Summertime Fun

Summer in Texas is a hot, humid time of year.  If you do anything outside during the summer you need to be prepared to do it with sweat running down your back.  Springtime on the other hand is beautiful.  The weather is pleasantly warm - not hellishly hot.  There are flowers everywhere.  Its the time of year when you want to be outside.  I always tell myself that springtime is really Texas's summer.  And summer is really Texas's winter because that's when you want to be indoors most of the time. So this past week we've been soaking up all this "Summertime" weather.

 It started out with a rain storm on Friday afternoon.  This wasn't like the cold rain storms that we had during winter.  This was a play-in-the rain storm. The twins had lots of fun splashing in the puddles of water that formed in our back yard.

 Derrick had fun drinking rainwater out of the downspout and then spitting it out while jumping in the air. This was followed by peels of giggles from him and Veronica.

 The rain continued into Saturday.  It wasn't as much fun the second day.  I'd been planning to take the kids to a Kites for Kids Day.  The activity wasn't cancelled, but I didn't want to be responsible for 4 soaking wet kids in public.  So instead we stayed home and got mad at each other.

Part of the problem was the the house was messy so the we worked on getting that taken care of.  We cleaned all the bedrooms and straightened up the living room.  That made me feel better about being trapped in doors all day.  I had been planning to get together with Ashley and Seth on Sunday, but I asked them to come over on Saturday instead.  We had dinner and watched Back to the Future Part II.

At some point on Saturday Veronica wanted me to take this picture with her.

 After Ashley and Seth left I cleaned up the kitchen and living room.  I also got all the laundry sorted and most of it put away. Even though most of the day had been pretty depressing I was very impressed by how clean my house was.  I didn't know I could be that on top of things while Brandon was away.

On Sunday we had another good day at church.  Once again my kids behaved themselves during church.  I think it's partly due to the fact that they are getting older and partly due to the prayer I say after I buckle the kids in their car seats.

The rain had cleared up so we spent Sunday evening outside in the back yard.  I was Skyping with my parents and I took the laptop outside.  My dad said it was like he was really there with us.  The kids had fun showing him the new swing set.

Here's a cute picture of Veronica.  She is so photogenic.

On Monday My visiting teacher brought me a belated birthday cup cake.  I ate the whole thing and thought I was going to die from a sugar overload - but it was worth it.

One day Charlotte woke up with an idea to go on a pinecone hunt.  So after lunch we put everyone in the wagon and walked around the neighborhood so Charlotte and Lydia could gather pinecones.  It was actually really fun. Charlotte ended up with about 20 pinecones, and has been playing with them all week long.  

Another day Lydia wanted to go to feed the ducks at the College that is only one freeway exit away from us.  So after lunch we hopped in the car and went over there.

 Last year we never went anywhere after lunch because Derrick and Veronica took turns napping all afternoon.  But now Veronica is the only one who consistently naps, and she doesn't go down until after 1:00 so we are free to do things like this.

 Oddly enough Veronica was afraid of the water.  I didn't think she was afraid of anything, but she didn't want to go very near the water.

 It was a strange day for feeding ducks. The ducks were nowhere to be found and the geese didn't want our bread.  We actually witnessed some geese trying to drown another goose.  (Ashley later explained to me that that's how birds mate.) We were all kind of traumatized by that.  But hey at least we were out of the house.

 Back at home we had a hyacinth bloom.  Last fall my mom sent me some leftover bulbs from her/my flower garden at her house.  I wasn't sure if they would grow here, but I wanted to try.  So far it's worked for this one.  We'll see what the tulips do.

 Our pink tree is also looking very pretty.  (For anyone who is interested its an Oklahoma Redbud)

 Here's Lydia smelling the hyacinth.

 This is what our park looks like these days.  I have no idea when or if it will be rebuilt.

 But there has been a silver lining to the whole no-park thing.  We still go on walks to the park in the evening - we just go to a farther away park.  That means that the kids walk farther, which means they are exercising more, which means they go to bed really easy.  So it's actually been kind of nice.  Lately we've been going to the playground at the elementary school. Here is Veronica playing on the play ground.

 See what I mean about the kids falling asleep easily.  I put the kids to bed, and Charlotte and Lydia were crying because they were tired and upset about something trivial.  A few minutes later the crying stopped.  When I went to check on them a few hours later this is how I found them.  This is definitely the funniest positions I've found them in lately.

Charlotte and Lydia love to play together.  This week they spent a lot of time pretending to be Susan and Peter from the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.  Lydia is Susan and Charlotte is Peter.  (I don't know why, but Charlotte is always the boy when they play pretend.)  They also played babies a lot this week.

 Here we are back at the school playground on another day.

It's actually kind of fun to have a "new" playground to enjoy.

Charlotte and Lydia have a double stroller that they both like to push around.  They seriously play so well together.

On Friday I decided to take the kids to a drive in movie up in Gatesville.  This is something I've wanted to do for a long time, but I was waiting for a perfect movie opportunity to do it.   When I found out that the drive in was going to be showing the live action Cinderella I knew we had to go.  I'd wanted to take Charlotte and Lydia to see it in a regular theater, but I didn't want to have to bother with finding a babysitter for Derrick and Veronica.  Plus I didn't want to spend a lot of money and then have the girls talk all through the movie. For $10 the drive in seemed like the perfect solution.

At first I thought that we'd go on Monday or Tuesday night, but then Friday evening came around I we didn't really have anything planned, and Derrick had taken a long afternoon nap, so I decided that we should go.  First we had to stop off at HEB to get cash and treats.  A spontaneous trip to the grocery store at 6:00 pm is not something I ever thought I would do with four little kids, but it actually went just fine.

 Then we drove up to Gatesville.  It's a half hour drive and we got there around 7:00. The movie didn't start until 8:00.  I decided it was a good idea to get our wiggles out.  I remembered a park from last time we were in Gatesville so we went there.  The crazy thing is that the last time we were here Veronica was less than 1 month old.  We'd had to come up to get a copy of her birth certificate from the county courthouse, and I'd taken the kids to the park after that.  This trip was a lot easier.

 We stayed at the park for about half an hour and then got back in the car to go to the drive in.  I snapped this picture of the Coryell County Courthouse.  I love how every county in Texas has one of these classic looking courthouses.

 We pulled into the drive in and set up the car.  I took all the car seats out of the car and folded down the seats.  Derrick kind of freaked out and refused to get out of his car seat.  So I just scooted it around with him still in it. Eventually he relaxed and enjoyed the movie.  But he never budged from his carseat.

 We had so much fun. The girls loved the movie (and talked during the whole thing.)  Veronica snuggled up on a pillow on my lap and stayed awake for the whole movie.  Derrick liked the movie, but by the end he was very tired.  He kept putting his blanket over his head.

 I had been hoping that the kids would all fall asleep during the movie and I could stay for the second movie that was showing.  It was Insurgent.  I didn't really care for the book, and my movie guy didn't like the movie, but I kind of wanted to see it.  Alas, my kids didn't fall asleep so after Cinderella ended I put the carseats back and got ready to leave.  First I had to get someone to jump my car because the battery had died.  (I think that it hadn't had enough time to charge back up between the park and the drive in.)

The kids all fell asleep on the way home.

 I carried them into the house one by one, put them in their pajamas and put them to bed.  I considered it a small victory that I got Charlotte and Lydia into pajamas. Most nights they just want to sleep in their clothes and I am just fine with that because at least they are going to bed.

 I didn't want a repeat of the previous Saturday's grumpiness, so I made sure we had something planned to get us out of the house.  At first I considered taking my kids to the Easter Egg hunt in Cove, but that seemed like too much chaos to handle on my own.  Then I read about a fire department open house in Belton.  The flier said it would have a free bounce house so that sealed the deal.  (We'll go to anything if there is a free bounce house involved.)

 Veronica wasn't so sure about the bounce house, but she liked the firehouse mascot.

 The kids took a break from the bounce house and we went to see the fire station.  The girls got to see the inside of an ambulance.

 The firemen were giving away a lot of free stuff like stickers, coloring books, chips, and hot dogs.

 Derrick wasn't too happy about everything and kept trying to leave.  I came prepared though and had put the wagon in the Honda just in case I needed somewhere to put Derrick.  So I grabbed that.  Derrick and Veronica were perfectly content to hang out in the wagon and eat hot dogs.

 Charlotte and Lydia got their faces painted.  Charlotte wanted to be a butterfly.

 And so did Lydia.

 We took a picture with the fire truck.  For some reason Derrick did not like the truck and he bolted from the wagon as soon as I wheeled it took close to the truck.

 We went back to the bounce house.  Soon we noticed that the firemen we letting kids climb up about a 1/4 of the way up the huge firetruck ladder.

 Lydia just had to do that so we went over and waited in line.  Soon it was her turn.  She was so brave as she climbed up (while wearing a purple leopard print dress and tap shoes.)

 Here she is looking out at everything with the fireman.

 Charlotte hadn't wanted to climb the ladder and had stayed at the bounce house.  But as soon as she saw Lydia up there she decided she wanted to climb too.  So we waiting in line again and soon it was Charlotte's turn.

 She was very brave too - and very proud of herself.

 I'd brought a picnic and there was a large field behind the fire station so we went under a tree and had lunch. See what I mean about springtime really being summer time.

 I'd even made a quick trail mix called, "leftover stuff in the cupboard we need to eat before we move mix."

 There were blue flowers in the field.  I'm all sorts of mixed up on what these flowers are really called.  I'm fairly certain they are called Bluebonnets, but I swear someone told me that Bluebell Icecream is named after these flowers.  So last year I called them Bluebells and so that's what my kids call them.  Lydia wanted to pick the "Bluebells" so badly.  I told her that I let her pick them last year because she was little and didn't know any better, but this year she is old enough to understand that she can't pick them.  She was pretty heart broken about that so we compromised by letting her take a picture with the flowers.

 Some of the kids wanted to go to the bounce house one last time.  So we headed back over there.  But pretty soon it became apparent that we were done for the day.  I put all four crying kids into the wagon and we went back to the Honda.  I think one of the keys to going places when you are outnumbered by little kids is to have a good escape plan.  This wagon is my escape plan. I don't know how we would have gotten out of there without it.

 I took this final picture of the station as we left. It had been such a fun morning and probably a lot less stressful than the egg hunt would have been.

 The kids slept on the way home and then woke up and started playing in the back yard as soon as we got home.

 Two years ago we hardly ever played back here.  There were too many sticker plans and fire ants - plus we didn't really have anything to do back there.  But look at us now.

 Charlotte likes to collect rocks and then bring them home.  She likes making what she calls "Yellowstone." with the rocks.  I love her imagination.

I guess I should throw in a little update about Brandon.  I haven't talked to him since Monday night. On Tuesday he passed his PT test and then started the actual Warrant Officer Training.  It's pretty intense, but in a good way. His group should have phone privileges in a few weeks.

I worried that I would be really lonely while we couldn't talk to each other.  And yes, I admit that I do miss adult conversation, but I'm actually surprised by how much fun I'm having with my kids.  I've always known that I love them and that I like spending time with them.  But this week I've discovered that they are some of my very best friends.  I'm so grateful that I have these four little people in my life.