Fire truck rides, fairy tale feasts, and life plans

One of Maya's classmates had a fire truck themed birthday party, complete with a fire truck to climb into the back and ride around the neighborhood!

 Fire truck ride selfie!

Happy girl listening to the sirens -

Collin was the oldest and bravest party goer -

 Posing with some of the classmates after the ride -

We went straight from the fire truck party to my parents' home, for a pit stop before birthday party #2 of the day.  Collin posing with a lizard he and Brownie caught -

First time skating at our friend Esmae's birthday party -

Maya with toddler skates -

Both out on skates -

Super star sunglasses -

Maya at our Monday morning gymnastics class - 

Family reading time.  Within the last few weeks, Collin has been asking to read the bedtime story.  It's a joy to watch him want to read, especially sweet books like Snuggle Puppy.

On Friday, Collin had a fairy tale feast at school, where they were to dress like characters from the fairy tales that they had been reading.  I suggested Jack and the Beanstalk, as I knew I'd be traveling the week before and needed a simple costume.  An $8 fake vine and a few safety pins later, and we were set -  

Our Jack and the Beanstalk giant with his shield.  They each made a crest with their favorite animal (wolf), favorite sport (basketball), favorite food (Reese's) and free choice (kindle).  What a goof!

Collin and his best friend, Finn, at the feast -

While Collin had a few hours left in school, Maya and I visited my great grandma Jewell Rae for the last time in Houston.  My sweet 91-year-old grandma has Alzheimer's, and moved yesterday to a full-time care facility down the road from my family in Austin.  For the last several years, my wonderful, generous and selfless aunt Debbie has been caring for her in a cottage behind her home.  She is one loved sister, mom, grandma and great-grandma!

On a sillier note, Collin and I were working on a circuit activity yesterday, and when he completed it, we remarked at how smart he was, how he'd make a great engineer.  His response was, "Yeah, I think I will be an engineer when I grow up.  Nah, never mind, I'm going to be a ninja."  We're encouraging him to keep engineering on the table as his back-up plan!

Easter 2016

We started our Easter festivities two weeks early with our neighborhood egg hunt.  We went to the late session, and our kids racked up the candy!

The Saturday before Easter, it was back to our church for the egg hunt I now lead.  The two-and-under group had tons of eggs, and with Maya being one of the oldest in the age group, she had her basket filled in a few minutes, beating all the babies crawling or toddling along!  I made her put down her basket and go share with other kids, and she was just as happy filling their baskets.  

Sunday morning we woke up, and the Easter Bunny had left eggs in our backyard.  Maya is scared of all things mascot, and she feared the same costumed Easter Bunny from the neighborhood egg hunt was lurking in our backyard, so it took a bit of coaxing to get her outside.  Happy for more eggs!

Then to church in Easter finest hand-me-downs!

Maya takes the cheese face to extremes - 

My dad grilled hamburgers over at our house for a small family gathering.  Welcome to Easter, great grandma Betty, prepare to be shot!

To say Maya loves Stella is an understatement!

These kids are all crazy about their Grandma Libia!

 Tree climbing, sugar-hyped Collin -

I love how Collin wiggled his way into the beautiful family picture of my mom's cousins and our wonderful baby-sitting second cousins.  

 Collin and his favorite baby-sitter, Leo.  Stella and Leo baby-sat this week when the school had a rain day.  I was telling them that I wasn't sure my flight would happen, since my flights the previous day had both been canceled.  Collin said, "I hope your flight takes off so Stella and Leo can baby-sit all day."  Feeling the love as I left for a business trip!

What says Easter love like a cascarones battle?

Cutie cousins, older getting younger with confetti on the head!

Collin smashing an egg onto my head - 

Cas pinned down Collin so he could get payback from the cousins -

My beauty with confetti decoration -

Handsome Lorenzo -

Collin talked Jonathan into giving him a ride -

 The cousins -

 Happy happy Maya in Stella's arms -

 Celebrating our risen Savior with a sweet afternoon with family -

Spring Break iphone dump

The blog started off as Collin and Canines.  With Maya, it changed its name and the dogs got the boot.  But we continue to add pets to the family - just the low-intensity kind.  We started with a goldfish we received as a birthday party favor.  Despite the money Cas spent on its tank, it died within a few weeks.  

Our latest is Bibbet the beta fish.  This was Cas' white elephant gift from his office exchange.  I think it's the perfect white elephant gift to give. And shockingly, despite Maya sometimes feeding him very generous portions, and Cas forgetting to feed him at all when I'm traveling, he's still swimming in his little tank lacking all the fancy technology that was a part of the goldfish contraption.  

One of Collin's more recent feats is biking riding.  He moved from the balance bike to the regular bike on the driveway to long bike rides around the neighborhood in a matter of 2-3 weeks.  

 Over spring break, I took a few days off to enjoy parks with the kids.

They play together on the weekend, but somehow it was different, watching them play together during the week.  They seemed sweeter towards each other, like they recognized the special nature of weekday free play.

 

We bought into the Pie Face craze, and while I'm not sure how often we'll actually play this "game," it did create moments like this - 

Here's one of my favorite moments with my grandmother over for dinner.  Very soon after Collin started school, he came home with an origami "fortune" paper.  In case it's hard to distinguish, my sweet grandma Betty's fortune was "you like to eat buggers" which disgustingly, Collin regards as only kind of bad since he truly does like to eat buggers, a habit we're trying our best to break!

Play date and lunch break with our friends at an amazing castle park.

I was able to chaperone Collin's kindergarten field trip to the Livestock show.  He and his best friend were partners, and it was entertaining to watch them interact all day.  We couldn't have asked for better weather, and we were all smiles for a fun field trip!

The next Friday I volunteered at the kindergarten rodeo, where they had various activity stations.  I was in charge of a beanbag toss into pairs of boots.

And Maya is making friends too.  Her class at pre-school is so sweet, and we're starting the birthday party circuit with these kiddos, with three-year-old birthday parties almost every weekend last month and this month!

A bit of drama on every visit to the zoo

Maya and I visited the zoo a lot the first few months of the year.  We met my mom for all of the trips, and had a great time exploring at Maya's pace.  We normally ended our trip with a spin around the carousel, which Maya would skip up excitedly towards, and then would get nervous when the ride would start.  She normally had a death grip around my neck, but would pose before/after like she was happy as can be. 

Over MLK and President's Day, when Collin was off school, he joined us there.  His favorite spots were different from Maya's, and with Collin, we spent quite a bit of time in the amphibian exhibit, showing the alligator our ninja moves.  

Near the gorilla exhibit, Collin was hanging on the barrier fence as I told him not to do and scraped his arm on the way down.  He's not a fan of natural consequences.  My mom tried to distract them by taking a scared photo in front of the gorilla.  Collin looks like he's playing the part, but actually he's just being overly dramatic about his scrape that produced a half drop of blood.  

Grammy with her survivalist first aid, wrapping the wrist in toilet paper.  If you knew how tiny the scrape was, you'd agree this boy needs to develop some grit!

 And speaking of drama, Collin recovered amazingly well to handle the carousel, but Maya with her distraught face -

All smiles at the end.  The funny thing about the carousel is she asks us to ride it 5 minutes before we approach it every single time we're at the zoo, and then acts like she's being tortured when it spins and goes up and down.

President's Day was all about posing on statues -

We made it to the cheetah zookeeper talk which was really interesting to all but Maya.

 We love our elephants - this is the animal Maya talks about the most.

We normally head straight to the elephants and watch their bath and snack time.  Maya will randomly tell people that Duncan eats grapes and sweet potatoes, and I have to fill them in on the backstory that she's referring to the baby elephant at the zoo.

The monkeys were very vocal the last two times we visited.  As were my little monkeys -

The week before our hometown spring break, we met one of my best friends, her mom and daughter.  We surprisingly were the first ones there, so we fed the birds and ducks.

  

And then we had a beautiful day with these sweet girls.

Another teary-eyed carousel ride to cap off our visit.   

As we shift into summer, we perhaps have one more zoo run before we pause our visits until the fall, but we have made very good use of our zoo membership so far this year!