My new toy

Mike surprised me yesterday with this. I've been looking at these devices for a few weeks and even mentioned that it would be a good Mothers Day or birthday gift!

Stay tuned for some short video clips here on the blog and if you're on the email list..watch out!

Spring Break 2011

Spring break comes quite early in North Texas. The weather has been gorgeous and we decided to take a few days and go to one of our favorite places, Glen Rose. We once again visited Fossil Rim Wildlife Center. This was the highlight of our trip; this is one of Lauren's favorite places and I think the boys now agree.



Lauren and Logan looking cool!














The boys were able to be out of their carseats and roam the van during our 5.5 hour drive thru the park. We can usually drive thru the park at about 2 hours, but not on spring break!








Not a whole lot of pictures of the different types of deer we saw in the first part of the park.
Here are the kids at the picnic table looking like they are behaving. We were at the lookout area for about an hour and a half, most of that time waiting for our lunch.













We pile back into the car and wait in line to see our favs...the zebras and giraffes. And we wait......and wait. What usually takes about 10 minutes took us 90 minutes. All the kids feel asleep almost immediately and I was a little disappointed that they wouldn't get to see the animals.

But as luck would have it, they all woke up as we were 3 cars back from the giraffes.










Here is Ian feeding the giraffe.















We stayed over night in Glen Rose and the next morning we started out at Dinosaur Valley State Park. This park is known to have 113 million year old Dinosaur Tracks in the Paluxy River bed. We got caught up with a couple of the park rangers who heard we had triplets. One by one they came to the car to check out the family. Once we got past the entrance to the park, we saw some dinosaurs and a gift shop (fun for whole family).










































Ian on another rock climbing expedition at the park. (and notice the paper in his hands - that boy won't put it down for anything)













This is one of the sites that you can see the dinosaur tracks in the river bed. We parked and walked down some stairs to get to the side of the river. Then we have to step over about 8 large, flat rocks to get to this area. Mike and Lauren are looking at the tracks, behind them is more of the river.









Here is one of the tracks. I would have taken more, but as I was taking some pictures I heard "sploosh".











This is the end of the picture show of our vacation in Glen Rose. Right after I heard the sploosh, I ran over and saw Ian in the river (fully clothed). Mike was right there and had taken off his socks and shoes so he could put his feet in the water. He took three steps in and lost his balance and blammo he was soaked from head to toe. Mom here wasn't too happy since he was crying and no one had been listening to me all morning, so I picked him up and headed to the car. Stepping over those large flat rocks with a flailing kid was a little nerve wracking. Needless to say, Ian rode home with nothing but a diaper!

On our way home we attempted to go to the Fort Worth Zoo, but it was a mad house. Parking was nearly impossible and we just decided that we will go another day. We headed home and called it a week!

School is back in session and we are getting back to normal mode (whatever that is).

Potty training is slow and painful. Ian wore underwear all day yesterday, 4 accidents and no successes on the potty. He refused to put on underwear this morning so I moved on to Travis. No accidents this morning and no successes on the potty- he either is going to fill that diaper during his nap or going to explode!

**so sorry for the formatting issue on this post. Blogger is doing some weird shit and I don't have the time nor the patience to figure it out!

Student of the Month (February 2011)

Once again, Lauren has been chosen for Student of the Month. She has gotten this award at some time during the year for the past three years! The awards were to be given out in February but it got canceled when we had the ice/snow storm in the early part of February.

I got my good friend, Tawni, to babysit the boys while I took Lauren to the school so she and the other students could get their awards from the principal/asst principal.

The Dora dance

I'm late on this weekly post and although I have some pics from last week, I'm not motivated to upload them. So instead, I just spent 20 minutes uploading and editing a video to post here. (yeah I know it makes no sense).

This video has been on my mind to edit and send to family, so instead I'm going to kill two birds with one stone and do a blog post and all the family can see it! I'm beginning to see the intelligence in my thinking ;-)




Please disregard the saggy diaper on Travis and the giggling in the background!

Pics from this week

On Sunday we had a little get together with Mike's family to celebrate Lauren's 11th birthday. I still wasn't feeling my best but I pulled it off. Lauren wanted a different kind of cake this year....a chocolate chip cookie cake. I decided that I could bake it myself and I did. It turned out pretty dang good if I say so myself. I made my buttercream icing for the decoration.

































Uncle Gary and Aunt Melisa's gift came in the mail for the boys on Thursday. I made the mistake of unwrapping it for them and then I was on the hook to put it together.
It first started off with a temper tantrum (not from me)

















Then I finally got it together after about an hour...I had sooo much help!

















And to end this post with some hope for me...boys in underwear! I'm not potty training the boys very seriously at this point, but Ian had a diaper change before bed last night and had asked to wear underwear!! By all means....then all the boys wanted underwear. Phase 1 completed. Travis and Ian wore underwear this morning and both had accidents (totally expected) even after asking a million times if they had to go potty and sitting on the potty just as many times. So what I learned today is that I think I'm going to have to potty train one at a time or have two other people to help so that we can have 1:1 odds. There is no way that I can potty train all three by myself.

Ian getting a little crazy

My sweet Valentines

Here is another week where I'm down to the wire on my weekly post. It's been a rough week. Mike was on a business trip in San Antonio and while I wasn't feeling my best when he left, I got much worse. I encouraged him to stay and finish his trip, but he insisted on coming home a day early. I'm so glad he did. I was pretty much incapacitated by Wednesday evening. Today, I'm not 100% but am pretty dang close as I baked a cookie cake and wrapped up three racks of ribs for marinating.

On Friday, Ms. Lauren turned 11. She is an amazing young lady. Mike has been doing everything this week and got to spend a little more time with Lauren. It's been good for both of them.






















A couple weeks ago we had the kids pictures done by Jennifer Mazy. Of course, there is usually one boy that is not wanting his picture taken and this time it was Travis, he has only one individual picture and he isn't even looking at the camera. But we got some pretty cute group shots.






Logan, Travis and Ian

























Until next week...

Ice daze

This week has been one of the weirdest ones since I've lived in Texas. Early Tuesday morning it began to sleet and continued to sleet apparently for many hours. When the boys woke us up at about 6 a.m., everything was covered in a couple of inches of ice.

This is our alley. I couldn't get out of the door to take a picture of the road (ok I could have, but remember is was really cold).













As expected there was no school for Lauren on Tuesday. There was no playing outside as it was too cold; about low 20's. (Now remember my last post where we were wearing shorts...um yeah that was how the weekend was).
Wednesday wasn't any better and again no school. Thursday was a little different, again no school, but the forecast was snow. And they were right...ok they were right about snow. They predicted 1-3 inches....we got about 4-5 inches ON TOP OF THE 2 INCHES OF ICE! Dallas is not equipped for this type of weather and we are hosting the Superbowl this weekend but that is a whole different story. At this point we have not hit above 30 degrees since Monday evening and I'm thankful that I have two fully stocked fridges/freezers.

So what do we do to keep ourselves busy while stuck inside for 4 DAYS???!!
We have our first hot chocolate!

















We take pictures of the snow.

















We play Cowboys!

















We put laundry bags on our heads and run around the house!


















































We play with Sissy!

















We play with playdough!

















Lauren told me about this "big hill" they were going to slide down! Gotta love my little city girl!

















And lastly, we have a sleepover with our very bestest friend and play games!

















Today was in the high 40's. Most of the snow and ice are gone and we made out way out of the house and to the mall...with everyone else! I would love to say that this weather is coming to an end, but as Lauren's teacher has pointed out to me this afternoon, we are expected to get more snow tomorrow and again on Wednesday (100% coverage). Snow I can somewhat handle, ice I cannot!
And I'm sure you're noticing that there are no pictures of the boys outside. Yes, I kept my boys inside and out of the freezing temps this go around. They refuse to keep their mittens on and even if their hands are cold and wet, they continue to play and will kick and scream to stay outside! I have learned to just "not go there"! Now if it snows this week I may have to bundle them up.....maybe!