Time for a Break!

 Today marks the first day of our spring break!  We have been waiting for this day for a long time.  This year our break backed up to conferences.  Andy and I have been busy at school teaching all day and then had conferences from 12:30-7:00 both Wednesday and Thursday night.  But now...it's officially over and I can put school on the back burner for a while and concentrate on having fun with my family.  I can't tell you how nice it was to wake up this morning and not rush out of the house.  Everyone still has their pajamas on...life is good!  Since we've been missing in action this week I had a few random pictures from last week to post.  I'm sure I'll be blogging much more this week since we're home. 

Andy's grandpa is a member of the Ames Kiwanis.  We went to Ames to enjoy their annual pancake breakfast.  Isaiah insisted that he was going to eat 10 pancakes and Ava wanted to eat 8.  I think it was more like 3 and 2 but they had lots of fun. 

I thought since I took of picture of Grandpa "relaxing," that I should probably post one of him working too. 

After an early lunch we went to Lowes to get the washer and dryer.  You know summer is right around the corner when Lowes brings out their mowers.  The kids love playing on these.  I was trying to tell Isaiah about the different parts of the mower and he said, "Mom, I already know all of that."  He was even telling me where to put your water bottle and fruit snacks when you mow.  Ava gets a kick out of him too and always looks at me, smiles, and says, "Oh....little brothers."

I love when he says, "These are John Deere ones.  See it says, John Deere."

On Sunday evening Ava had yet another birthday party for one of her classmates at school.  Her little friend Blake invited her whole class to The Playground, the same place where Ava had her party.  She had a blast.  I took a few pictures of Miss Ava.

Ava's best bud is Miss Reagan.  Ava is the one in the purple Micky Mouse shirt and Reagan is to the right of her.  They are so much alike and just love being around each other.

Well...now that it's break, what's on the list of things to do??
**Shopping, going out to eat, going to The Lorax, the Science Center, inviting friends over to play, and playing at friend's houses, seeing family more, celebrating my Dad's b-day, getting together with The Vermeers and The Browns (family friends with kids), and just plain old relaxing...the weather is supposed to be in the upper 60's this weekend so I'm sure we'll be outside quite a bit too.  We have no BIG vacation plans...we're just going to do little things that we never have time for during a normal school week.  I can't wait!  Oh...and maybe I should TRY to pick up the house...just a little.

My Three Happy's:
1) My Aunt Barbie came up from Indiana to visit.  We love when she comes back and my Uncle Dave will be back on Saturday.  It's so nice to see them again!
2) Doing nothing and having no "real" schedule.  We'll be busy doing lots of fun things...but we don't have to rush around!
3) Being with Andy and the kids!  There's nothing else I'd rather do!

A Seusstastical Supper

It's 6:30 in the morning and I've already fed two hungry children, indulged in my yummy, warm cup of coffee, showered, and let the dog out.  The kids were both up at 5:15...OH MY!  But after my coffee and a warm shower, it doesn't seem so bad.  They are happily eating their breakfast and watching Franklin as we speak before we get ready for church. 

This week as been nuts!  I feel like school has consumed my "extra time."  I've been getting report cards ready, conference materials organized, and had to be on the committee that was interviewed by the state at our school's site visit this week.  Talk about pressure...but it didn't turn out to be as scary as I thought.   With all of this stuff, I still NEVER let it take the time I have away from the kids.  My blog time has been taken over by other things lately...but spring break is coming up this Friday and I will have my personal life back!!  Yeah!
 

If you're in the education field or follow children's literature, you may know that Dr. Seuss's birthday was on March 2nd.  On Thursday night the kids wanted breakfast for dinner "Seuss Style."  We made green eggs and ham, green butter for our toast, green syrup for our pancakes, green peanut butter (looked terrible, but Ava ate it on her toast), green juice, and green milk.  I suppose you could say it was somewhat of a St. Patrick's Day theme too.  Here is Mr. Isaiah mixing up the eggs.

In went the green food coloring.  Of course he wanted to "multitask" and eat slices of cheese while stirring.

Yeah, I know...it looks like of yucky...but it tastes the same.  I'm making this for my class on Tuesday to go along with the story Green Eggs and Ham.  There are so many fun activities to do with this story.

Miss Ava is our picky eater...but she actually tried everything and liked it. 

Isaiah loves anything food.  He's always loved food since he was a baby.  This kid will try ANYTHING!  Lately he's really started liking fish and shrimp.  We will be going to a fun seafood restaurant in Disney World, Captain Jack's, and he's already told me he wants to order shrimp.

After dinner Ava told us all about musical chairs.  She told us everything from what we need, to how to set it up to play.  I bet we played for about 30 minutes or so.  The kids got a kick out of watching Andy and I get out of the game. 

The kids galloped, marched, clapped...you name it.  What an easy game to play and they had so much fun!

Here's the  next stage of the leprechaun house.  It's pretty cute now.  We just need a little ledge for him to stand on so he can climb the ladder and "fall into the trap."  One more week until that sneaky guy visits our house and makes all kinds of mischief. 

In a previous post I talked about how the kids wanted to make Star Wars droids.  We made the droids out of construction paper and markers.  Isaiah loved that this guy stands up by himself.

Ava working on hers...

...and the finished product.  These are both hanging on the kid's bedroom doors now. 

My Three Happy's:

1) My sister, Kevin, and Isabelle came over to play yesterday and to eat dinner.  How terrible is it that I completely forgot to take pictures.  Isabelle has really grown up and is turning into a little lady!  They left with this big car race track thing and a giant tiger that Isabelle can ride on...less stuff for us and more to add to their house. 

2) Our dryer broke the other day...the heating element went out and it was going to be pretty expensive to fix.  We just decided to buy a new dryer.  The washer has been acting weird too so we found a good deal at Lowes and got them both.  We really liked the front load ones...so that's what we got.  They come Monday and I can't wait.  How sad is it that it will be "fun to do laundry again."

3) Andy and I stayed up until after 11 last night watching a movie called Courageous.  This is a Christian based movie about a father who finds his faith in God after his daughter dies in a car accident.  He realizes that he wants to be a better dad and husband to his wife and son.  What a tear jerker!  It was an amazing movie with a powerful message.  One thing it makes you think about is that your job and hobbies will be worth nothing when you leave earth, but the souls and character of your children will reflect you and how you raised them.  What a powerful movie...a must see!

To Catch a Leprechaun

Sneakiness, a little green man, and lots of trouble will soon be in the air.  St. Patrick's Day is about 3 weeks away and it's time to prepare for Mr. Leprechaun again.  The kids had so much fun last year creating the trap and seeing the goofy tricks this little man played on us.  Yesterday we started to make our new trap...last year's didn't work...so hopefully we'll be prepared to catch him this year.

We started out with green paint and mixed in gold glitter.

Then traded off painting a box.

The kids then added more glitter on top of the wet paint...what a mess...but so cute!

This is what we have done for now...we're letting it dry.  This morning we added cut out shamrock shapes and a window.  I'll post some more pictures when it's finished.

This was last year's trap.  We may reuse the stick ladder we made or think of something different.

Last night Andy and I had "date night."  Andy's parents watched the kids...they had tons of fun with Grandma and Grandpa...and we went out to eat and then went to a surprise birthday party for Andy's old coaching partner from Gilbert, Scott Auderer.

Scott's wife Tammy organized a little surprise 40th b-day party at the Ballard Golf and Country club.  Here is Scott coming in...he just thought he was coming here with a few friends to have a couple of drinks and watch sports.  He really was surprised!

Wes and Randy...two of Andy's coaching buddies.

Scott's lovely wife Tammy...she's so sweet!  I can't tell you how nice it was to catch up with some of the people we used to sit by and talk to at Gilbert.  The coaches wives were back together again and we had lots of laughs! 

My Three Happy's for the day are on the next post...

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

If you asked Ava, "Who's your best friend?," without a doubt she would Reagan.  These two have been in preschool together this year and are two peas in a pod.  They have so much in common and absolutely love being together.  On Thursday last week, we had Reagan over for a play date.  These girls had tons of fun...plus it was pajama day at preschool so they were all cozy in their princess jammies

When I walked into Ava's room they were playing dolls and putting on make-up at Ava's beauty salon table.

The kids all wanted popcorn and hot cocoa for snack.  Isaiah joined the girls for a little bit and was showing off how much popcorn he could hold in his hand.

Chocolate mustache smiles!

Reagan and Ava playing Barbies

Time for some Perfection and Memory...little brother joined this too. 



I heard Ava and Reagan whispering and I asked them what they were talking about...Ava said, "Can Reagan come over for another play date tomorrow?"  I'm sure these two will be back together very soon!

My Three Happy's:

1) Making Star Wars droids with the kids this morning...pictures to come.  These turned out cute!

2) It's supposed to get to 50 degrees today...time to get outside and play again.

3) Seeing all our friends at Scott's 40th b-day party last night.  We loved catching up with everyone!

Rainbow Water

First off, blogger has been a bit strange lately.  For the past few days I've been trying to upload pictures and make a post.  It was as if someone had re-imaged it and things were in different places and I was unable to do any kind of typing or pictures.  When I logged on today things were just as they should be!  Technology...you never know how it can change! 

I look back and realize it's been over a week since my last post.  Really???? This week as flashed before my eyes as has so much of this year! 

On to this post...rainbow water.  The kids were taking a bath a few nights ago and I wanted to do something a little out of the ordinary.  We called it our "Science Experiments."  They were all about his...sometimes I feel like I have to ask them a million times to get in the tub.  This time I couldn't start the water fast enough.  They were ready to go.  We started out with food coloring and water.  I used little plastic muffin liners.  Ava and Isaiah filled each liner with a little bit of water.  I then added a few drops of different colors to the water.  We watched what happened and then stirred with paint brushes.  Then dump...that colored water went into the tub.

Next up was foamy soap.  They squirted some Bath and Body Works soap into each container and we added drops of food coloring to the bubbles.  It was neat to watch the bubbles absorb the coloring...it reminded me of a snow cone.  This was like creating your own washable bathtub paint!

Isaiah was painting some kind of scene on the side of the bathtub.

At first I thought...this better not stain the tub...but nope.  It wiped away perfectly clean!  They loved this.  We then moved on to oil and water and they thought it was cool to see that they don't really mix that well.  I think this was one of the best baths they've ever had!  Tonight we used water colors and paintbrushes in the tub.  The walls were covered with "artwork,"  but that wiped away clean too.

All the foamy soap colors we used

Miss Ava wanted her hair like Mommy's.

She wanted her hair braided and guess who did this...Daddy!  How cute is this!

One happy Bootles!

Yesterday it was actually quite nice out.  We headed out to the backyard and played on the play set.  We haven't done this in so long.  They loved the swings.  I told Isaiah the blue baby swing is going to be taken down this summer...he's just too big for it now and does just fine in a normal swing. I think he just likes the security of being able to swing high and not hold on! 

The kids were pretending they were on Disney World rides.  First it was Winnie the Pooh, followed by the Haunted Mansion, followed by Star Tours.  We were singing songs and making the music that you would hear if you were on the ride.

Toots...short for Tootsie (I don't know if I've ever shared Jackson's nickname) was happy about  the weather too!  He loved being outside with us!

These two love the great outdoors...and how funny that this was last night and tonight the snow/rain/sleet mixture is pouring down.  The temperature is supposed to drop tonight and the snow is supposed to blow...only in Iowa!

My Three Happy's

1) Ava had her friend Reagan over to play after school today.  It was so cute to watch them interact with each other.  It also gave me some extra time with just Isaiah.

2) Tomorrow is Friday...our class is going to the Civic Center to watch a Clifford play.  It should be fun...what a great way to end the week.

3) I finally posted again.  I swear the past week and a half just slipped by me.