Week 17: Dirt, Rocks & Nachos

Blogging again so soon, I know. But, a couple of nights ago when I was looking at maps and working on our trip, I told Asa maybe we should leave a day early, and instead of going all the way to Richmond in one shot, we could go as far as Charlotte (you know, checking another stadium off my list), and then what do you know, Appomattox is right on the way! I'm lucky he puts up with my crazy plans. I'm changed them about 18,000 times for this trip. It's jut so hard to decide what to fit in, and see what gets left out. Overall, I'm happy with our plans- a little bummed we're not making it up to Philadelphia, and maybe having to cut Baltimore, but we're gaining Appomattox and Jamestowne! 

I'm hoping we can skirt the rain Wednesday morning for a trip to Mount Vernon, and not have to leave D.C Friday to go, but we'll just see how the weather plays out. It looks like no matter where we are, Tuesday (and maybe Wednesday) will be a complete wash. We'll just have to make the best of it. 

So, the Waterstraut chore Act of 2014 coupled with points being able to be cashed in for vacation, has my kids being SUPER helpful lately. Calib cooked a meal all on his own. I didn't have to do a thing! 

He made pork loin, yellow rice, veggies, and strawberries. It was a pretty good meal too! 

Speaking of how awesome my kids are, they've been getting along pretty well lately. I was particularly impressed that Calib and Hayden played with toys together a couple of times a week. I guess this is what happens when you don't have the normal teenage pressures of middle school. You still play with toys! 

Tuesday was Earth Day, so we celebrated by making some dirt. Hayden did most of it on his own. We had planned on making it for the first day of Spring, but Calib and I went to see March Madness that day, so I had been promising Hayden that we would make it eventually. 

We were missing gummy worms, though. I couldn't find them anywhere. Gummy bears? Everywhere. It just seemed too weird to throw those in, so we just left it out. 

Also for Earth Day, we had a fun arts and crafts project and painted some rocks to put in our garden and label some of the plants. 

A couple of trips to the park this week, and one ended in disaster for Calib's Seminoles shirt. He's pretty bummed about it. And, I had to discuss with Asa taking it slightly easier on the kids while playing with them. In all honesty though, Calib's near being able to take anyone in this house. The other day, we were screwing around, and I totally couldn't get past him. 

We got lots of school work done this week, the boys had a couple of blue days, and we've completed nearly all our projects I set out to do before we left on vacation. (Things are getting very busy when we get back-- including Calib heading to Ohio for a couple weeks, so this is basically the end of their 'year') Such a hard life, doing school work in your pajamas at your computer with your loyal cat right by your side. 

Shout out to my husband. I'm all "I could really go for some nachos", and these appear before me. Homemade cheese sauce, and freshly made avocado salsa. He even put black olives on it! 

Thursday, Peyton and Hayden had their last class of the year at the aquarium. We got there about an hour and half before class to enjoy the exhibits. 

The new Madagascar area is open! 

Lemurs are the new feature animal of the Madagascar exhibit, which tied right into the Lemurs of Madagascar documentary we saw at the IMAX last week, so it was perfect! 

Hayden's class finished a bit before Peytons, so he got to show me all the experiments he did. 

I snapped a picture on the way home of Peyton reading. I swear, this is all he does lately. He's finally onto the last Harry Potter movie. Speaking of which, we watched the Half-Blood Prince this week. Hayden was devastated Dumbledore dies. Peyton will probably finish the book while we're on vacation, and then we'll watch the last two movies when we get home. Until then though, the hatred for Snape is ram pent in this house, and I can't tell everyone to hold on a minute. I almost told Hayden "you think Dumbledore dying is bad, wait till you see Dobby". I found that even sadder. 

More news of the week: the NFL schedule FINALLY got released. We really look forward to it in this house, so we know when we're heading to games. I'm thrilled our first and last games are home games. But, we have zero home night games, which are just the best. Maybe we'll play really well and get flexed in. And, our first two home games are at 4, which helps a little with the heat. We don't have a 1 o'clock home game until October! Under the not awesome category: The Broncos play the Bengals on December 22nd at 8:30. I had so hoped to take Peyton to this game, but driving up there that time of year can be dicey, plus we have a home game on the 21st. Not to mention sitting out in the cold. We've set our sights on trying to go to Saint Louis in November instead, so Peyton can FINALLY see Peyton Manning play in person. 

Also, super exciting, we found out we got our tickets to the White House. You have to request tickets way ahead of time, and I guess they are pretty hard to get.

Yesterday, Asa and I went out to get all kinds of pre-vacation errands done. We were going to pick up dinner at Publix, and the cooking demo station had this as it's feature recipe, so Asa made us some awesome Porkchops with bacon and onion jam, and some Alfredo potatoes. I told you, he's becoming quite the cook! 

We're headed out tomorrow for vacation. And while we have a bunch to do today, I am (shockingly enough) procrastinating to fill you in on the last few days at the Waterstrauts. I do have a list of things to pack, food to cook to take along, and all our itineraries and tickets printed out. My organization skills have been on full display for this vacation! I even already put all the addresses into the gps. I'm so on top of things. 

Next Up: Vacation! I might wait till we get home to fill you in, or I might do it while we're out and about. So stay tuned! 

Week 16: Eggs, Lemurs and a $3 Dinner

A little early with the blog this week, but after a big home school day I've found I have a bit of time before Asa is done with work (yay for work from home week!), and next week's blog will have to come Sunday (if at all), so it all works out. Next Monday we're heading off on vacation, so this week is lots of prep work. 

When I last left you, Hayden had built a nice blanket fort in the corner of the living room. Which quickly took on a life of it's own. Before I knew it my entire family room was under blankets. 

Monday and Tuesday were full home school days, and Wednesday Asa was off work, so we headed out to Mosi to catch the new Lemurs Documentary at the IMAX. We were hoping to do the ropes course and zip line but their was a school field trip invading the entire place. In a funny coincidence it was the boys old (old) school, Oakstead Elementary. 

We managed to avoid the hoards of children though. When I saw the pure choas that was field trips, I asked Peyton if thats what really happened on them. He replied with 'Oh, yea, I HATED them. Nobody ever listened.' 

We did get to see the Lemur Documentary without too much trouble. I had no idea Lemurs only live in the wild in Madagascar. It was even narrated by Morgan Freeman. What documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman isn't good? 

On the way home we stopped at Sonic for happy hour, since we had missed it on Tax day. 

If you read my updates on Facebook, you may have recently read about the competition to see who is the best at putting their head in the freezer. Yes, that's a thing. Calib came up with it after losing to Asa is NCAA too much. He said he was the best at something, and came up with that. So, now, I randomly find children (and Asa) like this.... 

Friday we colored our eggs. I hard-boiled three dozen, and am now coming up with all kinds of ways to use hard-boiled eggs. 

In the middle of coloring, our neighbor stopped by to drop off some Easter candy for us. He stayed for awhile and told us some not-to-be missed attractions for our vacation. He also agreed to watch our plants, one less thing for Justin to worry about. 

When we were done coloring our eggs, the boys worked on Operation Egg Drop. They were to construct a contraption which could be dropped and keep the egg in tact. 

I refused to help at all, so everything they came up with was totally on their own. Peyton used a bucket, wrapped his egg in a blanket, and then taped plastic wrap to the top. Calib used an empty kleenex box, stuffed with towels. 

And Hayden constructed a contraption out of his legos. I was so worried he was going to break the egg in construction. 

We then took our contraptions down to the park. The plan was to drop them out of Justin's second story window, but he was at Whole Foods, so we decided to just go with the top of the slide at the park. 

Also, sidnote: Don't judge my kids outfits. I tried to tell Peyton to get dressed, and he replied with 'what for? we're just going down to drop the eggs', it was a cold dreary rainy day and we had all sat around watching Harry Potter and constructing egg contraptions. 

Asa dropped Hayden's first. 

Sadly, it broke. 

Peyton's was dropped, and his egg came out totally unscathed. 

And then Calib's was dropped. 

His also turned out totally fine.

Oh, so I forgot to tell y'all but earlier in the week, Asa and I totally KILLED it grocery shopping. We don't usually coupon. However, when I hear there are $10 off coupons in the paper, I'll usually pick up a couple. Publix and Target both commonly run these coupons, this week it was Targets turn. A bunch of other good coupons kind of fell in my lap and we ended up with $170 in groceries for $81. I would have taken a picture of all of our purchases, but thats a lot of work. It was a good grocery week though. In addition to all that, I had $20 free to spend on Groupon so we bought one to the Land and Sea market, and ended up getting 4 meals worth of meat for $4. 

I'm bothering telling you this, because the meal you see before you came in for UNDER $3 for ALL FIVE of us. Yes, for real. The chicken is from the land and sea market, so it was $1. The sauce Asa made was negligible, but even if you put it at .50, the frozen veggies were also .50, and the bread was less than $1, being a sell by today bakery item. The strawberries were free. They're on sale for $1.50, but I had $1 off fresh produce coupon, and a .50 cents off Driscolls berry coupon. It was such a good dinner too. Asa did an awesome job. 

I did mention we watched another Harry Potter movie. Peyton finished book #5 (The Order of the Phoenix). So we all watched the correlating movie. As soon as he was done with book five, he grabbed book 6 off the shelf. That was Saturday. He's almost half way through it at this point. This is basically where he spent Saturday. Asa was working, and it was another dreary day (get it together, Florida weather!) so I didn't mind too much. 

When I had Calib, someone once told me 'they're all good ages'. I used to get quite sad that my kids weren't babies anymore, and they were getting big so fast. It's also a bit of a hazard when you have kids so young, and then when your oldest is hitting his teenage years, your friends are having their first babies. But, since we've been home schooling and I get to spend so much time with them, I don't mind it so much. Time has slowed down a bit, and I try and remember to enjoy every minute of it. Even when they are driving me nuts. This relates, because this was the first year we had no Easter Bunny Believers in my house. And, it didn't really bother me. I got to sleep in (we actually had to wake the kids up at 10), and we hid everything in the morning. Since the eggs weren't out all night, they're totally still edible, which is nice. 

We didn't really pick out good basket hiding places ahead of time though, so I think they were a little too easy. Everyone found theirs pretty quickly. 

In a fun turn of events too, the eggs Asa likes to hide up high aren't too high for Calib to get. That boy is getting taller by the second. 

After our egg and basket hunting, we had our usual rabbit pancake brunch. 

And we also made a trip to the park, in which Hayden found a stick he was totally intent on bringing home. Sometimes you just have to deal with their messes. Childhood is messy, you know. But this time his stick actually had a purpose. He came home, sat down, and colored this guy and made him all by himself out of his stick. This boy has quite the imagination. His favorite home school thing is his writing journal, where he gets to write stories. He's getting much better at them, too. It's pretty impressive. 

So, categorized under the weird things that happen in this house: the tortoise and the cat just hanging out, looking outside. I think Deleno is going to be bummed when we're on vacation and he has to spend it in his habitat, and not wandering the house. I'm so hoping the new house has a screened in room he can live in. How do you think the Realtor will feel about that request? 'Um, yes, we're going to need space for our tortoise to roam. Preferably something screened in with tile.'

We also broke out the Super Nintendo. Flashback to my college days. Sad story though: I spent months trying to get to level 100. One day I finally got to level 99, and discovered it didn't go any higher. What a let down. 

For Easter dinner, Peyton offered to cook. We were having a low country boil, which is so easy, I told him he'd have no problem making it himself. I talked him through it, but didn't help him at all. He did it all on his own. 

That's it from here. We just had a blue day for Peyton (he's on 1963 on his timeline-- JFK was just assassinated!), and Calib is still working on his checklist. Hayden finished ahwile ago and has managed to strewn his toys all about the family room while I've had my headphones in. 

Up next: Our final aquarium class of the year, a civil war puppet show, and visiting with some friends. If I don't get a blog up on Sunday, I likely won't have one up again until the following week when we get back- but then I'll have loads to share! And then it'll be May... and May is going to be busy, busy, busy!