Kite Flying

The other day Grant and I were at Sam's Club together, and he saw this really cool "X-Wing Fighter" kite. He's a big Star Wars fan, so he bought it with his own money even though it was $19.99 which is probably way too much money for a kite. We got it home, and he spent forever putting it together since it came in a million different pieces. It was a really windy day, so he and Drew took it out to the park to fly it.They worked and worked and worked, but they could not get this kite to fly. It kept crashing into the ground. Drew got bored and started doing cartwheels while he waited for Grant to get the kite in the air.
Finally, they came inside a little bit frustrated. Then, I remembered that we had a cheap 88 cent kite that I had picked up at the checkout at Wal-Mart. It wasn't quite as cool as the other kite to say the least.

Super Grover came all in one piece so no assembly required. Yea!

They took it outside and hoped for a little better luck.

On their first try, Super Grover sailed into the air.

I guess we learned that you don't always get what you pay for. Sam's Club happily gave us our money back for our "really fun to look at, not so fun to fly" kite, and we've definitely gotten our money's worth out of our 88 cent Super Grover kite.

Valentine PJ's

Every year my mom comes up with creative red items to give the boys for Valentine's Day. This year, one of the things included in their packages were these cute red pajama shorts. I wanted to take a picture of them in their new pj's for Grammie to see, and it turned into quite the picture taking adventure. Honestly, these boys can turn anything into a party. They're always looking for a way to have fun.

Standing up straight and then falling flat on your face is apparently hilarious.

Guess what? Falling backwards is pretty fun, too.

These kids are silly, and it's always an adventure at our house, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. I love my boys!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We've had a great Valentine's Day this year. We started out two weeks ago by making Valentine boxes for each person in our family. We've all been leaving things in each others boxes every day. The kids have made us cute valentines, left us candy, and even made up jokes to put in our boxes. They've left each other lots of cute things, too. I've tried to leave something every day for the kids...small toys, new toothbrushes, new socks, markers, gum and candy, books, etc. Nick wins the "fun parent" award, because he has left Lego sets, Transformers, and other cool stuff. Nick would NEVER leave new socks or a toothbrush for the kids in their Valentine boxes. I guess that makes me the practical parent and Nick the fun parent? I can live with that :)

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The kids loved their parties at school this week. I've decided that the longer you are homeroom mom, the less stressful it is to throw a party. This year Grant and Brady's parties both went off without a hitch, and I think all the kids had a great time. We had a pizza party with Grant's class and even finished it off with an ice cream sundae bar.

Brady's party was at 10 in the morning, so I brought heart shaped donuts, chocolate milk and fruit. Our school doesn't have any more parties this year, so I'm officially done with "homeroom mom" duties.

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Friday night my dad volunteered to babysit our kids so we could go out. Naturally the kids had a blast, and we did, too. My mom babysat my sister's kids at the same time so they could go on a date, and then they both babysat for my brother on Saturday night. I feel so lucky to have such great parents who live close and are able to watch our kids so often. The boys LOVE spending time with them.

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Since we went on a date Friday night, Saturday was a family day. We started off the day with 3 basketball games. Grant played 2, Brady played 1, and I coached all 3. My mom and dad, and Alicia and her family came to cheer us on, so we all went to Los Cabos for lunch afterwards.

Then, we met the Berry family at Laser Quest for a game of laser tag. We also took Joe with us, and Ben and Brent played, too. Laser tag with a bunch of boys is so much fun. They really get into it. We finished off our Valentine's day with ice cream at Braums.

Kaylee, Sarah, Joe, Brady and Grant
Kaylee and Sarah are really fun, cute girls. Grant and Brady get along with them so well. Who knows...maybe someday they'll actually be their valentines! I wouldn't complain!

Grant Berry and Drew

Happy Valentine's Day!

Big Muscles

Parents have to be smart. That's all there is to it. As long as you're smarter than your kids, you'll survive parenthood.

Recently most of our smart moves have had something to do with Drew. He's just at that age where you're constantly having to come up with a plan to get him to do what you want.

Our latest crisis has been that Drew doesn't like to eat. He comes to the table, eats one bite, says thanks for dinner and clears his plate. (at least he's polite, right?) We've tried all kinds of things to get him to eat, but nothing has worked. We may be smarter, but he's definitely more stubborn.

One day we told him that eating makes your muscles grow. Apparently this was an impressive thing to a 4 year old, and he started eating again. He's convinced that the muscle growth happens instantly when he swallows a bite of food. So, he eats a bite, then flexes his muscles so we can all comment on how big they're getting. Then he takes another bite, and we repeat the process. Granted he comes to the table with no shirt on so we can all see his massive biceps and dinner takes twice as long because there is just as much flexing as eating, but he's eating healthy food again, so I just can't complain.

Like I said, you just have to be smarter than a 4 year old.

Crazy kids

Everyone else's kids were bundled up nice and warm to play in the snow. My kids started out that way, but by the end of the day, the older two had stripped down to shorts. It didn't seem to bother them at all. They must get this from their dad because I'm always cold. I love this picture. It's just classic Grant and Brady.

Snow Days

The kids were out of school Tuesday through Thursday this week because of snow and ice. It wasn't that much snow and ice, but since Oklahoma doesn't get weather like this often, the roads take forever to get cleared. My kids were really happy to have a few days off.

The Echeverrias live a few blocks away from us and happen to have a perfect driveway for sledding. We walked down to their house several times and had a blast sledding for hours.
It's been 2 years since we've had enough snow to sled, and this time we couldn't find our sleds anywhere. We improvised and came up with all kinds of things that were fun to ride down a hill. We even used Drew's tricycle.

We also tried a cardboard box. It was pretty slow.

The Echeverrias had a few sleds that they shared with us.

Grant is sliding down on a pizza pan. The pizza pans were the winners. They were really fast.

My kids and the Echeverria kids decided to hold hands and go down together.

Here they come!

This picture was taken right before the giant sled mass hit me and knocked me to the ground. It's really not that smart to stand in front of a big group of sledders to take their picture. However, I didn't learn my lesson and was taken out again later in the day.

Drew couldn't get enough of the snow.

Grant perfected the "pizza pan snowboarding" technique.

The next day my sister and sister-in-law and my nieces and nephews came with us, too.

The boys were more than a little disappointed to go back to school Friday. But it was fun while it lasted.

Triathlon Results

Before the triathlon, there was a lot of friendly family taunting about which team would have the fastest time. Nick/Ben and Heather had to compete in the coed division which had tougher competition. They did so great and came in 4th place. Steve and Wes came in 2nd in the men's division, which had the toughest competitors of all.

It's been noticed by several people that I failed to mention in my previous post which family team won. (maybe my pride had something to do with it)

So, in all fairness, here are the results...
Steve smoked us all (which was no surprise). His time was 56:45.
Ben/Nick/Heather did it in 1:00:30
Christina/Alicia/Andrea did it in 1:02:42

There you have it. We were defeated, but only by 2 minutes!!! I get to take the credit for the 2 minute loss. Heather is SO fast, and I couldn't keep up with her in the run. But, we were all happy with our times. Had my team been competing in the coed division, we would have come in 5th right behind Ben, Nick and Heather aka the in-law team.

I don't think this is the last time our family will compete in an event like this together. A little friendly competition is good for us! (in other words...you're going down next time in-laws!)

St. John Indoor Triathlon

My sister signed me up to do an indoor team triathlon with her and her friend Christina. After hearing us talk about it, Nick, my brother-in-law Ben, and my sister-in-law Heather decided to form their own team. Then, my brother (who was originally signed up to do the individual triathlon) decided to compete with our friend Wes in the team triathlon, too. We all ended up in the same heat and that made the competition even more fun. My mom and dad brought ALL the grandkids to cheer us on. Here are a few of them.

Nick did the bike portion, and I did the run for my team.

Christina had an amazing swim time. You'd never know she's 5 months pregnant!

Ben and Wes after their swim

Steve and Nick in the middle of their 10 mile bike ride. It was kind of funny to do the bike ride on a stationary bike, but how else do you do an indoor triathlon? I was glad that there was a track for the run.

Alicia was enjoying every minute of her bike ride. :)

I loved being able to do this with my siblings and their spouses. What a great way to spend a Friday night!

Our team came in 1st place in the female division!!!