Earth Friendly Bags

I forgot to post this for Earth Day...the kids decorated reusable bags in school.  Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE reusable bags.  I haven't had to have a grocery bag or plastic bag from a store in well over a year, I always have my reusable bags with me.  So imagine how excited I was when Timo and Cameron showed me their Earth Day projects.  Timo's is, not suprising, a soldier on rocket boosters carrying his soldier guns and Cameron's did a collage of sorts of her favorite animals...dragonfly, bees, bunny,  a panda and a dinosaur. We broke them in at Target, of course!

Cameron's Filling

Cameron has one back tooth that just didn't form right.  It's been a cause for concern for her dentist for a while now.  It form with a deep hole in it, like a cavity but just a hole in the middle of it.  We've tried sealant twice and both time the sealant came out so the only other option was to put a filling in it as to avoid a cavity forming down the road.  So we went in and she was a CHAMP!  I was a wreck, but she was fine.  I'm not sure why I was so nervous, just worst case scenarios kept popping into my head.

They gave her a little "happy gas" to relax her and turned on the movie Cars.  Initially said they would have to numb the area because the hole was so deep, but they were able to do the filling without numbing, whew!

All in all it took only about 20mins, so fast.  She didn't let go of Dino the whole time.  I hope this is the last we have to worry about this tooth...at least until she looses it.

Happy Earth Day

I know Earth Day was earlier this week, but as usual, I'm a little behind my posts. But we did celebrate Earth Day last Saturday, at home doing some spring planting. Timo had been asking about sunflowers so I thought we should plant some this year in the back yard.  We pick out sunflowers, some pink flowers and some red flowers (don't' remember their names) to plant in a little block on our sunny side.  We cleared the area of weeds, made rows and started planting.  I told them it will take a few weeks before the seedlings start sprouting but it just falls on deaf ears...they ask almost every day to go check to see if the sunflowers are out of the ground yet.

We also moved my large sage bush and planted a small hydrangea plant too.  I've wanted one for a while so we pick up a pretty one at the nursery while getting the flower seeds.  Once everything was in the ground it was time to water, the best part according to Timo.

Timo decided he needed to move some dirt around afterwards...he tried his hand at using the big shovel. I think they were trying to dig down deep enough to look for worms, I know they found a few.  They started a "worm farm" in the bucket, keeping all the worm friends together.  I guess that's what Earth Day is about, getting outside, getting dirty and doing something good Mother Earth.

Bedtime Stories

Maybe it's an age thing, but upon turning 5 my children want books with facts, not stories.  Facts that are most time way over my head.  This our bedtime reading...tanks and dinosaurs.  Oh how I miss the days of being 2 years old and happy with "Goodnight Moon" and "Caps For Sale"...

Spring Break Roundup

I really enjoyed having the little break with Timo and Cameron.  I remember the days when they were 2 years old, thinking I would go crazy if I had to go to one more play ground.  But now, at 5 years old, with them in school all day, I relish the days we get to just hang out and play.  We visited a few play grounds on our time off...enjoying the climbing bug that has hit.

We kept up baseball practice and gymnastics class...

It was nice to just have a few lazy mornings to watch Curious George and Dinosaur Train. We also didn't have a bed time so we got to have few movie nights...Cars 2 was a major hit!

We visited IKEA on Tuesday, Tuesday kids eat free!  Timo doesn't like ice cream but he loves the soft serve from IKEA.

Lunch at Mel's is always a treat...Timo was showing me his "don't even think of taking a bite out of my burger" face.  My best friend's children were on spring break too so we all met for lunch one day.  Timo LOVES Jake...they played missile torpedo with the crayons...

And no vacation is complete without a trip to Target and the hand dryers.  Oh, a new Iron Man movie must be coming out...new Iron Man toys on the shelf...

We had a really fun "stay-cation" for Spring Break but Mommy was glad when school was back, and I think the kids were too...you know it's time when your kids start asking to see their school friends again.

Spring Break--Beach Day!

A day after the wind storm we had beautiful warm weather.  We decided to hit the beach and do some digging!

Building a sand castle was the first priority.  Lots of trips to the water and back...the cold, cold water.

We found lot's of  "skeletons" along surf and pick out this crab claw to guard the entrance of the castle.  Pretty intimidating, huh?

Still haven't outgrow good ol' fashion trucks and dump trucks in the sand...

Timo discovered burying himself in the sand.  Lots and lots of burying.

While Timo was digging himself in and out of the sand, Cameron was doing art.  She picked up a stick and discovered a whole blank canvas on the sand.  The second pic is Noah's ark, complete with boat, water and fish in the water

We were meeting Daddy for lunch so time to pack and up...heading back to the car is always the hardest part.

Yay for Daddy working so close to home!!  We rode our scooters down to the burger and ice cream joint and got to hang out with Daddy for a little.  Perfect ice cream day.

And of course, we have to stop and check out the construction going on by our house, which we did everyday of spring break.  While we were watching this day a police motorcade went by escorting some super high official, never found out who. But about 20 police motorcycles drove past, stopping traffic and causing quite a scene.  From then on, the kids have pretended that their scooters were police motorcycles...I love this age of "let's pretend..."

Sring Break--SF Zoo

One of our vacation days we spent at the zoo seeing the new dinosaur exhibit. Cameron had been seeing the advertisements all over the city and asking and asking and asking to go. Unfortunately the day we chose to go was an incredibly windy day outside, like 30mph nonstop winds.  We tried to make the best of it by keeping to the inside exhibits but it is a zoo after all...

The dino display was somewhat disappointing.  It was inside, so that was a plus that particular day but not too much in the way of actual dinosaurs to look at.  They had a large maze through out the building, all the panels making up the maze walls had dino facts all over them.  But most of the info was way over the kids' heads.  There was various activities along the way but nothing too impressive.

They did get to rock climb, dig some bones, walk with dino feet, etc and the kids enjoyed it...guess that's all that matters, huh?

The wind blew us over to the insect building and we took refuge inside for a while checking out all the bugs.  We tried to check out some of the outside animals but my guess was they were hiding from the wind too...not many animals to see, so we played a while.

After about an hour of being blown around like a tumble weed, I was begging the kids to go.  Of course they were having a blast so I took to something I don't do often...bribery!  I promised a ride on the merry-go-round if we could leave right after.  Done and done...we were in and out of the zoo in record time!

The day was still young so we opted for an inside activity like the library.  We loaded up on dino and military machine books...enough to last us the rest of the windy, windy, windy day...inside.