The Soldier's Show on Ft. Hood

On Thursday while driving through poste to get to the lake I got reminded by the signs posted that I promised Bella that I take them to the Soldier's Show the week following the Sesamestreet program. Sesametreet was cute, but really only for little ones and she was quite bored there. The Soldier's Show was supposed to be musical 'Entertainment from Soldiers for Soldiers and Families'. I wasn't sure if it was okay for their ages yet, but I thought, perhabs I should check it out and being told it was family friendly, okay I intended on keeping my promised. Except my mind is like Swiss cheese and I keep forgetting everthing and by the time we got to go go it was the last day the show was going on. But we made it. Just on time when the lights went out and trying to find seats in the pitch black dark with three kids in tow who want to go in three different directions.

But the girls were already happy when the music started with the favorite songs which usually blasting out of the radio all the time and didn't mind to hear some classics, too. Soren had a hard time to keep his butt on the chair, how can you with music playing, so he got to see some really really close.

Overall, the is a unisome decision made if both shows should come back to Ft. Hood we skip Sesamestreet, but will try to see these Soldiers again. Well done. We enjoyed the show.

One LAZY day - naja

You can try to call that way. The day was a day with no appointments. No important errands that had to be done. So we decided to take a whole day off to go to the lake and were hoping that it wouldn't be packed there like at the beginning off the summer.

So, two moms packed five kids, two ice boxes filled with food, drinks, snacks, towels, sunscreens, airmatress, floaties, sand toys, goggles, .... and lots of noise in the van in the morning and all fit in. Including the noise and the gettting into each other hair and we got on the road. It's a pretty short road trip, just through the the town, and through the whole post and another 10 miles and how often did we hear "ARE WE THERE YET?"

They hardly could wait to get their feet into the sand and to let their toes to touch the water. The kids had a blast. the two little ones just as the big ones. Barely to get out of the water. The swam, the floated, the dived. The swallowed some extra water - tja, can't be helped when you have to sing in the water. And the dug in the MUD. Yes, you get the mud bath for free there. And with out kids even applied and not just on your arms and legs also in your face and in your hair.

All of them love rock collections. Especially the ones from deep in the water and as bigger as better. I think we managed to come home with NO rocks this time, but who knows if we had a secret smuggler in the midle of us or not.

Tina had the great idea of bringing all the ingredients to make "sunshine smores" and the kids loved the idea. It was messy, but there's enough water for clean up.

At the end we even decided to check out the slide and the car wash before heading home.

That's a way to enjoy summer minus the sunburn.

A dip and a splash

That's a quick snap picture from soren in the kiddie pool splashing when I took the camera once. I don't really get the chance to take pictures ay the pool because Soren can't sit still for more as a second when he is at the pool and always  is about to fall in the pool of you don't hold tight onto him or feed him a snack. So the safest spot is in the pool with him, but  even this big life vest or his arm floaties did not keep our big guy above water so I had 47 pounds hanging on my neck and bouncing of me when he was not on the waterslide.

Yesterday while the girls were non stop sliding Soren finally figured out that he can float and swim with his arm floaties by himself and if he closes his mouth and stops shrieking he won't even drink the pool water neither. He did awesome. And he had such a blast, si we easily could skip the kiddie pool.

One HOT Saturday in Texas

Do you know something blue, something red, something yellow, something orange, all big and fuzzy?

I can name the Cookie Monster, by now also Elmo and Big Bird and that only after seeing three Sesamestreet shows. I never favorite the show as a kid, so somehow we never really have it running on TV very often here neither. But  somehow we went to see a show in Austin before Soren was part of my threesome and since then Sesamestreet came now the second time to Ft. Hood for a small show and we got to see them for free yesterday. The pricewas leaving the house in the HEAT and leaving the air conditioning. It is hot here. And standing in line is crazy. Some people were smart and just brought umbrellas and you saw them popping up in all colors.

                           

After our outing Soren and Chiara found a "hopper" (Soren) named "Grassi" (Chiara) which was right away adopted as pet. You have to be warned in our yard NOTHING is SAFE. No bug or rollipolli from Soren, no grasshopper from Chiara, no cat from the catbird - oh man that is truly entertaining watching them chasing the cats - no flipflop from the dog - SO BEWARE.

Do you want to see the BIGGEST hopper ever from close up? Come closer.

Soren was not really good sports sporting his new t-shirt extra large, not even with his popsicle. But, well, that's life. At least he likes his new t-shirt which we got finished last minute for our little Saturday outing and finallt he at least tried to say his name. Usually when I aske him who he is, he says ' BOY'. We already uograded from 'BABY' to 'BOY'. Perhaps we until school start he will say Soren. Stubborn stinker.

Now of course I have two more request for shirt with names - the sisters. We made one for Neva for her birthday and also put the same applique of her name on a small jeans purse. It is quite easy and I love how it turned out for Soren. It just took me forever to get started and then to make up my mond what type of font I wanted to use. Next step is to give my machine a overhaul as soon as possible, it seriously needs to be serviced again. 

Guck Mal

                         

Do you really need too many words to follow these pictures of Soren and one of his little bitty bike trips?

He is still stopping for hundreds of reasons, the bug on the side, the rock on the road, the airplane landing, ... not mentioning him  stearing into his sisters and not stopping, but luckily he is not that fast yet with his little balance bike. He still always has time to make a silly face and  his faszination with mailboxes did not decrease. These pictures were taken one evening last month. Yesterday morning him and Chiara were circling our mailbox in the driveway going always happily one more around and around.

 

Three drown little rats and a soaked puppy ...

How much fun is it to garden in the rain?

Everytime there is a drop of rain falling from the sky, I have two girls coming running and begging "Can we put our bathing suits on and run in the rain?"

Today by the time we opened the door we saw that it had rained during the night, it was not extremely hot yet, so all four of us put old clothes and the kids and puppy played and helped in the yard and testing our driveway. It was sprinkling in between, but compared to the times when the sun burns down that felt like heaven.

We spread our first ready compost in the yard mixed with some more topsoil and discovered that the small honeysuckle plant along the fence line already has its first orange blooms soon to open. By then in stared raining. Soren and Chiara used the little play house as shelter and started stetting it up with floor mats and filling the "fridge" with drinks.

By the time the were ready to come inside I had three drown little rats and a soaked puppy who is crazy about water and even tries to take a bath in his tiny water bowl. Hopefully she had enough of splashing for the day, too.

By now it is pouring like buckets outside and that's perfectly fine with me. At least we do not have to water the yard today.

Soren is sporting his "new table"

Last November we replaced Chiara's little table and chairs with an "old" desk and chair for her room. So Soren in herited a pink table woth  brown and white dots. Perfect size. Not so perfect color in daddy's opinion. Soren loved everything pink for a long time, no wonder with two sisters, after a while it changed to blue, even he calls everything PURPLE. He is also the biggest fan of AIRPLANES.

So just in time for his birthday I finished his table and chairs which his is showing off tonight for a picture on company of Giggly Lion.

I truly expected just to use the two blue spray cans I got and be done, but nope, I got back to the acrylic paints and paint brushes and  went all from there. It works just better for me. But best of all  Soren likes it and that's all that count.

Oops - its a while and Soren is 3 now

There is not much to say about the fact that I didn't blog much since the beginning of the month. I just didn't get to it as to many other things in my life.

My garage is still waiting for the finishing clean up, too. I started until it got just way too hot.

So what did we do?

We dug holes. Lots of holes. For trees and bushes and trying to get them to survive them in Texas clay.

We are making our own good dirt by recycling and having a compost.

We are simply working on our yard to making in enjoyable, not  just being  a plain square with gras that needs a huge a mount of water a not a bit  of shade,

We finally had shade. OMG. It was awesome while it lasted. We just picked the shade cover up from the roof and the power lines and folded and squeezed it back together. That was the shade part. Back to no shade.

We are farmsitting and having no luck in the chicken pen. Death toll: 2. Reason: Unknown. Snake? Illness? Boredom?

In between we had a birthday party and  our baby boy is THREE now and tiny is totally out of the question as you always could see. But he still LOVES Diego, airplanes, cars and his bike and his puppy. Is silly and crazy and loves his sisters.

We also got a little crafty, took pictures, went swimming once or twice and are now enjying the downpour outside. More to come. I am talking about the rain, perhabs more blogging to.