A Wild {Kratts} Surprise

Months and months ago, someone posted on Facebook about Wild Kratts Live! coming to Austin.  With my children's rabid love of Wild Kratts, I knew I needed to get tickets.  Of course, after I purchased them, they added a Houston venue.  Ugh.  Oh well, it gave us an excuse for a fun road-trip to Austin.  We wanted it to be a surprise so we didn't tell the kids,  Actually, I bought the tickets so long ago that I completely forgot about them for a couple of months. That was an easy surprise to keep.  Saturday morning, I had Ellie and Jack wear their Wild Kratts shirts and I put Sam in an animal shirt.  Ellie informed me that she was pretty certain their surprise had something to do with Wild Kratts or animals.

The kids loved the show.  They had a few glitches and it was pretty obvious when they blacked out the stage and you could still see everything they were doing, but the kids still loved it.  Well, Ellie and Jack did.  Sam was busy getting in and out of his seat and kicking the people in front of us.

We stopped at Cafe 290 on the way home.  I love Cafe 290, but they raised their prices and no way was our meal worth $60.  Although the kids seemed to really enjoy the giant piece of German chocolate cake that they shared.

All in all, I loved getting away together as a family.  Track season is starting and soon Tom will be gone every weekend and I will be busy taking the kids to t-ball and softball. So it was nice to have once last hoorah before things get crazy.

Yesterday.

Yesterday was such a day.  I woke up with a gunky eye so I had to wear my glasses and no makeup.  My hair was pulled back in a pony tail and my pants were too tight.  I was just not feeling it yesterday.  My students were irritating and I had an incident in my last class of the day where a student flat-out defied me. When I got home I was just done for the day.  I felt like I could not adult any more.  So, I asked Ellie to keep an eye on the boys til Tom got home and I went to bed.  Tom got home, saw me under the covers staring at the wall, and just took over all the kid-duties for me.  He took care of dinner and homework and chores.  I didn't even go to book club and I love book club!  I always feel really guilty if I don't take advantage of the small window of time I get with the kids each day, but I sure was thankful to Tom for picking up the slack.  On a more positive note...we have a three day weekend with nothing major scheduled!  Ellie recently finished reading the Hunger Games series and I promised her I would watch the movies with her. I am picturing a weekend filled with movies, coloring, and comfy clothes.  Things are looking up!

This and that

• We are on a bit of a coloring kick at our house these days.  A couple of weeks ago, I picked up an adult coloring book on a whim at Target.  I started coloring in it and then Ellie and Jack each wanted a page.  That led to some relaxing evenings of coloring and talking.  The kids love it.  I ordered more colored pencils and a Harry Potter coloring book to feed our new obsession.

• The new trampoline is also a big hit with the kids.  Yesterday, I joined Jack and Sam out there for a bowl of popcorn.  Then we all jumped on the trampoline together and Jack couldn't stop talking about how he had never seen me jump before.  Probably because their old trampoline was so small that one bounce from me would have demolished it.

• I have really been wanting to give Ellie a little bit of the freedom I enjoyed at her age.  I lived in a small town and I was able to ride my bike and wander about with friends to my heart's content.  I feel like we live in a pretty safe community, but I have never felt comfortable letting Ellie go  ride bikes with her friends or go to the park without adult supervision.  So, her best friend's mom and I got together and arranged for the girls to ride their bikes alone to the park to play and then ride home again.  It was crazy how much planning and back-channeling went on just to give our daughter's more independence.  It was only for an hour and Ellie was actually really nervous about it, but now she is begging to do it again. 

• Yesterday, the Powerball lottery was up to 1.2 billion and Ellie was begging us to buy a ticket.  Tom caved and bought 5...one for each of us.  We actually had to Google how to play Powerball and how to buy a ticket.  Needless to say, we didn't win.  Not even $4 for a single number match.  But it was fun dreaming about how we would spend the money.

What I Did Over My Christmas Break (in 1 million pictures)

Ugh, I am so behind in blogging that this is going to be the longest post ever.  Meaning it will be a pain to format when I convert to my blog book for the year.

We had the best Christmas break!  I am so happy we decided not to go anywhere.  It was so relaxing and fun to stay home and spend time with the family.

I am just going to document our Christmas/New Year activities with pictures and captions.

Jack and his cousin Naomi and his school Christmas party

Tom and my brother-in-law took the kids to an A&M basketball game.  It was a late night, but everyone loved it.

Jack said he loved it, too, even though he slept through most of it.

We went to the church Christmas party where the kids would not sit on Santa's lap.

But then we went to Chick-fil-A and they had no problem sitting on his lap.

Our Secret Santa brought us snowballs to make a snowman!

Christmas Eve day - We swam, played Pickelball, and Bocci Ball with my family

Christmas Eve - my dad telling "The Pack on Santa's Back" story to the grandkids

Christmas Eve - the grandkids acting out the Nativity

No Christmas Eve is complete without Jesus's birthday cake made by my mom

I tried to get a pic of the kids in their Christmas jammies - Sam was not cooperating

Christmas morning - the kids were up early and so excited about their gifts

We had fun playing Ellie's new Clue game.

Then we went to my mother-in-law's to open a million presents

The next day we celebrated Christmas with my Father-in-law

We were back at my Mother-in-law's on the 30th to celebrate her birthday

Fireworks for New Year's Eve

One of my favorite things we did over the break was watch all of the Star Wars movies and then went to see The Force Awakens

My very favorite part of the break was staying in our jammies all day and being lazy.