Happy Mother's Day to me...

NOt too exciting as Mother's Day's go, Tayne has found a new hobby using the Flip Mino HD though,

and I'm sure there will be many more interesting videos to come...
and like this one,

I'm sure many of them will be iDog related...

Happy Earth Day

I'd like to thank the good folks at Nickelodeon and my lack of eco-preparedness for a lovely morning at the beach!

Of course I had no good answer (or projects) pepared for the question "Hey, what are we doing for Earth Day?" that my not usually hyper-environmentally-concerned child uncharacteristically yell at me this morning - Usually only influenced by the commericals to buy exciting things like Bendaroos and Moonsand, somehow he was spurred into awareness and demands for action around 8:45 in the morning by his TV "friends" who have yet again betrayed me when I was counting on them to distract him while I did something selfish -you know, like doing laundry or the dishes or taking a shower -

Garbage (AND recycling) day is Tuesday so I was out of luck on an easy save there, so I decided to distract him with the nature appreciation angle - who doesn't love being distracted by a trip to the beach?

It was supposed to be a "wading only" trip, but as you can see, the gulf waters have warmed up nicely even and even thought nights around here keep it a little too chilly for unheated swimming pools, the beach is ready and waiting (not to mention full of fun suprizes like giant random logs too)!

Now we're back home and tired lunched up kids are taking a break, now I just need the internet to tell me what kids want to do on Earth Day - Nickelodeon got me into this, I'm sure their website can help me out...

Pay your Taxes ALREADY!

Ah, what an exciting afternoon - beautiful weather so I decided to take the kids to the park - well, it turned out that was the park they were having the Clear Lake "Tea Party" - I thought, "Oh well, it's a big park and the kids will probably be tired by the time this thing gets going so we'll just stay" - It was a great day park wise, Pallas has mastered the little slides, she can go down all by herself as long as you get her sitting down first (the "toddler" play space was killing me - everything was on criss -cross sides so if I helped her onto something I practically had to be on the other side so she didn't plunge down a slide, or if I was on the side with the slide there was a big opening for her to leap out of - sheesh!) ANd Tayne had other kids to play with so he could put up with me just kind of waving at him while saving his sister from walking off this or that... it wasn't until we were ready to start heading back to the parking lot that Tayne saw the party setting up -
Tayne : (while still far away and out of earshot) THat's crazy, why is there a party?
Me : Well, those people are having a party to tell the government they don't like how their tax money is being spent.
Tayne : (yelling) We don't want your party!
Me : Oh, don't say that!
Tayne : I was just electing not to participate
Me : That's fine, but maybe you should say that or just keep it to yourself and show them (you don't want to go to their party) by just walking to the car.
Tayne : ok
Tayne : (as we are practically walking through the party set-up and just after refusing a tiny American flag from some kind older woman) Attention everybody, attention - this is not the 4th of July, it's April 15th -go pay your taxes already! Sheesh!
Me : Uh, no - he didn't mean... um, he's just...oh well, you know freedom of speech goes both ways. And have a lovely party!

I hope they enjoy their protest, and I hope they've all paid their taxes (because if they haven't, they've been warned!)

Who's ready for Easter?

Long time no see eh? Well, here are a few pictures from Troy's birthday (celebrated at Chuck-e-cheese of course)

Pallas really enjoyed the games

Well, ok, she really didn't understand most of the games, but she did love pushing the buttons

Tayne really couldn't be bothered to smile, you know how 8 year olds are...

But enough of that - here's some pre-Easter photos of our little fashonista - these were the only shoes she wanted (and the only ones not on sale...grrr!)


-Can you believe this? Not even 2 years old and she chooses a shoe with a little wedge heel, it didn't even slow her down & it was incredibly cute at the store when she kept almost kicking the other Easter shoes shopping mommies in an attempt to show everyone how great her new shoes looked on her...

And it the shoes weren't cute enough - Grandma and Grandpa P. brought her this new outfit (complete with ears, I would say optional ears, but are they really optional this time of year???)

Hopefully the weather will be nice for Easter weekend, I look forward to getting outdoors and watching the kids run around, this winter has been too long, and the sidewalk chalk marks on all my indoor walls tells me these kids need to be supervised more and inside less!

Spring is coming

Ok, so if you are looking closely you'll notice the Christmas decoration in this picture, no - they aren't still up, this was actually taken on a warm day before Christmas (I've been horrible at taking photos, much less putting those few somewhere people can see them)
- but the yard still looks like this - we'll have to mow the grass soon, and we've been spending the weekends and days before trash day cleaning up the back yard before the bugs start getting too busy. Usually this time of year I'm thumbing through the seed and plant catalogs and dreaming of what type of garden I'll get around to planting this year - but instead this year we are busy trimming things back and taking out plants that are too wild and need to be moved - this year instead of adding we are making more space,

because these two need some room to run!