Lilly & Reid's Life: Spring Break

I have wanted to blog for a while but there is just so much I want to blog about that I have been overwhelmed and just couldn't decide where to start! The kids have done so much, we have done so much, and the Lord has been working in our hearts so much--and I want to share it all...but couldn't decide where to start so I have just kept putting it off and putting it off. If I am being totally transparent...this has been pretty true of several areas (laundry, anyone?) of my life over the past couple of months. We haven't really been any more busy than normal...I have just been less motivated than normal. Anyone else with me? I feel like I am finally starting to move out of this lazy-feeling haze and back into the motivated world. And now that our house is almost-not-embarrassing-type-of-clean (thanks in a large part to my awesome man), I would like to start catching up on what has been happening in our lives. I am starting with Spring Break because those are the pictures that are next on my camera and I have to start somewhere. Ha!

Monday

We started Spring Break off by making some yummy banana pancakes!

The kids love to help mash and stir.

Monday afternoon we met up for lunch with our sweet friends Rebekah, Duke, and Cilla at Chick-fil-a.

We got to be there when Duke tried his very first Chick-fil-a french fry. We feel very important now. Ha! (:

And Reid enjoyed an ice cream cone. My children are growing up too fast...they have started asking for the chicken sandwich instead of nuggets and eating ice cream in a cone instead of a cup. When did they start acting so big?

Reid planted a plant at school and I forgot about it in the car for a couple of days and then brought it in and sat it on the counter for a couple of days...and somehow, some way, without water or anything--it grew!!! Reid was SO EXCITED. Lilly, on the other hand, was a little bitter. You see a couple of weeks ago she, too, planted a seed at school and Reid dumped it down the sink while trying to "clean it." I let her water it and all was right the world again. It has since been spilled and didn't "make it"...but it had a good couple of week run in our house...which is better than most plants do here.

Lilly wrote her own story. On the inside cover of one of her books. She said it was a good one and I believe her.

Tuesday

Because I got all caught up in how excited the kids were about plants and because I got all visionary about how awesome I wanted our landscaping to be this year, we went to Wal-Mart to buy some flowers to plant! Luckily the guy working there said, "You do know it is supposed to snow in a couple of days and if you plant them and don't cover them they won't grow??" No. I did not. So I let them each pick out one pack of flowers.

Don't let it surprise you that Reid picked out blue...

and Lilly picked out pink. We went home and planted them. I remembered how much work planting flowers is and have shelved the whole landscaping idea for a little while. At least until we quit getting snow for a while. I don't remember much else about Tuesday except for that Reid was a toot and I had to call Matt at 4 to encourage me to stay sane until he came home. We had the two previous weekends with grandparents in town so we saw this coming. Ha!

Wednesday

Given the forecast for the rest of the week and knowing this would be the last nice weather day of Spring Break, I decided we had to get out and took a spontaneous trip to the Gentry Safari. Our friends Dallas and Levi joined us and I think we were all thankful to have some friends along for the ride!

We saw the alligator up close and were all really excited!

A ~~quick~~ funny story. The safari has a drive-thru part and the animals (except the bears, lions, tigers, and alligators) roam freely. They come up to your car--it is really awesome. That being said, there is no place to stop or pull over once you are in the safari part. We also picked an extremely BUSY day--so in the safari--we were bumper to bumper. What normally takes about 30 minutes to get through took us over an hour. Stay with me--all these details are important. (:

My son, less than 3 minutes into our time in the safari informs me that he has to pee. Now. I tried to tell him he would HAVE to wait--there are no bathrooms and there are wild animals outside of our car. 5 minutes later he is holding himself saying, "I have to go! I can't hold it! It's about to spill!!!!" I can tell by his panicked expression that he is serious. He has to go. Now!

We are in the middle of going up this giant hill at a snail's pace. An Emu even gets in front of our car and causes us to go even slooooower. Reid is doing the potty dance the whole time and I am begging him to wait 5 more seconds. We finally pull over and I had to dump out my water (that I had packed to drink that day...with no back-up) out of the window. I just barely rolled my window down to dump it out and thought I rolled the window back up...but in all the craziness accidentally rolled it down all the way. I am getting him situated when we look up and are face to face with the Emu. Insert panic. We are all yelling and panicking as the window slowly rolls up. Annnnd that is the story of how Reid peed in a cup in our car for the first, and hopefully last, time.

The kids enjoyed feeding all of the animals in the petting zoo.

And we had a picnic while we were there and this rooster just walked around cock-a-doodle-dooing the whole time. All in all, I called the trip a success.

Thursday

We all wore our mis-matched socks for World Down Syndrome Day.

Lola, our new dog, who will be the star of my next blog post, was very cute...but not very helpful in my mission of cleaning up the house.

It snowed. Forget that it had been warm, beautiful, and 70 degrees 2 days earlier.

I had some much-needed quiet time with the Lord. And I had coffee. I have decided that I am a much better person on coffee.

And, I don't want to brag on myself or anything, but I did make our bed at 5:00 that afternoon. So there's that. Lilly brought Mickey and put him on my bed because she said, "it needed him."