Take Your Time, Spring

While late season snow storms have lots and lots of people across the country ready for spring, the likes of us are dreading its beginnings. Here in the desert, "spring" usually means two weeks of nice-ish weather, immediately followed by our infamous and seemingly interminable summer. Needless to say, we are not particularly looking forward to it; once spring gets here, there is no going back. 

In the meantime, though, we are doing our best to enjoy our nice cool days while they last, and getting the most out of long sleeves and closed-toed shoes before they are stowed away for 6 months and promptly grown out of. A trip to the park was just the thing to take advantage of what little remains of our going outside time.

(Lexa stood in the stroller the whole way home, yelling "yahoo!" and "yee-haw!" despite 

 the fact that my lumbering pregnant body does not exceed more than .2 miles an hour.)

Who in their right mind would wish THIS away??

Blank Canvas

Leave some dry erase markers on the counter and your friendly household three-year-old just might find them and start some decorating of her own. Then, chances are, she'll deny the claims despite the overwhelming evidence against her.

But you'll know the bowl truth.

Zoo Beginnings

It has been a really long time since Craig has been able to take time off from work to go on a field trip with one of the girls, but he was able to chaperon the most recent outing with Savanna's Kindergarten class to the zoo. 

     

If you zoom in you can see that Craig's bags under his 

eyes also have bags. He is such a hard working guy.   

Much to Craig's chagrin he had three boys in Vanna's group (Cason, Ayden, and Christopher). Despite the fact that they were boys they all did really well and stayed at arms length from his little girl. Wonder how he is going to pull that off as she gets older. 

Maybe he'll just surround her with giant lobsters...seemed to work here.

Excited to see the Penguin feeding.

Vanna showing off her playground expertise in the beautiful Phoenix weather.

Savanna really warmed up to the baby goat and insisted that 

when she grows up she is going to have her very own.

The Giraffe feeding was the highlight of the trip.  

And of course you can't forget the obligatory walk on the 

pointy, crooked log wall. What kid could resist?

Vanna monitoring the Monitor and chilaxing with the Crocodile. 

Top off the day with an Icee and what more could you ask for?

(Christopher, Cason, Vanna, and Ayden)

The Princess and The Pee

We're doing it! It's the first time for me of PTWP, (potty-training while pregnant) which means I'm not having a blast, but Lex is a lot older than the other girls were when the next baby was born, so we figured we needed to give it a shot before she needs adult-sized diapers. She is doing really great so far, especially considering her rule, up until now, of PWS (pooping while standing). (Don't ask me to explain the logistics on that one.)

My favorite part so far is seeing her tiny little buns through her leggings instead of a wet diaper.

(I'll be sure to show these pictures to her future boyfriends.)

Secrets of the Children's Museum

The Children's Museum in Phoenix is great, but a little pricey, which is why we pretty much only go there when we can get in for free. They have free admission every first Friday night of the month, so we try to get there as much as we can. (This used to be the night that Craig took the girls by himself so that I could work on homework and/or veg, but since school is basically done and my nerves are in better working order these days, I have been tagging along.)

We discovered the secret to getting the most out of the museum (since just about everyone in Phoenix with children seems to show up on these nights) is 1) to have Craig leave work a smidge early so he can get in line outside before they open the doors at 5:00, and 2) to hit the quickly-crowded/most popular areas first and then meander aimlessly for the rest of the time. This means that when we go to the grocery store area, the girls all get a chance to get their own shopping carts and shop at their leisure, (a luxury sure to disappear once they have their own children) and when we hit the pizza restaurant room, there are actually plenty of "ingredients" (i.e. random scraps of fabric) for the girls to use for their pizzas. The rest of the time doesn't matter as much then, because we have already hit the areas where they really want to be, and by then we have all had our fill of play groceries and fake pizza, which puts us all in good spirits.

Just a few highlights from our last visit:

(sticker earrings in the arts and crafts room)

Oh, how we all heart a (free!) Night at the Museum!