Life At The Circus

When my little man sets his heart on something, you better watch out.  Because he will hold on tight with his 5 year old death grip on life! His preschool had an art festival last week.  It was the single best fundraising event I have ever attended.  Parents paid a $10 admission per child and the kids got to engage in numerous, fun, messy, outside art projects.  It was a glorious way to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon.   During the art fest their was to be an auction for some items the children’s classes had made previous weeks in art class. My son came home about a month ago all excited about a shelf his class had painted that he wanted to save up and buy to store his Spiderman stuff.  I told him he’d have to save his money and we could try, but that he might not win.  A few weeks went by and he was at Pizza Hut with his Daddy looking at the little vending machines where you put a quarter in and out pops a 5 cent chocking hazard   ...

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Not sure how many of you noticed my new little feature on my side bar.  But over on the right I have a widget (thanks to my tech support hubby) which links each day to the post I wrote a year go on that date. I clicked on it today, and that post gave me quite a chuckle.  Check it out:  A Year Ago Today

Been sorting through the kids clothes, bagging up the stuff too small, cleaning out stuff in the nursery....   I am so sad. It is so weird to think we might be done having babies.... so strange.... so sad.... I feel on the brink of tears.  I have been trying all week to mentally prepare that we  might be done, to figure out how to clean out the stuff and move on, but it is a lot harder than I thought. I thought  I  could be ok with it.... I am not sure. 

My son has always been a thinker, thinking things through one step ahead and drawing some unpredictable conclusions.  The following conversation took place last week between my son and his Daddy. Son: Dad, I really want to go fishing. Dad: Oh, that does sound like fun.  The bummer though is that it's not fishing season so we can't go fishing. Son: Why is it not fishing season? Dad: Well, if we fished all the time we would run out of fish to fish.  Instead, we give them a break so they have a chance to have babies and make more fish. Son:  So then we can destroy the families and eat them?

Today was a big day in the life of sibling relations at the circus.  Around my daughter’s third birthday, my strong willed, independent, knows what she wants toddler, morphed into a “ whatever big brother does, that’s what I want too ” little sister (she still kept her strong will however).  Her favorite color went from purple to red (her brother’s fav color).  For the past  week she has been telling me how she wants a Spiderman cake just like her brothers when it is her birthday. But today things changed. There was a face painting booth at our local grocery store today. What?  Your grocery store doesn’t offer free face painting?  Man, how prehistoric!  My son walked up and of course asked if she could paint Spiderman on his face. Nothing earth shattering there.  If you follow me on Twitter , you know we’ve been fully immersed in the world of Spidey here at the circus. But, then  it came time for my daughter to get her face p...

Apparently my daughter’s week long rebellion was against sleeping alone in her crib and not on sleeping in general.  Tuesday was a break through day for us! She napped and slept through the night without screaming for hours first. As I said goodnight to her in her sister’s bed, she had the BIGGEST grin on her face.  Seriously, I have never seen a kid so excited about sleeping in a bed.  I did have to go in their twice because I heard them giggling and running around.  One time I caught her sitting up “reading” on her bed.  When I opened the door, she threw the book on the floor and laid down.  Um, nice try missie, but you are busted! Scott had to go back a third time and he threatened to make her go back to her crib if she did not stay in bed.  We didn’t hear a peep from her the rest of the night! When we went in to kiss them goodnight before we went to bed, we found her sleeping on her floor.  Naptime Wednesday also went we...

Two cookies   One mug of milk   And two sisters Visit 5M4M and Angie’s 7 Ring Circus for more Picture Fun!

Since we first brought my youngest home from the hospital at two days old, she has been a good sleeper.  You could just lay her down and walk away and she would soothe herself to sleep.   Scott and I commented a few months ago that we haven’t had to go in the middle of the night to help soothe her back to sleep.   Even when she threw up in her crib in the middle of the night, she just rolled back over and went to sleep.  We never knew till morning.  She was my low maintenance baby. Was being the operative word.  Then we went on our grand Texas vacation. Since we have gotten back, she has been incredibly clingy.  I was paged by the nursery at church on Sunday b/c she was crying so hard.   She wants held by me all the time and fights with her siblings if they are in my lap or arms.  And bed time has become the battle to end all battles.   Since we returned home a week ago,  she has screamed and cried when w...

My son is obsessed with all things Spiderman.   I remember when he was about 2 and he saw a picture of Spiderman on something in the grocery store.  He asked me what that was and I told him Spiderman.  I remember he giggled saying that was so silly, to have a spider man.  Sometime since then, he got bit by the spidey bug!   I love this picture…the smile on his face was worth all the effort it took to make that cake!  I am not sure what made him pick Spiderman of all the super heroes to latch on to.  What was it about Spiderman that was more appealing then say Superman or Batman?  It’s not as if he watched any of them on T.V.  His love was born from merely seeing the character.  When he was born my brother bought him a Spiderman onesie.  Perhaps his obsession was born then?   Has it really been 5 years since this picture was taken?  When did my baby grow into a little boy? Given his love for all thin...

Sorry to leave you all hanging with my sarcastic tribute to San Antonio…I’ve spend the last 24 hours prepping for and then hosting my son’s 5th birthday…(How did he end up being 5 already)?  But, I’ll save that for another post… one involving sinister villains, and superheroes…be sure to come back next week for that one!  I do want to clarify, that even though we did spend 4 hours in the urgent care facility, we did have a great time in San Antonio.  My son thoroughly loved the Alamo (he even asked for an Alamo GI Joe set for his birthday so he could be Davey Crockett only when he played the good guys would win ) ( I had to tell him no such set exists to my knowledge).  We rode the river boats and visited the Children’s Museum.  I hope that my posts from our vacation have not given you the wrong impression.  I have not meant to come across as whiny, in my attempt to keep it real.  I just wanted to be truthful, and the the truth is we did have a grea...

After 4 days of camping at both Guadalupe and Big Bend NP, the next big destination on our trip was to San Antonio.  We were quite excited about showers, and more room to spread out.  After checking into our hotel at noon, we were off to see the sights. Where to first?  The Alamo? The Children’s Museum?  The River walk?  So many choices… We thought what better place to go to really experience the city than the urgent care clinic.  And it was a mere two blocks away from our hotel!!  How perfect!  So without stopping even for lunch, we quickly set out for our destination! We were greeted by a kind and friendly staff who told us we could stay in the waiting room for 1.5 hrs before seeing the Dr.  How delightful!  After spending the day before strapped into their car seats, the kids were so excited to get to sit quietly and wait in a waiting room.   We got to wait in not one, but two waiting rooms as part way through o...

The sun’s rays cast a bright orange glow on the rocks when it rose in the morning. As the day went on, the bees came out to pollinate the flora. As the day progressed, we were able to pose for the very significant sign shot.  Click here to learn of it’s high importance. As the sun began to set the rocks began to change color yet again. As if that wasn’t pretty enough, right above was a bright blue sky with a full moon shining. The goes down with a grand finale (please note these colors were not doctored at all, this is the real thing). After sun down, there is still more magnificence to enjoy as the stars came out and the full moon lit the cliffs up. Big Bend does a masterful job of showing off our Lord’s handiwork! Click here for more fun national park sign shots! And click here for more WW and here for WFW !  Two times the fun!!

I’m trying my best to summarize our almost 2 week vacation, so as to keep you up to date with our circus adventures, without boring you with every.single.picture we took (if you knew how many pics we took, you would realize this is NO.SMALL.FEAT).  I realized today though that I haven’t really posted any pictures of the actual parks yet.  Hmmm…perhaps I should do something about that. So, any guesses on which national park this is from? Still no?  Now? Here’s our itinerary , if ya wanted to narrow it down some. Want a hint? Ok, how about now? Come back tomorrow for some more glimpses of God’s handiwork in Texas .

  picnic lunches     sweet treats hot springs big leaps dirty hands

While I have enjoyed the many ups and downs of our vacation to Texas, I have decided that I never again want to go on vacation the week prior to Easter.  I was very careful when planning our trip to make sure that we would be with family for Easter so that we could go to church and worship our Lord.  I didn’t want to be camping or in the middle of nowhere for Easter Sunday.  I am certain we will have a wonderful and special day as we celebrate our Lord’s resurrection with them.  But, being away on vacation this week, I’ve been kind of off the radar.  I’ve been out of my routine and haven’t spent the time I would like focusing on and preparing for this special day.  I would have loved to have done some Easter crafts and projects with the kids.  I really feel like the crafts and projects help to create a sense of anticipation and excitement as well as focus on the day.  We did read the Easter story in the hotel the other night on Good Friday....

Besides taking in the beautiful scenery (of which there was much) at Guadalupe and Big Bend National Parks, we really enjoyed being able to just be together ( most of the time ).   Each day at Big Bend we took a very, long picnic lunch.  One day we went to the western portion of the park and enjoyed a leisurely picnic.  I thought it would be fun to make our own ice cream in coffee cans using a recipe I had found online.  This was a lot of fun.  I gotta admit it wasn’t all that cost effective since I first had to buy the cans of coffee, just for the cans, but we had a great time.  (Yes, $9 in sunk costs right there… if I had been at home I am sure I could have gotten an empty can from a friend or something, but we had no spare room in our suitcases for empty coffee cans).   The kids enjoyed rolling the can back and forth and then Scott and I took turns kicking it up and back across a field to really get it working.  I was so happy it worked!...