up space in the garage since January), a movie, and out to dinner. Followed of course by a stop at the grocery store.  Family outings on the weekend rarely end without a trip to stock up for the week.
Kaitlyn was happy to hit a little milestone of her own this weekend.  It has been driving her crazy that a lot of her friends have made the transition to riding in the car without a booster seat and she was of course wanting to do the same.  She's just always been our tiny little girl and with the latest rules we figured she'd be stuck in a car seat until she was married :)  We did our research though, and sure enough she's old enough and when we looked at how far her legs were dangling off the booster well...we gave in.  I can't believe our little girl is getting so big!  It completely made her day.  When we had our usual bedtime conversation about the best thing of her day it wasn't the movie or eating out, it was getting rid of the booster seat that topped her list.

2012 Week 16

All kinds of things going on this week:

Awards assembly for Kate - Bookworm (reading) award and Music award

Grandma Jackson came for a visit!  The kids were very excited to see her.  The first night they were bouncing off the walls, talking up a storm, and cuddling nonstop.  Tyler in particular couldn't get enough and spent a lot of time (the whole visit) hugging on her and telling her "I just can't stop lovng you."
On of Sam's requests during her visit was home made chicken noodle soup with mashed potatoes.  Kaitlyn was happy to have some one on one time learning how to make the noodles.

Of course a trip to the beach was in order.  The silly weather had us concerned as we had a lot of clouds and cooler temps this week.  It was pretty overcast when we left in the morning, but Friday was still the best weather prediction.  Luckily the sun came out shortly after we arrived at the beach and the kids were able to change into their suits and play in the water.

On Saturday we went to the Airborne Museum.  It was pretty cool, but I'm afraid the kids wanted to rush through it (as usual).

 They were however, excited to explore the new Veteran's Memorial Park nearby.  Tyler had spotted the water wall from the road and insisted that we check it out.

Sunday we explored the Natural Science Museum in Raleigh (no photos that day).  It just happened to be the grand opening weekend for their new wing, which was cool but very crowded.  Tyler's opinion of the outing?  "Awesome.  And boring."  (haha)  The kids love museums and learning new things, but they like to go through them at warp speed and get annoyed at us constantly stopping to read the information.
We finished up the day by wandering around the (big) mall and having dinner at Cheesecake Factory.  mmmm

2012 Week 15

View out the front window first thing most mornings lately:  Sam starting up the motorcycle.  More than once this week when he fires it up, Tyler (who presumably was still asleep) hops out of bed and makes a beeline out the front door to give his dad a hug before he leaves for the day.  It's really cute.

Spring Break!  With Sam working hard at the base (since more than one of his coworkers was out for their own spring break, plus drill weeked) the kids and I were on our own for entertainment this week.  Kate and Ty were happy to spend a lot of their time outside playing with friends.  And we worked in a few fun outings. 
Strawberry picking with the Grach family.  I knew Kaitlyn would love it and thought Ty would be ok with it and was suprised by exactly how much they enjoyed it.  Kaitlyn stuck to her own little section and busily picked and picked, filling more of the buckets than the rest of us.  Tyler ran up and down picking berries now and then as he went and having a lot of fun.  The kids wouldn't let us leave until we had filled everyone's buckets to overflowing and we ended up with 12 pounds of strawberries!  Of course then we had a lot of fun eating them plain and trying a few new recipes like strawberry turnovers and fruit leather.  Kaitlyn LOVES strawberries and probably ate at least 5 pounds all by herself.

Grandma and Grandpa Marchant sent kites for Easter so we took them out one afternoon.  Once Tyler's was in the sky he had very little trouble keeping it up.  In fact, he complained that he couldn't get it down!  Kaitlyn was working on flying hers all on her own and has almost mastered it.

On Friday a whole group of our neighbors/friends met up at the small children's museum in Fayetteville.  The building is pretty much just one big center for Playing Pretend, with different sections for everything from a grocery store and hospital to a theater stage and a TV newscaster's desk.

When the kids had enough of the museum we went to the park for a picnic lunch and a little play time. 

2012 Week 14

Easter week - lots of fun going on!  Tyler's class had a fun little easter egg hunt on Thursday.  I was able to go help hide the eggs so I could watch all the fun.

Friday marked the beginning of Spring Break, and as if the week ahead wasn't enough time off, the kids only had half day at school.

Saturday was a lot of fun.  We took the kids bowling in the morning and as usual had a fun time at that.  Neither Sam and I were bowling well at all so the scores were pretty close together the whole time.  I did manage to edge him out and win the game (probably the first time I've topped his score bowling).  The snowcone stand next to the bowling alley was open, so after grabbing a quick lunch and doing some shopping we went back and had snowcones. 

The kids have been wanting to roast marshmallows for a couple weeks now and the weather and the timing finally worked out.  So put the fire pit to work for the first time this year and dinner was hot dogs and marshmallows.

And as our tradition is to color eggs on the day before Easter, we also did that on Saturday.  This year we used a paint roller kit instead of the dye.  The kids really liked it and got pretty creative with their eggs.

Easter day was a great day as well.  Not as busy as the day before, but still a lot of fun.  The kids went through their baskets first thing in the morning.  Breakfast was wonderful home made cinnamon rolls (Sam's a great cook when he has the time and inclination), and while those were cooking the kids entertained themselves with the art kits from their baskets.

It was still a little chilly when we went outside to hunt eggs, but that didn't detract from the fun at all.  The kids got a lot of great stuff, including new balls (soccer ball for Kate, basketball for Ty), a Hello Kitty watch for Kaitlyn, and some Kinex monster trucks for Tyler.  And of course plenty of candy and other fun items.  Some of Tyler's eggs held new darts for his Nerf gun and we had a lot of fun having shooting contests (using the windows as our targets) multiple times during the day.

2012 Week 13

 Spring, spring, spring spring, SPRING!  Love it!  It's hard to stay inside while the sun is shining, and the very frequent rain storms are frustrating because we're itching to get outside again.  And the more things start growing, the more we wanted to get started on the spring yard work.  We did manage to work in the time tackle most of it this week (among our regular duties and those pesky rain storms).  Tyler was fascinated by the lawn mowing I guess.  He followed Sam around the entire front yard as he mowed.  It was pretty funny.
On top of the lawn mowing, fertilizing, overseeding in the back yard (oh how I hope that grass will start growing - it's yucky back there!), and treating for bugs we also extended a couple of the flower beds and I re-stained the back deck.

2012 Week 12

This week:

Kaitlyn had group photos at dance class.  Not my favorite thing to do, getting Kaitlyn all dressed up just to spend more than an hour watching the chaos for overpriced photos I had no intention of buying.  But Kaitlyn did look cute, and getting ready for the recital will be much easier now that we've had practice.

Tyler and I got a little silly the other day.  I blasted fun music and we had a Nerf gun fight.  But neither one of us actually wanted to get hit by the darts so we had our fight with the glass door of the dining room in between us.  Ty thought that made it extra fun. 

I have started in on the Spring Cleaning around here, oh boy (that's sarcasm, in case you were wondering).  Both kids were home on the day I decided to tackle the corner cupboard that houses all the small appliances and I told them to go outside and play.  Kaitlyn has spent almost all her free time outside, usually with friends but sometimes just to read or draw on the porch and she happily went off to play.  Tyler, however, told me "I won't annoy you.  I want to help!"  And spotting the crumbs left behind by the toaster he drug out the vacuum himself and started in on the cupboard while I wiped down the appliances.

And yes, those are shorts he is wearing.  It's been beautiful weather here - lots of rain but temps seem to hover in the 70s and 80s and we've changed out all our winter stuff for short sleeves, shorts, and flip flops.

Also this week Tyler and I made a quick trip to Audrey's house - so fun!  She had been telling me about these wonderful consignment sales they had and two of them were back to back.  So Sam managed to get the day off early on Thursday so he could be there when Kate got home (he's great sometimes - he even had night fire and could easily have told me it was a bad time) so after dropping Kaitlyn off at school we got on the road.  And since I had a stack of toys just sitting in the garage waiting for me to do something with them, I was able to consign some to one of the sales so we could go to the presale together Thursday night.  Once we got to Audrey's we dropped off the sale stuff then took the kids to the park to play until lunch time.  We had a lot of fun hanging out and the boys had tons of fun playing together.  Audrey got a babysitter that night so we could go to the presale without kids, then out to dinner on our own.  The next day we hit the second sale and did some more hanging out until it was time for us to leave.  In the end I made $91 from the stuff I sold - more than I expected!  And Tyler is now totally set up for clothing this summer, including an extra swimming suit and sandals.  Kaitlyn is pretty close to being all set too.  And I even picked up some fun surprises for Easter.

Kaitlyn and Sam had their own brand of fun while we were gone and went out to dinner and spent some quality time together.  Of course having been at Audrey's on Friday I didn't get my usual cleaning done.  Sam and the kids pitched in first thing Saturday morning while I did my workout, then I finished scrubbing the bathrooms and helped them put the finishing touches on their rooms and the playroom.
We found these notes outside our bedroom door later that day.  Folded into paper airplanes, as many of their notes tend to be lately.  Kaitlyn is such a sweetie, as I'm pretty sure it was her idea, and obviously she transcribed Tyler's note for him.

2012 Week 11

St Patrick's Day this week.  Tyler was excited to have a visit from a leprechan in his classroom on Friday.  And of course a leprechan or two payed us a visit on the 17th, leaving behind a treasure hunt for the kids, some treats, and a some sign of just how silly those leprechans can be!