Zoo Day!

MawMaw & Aunt Jana decided they wanted to take the kids to the Cameron Park Zoo today. Mom & Dad tagged along. We were excited to see a ladybug photo op right off the bat! Aunt Jana was also called Ladybug when she was a young 'un!

David made a handsome blue butterfly.

David's favorite part was the aquarium. I was last in with the stroller, but Dad said when David walked into the building, he stood in amazement and said very excitedly, "OH, MY!"

David, and every other kid who's watched Finding Nemo repeatedly, could easily identify the Anemone, though I had a time trying to figure out how to spell it!
David also recognized the Lion Fish from the page in his Shark Book.
The huge tank was very impressive. David & Dad also spotted a Green Moray, which also has a page in his Shark Book.

David is telling Aunt Jana about the alligator they can see under the water.

The otters were not on exhibit today, but the Otter Slide was open for business!

Another aquarium was equally interesting.

Mom's favorite exhibit was the Jaguars! Elizabeth seemed to like that one, too. She kept hollering, "CAT!"

This one was their kitten! My, what beautiful fur they have!

She's still pointing at the big cats & did not want to leave this area!

The tee pees were set up near the buffalo. Inside are David, Elizabeth, Dad, MawMaw & Aunt Jana.

Elizabeth pointing at an Elephant.

The lioness was neat... but that hungry look at my child is a little disturbing...

I thought the water lilies were beautiful!!! I wonder if I can grow some of these in our pond?

We finally made it back around to the play area before leaving the zoo. If I had known there was a water pad in there, I'd have brought extra clothes... Elizabeth learned to stick her toes in before long & it was adorable!

What a fun day! The kids were even exhausted the next day! : )

Water's Coming...

The water well digging truck was parked at the North Place this evening. I called to find out when they're planning on coming to dig - Tuesday morning.

Gas & Children in the Car

No, I'm not talking about children with gas! I'm talking about the gas pipeline that stopped drilling on Monday!

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The pipeline has now been marked, so I guess when the ground dries up Mr. Driller will come back out.

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We went up there Tuesday evening and took these photos.

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It was Elizabeth's bedtime as we were in the car driving home & she started to get fussy. I'd much rather look like a goof ball than listening to crying for a few miles, so we sang a few rather energetic verses of Old McDonald to keep everyone happy.

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I'm telling you, we were having quite a moving rendition of the song!

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Then we met my cousin driving along the way... I just hope I wasn't looking like this when we passed each other...

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Oh, the things you do for your kids... yep, and I took pictures of it! : )

We made it!

I survived another week of Cubbies with 15 preschoolers. Two more weeks...

Tonight, David said his last memory verse from the Cubbies workbook and earned his last patch. So, in the course of this school year, David has memorized all 24 Bible verses and 3 of the special occasion Bible verses, plus his Christmas passage.

You know, this took a lot of work! But I enjoyed doing it and I am thankful for the chance to be at home with him, teaching him the Word of God. I wonder what we'll work on this summer...

Tidbits & Tiny Talk

David's painting from Sunday School this week. Titled, "Snakes," by the artist.

I can not begin to tell you how wonderful it was for me to have to wait for David to come out of his class at church last Sunday. For about 2 months prior to starting visiting this new church, David was dreading going to church on Sunday. He bawled hysterically when we left him in his class, and I got paged to extended session each week. When we got to church this Sunday, he ran into the classroom & started playing & interacting with the other kids. He never looked back at me. After Sunday school and church, we then had to wait for him to finish his puzzle, gather his things, and almost reluctantly come to the door. It was very exciting! (for me to see him enjoying church again)

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In the car, I asked him if he had a Bible story in his class today.

Uh-huh.

What was the Bible story about?

God.

hehehehe...

Here's some other stuff I've heard this week...

David has a little toy airplane. On the bottom is printed that it's a Super Sonic Jet. Another airplane has the same body style, but is painted differently. This is how he refers to the second jet: Super Split Ba-Jet. He belongs to Super Sonic.

I found it rather difficult to type with a 3-year old head in my armpit, so I said, "Would you please get your head our of my armpit?"
He replied, "My armpit belongs to your armpit."
Then he stuck his armpit on my arm and it was still hard to type! : )

Getting our tires rotated made quite an impression on David this morning. As he played with his big truck car carrying case today, he flipped it upside down, started spinning the wheels & said, "I'm rotating the tires!"


Today I learned that a 16-month old can't digest a whole wheat (with added wheat bran) banana nut muffin very good, no matter how much she enjoyed eating it for breakfast yesterday! I'll not be feeding her that again. It didn't really jive with cloth diapers, either... : (

Elizabeth's vocabulary never ceases to amaze me. Today in her high chair, she sat hollering, "I eat! I eat!" over and over again! And she was packing it away. (after getting cleaned out, no doubt!) For supper she ate squash baby food, fruit baby food, 2 grapes, 2 whole wheat Ritz, and I thought she was done. I made some fish sticks later & she ate 3 or 4 of them! She kept pointing at them saying, "Go-fish!" Then I showed her the difference between a Goldfish cracker & a fish stick. She still called them "Go-fish!"

She has also started linking words together like "I eat!" "Go play!" "Play ball!" Notice everything she says has an exclamation point! I must tell her it's ok a lot, because tonight she didn't want to go to bed, so when I went in to lay her back down again, she just kept repeating, "OK, OK, OK" as if she was trying to comfort herself.

Ups & Downs

It was exciting when we pulled in the driveway and saw this drilling rig sticking up in the air. Piers were scheduled to be dug today! The kids & I parked & got out with just enough time to snap a picture as the tall thing was starting to lay back down on the truck. "Wow, that was fast!" I thought. Then the operator explained to me that Mr. Builder had called them off for the day. My shoulders fell. Rain chances & an unmarked gas pipeline not even on our property were the culprit. It didn't rain today. Just reminding myself, all in God's timing. Guess we'll try again on Wednesday.

David's Latest Creation

This is David's latest masterpiece, titled My Four Cars. Can you find Wingo, Boost, Snot Rod and DJ in this photo? (from the movie Cars) Click here to see the notes on the photo on my Flickr.

This Week at the House!

I can not tell you how exciting it is to see work on the house starting!!!
This was Wednesday. The guys were building the forms for the foundation. Here's the stack of forms. Notice that they brought their own microwave to the site!

There were absolutely no workers at the site today (except for us). That was kinda disappointing. I raked up a ton of mesquite twigs. Dad dug a hole & worked on his signal mounting plan. He also found something interesting in his pile of railroad signals and is showing it to David...

A chicken snake curled up on one of the lenses!

Oh, the joys of country life!

This is what the house site currently looks like:

Rebar in the foreground is prepared to go into the piers. There are little orange flags all over the flat site, marking where the piers will be drilled.

Here's the fam resting in the shade while I walked around.

Time to Practice CPR!

It's time to practice your CPR skills!
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CPR Teddy's founders (an ER physician and a health care attorney) recognized that very few people remember how to do CPR shortly after taking a class. They wanted to create a practice aid that is inexpensive, non-threatening, and easy to use, but that also would be left out in the home and seen on a regular basis. They believed that if people could see the device, they would get an immediate memory prompt about CPR, but they may also pick it up and practice with it more often.
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Click here to learn more about the lifesaving (and adorably cuddly) CPR Teddy, and purchase yours from me online!

Today at the House!

Hopefully, "Today at the House" will be a common post title as things actually start happening at our house site! The first delivery of supplies was brought in this morning and Dad strung an electric fence around the site to keep the cows from tearing it up.

This evening we headed to town to do some errands. One of the things on the list were some "work boots" for David. The old shoes he'd been wearing as work shoes were quickly getting too small. We found these fireman boots at Tractor Supply. I liked that they had handles & he could pull them on all by himself! The rest of the evening he talked about his work boots, that he could go through mud, and dirt, and grass, and dust, and water, and... After tromping around for a little bit at the house site, they got nice & dusty, so he declared: My work boots are dirty! I've been working hard!

I can't remember what these things are called that go up just outside the actual edge of the house, but they went up today from that load that was delivered this morning! And there's David, working hard to remove a big rock from the house!