March Madness!

March had a lot of events, and a lot of cub scout stuff.  Here is a picture of our two scouts:

Luke and Steven

March was a busy month, from what I can remember of it...  We had swim meets (of course), including the Junior Olympics.  We also had a lot of big cub scout events, including the pinewood derby.  Mac was very busy with his local rotation in Fort Belvoir which involved a grueling and tedious and terrible commute of anywhere from 2 hours to 4 hours daily.  The powers that be determined it was a local rotation even though it was so far away, but this way WE got to pay the gas and there was no reimbursement...  Back then, we thought the gas prices (around $3.50 per gallon) were terrrrrrible.  Those prices would be a bargain now, especially in California!!  But I digress... 

March was also a big month for Last Minute Getting The House Ready For The Market stuff, and so Mac, when not commuting and not taking call, was constantly doing various tasks around the house.  I was sorting through stuff, and getting rid of lots of things that we just didn't use anymore.  We were also preparing for our big spring break trip out to Yakima to visit family, but that will be covered in the April installment of the blog!  You will just have to wait...

So, first up:  The Pinewood Derby.  We have never been big fans of the parents making the cars for the kids, which means that our kids' cars are generally not the fastest or coolest looking.  That being said, Steven's car was so original that it was a HUGE hit at the races.  Of course, it failed to complete a single race, being too tall for the end gate, but no matter.  Luke's car was All Luke and it did very well!  Here are some pictures of the cars from the derby:

Steven went with a sports theme this year... 

The basketball toy was too tall for the clearance of the finish line, so during the races Steven's car would hit the top of the finish line box, then bounce back about halfway up the track.  The kids LOVED it.  Uproarious laughter.  Every stinking time.



Luke, hard at work on his masterpiece.

The car with the headlights is this year's car.  The other one is last year's winner.  You can see last year's was a bit more streamlined, but no worries.  Luke's car was All Luke!

At the starting line...

Grandma and Grandpa were in town for the Pinewood Derby again!  The organizers change the date on that event every year, so it's just LUCK that they've been able to see it almost every single year!

As mentioned, in March we had the Junior Olympics swim meet (or JO's for those *in the know*).  It was a long meet, with events on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  To make things extra long, the brainless meet organizers decided to combine the largest age groups (11-12 year olds and 9-10 year olds) into ONE SESSION!!!  Making the meet SO crowded that the fire marshall was called in and threatened to shut down the whole meet because there were too many parents and swimmers in the facility!  Imagine five rows of bleachers completely packed, and three rows of parents standing behind the bleachers, with one row of people trying to elbow in between the standing people.  It was packed, but it was JO's and people just wanted to see their kids swim...  Anyway, eventually they kicked all the standing spectators out and worked out a system of allowing people in for their events only, but still.  It was an exceptionally poor decision of the meet organizers to combine age groups...

Anyway, Steven did several events and Isabel did the 50 yard fly.  Izzy just had started with competitive winter swim a few months before JO's, so it was pretty great that she made it! 

Two pools, one for girls and one for boys.  Lots of kids, and even more parents...

For fun, we went to a mall near the meet and the kids went on a carousel ride.  It's funny how I keep thinking "this might be their last carousel ride, they are getting so big..." but then it seems that there is ALWAYS another carousel ride, just around the corner. 

Isabel, wearing her new JO's sweatshirt.  She's no where NEAR too old for a carousel ride.



Steven is *thinking* about being too old for a carousel ride.

Luke is definitely looking a bit too old for a carousel ride.  But he will indulge his father.  Josie is really into it though!

We also had some fun with Grandma and Grandpa down by the Rio shopping center.  This is sometimes the high school kid hangout, but sometimes the family hangout.  Depends on the night.  We always had Kate check up on social media to make sure it was safe for families!  Sort of joking...  We didn't exactly have Kate check, but we knew if it was a "teenager" night because Kate would not go there with us if it was!  

Josie and Luke.  See why Josie nicknamed Luke "HuggyWuggy?"

Here is a picture of the kids and their FroYo-- Grandma treated them all to these gigantic make-your-own frozen yogurt treats after we had dinner and walked around the Rio center...



Josie, Luke, Isabel, Kate, and Steven

That's all the exciting stuff from March.  There was a ton of stuff going on, but of course I rarely had time or the presence of mind to take pictures!

Catching Up! February 2012

We have been a little bit busy, and I have been very neglectful of The Blog... 

As a Very Brief Overview, we sold our house, Mac graduated from residency, and we moved to California from Maryland.  The kids started school here in California, and the transition has been a challenge, but we are all settling in.  To add to the chaos, we got a dog.  A puppy does wonders for lowering the stress level!!  Anyway...  Now I will update month to month...  starting with FEBRUARY!!  YIKES!

February:  We had the usual assorted swim meets, including the exciting meet where Isabel qualified for the Junior Olympics swim meet!  She was thrilled!  She qualified in the 50 yard butterfly.

Another fun February activity we did was taking a little weekend trip to the Great Wolf Lodge indoor water park in Williamsburg, MD.  Kate brought her good friend Gislene along for the fun, and the rest of the kids stayed very busy in the big waterpark. 

Some pictures from February:



Overall View of the waterpark. 

Day 1 we arrived at the waterpark early enough to spend a full afternoon in the waterpark before checking into our room.

Tired Jollies a little bit!!  But loving the water park on Day 1.

After checking in to the room, we had dinner and enjoyed some of the "nightime" activities...  Such as coloring the big posters outside the restaurant, bowling on a half-length course (where we still needed bumpers!) and storytime by the not quite as good as Disney Great Wolf automated storytellers...

Waiting for storytime...

Coloring fun...

Steven takes *everything* seriously!!

Kate and Gislene found a group of teenagers to hang around with, so everyone was happy. 

On the second day, we checked out of our room and went back to the waterpark for More Waterpark Fun.

That's Josie playing in the danger zone...  Periodically a huge bucket of water dumps its hundreds of gallons out right about where she's standing!

Josie and Luke lounging in the water.

Josie, Luke, and Dad just hangin out.

Steven is performing a scientific experiment.



Isabel trying to convince us to go on one more waterslide with her.  Tornado!!

 

After two days of waterpark FUN, Josie and I were exhausted...
 

Those were the main activities of February-- I also had a birthday.  I turned 36 years old!  Officially I'm closer to 40 than to 30, but it's OK because my husband is well-trained in the field of facial plastic surgery so I can look Forever Young should I want to! 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Break, or The Rest of the Story

Christmas Break was supposed to be a great opportunity for Mac and me to make some Serious Headway into getting the house ready for putting on the market this spring.  Mac started off with the aforementioned master closet door project, which after many hours and layers of paint and spackle looks OK.  If you don't look too closely, you don't really notice that the door frame is slightly uneven.  And having bi fold doors is a BIG improvement over the unyielding slide things we had originally, years ago.

Mac "fitted" these bi fold doors into our closet opening (we had no doors at all!), and he put up the crown molding.  Crazy how much time this project took!!

Another project was clearing out the play room in the basement. This involved removing a very large bookcase which we called "The Tower of Pisa" because no matter what we did to this bookcase, it would always list over to one side. This bookcase has traveled with us from our first apartment, to the house in Yakima, and then across the country to the basement here. We decided it was time to just get rid of it!! And so we did. We also donated many of the unloved and unused toys, and we tried to declutter the basement play room... It's a work in progress.  Mac repainted the basement, and it looks nice and bright now. Alas, no pictures yet because while it looks nice, it's not quite THAT nice.

We tried to fit in some fun activities for the kids while we were all on break.  Steven and Isabel had a lot of swimming practices, most of which weren't so much fun.  Mac had a lot of trips to Home Depot, and I spent a lot of time trying to stay one step ahead of Mac and his projects... 

But we did fit in some genuinely Fun Stuff.  One day we took the kids to an indoor play area filled with giant bouncy type toys.

Steven's not quite too old to enjoy the slides!

Isabel spent a lot of time trying to capture that yellow flag.

She finally did, after about 15 minutes, and then she gave the flag to some of the younger kids.

Josie is fearless.

Luke was hard to find in this place since he ran around to all the toys so quickly- now you see him, now you don't...

Steven helped Josie climb to the top...

Checking out the view from way up there...

Playing is hard work...  We loved these cute water fountains- great for preschoolers but a tad too short for people over 40" tall.

Over break we also took the kids to Chuck E Cheese.  We rarely go there anymore (so tragic), so it is a treat for almost everyone when we do go.  I didn't manage to get any pictures of Luke there, as he was taking Full Advantage of video gaming and wasn't really in camera range, but I did get some pictures of the others...

Steven is sporting his new hat- University of Maryland gear.

The basketball machine was broken so they could shoot to their hearts content, no tokens required...  But sharing is always tough.

Who is that?  Looks like a bolt of lightning...

Maybe not EVERYONE was happy to be at Chuck E Cheese.

Those were really the Big Outings of Christmas break.  There were some random playdates and what not thrown in there, but mostly it was a working staycation!  Mac only had 7 days off.  No one really complained much about the lack of planned activities although since I'm the Cruise Director, I felt a little bit disappointed that I hadn't forced MORE fun times on everyone.

Mac took call over New Years Eve and New Years Day and he liked it SO MUCH that he kept on taking call for half of January.  Well, he took call all those days because that was the schedule more than because he loves taking call.  But nonetheless...  That's what happened to Fun Family Outings.  Nothing gets planned on a call day... 

So our big New Years Activities involved...  a special swim practice: The New Years' Distance Challenge.  Isabel and Steven both went to the challenge to see how far they could swim in 3 hours.  Fun, right?  Isabel ended up swimming 6500 meters (Woot!  That's a lot!!  She was expecting maybe 3500 meters, so achieving this number is a huge confidence boost for her!) and Steven hit 10,000 meters.  His blood sugar dropped down to the 40s while swimming the first hour (yikes) but after some juice, he kept on going.  He made his goal!  And no ER visits required, which is always a bonus.

Here are some other random Christmassy activities that we did, if not exactly during break...

Before break even started, we went to the Build a Bear Workshop, where they happened to be having a Very Big Sale.  The four kids were able to build their own bears for a fairly reasonable price, and the Super Deal included an outfit for the bears.  Building bears and dressing them up occupied the kids while Kate and Mac were visiting the Apple Store to get Kate's broken iPod replaced.  Win Win for everyone, especially the Visa.

Josie named her friend "Nina", and she was adamant that Nina would have a Tinkerbell Costume and a tiara.  Of course. 

Here is Luke with his friend, the Monkey who is a Padawan, just like Luke.  He named the monkey "George".  The lightsaber was an extra charge, OF COURSE!  But doesn't the little lightsaber just make the outfit?

Isabel and her beautiful polar bear, which she named "Katie".   Everyone say "Ahhhhhh!"

Steven's stuffed puppy dog (named "Harry")is an Oriole baseball player.  Steven prefers Orioles to the Nationals, and so I guess we can call this a souvenir?

Now, you may have noticed Steven's rather impressive hairdo.  This is the way his hair looked from morning to night, and no amount of gel could make it flat.  His hair had so much dried on chlorine from all the swimming.  It was just awful!  But after Christmas, we took an outing to a military base with a commissary and a PX (post exchange- more shopping but tax free HOOAH!), and Mac took The Boys to get haircuts by a real military barber while I took "the gels" shopping.  Happily Steven's hair looked 100% better and felt better after the haircut, but I'm pretty sure it will return to this state of defying gravity soon enough.

Another activity we did well after Christmas break was over (don't judge!) was building a gingerbread house village.  I found a very cute village set at Bed Bath and Beyond which allowed each kid to build their own little villa.  Believe me, getting them all to work on ONE house together would not be advisable...

What do you mean when you say the candies go ON the house?  Do you mean IN my mouth?

Clearly some candies got ON Josie's house.

Luke the character

He REALLY loves building stuff.

After the trauma of trying to get the house to stick together, which required several different rebuilds, Isabel finally succeeded in building a lovely house.

The architect...

And here is the village.  It takes a lot of frosting and a lot of candy to make a village.  Clockwise from the top left:  Josie, Luke, Steven, and Isabel.

And that was what we were up to for much of Christmas and January.  We had a fun Christmas, with a laid back schedule, but we managed to keep fairly busy and make some memories in the process!