Phoenix's Birthday Week

Monday March 21st Phoenix turned 6!! He is the sweetest little man you will ever meet. Quick to smile, quick to tease, and quick to love. We love our Phoenix and are so glad he is part of our family.

We started his Birthday Week with a cake on Sunday the 20th, because Dad was flying out for the week Monday morning. Phoenix wanted a Soccer cake, so after much deliberation we ended up with a 4 Layer Lemon Pudding Soccer cake. Yumm-o!
On Monday the 21st, his actual Birthday, I took cupcakes to his class. Seeing as they're Kindergarteners they got to eat them outside.
And at the end, though they were supposed to be lining up to go inside, they were a little occupied comparing their Transformers rings that were on the tops of the cupcakes. Funny boys!
Now, onto the Party! Phoenix picked an Army Theme. This was one of the easier cakes we've designed. Oreos, Twix Candy Bars and a little icing goes a long way.
Yumm-o again.
Jared designed an awesome obstacle course for all the little boys. Complete with army crawl and water gun shooting or little army guys.
Running to the water balloons after going down the slide.
And finishing off with BB-Gun shooting of Balloon aliens. It was a big hit, good job Daddy.
Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday Dear Phoenix, Happy Birthday to you!
And the final Pinata! What's a party with out one.
Only a couple of wacks knocked this Pinata down. The boys were much pleased with their candy.
We love you Phoenix! Happy Birthday!

Pet Chickies

We have recently acquired 8 little chicks. They are the newest addition to our Family Farm. Other creatures include, but are not limited to: Fish, Dog, Snake and an even more recent and forth coming post, a Lizard. We can't seem to stop collecting pets. I know Jared hates this, but me and the kids love it. And after to initial building of a home for them all, Jared has nothing to do with the animals, and he loves it that way. Though he does like to show them off to all of our guests. :) Go figure.

Anyway, 8 chickens, 4 breeds, 2 of each breed. They are meant to all be hens, but I am waiting till they are big enough before I uncross my fingers. I'm not allowed roosters in our area, and I don't want one anyway.
Beaux has been on the hunt ever since they came into our possession. They are currently residing in our fenced in, chicken wire lined garden area. Until Jared can convert our great big blue Charlie Dog House into our new coop. In the mean time...
I did try to introduce Beaux to our new pets. As you can see he is a terrier, and terriers are breed to chase and kill anything they can catch.
This being said he has somehow captured and killed 2 of our 8 chickens to date. Luckily of 2 different breeds so there is still hope we will have at least 1 of each breed left. I'm technically only allowed 2 but I'm going to keep 4. So whichever are not roosters get to stay. Cross your fingers for me that that many even survive my dog....Dang dog!

Surfside Beach

Final Day of Spring Break 2011 was a trip to the Beach. We went early to beat the crowds, but it was a little cold. That didn't stop my kids from swimming, especially Aspen, whom I did not get many pictures of as she spent half of the day in the water and the other half collecting Sea Glass to make a flower pot out of.

We started the day by teaching our friends that these are not Jelly Fish. One Dad was burying them all before he would let his kids get out of the car. They are actually seaweed seed pods. Cool eh? They're like blue balloons, they even POP! when you step on them.
Phoenix only ventured into the water a little bit, he's not one for the cold. But he had Plenty of fun digging and digging.
I didn't even realize Jared had taken Sicily out for a swim until I heard her crying. Our little snow sled (which has seen more beach than snow) apparently tipped her right into the freezing water. She was not too happy.
But after a warm up under the towels and a few snacks she camped her little butt in the sand and had loads of fun.
Though London doesn't mind the cold water I think he went numb, so he came in for some sand time too.
Our friend Devin came with us and got completely coated in mud. I'm not too sure how this happened, as he spent a good portion of the morning under a towel keeping warm and playing his DS. Aw well, at least he had a little beach time like the rest of us.
We always take our kites to the beach. There is ALWAYS wind and NO trees, so it's perfect. Jared prefers his trick kite, which he scares people to death with when he dive bombs them, it is pretty funny actually. But today we had a flock of Pelicans fly over making a perfect camera shot for me.
We did bring our puppy to the beach with us, and he loved everything. I think he made it his personal goal to smell, taste and pee on every patch of sea weed he could find. He was a little afraid of the waves though, and after Phoenix splashed him a few times...
he wouldn't go back into the water. But that doesn't mean he didn't have fun chasing all the kids and sea birds. It was a good day for Beaux.
I love the Beach. I love that we live so close. The kids always have a good time at the beach. We actually got a couple of Jelly Fish stings this time around (Aspen and London) but they powered through it to make the most of their last day of Spring Break.

Butterfly Purty Butterfly

What a cute group of kiddos, and all good little friends. It's really nice when 2 families can get together and everyone has someone to play with. Yeah!

So we start with the caterpillar.
Then we move on to the cocoon.
And then the Beautiful Butterfly.
We were told if you smell pretty you get the most butterfly's to land on you. Sicily always gets a bunch. :) If you want a lot to land on you we were told to wear some smelly lotions, they like that. Hmmm, Sicily does like her lotion, hmmmm, naw she just smells sweet naturally.
These orchids were gorgeous, and even more beautiful with the butterfly's.
We made sure everyone got to hold one. London caught quite a few, when he'd try to pass them off though they'd fly off then come right back to him.
Wow!! Dinner time, everyone likes some fruit.
Phoenix finally got one, but it landed on his head. So he had to look at my camera, after the fact, to see what it looked like. :)
These are something like Paper Butterfly's. They're bigger than your hand and look like a slight breeze would blow them off course.
These little orange guys are so friendly. This particular one went from my hand, to Aspen, to...
Julie. I think the butterfly's were as shy of Julie as she usually is of everyone else. They made good friends with each other pretty quick.
Group shot. Aspen, Julie, Belle and London. Yeah for cute kids!

HMNS: Dinos, Rocks and Friends

There's nowhere better than the Houston Museum of Natural Science. And no one smarter than "Members" like us, who know when the place opens and the fact that no one is there at that time. :) We love having the place to ourselves.

Phoenix and Sicily are never bored when it comes to dinosaurs. Phoenix always thinks he needs his picture taken next to EVERY dinosaur, especially the man eating type.
We traveled there this time with our friends the Allred's. Our kids are all pretty much the same age so it's always an adventure.

This awesome guy always has plenty to say and tell the kids about the time of the dinosaurs. This time around everyone got to hold dino-poo. Yuck! Notice Phoenix covering his nose.
And a tooth to help you eat is even better.
Little Julie is the funniest about her rocks. We think for sure she'll be a geologist one day. So we had to do a early on exploration of their rock exhibit.
My favorite part of the rock exhibit are the polished rocks. It's amazing what you can do with a little shine.
My favorite snowball. Though I wouldn't want to get smacked with this, it's kind of spiky.
I keep telling Jared he just needs to buy me one of these for my Birthday. Come on Honey! It's not THAT expensive. ;)
Phoenix centered in on the green rocks this go around. No idea why, but they were pretty pretty.
The is a Faberge Egg. It has a snow design on it. So beautiful.
I had to take this shot of Leia and Sicily. Leia is 5, Sicily is 3. This gives you a prime example of why people think she is older than she actually is.
They wouldn't let me take a picture of the actual Mummy, so this will have to do.
London and Aspen had to pay half, but we let them go on the Gyro Ride.
BLECH!! Even filming this made me sick.

I love the Museum. Our Membership is about to run out and I'm debating if we want to renew. I love it so much that we probably will, it's always fun and the kids love it too. Though the Children's Museum is calling to me too. Hmmmmm, we'll see.

Spring Break Camping Trip

What a week our Spring Break was. We started out with 3 days and 2 nights camping with 3 other families, all with boys London's age.

Let's start with the Cat Tails. We used to beat Cat Tails across the road at my Grandma Wolds house in Riverdale, ID every time we went to visit. It was the best. You'd gather 20 or so, I don't remember how many, and beat a big line of them across the road. Then we'd climb in the ditch and wait for a car to drive by. We were ever so sneaky. As soon as one went through our line, POOF, one huge cloud of fluff. The best was when they'd have their windows down, or once a motorcycle went through it. That was funny! I think the last time we did it a Cop drove through, pretty sure we didn't do it after that.

So Huntsville State Park in Huntsville, TX has Cat Tails. I showed the boys what to do with them, and they took it to the next level. I'm honestly not too sure how they got a hold of so many, I could barely get one with out falling in the lake.They only had about 10, and look at all that fluff. They proceeded to try and stuff it down Ty's older brother's (Blake) shirt. There was fluff all weekend
This game is always a winner when your kind of bored from camping. I think some of the ball and strings got stuck on the roof of our shelters a few times.
Our first night there it was COLD, low 40's. We all had nice warm sleeping bags but the kids slept with their coats on. Sicily had mine and Jared's coats, her sleeping bag and a blanket. She was toasty warm. I didn't stray too far from Jared that night, it was cold on my side of our big sleeping bag.
The following morning Jared was relishing the crisp air. Sicily was not too big of a fan, so she stole Daddy's coat. I love this picture.
We did a little fishing. London caught the most and even cooked some up in his tin foil dinner. Loved them too. Phoenix caught a couple but also managed to reel in a turtle. We let it go, don't worry, no turtle stew for us.
London, Ty, Devin and Tyler (and Devin's little brother Braeden). They're playing some random Ninja game. I don't really get it, but they do it all the time and laugh all the way through.
This is Ben Barrow. Jared brought the most GINORMOUS marshmallows I have ever seen. They were the equivelant to 4 regular large marshmallow. Ben tried to make a regular sized s'more with his and though it was tastey it didn't work out too well on the clean side. :)
We were able to do plenty of biking with the kids and even a little swimming on this trip. There are alligators in the area, so they had a section netted off for people to swim. I found the water a little cold myself, but of course my kiddos jumped right in.

All in all a good Camping Trip. And though we miss the Mountains in UT and ID we are so excited to discover there are fun places like this here that can compensate for our missing mountains.

After School Reading

Phoenix is such a good brother (sometimes). Today he was exceptionally sweet. He gets hooked on a book every now and again and wants to read it to everyone. At this point Sicily lucked out and got "The Foot Book" read to her.
And I lucked out and got picture proof of 2 things:
#1 They are definitely red heads
#2 They can get along sometimes