We are not amused.

Saturday we decided to take advantage of the warm-ish weather and our free passes and go to Six Flags.  Apparently, so did everyone else in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.  It was ridiculous.  We waited in our car to turn into the park.  We waited in our car to get a parking spot.  We waited in line to get into the park.  We waited in lines for rides.  We waited in lines for the bathroom.  We waited in lines to get out of the park.  We spent a little over three hours there and went on a total of three rides.  All of them for the kids.  I didn't get pictures of the last one because it was a Ferris Wheel and I could actually ride it.  Also it was dark and we were moving, which my camera does not do.  

The boat ride.  This one was The Captain's choice.
They are easy to spot because Joy is wearing the bright red fox
hat I made for her.  She was scared, but loved it. 

This was Joy's choice.  She was not understanding of the line concept.
We had to distribute many snacks and have many "it's not our turn
yet" conversations to avoid tantrums.  Also she did not want to leave
when her turn was over.

Oh yes, The Captain was there too.

The best part of the whole day--hot chocolate at IHOP.

Why do I have more pictures of Joy these days?  Because this is the
reaction The Captain gives the camera.

Dinner!  Cheese omelet and fruit.

The Captain went with pancakes, eggs, and bacon.

 So, the amusement park was a bad decision, but at least we were there together.  And the kids had fun.  And we learned the important skill of waiting.

Christmas

Christmas is good.  I got the flu.  That was not so good.  But, not to be annoyingly optimistic, but the timing wasn't that horrible.  Johnny had work off or got home early all the days I was sick.  That would not have happened another time.  It put a damper in my holidays plans, so no neighbors got presents, no sleepover under the tree, no driving around looking at lights.  But Santa still came and we still had a wonderful Christmas.  And after the presents were opened, I took a two hour nap and Johnny took care of dinner.  (Ham instead of turkey--another sacrifice for health.)

Christmas morning.  She was not tired, just not used to flash.
Christmas jammies courtesy of Grandma P.  They were awesome
this year, as always.  And the kids were glad to open something
Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning breakfast sweet rolls, courtesy of Kroger.  

Joy went straight for her new bike that Johnny put
together the night before.  We were worried it
would take a long time, but it only involved two screws.

The Captain was happy that Santa put R2D2 in his stocking.

Christmas cheese.

Since we had a new bike and nice weather, we went to the park to
ride around for awhile.

And play Frisbee

And sit around talking about how awesome Christmas is. . .
or just pick some grass.

Have you ever wondered . . . ?

Have you ever wondered where Santa does his shopping?  Well, apparently it's the Aldi's here.

Story time:

I ran out of milk last night.  Normally, I do my shopping on Wednesdays because it's double ad day at Sprouts and it gives us something to do before preschool.  But I knew we couldn't really make it three days without milk.  So after we dropped The Captain off at preschool, Joy and I went to Aldi's to pick up milk.  As we were walking in, we saw Santa walking out.

 For those of you not familiar with Aldi's, I will take a moment to explain.  There is one entrance and one exit to Aldi's.  They are sliding, motion-sensitive doors.  They are transparent and are separated by a transparent wall.  This keeps things moving in a definite flow pattern, and it never makes sense to go in the exit.

Santa stopped and waved at Joy through the transparent wall.  She was excited to tell him about her new jacket, which is The Captain's bomber jacket that I dug out of the closet.  He held up a finger to wait just a second and came inside the entrance.  He asked if Joy would take a picture with him and if I had a cell phone.  I said yes.  She happily climbed into his arms and did a few high fives.  Then she talked about it and told me the whole story a few times while we did our shopping at Aldi's.

Good day, I think.

Ice Storm

 So, as some of you may have heard from Facebook yesterday, we had a major ice storm come through Dallas.  It went from 78 degrees on Wednesday, to 40 degrees on Thursday when the storm rolled in.  People were already cancelling things, and I was hoping it would be mostly a false alarm, but when the power went out around 2 am, I knew it was serious.

The nice thing about power outages is that the kids actually sleep in the next morning.  Which is good since I didn't get to finish the laundry the day before and all the warm jammies were still dirty.  The official reports were saying that we wouldn't get power until 8:30 pm, and since the temperature inside the house was falling rapidly, I was worried.  These are the times you kick yourself for not getting the gas fireplace set up.  Or not having the gas range you really want.  Anyway, we didn't have to wait nearly that long, we had power back before noon.  But we went out to lunch anyway to test the roads and such.  

Then, because we could warm up afterwards and the kids were already in layers, we went outside to play and take pictures.  So here is Ice Storm 2013:

I loved the iced over fall colors that just started showing up last month.

Christmas berries, anyone?

Our mailbox--completely iced over, even the wood post.  I had to break the seal to get yesterday's mail.  Pretty sure they didn't deliver to our house today. 

My favorite thing was the individual needles frozen on the pine trees.

I know it looks like snow, but it's not.  There are no footprints in this picture.

Basically, it's a thick layer of ice.  Where it gets thin enough, the section where you're standing will break.  This kind of freaked Joy out.

You can see the frozen grass sticking out of the ice.  Johnny's new mowing method is breaking off the grass above the ice line.

I guess the kids' mailbox is frozen over too.  And they couldn't really open the door.

But did we have fun?  Yes we did.

Thanksgiving Trip

It's becoming a tradition to go on vacation around Thanksgiving.  This year I had my family over on Turkey Day, so we left on Friday for Branson, MO.  My in-laws got us a great deal on a resort condo for a week, but sadly, we could only stay through Monday.  My MIL also gave me a great list of cool things to do there, which I kept in a safe place . . .  and couldn't find.  So we left a little blind.  Which would have been fine, except that we had no cell coverage and no WiFi in our condo.  So we found some stuff the old fashioned way.  

Also, we had to pack in a bit of a hurry since we hosted Thanksgiving and all.  So photographer that I am, I forgot my camera.  So you get cell phone picks.  Sorry.  

We got in late Friday night and Saturday we went for a train ride.

Miss Cheese was super hyper all weekend from lack of sleep.

 The kids loved it.  I enjoyed the view of the Ozarks.  It was nice.  That night we wanted to see a show, but by the time we got through with dinner (at Denny's) and ice cream at McDonalds it was too late for the tired kiddos.

So Sunday after church we went to a park.  The kids got to get some of their energy out and we weren't stuck in the condo all day.  It was pretty nice weather while we were there, 50s and 60s.  Then that night while Johnny did some school work, I took the kids to a 2.5 mile Christmas light display.  Joy slept through the first part, but really enjoyed going up to the observation deck on the tower when we were done.

On Monday we wanted to do something else before we left.  We were choosing between the Fantastic Caverns- a drive-through cave, or the Butterfly Palace.  Guess which one Joy wanted?  Well, some ladies at church told me the caverns were quite far away and likely not on our drive home, but had never been to the Butterfly Palace.  Which is where we decided to go, in the end.

Best decision ever.  It was amazing.  The Captain loved it.  We made Christmas tree butterfly ornaments, saw some cool tropical animals in their mini-zoo and learned some great things.  We got there just in time for feeding time, too.  We went through the mirror maze (many times).  And the bungee maze upstairs.

The Captain loved "splashing" in the projected koi pond.  It had mats on the floor and would ripple when you touched the water.

 Then we went into the butterfly room.  It was amazing.  They had a live angel and a wooden dulcimer player for part of the time we were in there.  Joy got to help her play jingle bells and proved her musical talents by shaking those things to the beat the whole song.  At the end we got to release some new butterflies.  And then we watched a 3D movie about the life cycle of butterflies.  An awesome day, really.

My little explorers, ready for action.

We hunted for butterflies to check off our list.

They were not shy about landing on shoulders

Or hats

Or hands.  Poor Joy had one fly in her face.  It freaked her out a bit, but not enough to scare her away.

Happy Thanksgivings

Since I'm just barely taking down the Thanksgiving stuff, eating the leftovers and slowly getting Christmas stuff out, it must not be too late to post our Gratitude Tree.  

We started making it while Johnny was gone on his trip.  The kids loved putting it together for FHE-while talking about gratitude, of course.  

Then I printed out some leaf patterns, cut out a bunch, and the next week we played the alphabet gratitude game and really filled our tree out. 

Sorry I cut off some leaves.  Not too many.  The tree pose was a spontaneous The Captain thing, and we convinced Joy to join in. 

I really liked having a large, 3D tree art on my wall, so I might put up a Christmas Tree there.  Maybe we'll make service ornaments . . . yeah . . . *off to Dollar Tree for some cheap green wrapping paper*

Fishy Fun

It was awhile ago that Johnny went on a two week international business trip, but while he was gone, I decided I should do at least one fun thing with the kids.  So we went to the aquarium.  

Miss Joy feel asleep in the car about 10 minutes before we got there.  And stayed asleep when I picked her up, which is rare.  This is where I kicked myself for not bringing the stroller.  But really, we use it so little these days.  So I carried her around along with a super heavy diaper bag (can I still call it that when it no longer holds diapers?) and a camera for over an hour.  She missed the rays. 

 And the sharks, and the sea turtles.  But she woke up for the jellyfish.

 Of course none of these pictures were taken while she was asleep.  Luckily our tickets were good all day, so we just went through everything again once she woke up.  

In an observation bubble inside the tank.

Looking at all the speedy clown fish.

At the tide pool.  This girl has no fear.  She petted everything, including a hermit crab.  She wanted to pet them all, but they were scared.  That's probably for the best.

That ray was smiling at us.

Hello Sea Turtle

I think we're stepping on sharks.

An oceanic view

Fish want a pumpkin?

 So it's nice to have proof that I am a fun mom occasionally.  Also that I can take decent aquarium pictures with no flash.  Two small ego strokes, but I'll take it.

When Nature gives you rain, pull out your cute raincoat.

So the other day, I remembered about this ridiculously cute raincoat I bought for The Captain back in the day.  I think I was lamenting about the lack of jackets for Joy.  But this raincoat is plenty warm, and since it was actually raining the other day, it was perfect for a photo shoot.  

She's obviously had too much experience posing.

Someone has a cute raincoat?  Oh wait, it's me.

There was a sad lack of puddles, but she did her best.

And raincoats give you the wonderful ability to play in the rain!  No those are not galoshes, they are Sunday shoes, her current shoe of choice for everyday.  

And the obligatory grumpy picture.  The Captain didn't like the hat.  I'm pretty sure Joy was mad that I wanted her to stop playing.