SEA WORLD WEEKEND!!!!!

We went to Sea World- San Antonio! Friday night we drove the 3 hours to the dog-friendly hotel (Boo and Mingo got to come along). We all went to bed after eating quesadillas, watermelon, and carrot sticks in the car. When we got to Sea World the next morning, I was amazed at how BIG and Disneyesque it was- I had no idea!? Also, in case you ever go, the daily admission price is the exact same price as the "funcard," which gives you unlimited admission the rest of the year. Perfect! We headed to the sharks and coral reef exhibit first. The kids were very impressed with the huge sting rays flying through the water, and the even bigger sharks in the next dark aquarium:

Next we went to the Shamu show- but we were scared enough by their multiple warnings of being soaked that we did not take out our camera much. We did in fact get wet, which freaked out the girls. Vivi told us that she likes when whales swim in the sea instead of in the Sea World and it broke my heart. She is the forever compassionate animal lover! We told her that Shamu is here to teach other people how to love animals so that they will protect the oceans, and she seemed OK with the answer. Wasn't there a movie about a kid rescuing a whale?

After Shamu, we went back to the hotel. It was 105 degrees out and time for a cool nap. Tonito slept from the moment his head hit the pillow, Vivi slept about 10 minutes, and Maya about an hour. It was way too exciting to be in bed with either mommy or papi (we kept switching her to see what would work). After a couple of hours, we headed back to the park, this time with a schedule and a plan: playing in the spray park, roller coaster, the pirate show, dinner, crocodiles, the finally, sea lion show. The pirate show was scary, and Tonito was in heaven.

Here is Vivi and Tonito's first roller coaster!!!! Smiles from ears to ears!!!

We rented a stroller the first day, which was well worth it. I miss my double stroller so much!!!!

*

Day 2: We got to Sea World early, and went straight to the dolphins. You can buy a "tray" of fish for $4 and then lay on your stomach hand-feed the dolphins.

This was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I love dolphins and might have been more excited than the kids to be able to interact with them for a couple of minutes.

Maya wasn't quite sure about it, but she liked to watch when I or the kids fed them (and actually got mad one time I took her down off the rim of the pool).

Look at these gorgeous creatures- honestly, this dolphin is smiling!

After the amazing dolphins, we walked over to the penguin exhibit and found some characters along the way (missing Maya was too scared).

Another ride on the roller coaster before we left, this time braver Vivi wants to sit by big brother instead of mommy or papi:

Our hotel check-out was at noon, and since the dogs were relaxing in the air conditioned room we had to rush back to get them. It was a fantastic weekend, so fun, so nice to leave our apartment without cleaning it for a showing or an open house! ha! But also just to enjoy the 5 of us together experiencing new things together, aaaah.

Starting the Ocean Unit

This is what our days look like:

8-12: run errands, go to the library or park, color, play

12: lunch

1-4: naps and snack

4-6: SWIM

6: dinner

7: art projects, read books

8:30: bed

*

We are studying "oceans" right now, and the kids are making an ocean scene on our un-decorated wall. Here they are glue-ing cheerios to starfish (Maya thought the glue was a fun dip for her cheerios snack until I confiscated it).

*

Here is a picture Vivi made for my dad for Father's Day. It is Nala and Simba and Zazu on Pride Rock, with a giraffe, cheetah, elephant and zebra watching. (the black figure is the elephant). She is so good at drawing- everytime she impresses me more!

All in all it was great first week! We are unpacked (yeah, once I found out cockroaches like the glue in boxes, I unpacked in a day and threw all boxes away), settled in, already have books checked out from the library, food in the fridge, clothes in the dressers, and toys strewn around.

Duck Attack and our crazy walk

Two hilarious things happened on our walk today. I love to walk everywhere and while driving down a street by our house I noticed a big field that has 4 different playgrounds around the edges. I decided we would bring a picnic lunch and play for a while. I parked at the library to cut the walk a couple of blocks shorter since it is 95 degrees and I do not have a stroller. So here we are walking down the street, sweating, but it was pretty shaded and I had tons of drinks and snacks for the kids (plus hats, sunglasses, sunscreen, etc). First we came across a pond with a fountain, and some nice houses and palm trees and I decided to take a picture with the kids. Immediately ducks (are they ducks?) started flying, swimming and running over to us (conditioned to get food?). The first 30 seconds was fun because Maya was squealing "kak-kak" and they made good props, but when they started trying to nibble US and our clothes, it wasn't so much fun.. more like terror and screaming kids running in every directions trying to escape. Think Hitchcock's "The Birds" movie, but with weird, red-faced ducks, almost as big as Maya, chasing her. Maya started crying, I picked her up and started running and told the kids to run "But stay on the sidewalk" as Vivi tried to run in the street to escape one. They look innocent in this picture, but it was taken just as the ducks realized we were not going to feed them. So here we are trotting down the street, I am balancing my camera and its case, the picnic lunch, my phone, and squirming Maya, who is looking over my shoulder and saying "waddle-waddle-waddle" (I think she was talking about the ducks and not me). Then Tonito is in front laughing and screaming "they're gonna eat us!! ha ha ha! they're gonna catch us and eat us!" while that scares Vivi even more who is hanging on my leg saying "mommy carry me too!" I am laughing so hard she can't understand me explain that ducks don't have teeth and can't actually eat us. We stopped after a block, and they were still chasing us, and almost had caught up to us. How can ducks run that fast? There were about 20 seriously running after us, and almost as fast as us! I told the kids we just had to run one more block and then we would be far enough away from them, so we did and we were. By this time everyone is red-faced and sweaty, and I am *almost* regretting our walk. We sat on the bench to take an apple juice break.

*

Enter man on bike.

*

Older Man, stopping his bike and staring, confused: "Are you just out... taking a walk?"

Me, smiling: "Yeah."

Man, stammering: "Oh, wow!........ That's........good! .........Good for you, taking a walk."

Me: "Thanks."

*

Thanks, I think? Am I crazy? We were the only people at all 4 playgrounds. I get it that it was really hot, but.. really? There was no one else out and a guy congratulated me (or reprimanded me, I can't tell)..? Maybe their summer is like our winter, where people staying inside their air-conditioned/heated homes until the weather is better...

Napping then Swimming: how we spend every afternoon

So it is really hot in Houston. HOT like almost 100 and very humid.. Fortunately, during the hottest part of the day we have lunch and then take naps! Well, you can see from the pictures who takes naps and who has "quiet" time in her room and plays with animals. Maya is in our bed until I wash out her pack and play- it was in the basement for too long! Sunday we made a huge arget run and got sheets, and garbage cans, and all the fun stuff that we wouldn't fit into our car. The kids were so excited, even though I told them that when their other beds come they will use their other sheets (I hope they don't get used to queen sized beds). Our apartment is in a really centralized location and we can walk to the library, mall, "downtown" area, and some parks, and we have a much appreciated pool here. So last night I was taking a little walk to CVS for some calamine lotion (Tonio is covered in bites) and I thought I saw a mouse scurrying across the sidewalk. Upopn closer observation I saw the it was not a mouse, but a HUGE cockroach. In an instant all of the dried leaves in the ground looked suspicious.. but they were just leaves. The rest of the way home I walked as fast as I could, ready to swat away any flying cucarachas (yes, they FLY) and vowing not to walk at night. They only come out at night, right? Well, in my fantasyland they only come out at night and are only on that sidewalk on the way to CVS, and I'm sticking to it.

After only a couple of days of swimming Tonito is getting really comfortable in the water! He and Vivi wear life vests in the water and float around and Maya has a little floaty thing too because it is impossible to watch all 3 kids and there is no life guard at our pool! There are about 10 local pools and so we checked out one of them today and were surprised by how little people are out. Is it too hot? Or does everyone have their own pool? Nice for us:), we had the pool almost all to ourselves.

On the road again...

Everyone slept late (7:30am) and was refreshed for another day in the car. After breakfast we got on the road and made it to Texarkana pretty quickly. There is a huge rest area with brochures for every region, city, park, attraction, etc, and the kids picked out "maps" to hold in the car and tell us where to go. We spent a half an hour running with the dogs and kids around the trees and picnic area- man is it HOT.

We ate a little picnic lunch here, and then got back in the car for a nap. After naps, we got some ice cream for the home stretch- almost there!!! The kids rarely get ice cream at McD's so this was a huge treat that they loved- look at Maya!

I don't think you could fit much more into this car! Finally around 5pm we made it to our apartment. While the kids ran from bedroom to bedroom, this is what they said (actually shrieked):

***

Vivi: Mommy!!!! It is the PERFECT POTTY!! It is the PERFECT sink! It is the PERFECT this! (pointing to a towel bar)

*

Tonito: It has a bed for me! Tonito's bed!!! (well, a rented bed, but yes it is for you:).

*

Vivi: Mommy look- a KITCHEN!!!! (squealing with excitement)

*

Tonito: It has a refrigerator!!! For our food!!!!!

*

Vivi: The perfect refrigerator! And to cook! (pointing at the stove)

**

It was as if our little apartment was a luxury home on tour, and I think it stood up a little prouder hearing the gushing words of these mini- real estate experts. Either the kids were overly zealous to get out of the car after 2 long days, or they could see beyond what our adult eyes saw: finally we were together as a family, and that really was perfect.

Life is a highway... (repeat song 50 more times)

We woke up at 3am, and were on the road by 3:45am- 3 kids in pajamas, 2 dogs in the way back on a bed on top of boxes, the excargo on the roof, and lots boxes packed every square inch of our minivan! We had a cooler full of snacks, drinks, breakfast, and lunch and we were READY. I innocently thought the kids would go back to sleep once they got in the car, but I was wrong! By the time we were getting on the highway, they were ready for a movie (I had been telling them the whole week we could watch movies on the way to Houston, I just didn't think it would be in the first hour!:). After 2 movies it was time for breakfast, a gas fill-up (terrible gas mileage with such a heavy load!) and a bathroom break. We brought a tub of vanilla yogurt, a cut-up pineapple and a box of Kashi chocolate granola to make parfaits in plastic cups. Yum!!! Who said breakfast on the run had to be unhealthy? The rest of the day included naps, more movies, and using our new car seat tables from grandma to play on the computer:

Color:

Eat markers:

We made it all the way from Chicago to Little Rock, Arkansas by 3:30 pm! It took us a while to find our hotel (sorry Tonio, I made a wrong turn:). At one point we *almost* ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere because I wasn't watching, oops. The light was on, we followed wrong GPS directions that were supposed to lead us to a gas station but instead led us to a farm. I ran across a field and flagged down this huge tractor, who told us the nearest gas station was back on the highway, about 10 miles away. We crossed our fingers and prayed the whole way, as we counted down the miles: "Tonio, you could run the 7 miles to the gas station while we wait here..." "OK, for sure you could do 5 miles if we run out now..." "3 miles, piece of cake!" "1 mile, you could sprint there and back in 10 minutes (haha), "Here it is, phew, we made it!" I told the kids they had to be quiet because it was an emergency and they were all excited to see what type of emergency it was going to be. It was quite disappointing when nothing happened. "Mommy, when's the emergency?" "There's no emergency anymore! We made it." "Oh, man." We found a hotel that accepted dogs AND had free breakfast- nice! For dinner we went to a not-so-good Mexican restaurant, but everyone was happy to be out of the car and stretching out legs. All 5 of the weary travellers were asleep by 7pm, even the drivers- but we made it more than halfway with no meltdowns!!!!! It was a great first day on the road.

Saying good-bye to our neighbors!

Maya, Jensen, Vivi, Tonito, Carter, Marshall

We're spending the last couple of days at my parent's house so that I can come back and clean without the little monsters taking everything out again! It was so sad to say good-bye to our neighbors down the street! We see them every morning and every afternoon while we are both waiting for the bus, and then frequently in the evenings at the bewitching hour when Lynn is waiting for her husband to come home and I am just waiting for dinnertime and bedtime:). Lynn has saved me many times if I am late with the bus getting home (stuck in that darn Caputo's!), babysitting for a quick errand, or providing some sane adult talk when we are both stuck at home with 3 little ones. Her kids are adorable and really nice, and constantly let my kids use their cool cars and riding toys (how do you find all of those Lynn!?). In addition a certain someone in our house has a crush on Carter and a certain someone in her house has a crush on Maya, so the sparks are flying when we are playing together! We will miss you so much!!! They gave each kid a little goodie-bag to take in the car with crayons, a notebook, lots of snacks and ltitle toys- so sweet!!!! We leave tonight at 3am.... wish us luck!!! Say a prayer for safe travels!!! We are hoping for a boooooting trip with no surprises or catastrophes:). I have a 2 hours play list of Disney and Pixar songs on my Ipod and lots of DVD's ready (with snacks, stickers, toys, coloring... how is it all going to fit!?)...