Ranching Heritage Days

One of the nice things about our area is the Ranching Heritage Center. Once a year they have "Ranch Days" where kids can come and learn how it used to be done in the west. Everything from riding ponies to washing laundry...they get to see/experience it all. This year was fun because Nicholas and Christian got to actually experience it all and have fun. Nicholas has done some of the stuff in the past, but for the most part he was scared and didn't want to participate. This year was different because he wanted to do all the stuff, and Christian wanted to do everything that his big brother did.

Ropin' the dogies...I looked, but could not figure out what happened to the picture taken of Nicholas doing this...I'll keep looking.
The boys with Daddy. They have their stick horses that they made in their hands.

Doing laundry the old way...here Nicholas is drying his cloth.
...and Christian drying his cloth.
We made corn husk dolls--boy dolls--for the boys.
Happy boys rolling along in their stroller.
Putting mud on the log cabin to "insulate" it. Christian wanted no part in this.

Nicholas doing his part to insulate the cabin.

We had a great Saturday afternoon with Daddy. He will be gone this weekend, so we were getting in as much fun as possible. After this we went to McAlister's for lunch. Yummy!

Gymnastics Program for Nicholas's Preschool

Today Nicholas's preschool had their Gymnastics program. We decided at the beginning of the year to let Nicholas participate in gymnastics. A local coach comes out once each week to let the kids participate in a pullout program for this. He has learned so much this year from this class. The following videos are clips from his program today. I edited out most of the other kids so that you get to see our star! Enjoy!!!

Fellowship Interviews

Well, Ed has now received 3 invitations to interview for Fellowship positions. The kicker...they are all in the North East!! So far we have:

-University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
-Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, MD
-University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD

Apparently there are 8 spots in Pittsburgh and something like 4 or 5 spots in both Hopkins and U of Maryland.

It looks like Ed will be heading up in June for the Pittsburgh interview so he can make it to the early selection (they do their interviewing and hiring in 2 waves, so our odds will be better if he attends the early interviews). I believe he is trying to do both Baltimore interviews in August.

Friday he is heading out to Miami, Florida to present for a Conference (he calls it GAARC--I am not sure what that means). We will get him back Sunday night only to start work again bright and early on Monday. The next weekend he is on call...so I guess we will see him again sometime in mid-May. Poor guy! One day his schedule will be nicer.

Kenny’s Korral Field Trip

We have a little place south of town that is called Kenny’s Korral.  The idea is that it is a petting zoo where the kids can go and play and feed animals—all kinds of animals.  They have buffalo, camels, emus, chickens, pigs, and a bunch of other animals I don’t know the name of.  We have gone to Kenny’s Korral one time.  It was for a birthday party and Nicholas had loads of fun.  Tuesday we went for Nicholas’s preschool field trip.  This is the second field trip he has gone on this year.  The first one was to the Maize in October.  That one is pretty cool because it is a corn field that has been carved (cut) into a maze…but it is corn, so they call it the “Maize.”  Get it?  I don’t have pictures of that event, but I do have pictures of today’s activities.  Here they are:

The boys had lots of fun visiting Kenny’s Korral.  The fieldtrip was definitely a hit.  The most amusing thing about watching them was when Christian would get food for the animals.  He would grab exactly one pellet of food each time he went back to the box.  It was so funny because all these other children were trying to fit as much food into their little hands as they could and my child was getting exactly one pellet.  He was so proud of himself.

Big Changes for Nicholas

Hey everyone!! This week has brought about some huge changes for Nicholas. He had his first shower (we are working on getting him able to take charge of shower time all by him self), he asked me (yes, I just said "asked me") to make him a chore chart, and he attended Kindergarten roundup at our local elementary!

Now, to explain more about the chore chart...it is on a website called Handipoints.com

He watches Sid the Science Kid on PBS almost every morning and one day, after viewing an episode where Sid had a chore chart, he asked me for one. We have it setup so that as he completes and marks off his chores as done, I go back and "grade" him on his chores and he accumulates points. Once he gets so many points, he gets $5.00 from us as an allowance to use on whatever he wants to. The nice thing for me is that sometimes when he doesn't do a chore well, his grade reflects it because I grade him on it. For instance, the other night...he took a shower (one of his hygiene chores), but he cried the entire time. So, when I graded him on it, I gave him a D. He only got a portion of his points for that chore. He did great when he put his laundry away, so he received an A an got all the points available for it. In addition on this site, there is a place called Handiland where he gets to play games and walk around using his virtual pet cat that he calls "Overboard." He got to name him and pick his coloring...and if/when we are able to afford it and still want to, we can pay to have the service and his other points he earns can go toward "buying" clothes and accessories for his cat. Kind of like a WebKinz, I guess. I am not sure because I have never checked out Webkinz. For right now we just use it for the chore list.

Kindergarten roundup was fun for him. He went yesterday and got to know a teacher and some of the students that he will go to school with. He made a butterfly and read a book while all of us parents were introduced to Kindergarten. Sitting there while the principal spoke to us kind of made me feel like I was going to school. We were lectured on attendance and what kinds of foods we can bring to school. They are much more strict now days about what you can send to school with your kids for food. You would think it would be common sense stuff like allergy-foods..but they actually stressed candy much more. Even if there is a birthday party, you cannot bring cake to your child's class. I actually kind of liked that aspect. One really cool thing...We DON'T have to buy school supplies. They are all provided from the money they make at their first big fundraiser. They encouraged us to donate to that instead. Works for me!! Now I will only need to buy school clothes and school supplies for Christian. Way cool!!!

Tomorrow we (all 4 of us) are going to the Ranching Heritage Center for Ranch Days. They do this every year. I'll try to get some pictures and post them. We are stoked because Daddy gets to go with us.

You all have a great weekend!!!

What a Week!!! Easter Weekend

Last week flew by! I once again missed Family Friday Update. I believe missing something that you started doing on a scheduled timeline 2 of the 3 times qualifies it for permanent rescheduling. With that in mind, you will just have to have Friday Family Updates whenever I happen to logon and write about them...and they probably will not occur on Fridays! It is pretty amazing that everything is on a schedule in my life...but not every schedule is followed. I think I really like schedules...or, maybe I like making them. :)

We started the holiday weekend off a little early by coloring Easter eggs on Wednesday. Ed was supposed to start his time off on Friday, but somehow we got a lucky break and he was off from Wednesday until today (Wednesday)-- A whole week!!!




Although I do not have pictures of it, Christian did enjoy coloring his Easter eggs. We had to be very careful about dropping them into the coloring "gently" though...he is not a gentle boy.


Such concentration from Nicholas here. He was very proud of his eggs.


Time with Daddy is always fun! Add a little painting or coloring of eggs and you have an instant hit with the boys!


We geared up for Christian's Birthday party which was held on Good Friday (also his birthday this year). Due to planning it on a major holiday weekend for some, we did not have much of a showing of guests. This was not a bad thing. The three kids had a great time. The little girl in this picture is our friend Evey. Evey's parents are Christian's Godparents. We have known them since college and they are about to be done with Medical School here in Lubbock.

We held an Easter egg hunt as part of the party games for the kids. I filled the eggs with LOTS of candy and hid them. Nicholas was great about letting the little kids get enough eggs. All three of them got lots of candy and had a blast hunting for the eggs.


This is a little out of order (I'm still learning on this Blogger thing). These pictures are of Nicholas's Parent's Day Out Preschool Easter Egg hunt. Since this is one of the few things that Ed can attend of Nicholas's many events this month and next, we decided to go and see the hunt. We were the only parents there as it was meant to be just a class thing...not a parental audience type of thing. I did one thing wrong. I FORGOT to mention to Nicholas that we were coming.

Oh My Gosh!!! He threw a tantrum when we showed up!!! At first he thought we were going to take him home when his Easter egg hunt was just about to start. I let Ms. Marcie take care of his hysteria. She calmed him down and after the Easter Egg hunt began, he started to become a nicer boy again. Whew!!! Future notice to all: Don't Spring any surprises on this boy. He doesn't like change at all!!!
That was our week/weekend. We are now halfway through this week and it is busy busy again. Ed's back at work as of today and works through the weekend. The boys and I have been going to workout in the morning and I have been tutoring like a mad woman to catch up from last week.

We will be attending some great events in the next few weeks. We have a field trip to a place called Kenny's Korral (a petting zoo type of place) and Kindergarten registration fast approaching.

Visit with Grandma!!

This past weekend I missed updating everyone on Friday for Friday Family Update. We picked up my mom from the airport on Friday and spent the weekend together. We ended up just spending good quality time together and with the exception of one trip to Walmart and Kohls, we really didn't go anywhere. It was quite nice! Ed and I did get a nice evening out, so that was a wonderful treat!!

Mom took some pictures of the boys playing around the house and of us playing Guitar Hero as a family. Here they are:

There were other pictures, but these were my favorites. Here are some more pictures I took today when we were playing around the house. In this first one, I was tickling Nicholas because he decided to give me crazy looks instead of giving me a good picture. This is what I got for tickling him! I need to do this more often!!

I love this picture! It took several tries, but I finally got a pretty good one of them together! This never happens. They decided to sit and watch TV together in the glider rocker. Too cute!!
Another pretty good one of them...however Christian looks a little uncomfortable. Also, look how much bigger Nicholas's head looks!!!

This next one makes me kind of sad!! Christian is growing up so fast and becoming a little boy instead of my baby boy!!! He turns two this Friday!!! Oh, and he is really tall for his age! He is wearing 2T and 3T shirts & 2T pants already!!! (oh, these sweats are huge on him because they are 3T!!)

Here is Nicholas being his silly self. :)
As is typical, we did not get any pictures of Mom at all. I will need to both remember and make her do this next time if it is possible. We want LOTS of pictures of the Grandkids with the Grandparents around this house!!! I wish I had more pictures with my grandparents now that they are both gone...so, I would like the boys to have as many memories on photo as they can of their loving grandparents.