San Antonio Day-Trip

Two weeks ago we went to San Antonio on a day-trip to get the final items necessary to finish our back patio expansion (by the way we expanded our patio - more on that to come).  But the only place which sold the "grouting" material which we needed for the flagstone was on the north side of San Antonio, and we were a couple bags short of finishing.  So kiddos and I packed it up, picked up Grandma, and then headed to San Antonio to pick up the material and make a fun trip out of it too.

The original plan was to go to the drive-thru safari zoo which was like one exit before the place we had to go to anyway.  But when Jake figured out that a drive-thru zoo is not the same as the Austin Zoo, and you can't necessarily feed goats there, and are supposed to just stay in the car, he decided we needed a better plan - we were half way there...

So mom, with her IPad and extensive knowledge of San Antonio, suggested some other places, and we finally landed on something which Jake found agreeable.

Picking the patio stuff up was easy, and then we went to Breckenridge Park and rode the train, fed ducks, and played on the playground.

Mama and Travis on the train

Jake and Travis on the train

Grandma and Jake on the train

The train was fun, it was a 3 mile loop (or something like that), and we got to scout out places to go play - one area we found was on the river near a playground, and we could feed ducks there - so we did.

Jake and Travis feeding ducks

A mama and daddy duck and all their baby duckies!!

Travis feeding more ducks (where he couldn't fall into the water by sitting on the wall like that first place)

We didn't stay at the playground long, so I didn't get any pictures of the kiddos there, but they slept all the way back to dropping off Grandma, and then went to bed a little early that night.  All in all, good day, and our patio got completed that evening - and we have been enjoying it every day since!

My little boy is growing up!

I swear, my little boy is just growing up too fast!  In the last 2 days, we have hit 2 major milestones, with no sign of stopping anytime soon.  I guess at some point this just starts happening without you even noticing that it is coming up - nothing like crawling or walking which you could see coming for days and weeks in advance.

So what are these 2 milestones you may ask?

  Well, Saturday during bath time Jake declared that he wanted to start showering by himself instead of taking baths with Travis.  So Sunday, I took down the fabric part of the shower curtain in the guest bath, got all his stuff together, and talked him through the proper way to shower without missing any parts, and with getting fully clean - dude was very good at it.

  And then today at the grocery store he declared that he doesn't want to ride in the cart anymore, he wants to walk with me.  He got a lovely lecture about the proper way to behave when not in the cart (not that he ever really behaved in the cart), and you know what - HE LISTENED, and was the perfect little boy walking all through the store for a full shopping trip.

So yeah, I guess he is turning more into a little man than the little boy that he has been. (Mama wipes away a tear)

And, because I don't figure a picture of a small boy in the shower is appropriate to share, here are pictures of his first baths when he was a newborn little guy coming close to 5 years ago now - my how time does fly.

My do-over day

If I could have a "do-over day", this is how this morning would have gone...

1. I would have gotten up when my alarm went off instead of hitting snooze, because the 20 or so minutes before the kiddos woke up for the day would have been really nice to have to myself.

2. I would have let Travis sleep just a little bit longer, maybe an extra 15 minutes would have made a difference in the way that his behavior turned out today.

3. I would have made Travis go potty within 10 minutes of removing his night-time diaper, maybe this would have saved my upholstered chair the indignity of being peed on.

4. I would have immediately removed the peed on chair cover and thrown it into the washing machine (they unzip apparently), and hopefully saved the underneath cushion from any wetness - it seems that there also is a slight water barrier to the cushion cover (score for future issues now that I know this).  I definitely would not have pulled out the steam vacuum to fix it, proceed to use the "tools" attachment to try to clean said cover while it was still on the seat, just to end up taking off the cover when my cleaning job wasn't doing much good.  This also would have avoided the floor getting soaked with pee water since the vacuum had a leak, the front of the vacuum breaking off when it was put back into the closet (oh goody), and crying little one who thought that the steam vacuum was too loud.  (On the bright side, even though the chair bottom very clearly says that the cushion covers are not intended to be removed and washed, it worked perfectly, and I plan to ignore the advice of chairs in the future - clearly I know better once I have my head on straight).

5. I would have packed water-bottles for the kids for the trip to the gym.  This would have made it so that no one was complaining about water on BOTH the drive there, and the drive back.

6. I would have asked Travis what he wanted for lunch instead of just giving him what I thought he should be eating.  Maybe this would have removed the struggle to get the kid to swallow, would have avoided all the crying, and the eventual gagging on the food he enjoyed chewing up but refused to swallow - which necessitated more laundry, and the cleaning of floors.

That is probably really all that I would have changed, I figure that amount of change in my morning might have made things more pleasant, and some of the mommy yelling due to compounding frustrations could have been avoided.


Things that I am glad that I did today:

1. Went to the gym and got in my workout class - I am always happier on days that I work-out (Just imagine what kind of scary-mommy I would be if I had missed my workout today!!)

2. Took the kids outside for a bit to color on the driveway with side-walk chalk.

3. Realized when I was getting too frustrated, and instead of screaming at the children, I sent them upstairs to play, and instead took out my aggressions by cleaning the house - vacuumed, mopped, cleaned and tidy now - which always puts me in a better mood.  And the kids got about an hour of play where they were not being told no.

Unfortunately that second list is only half the length of the first, but with a little luck, when the kids get up from quiet time things will go differently.

From Meh to Muah!

When we bought the house, we bought new "grown up" living room furniture - it included a sofa, love seat, 2 chairs, coffee table, and 2 side tables.  Sounds like it would be great doesn't it?  (It is really)

Notice the space between the sofa and love seat in the very far back corner?  There is a tiny side table located in that space (the space is like 4' x4') - this drove me completely nuts since the day that the furniture arrived.  I know, you think the trained designer in me would have planned better, but apparently I overlooked something.  So I started searching for a VERY large side table - did you know that those are REALLY hard to find?  It is like not everyone on earth has this same issue of 4' of wasted space between their furniture pieces...  odd huh?

So I looked, and looked, and looked, and came up with exactly - diddly squat.  Then, one day, out of the blue, I am perusing the internet (facebooking), and a post comes up with a 42" x 42" table on it.  So I immediately contact the person, go and look at the table, and bring it home (after some fanangling to get it into the car).

         Picture a fairly beat up table made of solid, sturdy wood, with scratches, crayon marks, and other stains on it - kind of a new teak color appearance to it.

(I spent like 30 minutes looking back through the neighborhood facebook posts trying to find the post which had an original picture of this table that I purchased off a neighbor, suffice it to say that either I can't remember how long it has been since I bought the table, or the post was removed since the table sold.  Who knows.)

After spending a LOT of time sanding, filling cracks, and sanding again - the table looked like this:

And again I am wishing I could find the original post because it looks so much better here than it did when I picked it up.

During the sanding process, I was in the driveway - mostly weekend mornings, and I got comments from 2 flanking neighbors that I was making them "look bad" with my over ambitiousness to refinish a table in my spare time.  I know, I am too ambitious, sorry that your husbands were witness to my crazy side!!  Mine pretty much thought I was crazy until I was done with the project, but now he understands.  (Well, he probably still thinks I am crazy, just not for this reason anymore).

Anyway, one coat of stain, and the table began to take on the life that I knew was hidden deep in there somewhere.

Addition of a second (darker stain) sponged on in areas to make it look more like the pieces we already had, and 2 coats of polyurethane (3 on top), and the table was done.

Finished product in its space.  And it feels so much better.

Probably need to cut 2" off the legs, it is a little tall, but hey, it is there, it fills the space, and the kids are no longer running around behind the sofas unplugging things!!!  And my living room is back to being my happy space instead of my "man I wish I had a table that fit" space.

Welcome Summer

 The last day of school for these 2 little guys was yesterday and I am already regretting not signing them up for full time summer school, and we are looking forward to our summer fun!  What all has changed for these little guys in the months between the first and last days of school you ask???...

First day of School

Last day of School

Travis:

 - 2 3/4" inches taller (according to his school stats)

 - size up in shirts, shorts and shoes

 - Gone from simple words to make needs met, to full on sentences and conversations

 - Has friends

 - Is working on potty training (as mommy bashes her head against walls due to how well it is going)

 - Is sleeping in a big boy bed

 - Can happily spend a few hours away from Mommy

Jake:

 - Pretty sure he grew, but I didn't get an end of year comparison for him, so we'll just go with - he is still taller than Travis (for now)

 - About to out grow his shoes, but the darn skinny thing doesn't seem to be putting on any width in the waist, so his shirts and shorts are all still same size as they were

 - Has started excessive storytelling, with stories that are very involved, always start with "when Travis and I were hunting", and normally last about 5 minutes

 - I am able to drop him off for school and not have him cling to me anymore (Summer don't you dare ruin this for me, I will not go back to the way things were come Fall)

 - Has lots more friends

 - Is helping with his own laundry, and with cleaning around the house

Now obviously not all of these changes are directly accredited to schooling, but all of these "life improvements" did happen during the course of a school year.

Happy Summer Everyone - now off to Google "How to keep your kids from driving you crazy during the summer".

Swimming lessons

I knew it had been a while since I had gotten on here, but I honestly didn't realize that it had been nearly a month - oops.  Well we have been building a patio expansion in our backyard, and the kiddos have started swimming lessons, and are about to finish up the school year.  We also have been doing potty-training, so I guess that we have been pretty busy.  What has really kept me away though is that we started watching LOST on Netflix, and that has kind of sucked us in and adjusted what I am spending my free evening time doing...

So, swimming lessons.  The kids started swimming lessons 3 weeks ago.

They were really excited about their first swimming lesson, watching the classes before - Jake was all "I'm going to swim across the whole pool" (Ha, right kid - not on first lesson, but okay).  Then we got into the pool, and it went more like this:

Travis clung to my neck and basically screamed for 30 minutes, and Jake looked at his teacher like she was some space alien for the first 15 minutes before he started thinking about listening to her.  It was stressful to say the least.

And yet, we went back for more...

Week 2 went marginally better, and Jake listened the entire time (I have no photos and really don't know how well he did because I was still in the water with Travis).  Travis only screamed half the time though, and I did manage to get him to turn around and cling to me differently, and about half participate in most of the activities.  So we called it a win.

3 weeks in, and it is going much better than week 1 did, still not perfect, but hey who needs perfection (other than me) - Jake has become a pro at holding his breath and ducking his head in the water, and Travis seems to cooperate better when Blake is in the water with him instead of me (probably because my mothering instincts make it so that I can't force him to uncling from me, and Blake somehow can).

Jake with his face under water, and his feet in the air.  (He has to master 5 seconds of his face and ears in the water before he can move on to the next lesson task - I think he is almost there)

Okay, not the best example of unclinging, but if I were in the water, the feet would be wrapped around me too instead of out and kicking like he was supposed to be doing.  And of course the camera battery died when they started jumping off the wall into parent's arms - that was adorable.

So, thus far, we have survived swimming lessons, and Travis has only once decided that since we are doing swimming lessons, that must mean he can breathe while underwater - yeah, he was not correct about that one (and luckily it was in the evening during bath time, and not at the pool with witnesses, it also was not realized by him in a scary way - he was sitting in the bath, stuck his face in the water, and came up sputtering - no near drowning incident, so don't you worry).

Making things harder for myself

I have been known on occasion to be overly ambitious about making things - typically food things, which are typically for parties - most typically birthday parties.  I was really proud of myself for not doing that this year for Travis's birthday party - bought the sandwiches and other food, and only made the cake - as opposed to last year when I made everything - cake, BBQ sliders, fudge, mac-n-cheese bites, chocolate dipped pretzels, etc., and I think spent like 3 days on it...  anyway - this isn't actually about birthday party food this time.

This time, I signed up to bring cookies for the boys class Easter parties at school.  Figured we would make and decorate cute cookies, and it would be all good.  But then, on Monday, I found these little gems at HEB...

If you can't tell, they are 3D cookie cutters - which make what look like adorable cookies from the pictures which were on the packaging (these are photos of the photos on the packaging)

Cute huh?  I should have known since they looked so pretty that it would be HIGHLY time consuming, but I didn't really thing of that, and I was ridiculous enough to actually purchase them... so yesterday, we made cookies.  It said the recipe made approx. 2 doz., so we made 1 1/2 x the recipe so that we would be certain to have 2 doz. for school since I needed 1 dozen per class.  We ended up with 41 cookies total - so I would say that worked out pretty well.  Leftovers will be for Easter Dinner Dessert - so watch out family coming to Easter dinner on Sunday!

They stack pretty well, and at this point look exactly like the ones in the photo ad!! (I swear 41, the back 3 are stacked 7 high, and the front 4 stacked 5 high - see I can count)

They did start to get stuck in the cookie cutters though, and if you look really closely at the upside-down flower pot cookie, you can see my fingernail impressions from where I had to push the cookie out of the cutter - oh well though.  

Now, I only purchased 3 colors of decorator icing, figuring one for me, one for Jake, one for Travis - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.  Once I started on the cookies I decided that if I gave over colors to the boys, it would just be a disaster and one of them, if not both of them would start drinking from the icing containers like they were juice boxes (yeah, seriously they would have).  Or, and also likely to have happened in addition to scenario #1 - they would have had an icing war-paint party, and be permanently stained in bright colors...  So instead, I decorated all the cookies during nap time.

Then, after the kiddos went to bed, I assembled them into the 3D designs that the photos on the packaging showed.  Only, they didn't really want to stand up all that well on their own initially, so I had to use icing to "glue" them together, and had to use spice containers from the pantry to prop them up on all sides while they dried.  They did end up cute though.

Now, if I had green and blue in addition to the colors I did obtain (and if the icing would have mixed a bit more evenly before I started applying it initially), I think I could have made them even cuter, but they ended up pretty cool, and the boys teachers were highly impressed.

Now, for the admitting that I made this way harder than it needed to be - making dough, rolling it out, pressing and baking the cookies took approx. 2 hours all in.  Icing the cookies took about 1 1/2 hours.  Assembling the cookies took about 1 hour.  So, this was a 4 1/2 hour project - which was spread throughout the day, which I spent more $ on than I would have if I had just bought pre-made cookies from the store, or made (probably tastier) from scratch NORMAL cookies.  Oye-vey - I guess I really will never learn... or maybe I will, but more likely I won't.