Phone Dump

Ok, so it's been over 2 weeks since my last one...oops! I have quite a few pictures to share!
The first few are from our San Antonio getaway.


On the riverboat tour.


We came up on a car show and thought Ethan would like this old police car.


The Alamo at night.


Hanging out at our friends house. Mayleigh and Nora jumping!


Ethan loves to shovel snow. And we have had a lot this year!


Playing in the bathtub.


Dustin and Amanda came up last weekend. Here is Nora in Amanda's glasses.


The kids just watching some Monday morning cartoons.


Nora by her potty chart. Which happens to be all FULL now! She is doing great!


We made a quick trip to Rural King today and they had chicks and bunnies already!


Daddy reading to his kids! He's the favorite on the weekends :).

Pre-School Olympics

Ethan's preschool class had an Olympic day today.  It was so fun, and the kids loved it.  I went and helped out with one of the 'events'.
This was the event I helped out with.  It was called "Ping Pong Letter Matching".  Each student drew a ping pong ball with a lower case letter on it and they had to blow it across the floor into the matching upper case letter hole.  They loved it!

Ethan's group

Ethan at the starting line :) 

Making their way down to the holes.

Each kid had a "Medal Count" chart.  After they did the activity they colored the corresponding box, yellow (gold), gray (silver) or orange (bronze).

Ethan's medal count chart

Another activity was the "Penguin Race".  They had to keep a bag of rice between their knees, waddle down the lane to pick up a marshmallow and take it back to the other end and put it in the cup.  Whoever had the most amount of marshmallows at the end of 2 minutes won!

Ethan, waiting his turn!

Waddling down the lane :)

After the all the events were over, each student was awarded a medal and stood for the National Anthem.  Such a fun day!

Then for some play time in the big room!

San Antonio Getaway

A couple weeks ago, I decided I would try to book a short getaway for Jared and I.  Turns out, the best time for us to go was a week later!  So, we got our things packed, the kids dropped off with Grandma and Pop and off we went!  (A huge thanks to Abby and Alex, who gave us a lovely place to stay the night before our flight AND drove us to the airport at 4:30 am!)
I'll let the pictures do the talking :)!

God is an amazing artist! Here we are above the clouds, beautiful!

We got to our hotel in San Antonio around 10:30 Friday morning, so we basically had the whole day to explore.  The whole, beautiful day!  It was close to 80 and sunny!

We started off with an amazing, authentic Mexican meal!  That black, 3-legged pot was boiling with steak, chicken, shrimp, cheese, cactus strips and a yummy broth to be put on tortillas.

Then, we made our way over to check out the Alamo.  It's quite interesting and full of history.

In front of the Alamo

In front of a giant, very old tree at the Alamo.  

Jared, with one of few remaining cannons from the battle of the Alamo

After we were able to check into our room, we changed and freshened up a bit (after our long day) and headed back out.

First stop was a riverboat tour.  I was so glad we did this and would recommend it to anyone visiting San Antonio.  It was relatively inexpensive and very informative.

View from our boat 

Jared and I on the boat.

Riverwalk Theater, view from the water.

That evening, we walked back by the Alamo.

Beautiful at night.

Saturday was another beautiful day.  We spent a lot of time walking the Riverwalk, eating and walking some more.  We definitely found some great restaurants!  I would say our favorites were, Boudro's (amazing, made at your table guacamole) and The Esquire Tavern.  We also decided to take a Segway tour.  I'm so glad we did.  It was a blast!!  And turns out, we had a private tour!

Ready to roll!

He looks good in a helmet :)

The San Fernando Cathedral was one of our stops on the tour.  It is one of the oldest Cathedrals in the United States and is very beautiful!

On our segways in front of the Cathedral

 While on our segway tour, we learned that you can rent bikes for free, if you dock them every 30 minutes.  So, for a change of pace, we did it.  It was fun!

Biking in a dress :)!

Sunday it turned cooler and a bit rainy, so we took a cab to brunch, did a little shopping, saw a movie and found a nice place to watch most of the Super Bowl.
A collage: 'Everything is Bigger in Texas'

The red recliners were our seats in the theater!!  The giant oak tree at the Alamo.  And our cinnamon roll from the Guenther House!  It was almost as big as a to-go box!

Our breakfast was very good!  And it should have been, after an hour wait!  We went to The Guenther House, after a recommendation from my sister.  It didn't disappoint and it is a very neat place!

We flew home on Monday and it was a great trip!  Thanks mom and dad and Karen for wrangling the kids for us!  And thanks again to Abby and Alex for being our taxi service to and from the airport!

Phone Dump

I really need to designate a day, each week for this post. But anyway, here are my phone pictures from the last week (or so)!
Last week, was my turn in Ethan's class.


Here's his group at the corn table.



Jailbirds!


They were pretending to be in jail.


Nora is very proud that she gets to use markers. This doesn't happen all that often!


Doing some puzzles


Loving on Max


We went to the museum with some friends on a "no school because of extreme cold" day. Camden, Brennan and Ethan are good buds!


And we visited with Mayleigh! She just came home with our friends, the Lloyd's, from China. She is so sweet! She and Nora will be good friends, I'm sure :).



Cute boy, with a new haircut!


She was "talking to Emily!" (One of my friends).

Cold Days

We have been having quite the cold snap this month!  I think there has been snow on the ground since just after Christmas.  Cold days, mean staying inside a lot!
These pictures are from a couple weeks ago (I forgot I had them on the camera).  Since it was -30 degrees (with windchill) out, I brought some snow inside for the kids to play with.

Our snowy backyard

Putting his 'guys' in the snow

Not sure what they were doing though :)

Cold hands!

She, basically, just wanted to eat it the whole time.

Laughing at her brother

Another, inside activity that has been taking a lot of Ethan's time...

LEGOS!  He loves to build.  Right now, he is especially into police.  So he always has a jail on hand for the 'bad guys'!