Richard Scarry's Busiest Saturday Ever!!!

A couple weeks ago, our family schedule dictated a very full, very busy Saturday.  It started off with the Elementary school carnival.  My sister, M, did the cupcake walk...

 I, JC, did the catapult fling...

And my other sister, SM, did the Lucky Duck Flippin'!

Midway through the carnival, my sister, M, had to go attend her Tball opening day game.  Did I want to go?  No!  I stayed at ate my way through. 

Down the hatch went the snow cone.  And now...brain freeze!!

I also spent some time on all the bounce house accoutrements.

Since my dad was coaching and my mom was running the carnival the following pictures are those from her first practice, not her first game.  Watch how my dad taught M to swing and then the end result!

After the game she came back to the carnival.  And I kept eating.

Then we went home and made a tin can phone.  Our courteous conversations devolved to rude noises in a little less than fifteen seconds.  The novelty of the rude noises through the tomato can phone did not wear off that day and is still awesome in my humble opinion...

My dad ate a whole pizza for dinner and then we got to read Richard Scarry's Busy Busy World.  It is quite possibly the best book ever written.  It is 92 pages long and my dad has read it to us fifteen times in the past two weeks.  Even SM loves it!

Then it was time to go to bed.  What a nice end to a busy, busy day.

Pink Hair Wig

What fun!  A new wig arrived in the mail from our wig-of-the-month club.  It was a loud color.  The color was...

Everyone gave it a wear...

 No fear of lice in this family...

We don't only share hair, we share clothes too!

Thanks for the outerwear, Grandma L!

Easter on the Dniester

Do you know where the Dniester River is?  You probably should since only seven two syllable words rhyme with Easter according to the Word Hippo.  Dniester, of course, being one of them.  As with all LOE holidays, Easter was spread out over a week this year since the next state-wide holiday isn't until  JC's birthday in May.  It started with the official White Rock Ward/Community Egg Hunt put on by my beautiful momma.  The hunt overtook all of Rover Park which encompasses a full 10% of the land area of our town.  Given the acreage of the hunt, my beautiful momma could only pick one kid to follow.  She chose SM.  JC was not surprised.

At least we didn't have the kid who looked in the port-a-potty (see background of the above photo) and fell in.  Here is the lone photo of the older kids who were moving so fast they were a literal blur.  M is behind the kid wearing snow boots.

Here is a shot of M displaying her latest loss - two of her teeth fell out of her head leaving her unable to eat corn-on-the-cob but still able to eat Easter candy.

We moved on to coloring hard-boiled Easter eggs using tubs of dye.  When my dad was a kid he remembers gratuitous amounts of vinegar when coloring eggs.  We reminded him that in the 22nd century we had no such concerns.  Look - none of us have the face of one breathing Pine-Sol!

SM quickly figures out that these were no ordinary plastic eggs.  While everyone was dyeing and paying no attention she served herself a snack.

The next day was another Easter Egg hunt in the backyard of some kindly neighbors who also gave us ham.  Here is a shot of the camera-shy middle child in his Pops-Approved Purple Easter Shirt (PAPES).

Easter baskets from the Easter bunny focused mainly on water toys this year for the upcoming pool season.  SM traded everything in her basket for the other two stuffed animals which she wanders around with on a near-constant basis.

Happy Easter from the LOE Clan! 

 

Late Season Snow

After two consecutive days of 75 degree weather, a snow storm decided to roll in.  You can see how late in the season it way by how green the grass was underneath.  This is SM's first walking excursion through the snow!

We tried to build a snow man.  SM mainly managed the operation.

Alright, that's enough winter for me!

On to Easter next time!

Denver Delivers De Wedding!

Load up Minnie - We are taking a trip downhill to Denver! Unbelievably, this trip coincided with Denver's "Peyton Watch".  And, even more unbelievably, I, M, was consigned to the back seat again.  Kindergarten Star of the Week just doesn't mean what it used to mean...

Who was getting married?  B's cousin, that's who!  Here he is with his new bride...

And here is my family.  That's weird - my dad looks taller than my beautiful momma in this picture.  Must be his tie.

After the ceremony we went to the reception.  Everyone loved it.  SM is having a bad reaction to the dessert being taken away.

We dumped my dad at the airport and then the fun began!  After the wedding I got to read a book to my Great Grandma...

I got my hair braided by my two great Aunts - not Great Aunts!

We went to the mint.  The "D" on your quarter doesn't mean Delaware.  That place shouldn't even count as a state (and a majority of my readers agree!).

The mint probably would have been a metallurgist's dream.  Too bad my dad was in the Magic Kingdom.  We ate at a place called Casa Bonita.  It has to be better than La Isla Bonita, right?  Wrong!  Equally dreadful.  We supposedly paid for the entertainment.  Which consisted of my brother, JC, dancing...

We looked for my dad on the river as he said he was now on the Amazon.  But no luck.  As Belinda Carlisle once said, "Ooh Heaven is a Place on Earth".  We headed back uphill, towards Heaven, and the LOE.  What's next...probably making "Circles in the Sand" (2nd gratuitous Belinda reference).  Some things are forever, indeed!

Welcome to Virginia (Bienvenido a Virginia) - SM Version

In order to properly enjoy a Rocky Mountain highhhhhh, you need to go to the lowlands once in a while.  To the land of Powhatan!  {And, perhaps more importantly, to the land where donuts rise!}

The chocolate donut munchkins were so good, that SM started to REALLY walk while in VA.  This is the second kid in a row who has learned to walk while away from their dad!

 I got to see Gram, who still held me despite my increased mobility!

This dog sings "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash while the ears dance.  Needless to say, this was my favorite toy, and JC's too!

Finally, the C Clan main base in NoVA is the ultimate eating place.  Look all three food groups are omnipresent on the dining room table - Fudge Stripe Cookies, Girl Scout Samoas, and Bananas!

It was nice to visit Gram and Pops and Aunt J.  Thanks for having us!  Due to technical errors, we will not be able to display the second half of the trip until a later date!  Sorry.

M and Her Father

My beautiful momma, forwent her trip to Belize this month in lieu of a trip to a place even more exotic - Virginia!  My dad and I stuck around the LOE making sure it stayed enchanted while she, JC, and SM visited the EST.  The first thing we did was to visit the Big Rock Bowling Center.  It was my first experience at a real bowling alley.  Here I am trying to catch a spare!

It was President's day at 10 AM.  We had the place to ourselves, which was a good thing - few people can project such disappointment in themselves during their first go-around with something like I can.  I missed the spare and the shoe guy definitely heard about it!

I won both games.  My dad bowled left handed while trying to spin the ball.  Or so he says...(he also thinks he can sing...)

We spent the rest of the week reading Mary Poppins.  Guess what!  She was terribly grouchy in her literary version.  Julie Andrews did some good work.  On Saturday we went to hike Tsankawi.  We got to use our free National Park Pass that was set to expire soon.  Gram purchased it for us last year when she came to see her new grandbaby, SM.  Now she's with SM, and we are hiking!  Trees take a long time to grow here.  This one we saw early in the hike is ten years old!

We kept climbing higher and higher (Jackie Wilson reference).  Soon we made it to the top of a mesa where the Tsankawi Pueblo had been.  We could see more than seventy miles in all directions except to the west.  It was wonderful.  Here is M enjoying the view...

Later that day we saw a live performance of Mulan that left us both atwitter (seriously check out our accounts!) with praise.  It was a great week with my dad.  My beautiful momma, thanks to this post, now knows what she's missing!