Mother's Day

Mother's day this year consisted of me staying up all day after working the night before and hanging out with the kiddos. We went to church, Mondo made me lunch, and the we played in the backyard with our new blowup pool.

My prizes. Actually, just the flowers and the pictures. The other two items are from school. Mondo isn't that crafty. ;-) But he does know that I'm a sucker for all things home made.

This was from Ethan's school. So cute!!

From Caleb's school.

His picture is hanging out of the little tea cup...so cute!

Ethan's picture that he drew for me. I asked him who it was. He said "Mommy, Daddy, and me." Funny...he left out his brother. Hmmm...

Caleb's picture. I already forgot what he said it was but it definitely wasn't what it looked like.

Weren't these beautiful?!

Another thing Ethan made at school with his little handprint.

And another...

The best part was that he opened each little page and read it to me. :-)

Mmmm...lunch from Iron Chef Mondo. Steak, corn, and au gratin potatoes. So good!!

Our new blow up pool. It has already provided hours of fun!

The Tooth Fairy Came to Our House!

Oh, so behind on the blogging. Ethan lost his first tooth!.....on Mother's Day. He has had 4 slightly loose teeth for what seems like forever. Then suddenly one became very loose. He showed it to me that morning at church. It seemed like it was still a little stuck in the front so I thought it would be a day or two before it actually fell out.

He kept playing with it all morning. It was really bothering him and he wanted it out. We were playing outside and he was standing in the pool and started shouting "my tooth just came out!" Of course I didn't believe him. But sure enough...

It did fall out! Actually, he pulled it out himself. I was shocked. And I was even more shocked that he didn't drop the tooth in the water. It was a tiny little sucker. And man, did it bleed! I made sure to act super excited so he wouldn't notice the hemorrhage going on in his mouth.

Love that face.

Wow! The tooth fairy left him five bucks! I have later heard that we must have a great tooth fairy to leave so much money. I told him that the tooth fairy usually leaves the most for the first tooth then just a little for each tooth after that. He seemed to go along with that.

He requested that the tooth fairy bring him coins next time. I think that's a fabulous idea...since his top two are about to fall out!

There Went Our Shade

I'm sure by now most of you heard about the loss of our giant tree in the backyard a few weeks ago. Mondo woke me up and told me to look outside. Of course I was irritated that he woke me up early...until I saw why.

Yep. This is what I saw. It felt so surreal. Strangely enough, there was no crazy wind during the night...and none of us heard it fall and crush our fence. We later found out that the tree was dying and diseased and it just broke off. Luckily it didn't hit our neighbor's house. There was about a millimeter of tree branch on their gutter. Whew! But unfortunately, it took out our phone and internet line. You can't see in these pictures but the lines were all wrapped in the branches.

Here's the view from the street.

Another view of what was left standing.

We had a tree company come out and within a few hours they were hacking up our beautiful tree. He said it was diseased and the whole tree needed to be taken down because the rest of the tree was headed for our house! It suddenly became a stat situation!

Luckily the tree people also do fences because this is the hole we were left with...for 2 days because they didn't have time to patch it. I felt like I lived in an apartment. The kids couldn't go outside without me and I had to take the dogs out on a leash. I don't miss those days!

So there you have it. A tree stump and a patched fence. We are getting quotes to have our entire fence redone. Part of the fence on the other side of the yard is falling down so it needs to be done anyway.

Another view. We actually had the stump ground up last week. Now we need to buy some grass to cover the spot. On the bright side, our yard looks bigger. But it is very bright now! We get a little shade in the morning from one neighbor's tree and a little shade on the other side in the afternoon from another neighbor's tree.

Bye old tree. We miss you!

Ethan's First Fieldtrip

Ethan had his first field trip a few weeks ago. I was happy to be able to attend and help out (thank you weekend job). We went to a farm in Arlington and a playground. I was put in charge of a group of kids which was like trying to keep up with ants! We spent half of the time on the playground and half of the time on the farm. The weather was gorgeous!

Waiting patiently for the bus.

This is the gangster pose he always gives when I take his picture.

Loading up. That's his teacher waving.

I think he was equally excited and nervous to ride the bus for the first time. I was very nervous for my little baby. There are no seat belts in that thing!

He LOVES the monkey bars!

He can get pretty high with the swinging.

See-sawing with Marcus.

Notice the sad face? He fell on the concrete right before lunch and skinned the palm of his hand. He looked like this all through lunch. Pretty sad. :-(

Um, do you think the petting zoo was stinky? Silly Brody and Braden.

There's my baby's smile back. I was actually holding this bunny and taking the picture. I carried it around for all of the kids to pet. Reminded me of my days working as a junior zookeeper at the Dallas Zoo.

Poor donkey.

Cute Shetland pony. I always wanted one of those. I was the kid who actually did wish for a pony on every birthday.

Most of the kids didn't want to pet the pig.

Feeding goats.

Oh look! I'm actually in a picture...with one of my adopted kids on my shoulder.

Here he is talking to Mondo about his hand injury and about being mauled by children when he wanted to be left alone. Poor Ethan. It sucks to be popular. ;-)

Checking out a baby goat.

Wringing out towels like they did in the old days.

Going on a hay ride (and STILL looking sad about his hand).

Pumping water.

Snacking on watermelon before going back to school.

Comparing watermelons with Ana.

The motley crew. Can you see Ethan's little head over by his teacher?