Word Confusion

We went to the Exterran (who Jason works for) company picnic last weekend.

Unfortunately, Kyle and Reed now think the word "picnic" means: multiple bouncy apparatuses, train rides, face painting, and unlimited snow cones/cotton candy/ice cream. 

 

My favorite part? (Besides the ice cream and cotton candy, of course.) They had somebody taking pictures!

 

obstacle course

 

It's hard not to smear your face paint when there's so many bouncy houses...so little time.

Typical Kyle.  He must have jumped in front of the photographer every chance he got.  We had about 10 pictures of him.

And would you look at that, Jason and I were there too! 

Jeep Attack

So before I tell our tales of jeeping in Moab, I'll give you the short, short version for those of you under a time constraint. 

This pictures sums up the whole day.

Me holding on for dear life. (The arrow is pointing to my hand in full on death grip.)

And Jason smiling from ear to ear.

All kidding aside, the boys loved it!

Last weekend Steven organized a trip with 15 of us.

And Reed was immediately thankful that the group included hot, shirtless high school girls.

And besides cute high school girls, the kids also enjoyed plenty of jeeps doing things like this.

And this

(No, that's not a wolf in the foreground.  One of the couples brought their dog who, like me, would rather walk along side the jeeps than actually ride.)

And then Steven (with Liz in the passenger seat) did this and I almost had a heart attack.

While I wasn't hyperventilating, I did have some time to take in the spectacular scenery.

That's Reed still working on bringing home a new babysitter.

The best family picture we could get.

I'm smiling since there aren't 4 (or sometimes 3!) wheels under my feet.

Fredericksburg Fabulous Friday

Our road trip continued on to Fredericksburg, which is known as a romantic getaway or girl's weekend kind of a town.

Obviously with my parents and 3 kids in tow, we weren't experiencing Fredericksburg the way it's intended.

Instead of spending the day touring wineries, lunching at small cafes, and/or shopping in fun little boutiques, we:

watched animated, dancing salsa bottles

had my dad babysit on park benches as my mom and I ran in-and-out of stores in record time

and posed for pictures with giant cowboy M&M's.

(Do you see the sign advertising the chocolate covered bacon? We didn't try it, but a couple passing by told us it was really good.)

The whole family did spend a really enjoyable hour in one of the Christmas stores.

And the term 'really enjoyable' isn't laced with one drop of sarcasm. 

Christmas decorating genes run strong in this family!

Hometown Tourists

We did a little hometown touristing the other day while out and about in Huntsville.

(Huntsville is my dad's hometown and about 30 miles from where they live now.)

Though Huntsville is probably best known for "Old Sparky" (the electric chair which you can now see in the Texas Prison Museum), it also happens to the hometown to Sam Houston.

Now, if you're a Texan you definitely know Sam Houston, but for you non-Texans:

 He was President of the Republic of Texas, Governor of the State of Texas, and led the Texas Army in the Battle of San Jacinto which was our big victory over Mexico in the Texas Revolution.

And if you think we Texans don't love our Texas history, then just check this out.

The Sam Houston statue in Huntsville is the worlds tallest statue of an American Hero.

 It's 67 feet tall!

Oh yeah, everything is bigger in Texas.

This replica of his face gives you an idea of how big the statue is.

Kyle and Reed aren't much bigger than the nose!

Fashion Fabulous Friday-Britney Edition!

What's more fabulous than attending a Britney Spears concert?

Attending a Britney Spears concert dressed in full Britney costumes, of course!

And in case you're not a Britney fan, I'll walk you through our evolution of Britneys.

(left to right)

Shari as 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' Britney

Me as 'I'm a Slave 4 U' Britney (complete with albino boa constrictor)

Marcia as 'Me Against the Music' Britney

Adrienne as Post-Mental-Breakdown Britney (complete with Starbucks coffee and purse sized dog)

Kelly as 'Circus' Britney (complete with whip)

The costumes went over even better than we could have imagined, with people lining up to have their pictures taken with us!

Deja Vu

My Denver Zoo pictures look a whole lot like last year's Denver Zoo pictures.

I'm almost certain that's Kyle on the left, and if I had to pick, I'd say that's Reed on the right.

JR and I were excited to see the penguins since he's reading Mr. Popper's Penguins, but wouldn't you know it, the penguin exhibit was closed.

Although the penguin habitat was open for business.

Which I'm guessing it was last year too.

Usually I don't take many animal shots at the zoo, but I guess I had a thing for birds this year.

A peacock to show Paw-Paw.

(On a bird side note, Kyle asked me if Paw-Paw would buy him a (real) flamingo. 

My answer: Probably.)

Jason and Reed feeding the birds.

As you can see, Kyle was super excited about feeding time.

 Kyle finding another bird to feed.

And JR feeding.

Zip-a-Dee Doo Dah

We just couldn't bring ourselves to buy JR yet another Wii/Nintendo game for his birthday.

So we figured this year we'd try buying him a gift that you don't unwrap.

We took him ziplining.

And when I saw 'we', I mean Jason also ziplined and I stayed safely on the ground taking pictures.

Kyle and Reed even got into a little bit of the action.

They let them try out the practice zipline!

But it was the two big guys that had the serious fun.

2 hours of ziplining.

I'm pretty sure they're both "hooked"!

Fire and Feathers

I have to give credit to Cassidy for the title of today's post. 

We were at our friends, Liz and Steven's house around the fire pit when this picture was taken.

Now check out Liz's drink.  (She's the one in the pink that looks like Teri Hatcher.)

She's got a fun feather koozie!

(Definitely gonna have to pick up a few of those.)

It was then that Cassidy said, "You'll have to put this on your blog! You can call it Fire and Feathers!"

And I really meant to take pictures at our Fire and Feathers evening, but as usually happens when you're having lots of fun, I totally forgot.

10 kids running around, jumping on the trampoline, roasting marshmallows and the only picture I took was of Kyle petting their cat.

And a picture of Kyle when we pulled into our garage, proving that the evening was a total success.

Somewhat Top Chefy

We went to Taste of Durango yesterday (which I called "Taste of Texas" everytime I said it since there's a restaurant by that name down the road from us in Houston) and had some seriously yummy yummies.

It felt a little Top Chefy since they have booths set up all down Main Street and you buy tasting servings (just like on Top Chef) of whatever looks good. 

We had things like shrimp ceviche, cheesy garlic bread, crab-stuffed crepes, pork sandwiches, and even pizza.

I wanted to take a picture of the kids eating from the Jean Pierre booth for my friend, Tiffany. (Owned by her in-laws.)

But the croissant and quiche were gobbled up before I could even get my camera out, so all I have is Kyle eating something that I didn't get a bite of and have no idea what it is. 

 I'm gonna go with "something Frenchy".

And if you're wondering what's on Kyle's face, well, they also had face painters.

Kyle and Reed wanted to be dogs.

And there was a band too.

So K and R decided to show off their dance moves...much to JR's embarrassment.

Kyle's "breakdancing" in this one.

So of all the yummy food which was the kids' favorite?

Yep.

Cotton Candy. 

Sold by the Future Chefs of Durango High School.

Bears 3. Jason 0.

So for the 3rd time, Jason and JR came home empty handed from a bear hunt.

(Although it wasn't for lack of trying since Jason's neck is purple it's so sunburned from riding a horse all day.)

Kyle and Reed are now old enough to know when they're getting left behind, so I had to pull out my own "big guns" when it came to entertaining them.

We tried two new things this weekend, which both went surprisingly well.

JR told me he wanted to paint pottery for his birthday party this year, 

(That child never ceases to surprise me with what he comes up with.)

so I went by to reserve the studio for his party.

Guess who thought they needed to paint pottery?

The lady who owns the studio was a typical, artsy Durangoan.

Had she known the rest of the family was on a bear hunt, I probably would have been asked to leave.

But instead, she thought she'd found a kindred spirit in me.

When she asked the boys what colors they wanted to paint with Kyle said, "Pink!"

(Of course he did.)

She immediately looked at me to see how I would react to my son asking for pink.

 I said, "Okay. And Reed what color would you like?"

(I think he picked yellow.)

Her face lit up and she started praising my parenting skills about how wonderful I was to let my son express himself with pink.

Yeah. I just kept my mouth shut.

I had no intentions of telling her that I'm really just a lazy mom and pick my battles. 

Pink paint isn't a battle I feel like fighting.

Besides, he picked out a 4-wheeler to paint. I figured that was manly enough for the day.

I also took them to their first movie.

I figured if we made it halfway through it'd have been worth it.

Poor things don't even weight enough to keep the seat all the way down.

Reed asked me not to take his picture.

There was lots of changing seats, getting in my lap, and of course...shirt taking off.

Yep.

Kyle informed me he was hot and needed to take his shirt off.

And again, my lazy amazing parenting took over and I figured, it's dark, he's 3, who cares?

We made it through the entire movie, and Kyle's shirt was back on before the end.

Total success.

Except for Jason and JR.

The Big Reveal

So I know I was supposed to be back yesterday with the big royal hat reveal.

 And obviously, that didn't happen.

Kyle and Reed had a soccer game in the morning, then JR had dress rehearsal plus his dance recital last night.

(He also has a recital this afternoon, but Jason and I made the seriously awesome decision not to take Kyle and Reed. So I represented Team Ingersoll last night, and Jason is there right now.)

So now that that's cleared up, let's get on with the fun stuff.

Cassidy and I decided as much as we wanted to see the Royal Wedding, we really didn't want to get up at 2:00 AM to do so. 

So thanks to the wonders of DVR, we had our Royal Wedding viewing party Friday night.

And, of course, I couldn't just reuse one of my old hats for such a special occasion. 

But you'll be proud of me, I didn't buy a new one either.

But I did make two pretty fabulous creations fit for a royal wedding (or at least Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie) if I do say so myself!

And if you're thinking to yourself, "Does Cassidy have a teapot on her head?"

Why yes. Yes, she does.

You see, she jokingly texted me Friday night asking if her hat could have a commemorative tea cup. 

 Now you know, if it's a commemorative tea cup you want, well, I'm gonna throw in the tea pot and the sugar bowl too.

(And that hat was seriously heavy.  I had to make our hats from Walmart supplies and they didn't have a plastic toy tea set in the whole store. They're actually porcelain!)

We also wore our commerative Kate engagement rings.

And made paparazzi stops around London.

My kind of wedding, indeed!