Irish For The Day

I love St. Patty's Day. Back in the day I loved that there was a holiday created just for drinking. Life looks much different for me now, but I still enjoy a good St. Patrick's celebration. 

 Bless my Copperfield friends. They will still come out to enjoy a green beer with me. 

Actually that's not quite true. I was the only one that actually drank a green beer, but they enjoyed beer with me.

Perfect day for patio drinking.

It took me a few years to realize that I can no longer drink the same amount that I used to back in the day. There was a time a few years ago that Abe made me 'drink coupons' so I knew when it was time to quit. I now know my limit all by myself (yay for adulting). Just as I was reaching that limit, the rain came pouring down. Perfect timing to go home. We arrived to find some wet kiddos.

The luck o' the Irish to you!

Springing Through Spring Break

We continued so spring break with an unexpected visitor.  One afternoon Frito Pie was in the living room giving Chuey a warning growl to stay the heck back. When I looked over to see what she had I thought it was a mouse. I was going to praise her after I made her take it outside. It was when she was outside and dropped it that I realized it was a baby bunny. Unfortunately the baby bunny did not survive. :( I don't know how I ended up with such a hunting dog. It really does make me sad to see all those dead animals.

Anyway, I told the kids to watch out just to make sure there weren't any more baby bunnies. Sure enough, Lijee came running up about 5 minutes later telling me Frito had another baby bunny in her mouth. She brought it to us. I commanded, "Drop it!" When she did, the baby bunny was alive! It began to spring around the patio and Lijee yelled to me and Frito, "Everybody scatter!" We wrestled the dog inside and were able to grab the baby bunny. 

Oh. My. Word. It was so cute!

We found the nest, which was now empty, and gathered some of the fur and grass to put in a shoe box.

Of course we took some time for everyone to love on it.

We came across the name of some random lady who takes in stray wildlife, rehabs it and releases it. Crisis diverted.

***

One day we went to The Flags with the Tapletts. 

Tracy is paranoid that someone will get lost so she tried to make us all buy matching hats. I put my foot down.

A couple of the kiddos went on the Aquaman. I did not want to get wet, but this little guy decided to stand on the water bridge to get even wetter. It was not a super warm day, but he did not complain of being cold.

Mommy and Lijee

 Zekers and Will

Daisy and Mattie

 girl ride

 boy ride

 late park riders

We took in this last ride while Tracy and Will brought the car around. I think we rode it 4 times in a row. Goofy kids.

***

Spring break was full of beautiful weather so the kids, the dogs and I took and adventure hike. At times it was dangerous, like on this big cliff we almost hiked.

 It was full of rough trails that we blazed ourselves.

 They thought they needed a short break.

 We stumbled upon some waterfalls. Little Eli is on the top in the middle when you look closely. Frito Pie is at the bottom in the middle.

 Zekers is blazing ahead.

 Daise is striking a pose.

 My littles helping each other across.

 You can see Lijee, Daisy, Zeke, Frito and Chuey are ready to get home.

 My Daisy and I like to collect fossils. This was our find of the day.

*** 

And then sometimes we were just bored.

You can just see the orneriness oozing from this picture.

My flowers are ready for spring.

 The doggies love having us home all day.

 And that pretty much concludes our spring break!

Houston, We Have Lift Off

Spring break! While I enjoyed 2 weeks off with my littles, it was not as eventful as years past. Here's why:

Our money went to repair our little Chuey over New Year's. A good lesson for the kids that you make sacrifices for the ones you love. Y'all can breathe a collective sigh of relief to know that Chuey has totally recovered. She barely has a scar now. 

The first week Daisy and Eli and I watched some movies, Daisy went to work with me and they both spent a day with Grannie. The next day I spent the afternoon in the hospital with Grannie. We don't think their visit and her hospitalization are related... Ya'll can breath a collective sigh of relief that Grannie has totally recovered. 

We spent that weekend with family celebrating Adam's birthday in Houston.

We hung out in Houston a couple extra days to do some fun touristy things. We went to the Houston Science Museum for the first time. 

They have a great dinosaur exhibit that has a lot of interesting facts you can learn, if your party was inclined to listen and read. Not that I am directly referring to our party of 5 boys and 2 girls, all 11 years-old and under, I'm just sayin'.

 I have a ton of these little fellas in my fossil collection at home. I have become a bit of a fossil nerd; it's amazing how old these things are and these little rocks have their own story. These little round things are sea urchins; they have a little flower on the top exactly like sand dollars.

 Impossible to get all 7 kids in the same shot at once.

 Here is our best attempt.

 The museum has a cool butterfly exhibit, too.

This is the best family photograph we got.

 Grace was brave enough to eat bugs.

 She was Daisy's inspiration for this worm sucker.

We watched butterflies coming out of their cocoons and some landed on us.

This photo was taken shortly before we lost these boys and had to send out search parties to find them.

Then DanFam5 got a hotel room for the night. Daddy is my hero for always swimming with the kids when it's too cold for the Momma.

Sometimes we like to gross the kids out.

The last day of our Houston adventure was the NASA Space Museum. Once again, it was a first for me and the kids. The hubs, who actually IS a rocket scientist, did an internship there in college.

Elijah was into his wolf ears for a couple weeks. He wore them everywhere.

 This is the observation gallery at the command center.

 This is the view of the command center. There were actually astronauts at the ISS that were in one of the little screens that we watched.

 The long building behind us was built around Saturn V. 

This is inside the building. This is an actual space craft, but for some reason that I can't remember it didn't make the trip into space. I think the program was cut or something.

Daddy explaining some rocket-science things.

 The 747 behind Lijee was used to fly a shuttle piggy-back to Texas.

And that concludes our Houston spring break trip.