the gheebina is growing up

Delaney has a personality that is so different than my other kids (though certain parts are just like me, the horror!).  Sometimes I feel like dealing with her is like trying to catch a butterfly.  She has taught me so much about what's really important in life, and, what's really not that important after all.  I am blessed to be her mother.
{gheebina was her nickname as a baby -- blame her father}

more broccoli!

A happy little muffin harvested more broccoli and some cauliflower yesterday . . . yum!

pardon the dust

I'm doing a little experimenting around here to figure out finally whether to keep a blog on Typepad or Blogger. It will look funky for awhile, so be aware!

Mother's Day 2010

We had a quick, fun little trip down to see my mom & Don this weekend. We had a great day at the beach on Saturday -- very creature-laden, to my kids' delight -- and then I took the kids to see How to Train a Dragon in 3D, which we all liked. We did some Chili's takeout for dinner, did church on Sunday, then it was time to come home. Don took a picture of our crew after church:

It was a good time. I have been blessed with a great family and especially kids that I love to pieces.

creatures

I don't think I ever posted about how we have once again found ourselves with reptiles and amphibians in our domicile.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, we were gifted a small turtle by our non-English-speaking cleaning lady, who had figured out that we had a house full of creature-loving kids. We already owned a tree frog. Both of those will ensure that you have to also keep live crickets as pets in order to properly feed the aforementioned creatures. So it seemed like quite a production. We also had a cat and a hamster. Yes, I KNOW.
Anyway, we were gearing up to take our extended vacation to California, so we had to start farming out the pets. One of our friends already had a massive aquarium set up with fish and frogs, and she loved turtles, so we arranged for her to take our turtle and frog. The day before we were going to take the pets to her, my kids found another small turtle in our yard, so she won the jackpot and got TWO turtles and a frog.
Fast forward to about a month ago, when I got a call from this same friend who was now getting ready to move herself. She still had the turtles, but now instead of a tree frog, she had an African clawed frog.
So . . .
Junior and Kimmy are back.

And now we also have Big Bertha.

Big Bertha is kinda creepy-lookin, I think. And sometimes she stares at me while I'm on the computer. But I'm getting used to her. It is fun to watch her eat guppies, so I put up with her. It's totally Animal Kingdom in this house, I tell ya.
Well, we're gonna take off to my old stompin grounds to visit Mee Mee for Mother's Day this weekend, and get in a little beach action while we're at it. See you next week!

I bet our neighbors think we're weird

What do ya bet?

{the pregnant kitties and their brother were chasing a lizard to catch it}

more campout pics

The kids had a lot of fun camping and it especially provided some great sibling bonding time. We did actually discover, however, that Sadie is NOT a fan of the camping per se as much as just hangin out outside. I think she would prefer to head back to a hotel room in the evenings (and I can see her point!). Ava on the other hand loved all of it and as soon as we were home she was already begging to "go camping again tomorrow!"
The river was a bit cold, but they got used to it and were river rats for 3 days!






(Amazingly enough, this picture was not posed, they were genuinely happy to be playing together!)

ward campout 2010

"If there is a design in this world in which we live, there must be a Designer. Who can behold the many wonders of the universe without believing that there is a design for all mankind? Who can doubt that there is a Designer?"

--- Thomas S. Monson

We did a 3-day/2-night camping trip with our church group this weekend to Pedernales Falls State Park. It was mostly wonderful, which is all you can ask for when you camp with four kids. ;-) More tomorrow, right now it's time for some post-campout manicures before church!

dance competitions

One of the things keeping us busy lately is DANCE. These two had dance competitions the last two weekends, though we were so lucky that they were nearby so we at least didn't have to travel to attend. However, it is very busy between keeping up with which performance is next, running backstage to change costumes/hair/makeup/shoes/etc, waiting for awards, and fitting in all of the other stuff you normally do on the weekend and the other kids' activities. Both girls did very well. They have worked hard this year and it has paid off!

Delaney's team will attend a national competition in Galveston this summer and they are very excited about it, so the work is not done yet!

Josh in Sculpey

Had a little blog break last week, oops! It was a very busy week and I'll tell you more about that tomorrow. Here is Josh with a "self-portrait" sculpture he did for his art class. Only 27 more days of school for him this year before summer break! He takes the state standardized tests tomorrow and the next day, then we're gonna take the last two days this week off to go camping with our church group. The K12 virtual academy has worked really well for him this year and we have already registered him again for next school year (7th grade). I still feel like it brings together some of the best things about public school and homeschooling.

I didn't take a picture of the part where he added a LEGO gun to this guy and had him shootin' everything up. :-p Boys.

broccoli

Ava owns the two broccoli plants in our garden this year, and when one of them grew enough she just couldn't take it anymore and begged me to let her eat it with her lunch! I was lucky enough to get a little sample and I can verify that it was homegrown good!

Can you tell she likes a little broccoli with her Ranch?

picnic at the park

Last Saturday we ran around to various activities in the morning and then busted our booties in the yard the rest of the day. We figured after all the work, we deserved a picnic in the park with the cousins. It was a nice way to relax and let the kids run themselves ragged so we could take them home, clean them up and put them to bed! My kids actually got to stay up later than usual and watch a movie with Ben's kids, waiting for their parents to come home from a friend's wedding.

T-ball man

Logan would REALLY like you to know that he got a new T-shirt and hat on Saturday! And oh yeah, he played T-ball, too. :-D He explained his new shirt to me several times and then said, "Tia, you should take a picture of me with my new shirt and hat!!" So I did as instructed.

Here are a few more hooligans, too:

chalk + cement = happiness

During our stay-at-home sickfest Spring Break I did a run to Target and came home with new sidewalk chalk and sidewalk paint. Everyone was very happy! We are enjoying the nice, wide, long driveway at our new house. A week or so later we tried painting the sidewalk with watered-down acrylic paint and discovered that it doesn't quite wash off like Crayola's sidewalk paint does. ;-)

one of these things is not like the other

As most of you are aware, much of our life right now revolves around dance, with three girls in dance class or on a dance team. This is from a community performance that Sadie did a couple of weeks ago. You can see that she wasn't wearing her tap shoes -- it was just a few days after she got her cast off her broken heel. Her foot is still pretty stiff and it is not totally back to normal yet, but it is steadily improving. She is still as accident prone as ever, though, so it feels like that kid is always recovering from some sort of ailment!

file this away -- the pink party

Delaney and Sadie have birthdays in the same week, so thus far we have been throwing joint birthday parties for them, mostly for the convenience of family members who would want to attend. They have already been talking about their next party, even though it is at the end of January. It has been decided that it will be a pink party -- EVERYTHING will be pink. So it's a good thing I came across this tonight (while I'm waiting for Flickr to upload my bajillion pix) -- can you even believe all the awesome goodies at this party??!