Happy 6th Bday Padooks!

Don't ask.  It started off as Pookie.  Then, Pooks.  Now, it is Padooks.  I promised him that I would never call him that in public.  So far, I have about a 50% success rate.  Anywho...

I would say Alex had quite the bday this year.  His actual birthday was spent at Opa and Grandma's house and was a huge success!  The day started out with all of us going to visit a litter of lab pups that one of my dad's friend's dogs had.  Needless to say, we all wanted to take one home. Thankfully, they were all accounted for at that point. 

 

Then, it was off to lunch at one of our favorite local Italian restaurants.  For what else?  Sausage and Pasta!

 The place is great because it has this whole yard where the kids can play while they wait for food.  They typically have corn hole set up too...

After lunch, it was off to the water park in Berlin, WI, which we didn't even realize existed until just recently.  Talk about the perfect place to take the kids!  It was basically like a big public pool with about 2-3 slides for them to go down.  And, it was $2.50 per person for the day.  How can you go wrong? 

 

The best part?  They had a slide and a diving board in the deep end of the pool.  So, Uncle William and Charlotte went to go off of it and were very promptly scolded by the lifeguards because they didn't have a wrist band.  You may be wondering how one gets a wrist band?  Well, you have to swim 2 laps back and forth in the deep end. Ha!  So, Josh decides to give it a try thinking he is clearly old enough to know how to swim.  But, sure enough...he had to take the test!  It was awesome.  You can hear it now - "Seriously?  I was a lifeguard.  I can swim better than all of these kids combined..."  Then, after passing the test?  He gets this "trophy" that he has to take to the front counter and that, my friends, is how you get a wrist band...

 

 

After the pool, we went back to Opa and Grandma's for dinner.  Yep!  You guessed it!  Alex wanted his traditional cake and Grandma didn't disappoint.  Not only did she not disappoint, but this year, instead of hot dogs?  Brats!  I'm not sure we could get any more phallic, but hey - if that is what the kid wants, that's what he gets!

 

 

 

 After dinner, A-man got to open his gifts. 

Alex definitely had an eventful b-day!  Of course, this post doesn't include his TWO other b-day parties that he had.  Don't worry - they will be documented as well - hopefully before the kid turns 7!

Easter 2015

Bouncing around a bit in an effort to catch up.  Bear with me...

It's funny - I said that Easter deserved its own post, but in looking back on it, it wasn't overly eventful.  But, it was still a holiday, so I'm posting.

We had our annual dying of the eggs, which I swear - just never turn out quite as well as I would hope for whatever reason...Love the annoyed look on Avery's face and the psycho look on Alex's

Easter fell early this year and given the winter that we had, it was definitely not going to let up for the holiday.  The morning started out with opening their baskets from the Easter Bunny and from Opa and Grandma and then finding eggs around the house.  Mind you - I had meant to put eggs outside the night before, but for whatever reason, didn't.  So, I woke up with a panic attack wondering how the hell I was going to do this without them seeing.  Solution? TV.  Of course.  We just put them in front of it in our bedroom and I ran around like a maniac (freezing my tail off, mind you) outside, hiding eggs.

Later that day, we went to Grammy and Grampy's to celebrate.  But, not before I made the kids suck it up and pose outside so that I could get pictures of them in their outfits.  You can't tell they are cold, right????

The Easter Bunny managed to leave some eggs there as well.  Although, Grammy may have been busted because A) they are the same eggs as last year and B) Everything in them was put into a plastic baggy.  Apparently, their Easter Bunny is far more germ conscious than ours...

We had a very nice dinner at their house and then headed home.  All in all, not too eventful, but a nice day.

Wisconsin 2015 - the First Trip

Yes, I say the first trip because, well, there were two trips to WI this summer.  This post is about our annual birthday/4th of July trip.  The other one will be about our second trip where we celebrated SOMEBODY's 65th birthday. :)

This year's trip started with a bit of disorganization on my end.  I had found out about my high school reunion a few months earlier, so I made sure to book tickets for myself and the kids (Josh was coming later because of work) so that we would make it out there in time for that...only to find out (after booking them) that my reunion was on the same night as Avery's dance recital.  Awesome.  We managed to figure it out and it probably worked out better anyway.  I went to Avery's dress rehearsal so that I could at least see the dance and then Josh and Grammy took Avery to the actual recital while Grampy took  care of Alex. I left early on Saturday morning and flew to WI in time for the reunion.  Which, was so much fun.  The girls and I all got a hotel right down the road from the reunion, so we met there to get ready and have a drink.  Then, we met up with a few people from HS and headed over.  It was so great seeing so many people that I haven't seen in years.

The next day, Sara and I went to visit Jamie, who I have known since kindergarten and haven't seen in probably 10 years?  Again, a great visit and great catching up and meeting her kids and husband!

That night, Josh and the kids flew in, so I picked them up and after nearly getting a divorce over the fact that the car that I got was nearly too small for our luggage, we headed to Culver's and then to Opa and Grandmas!

The week, once again, was filled with all sorts of fun activities...

Strawberry picking where once again, Charlotte ate more than her weight in strawberries, Alex did his best to chuck the rotten ones as far as he could, Annabel very carefully selected the perfect strawberries and Avery attempted to instruct everyone on how to do all of the above...

The beach...

 

Fishing (where Annabel and I nearly broke up due to her frustration over not being able to cast and my frustration over her not listening to me telling her how to do it - don't worry, we made up).

 

 

The boat, where once again, we attempted tubing.  Well, by "we" I mean, me and the kids and Uncle William.  Josh had left at this point and Aunt Lexi had zero desire.  Everything was going great until...we got flipped.  I was so intent on holding onto Charlotte ( I was holding onto Avery as well, don't worry - it is just that she wasn't quite as little and fragile as Charlotte) that I continued to hold onto her as we both got thrown into the water.  Avery managed to stay on, and patiently sat there waiting for Opa to come and get us.  Charlotte handled it pretty well.  There were tears, but considering she wanted to go again the next day, I'd say she got over it pretty quickly.

This year's picnic activity - the scavenger hunt!  Opa and Grandma came up with a great list of things that everyone needed to find and we paired off into teams of two.  The list included such things as, a dog cookie, snake skin, oak leaf, a bullet (don't worry - it was just the shell, which was found at Opa's shooting pit thing.  Then at the end was our annual picnic in the field.

Oh - and, because the kids' have the most creative grandma on the planet, they were told to make a smiley face with all of their findings!  Annabel was the only one who found the snake skin, which became her face's hair...

Playing in the pool...

 

Scooting and even more importantly, learning how to ride bikes!!!!  Aunt Lexi was on a mission to teach Avery and Alex how to finally ride bikes.  This was good, because as it turns out, I have no patience for this activity, which is the main reason they still didn't know how.  So, off to Walmart we went to buy 2 bikes ($50 each, thank you very much) and sure enough, 2 times down the paved driveway and they had it!  It was great!!!

 

A concert in the park!

And, of course, we had all of the bday celebrations and the fourth of July and the cousins' visit, which will be covered in their own post. 

All in all, yet another great trip to Opa and Grandma's farm!