More signs of Spring

Baby Praying Mantis

Grapefruit Anyone?

Happy Birthday!

It was my Mom's birthday on Friday, the 18th.  I called her in the morning to see if she'd like to have lunch at this really neat place in town.  While I was talking to her I heard some other noise in the background that sounded like a little kid.  Turns out my sister flew in from Dallas with her two boys to surprise my Mom for her birthday. 

So, all eleven of us went to have a fabulous lunch at "The Farm".

The Gang minus dh and me (I'm taking the picture)


Grandma and Grandpa w/ 7 of their 17 grandchildren

Happy Birthday Mom!  We love you and enjoyed spending the day with you. :)

Blimp

The Goodyear Blimp was in town a week ago.  I remember seeing the Goodyear blimp all the time growing up.  It's "home" was just out of town.  Those days are long gone and now we only see the Goodyear Blimp occassionally. 

My oldest has been begging (bugging) me to post these pictures, so here ya go. :)

Entry 2 for today

My girls have created another land in our side yard.  Right now, it's the Land of Camila.  The characters in Camila change, depending on what toy they can find and that their little brother hasn't taken away.  The other day I gave A. some small figurines of Jamestown and the Powhattan Indian tribe.  They got right to work creating another world with these new figures.

Unfortunately, this rendition of Camila disappeared very much like Jamestown.  The demiss of this installment of Camila was at the hands of Giants, aka the preschool aged siblings of the girls from our Keepers meeting this past Friday.   At least this land was preserved in pictures before the destruction. LOL

I love how creative they are and by being home they have the time to let their imaginations soar.

Thank you Lord for allowing me this precious time with my children. 

A Day at the Park

My kids have been asking to go to the park for some time.  On Thursday I told them we need to get all of our schooling done and the house cleaned up for our Keepers meeting the next day, then we'd go to the park.  My oldest had already finished her school for the week, so she got busy and cleaned the whole house while I finished up school with her siblings.  Everything was done by that evening so I told them that we'd go to the park after breakfast on Friday morning.  They were very happy and very excited.  Thank you Sweet Pea for being so diligent and getting everything done.  I appreciate all your hard work.

We decided to go to a new park.  Well, the parks not new but it was new to us.  This park has a small water park section that the kids had fun climbing around.  The slide would be a lot more fun with water in it, but the kids still managed to scoot down on their bottoms. LOL

My little guy climbing up the water slide (sans water)

Wrestling the Alligator

A. Taking a closer look at the Alligators mouth

Another portion of the water park had a "boat" complete w/ wheel and periscope.  My 4 yo loved this area, he could play Pirate!

The park also had regular playground equipment that the kids enjoyed playing on as well.

This was the best upclose action shot I could get of R. swinging.  I did have quite a few of just the blue poles though thanks to the delay. LOL

J. Swinging like a big boy.  Hold on!


You know how some curly slides are kindof slow and disappointing?  This one wasn't!  Whoosh, down you go.

Every playground needs at least one piece of climbing equipment that makes a mother *gulp*, smile and say "That's great, let me take your picture."  Knowing that even though it's scary to see them STANDING on the climbing equipment, it's actually good for them in so many ways.  I just have to remember all the crazy things I did on bars and playground equipment as a child and snap the picture.

Our outing wouldn't be complete w/o a little bit of nature study.  I snapped some pictures of a few of the trees that were representative of what was in the park.   We looked them up to see what their names were, beyond "palm" and "pine" tree. LOL  Anyone want to venture a guess as to what these trees are?

close up of the leaves from the above tree.


Closer image of the above tree (different tree, same type)

Overall, this park was fun but it's not one I'd be returning to unless someone wanted to meet us here.  The play equipment was to old for my little guy to really enjoy (or for me to really relax) and the cave in the water slide area smells like someone (or animal I hope) uses it as their bathroom.

We had a lot of fun spending the morning at the park and made it home in time to grab some lunch, pick up and await all their friends from Keepers.  I told the kids that if we can have our schoolwork done by Thursday, something I strive to do anyways, and the house picked up, we'll go explore different parks every Friday morning.  They were very excited.