Mexico

It was finally here. Our anniversary trip that we had planned to take for our 15th wedding anniversary but ended up taking the month after our 16th. It was worth the wait! We flew out of KC at 5am Friday morning and arrived in Cancun by 11:30 am. We had to wait awhile through customs but got out and to our shuttle pretty smoothly. I felt safer by the minute on our drive into the resort and the security checkpoints we had to go through to get into our resort.

Our room wasn't quite ready when we got there so we wandered around checking everything out and then ate at the buffet since we were starving and we had to get our week started of endless eating!

loved the cool sand...much different than the burning hot sand of some beaches that may bring out the worst in some people :)

this was at the end of the walkway from the lobby...ahead was the pool/pools, the restaurant/pool bar and then the beach/ocean.

our room with two t-shirts since we "liked" them on facebook

the little courtyard outside our room...our room was the one on the bottom floor. yay, no stairs!

this was our beach access from our building...really could it get any more beautiful?

this was the walkway walking from the pool area. it was a nice long walk that we actually loved since we felt like all we were doing was eating at least we had a nice walk to go eat!

during the cloudier times we opted to sit under the little huts. the beaches were not packed. there were always plenty of chairs.

For awhile we thought we were the only Americans at the resort. Most everyone was French or Italian. No one spoke English! We did end up meeting several Americans during the week.

Be forewarned, i have lot's of pictures so it's going to take me several posts even though i have narrowed it down a lot...

Here comes the sun

I love my kids summer tans and bleached blonde hair that they get every summer. Though before the tan comes the first summer burn. Even though i drenched the kids in sunscreen, Trey and Ethan's shoulders got burnt the other day so they are nursing some sore shoulders...

Raegan loves riding around on her brother's back in the pool. Gone are the flip flop stealing days and in are the easier for mommy days when Raegan (for the most part) will go play in the water or use her little spray bottle to be my personal little assistant keeping me cool from head to foot and face!

Ethan started out the swim season by getting up on the diving board and doing a front flip off of it...bout shocked the pants off his momma...

our days at the pool involve just about as much snacking as swimming. I have already had to lay down the rule of no snacks until we have been at the pool for 45 minutes, because Raegan would like to sit down and snack as soon as we walk in if it were her choice!

the water has still been pretty cold the last couple of days, hopefully it will warm up soon!

Summer

Summer is here and along with summer comes kids getting to stay up later, little ones that never nap and so are so exhausted at night that they fall asleep if they stay still too long...

The older kids get so tired they actually choose to go to bed some nights. We spent the weekend with cousins swimming in the rain and going to Worlds of Fun in the rain for part of the day. I didn't have my camera either day so no pictures...

We are hoping for a semi sunny day tomorrow so we can head to the pool. I went to the store today to stock up on pool candy (fun dip, airheads ect...you know the candy they sell at the pool for three times the price you can get it for) They were out of fun dip and the lady said "i'm sorry, people come in and buy the whole box". (she acted like she didn't know why anyone would do that. Really, who does that?? ;)

We had a very relaxing Memorial Day. John built the forms for our patio (ok so maybe that part was not so relaxing for him) and then we went as a family to see Kung Fu Panda 2. The kids enjoyed it. Ethan has been doing his moves and "finding his inner peace", he cracks me up!

Hope you are having a great start to your summer!

Back in!

Just seeing if i can actually post! I have been locked out for the past few days, but looks like i'm back in...

Catch up

Busy busy May! That is what it has been! Here is a little of what we have been up to the last week or so...

Avery and her friend Mikayla participated in the school talent show. They sang and danced to a little Justin Bieber or "justin biever" as Raegan would say...

Ethan had his last soccer game. Avery got to hang out with her friend Emma and do a little hula hooping...

Ethan got a medal, something that he was super excited for!

he posed for a picture with his bud Will

We have started our trips out to Worlds of fun and Raegan can't wait to ride the patriot roller coaster so she practices sitting in the test seat...yea right, i can't even get her to go on half the rides in planet snoopy. It takes a while to build her bravery back up since she hasn't been on them for some months now...

Tomorrow is the last day of school!! Half day! This school year has flown!

I have been busy working on my calendar. I have a list a mile long in my head, lot's of little things to do before leaving the country! I am now starting to get that all down on paper and actually accomplished a lot today to check off. Here i go with my lists. I am so obsessed with lists!

John and I celebrated our 16th anniversary. We just went out to dinner and wandered around the Legends and bought nothing but socks for one of our kids, how is that for date night! :) 6 days in Mexico will make up for a low key anniversary night, that is for sure!


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A few random moments around here that make momma smile, blush or shake my head:

walking by the pineapples in the grocery store Ethan stopped and said "alright, which one of you does spongebob live in?!"

picking raegan up from sunday school and realizing she has gone commando under her little skirt(when she announces, "i'm not wearing any panties!" followed by a gasp from me! ...it's not like little 3 years olds are always lady like so i can't even imagine...hopefully she sat like a little lady the 2 plus hours she was in there!

after running tonight tucking raegan into bed i leaned down to kiss her goodnight and she said "oh mommy you smell awful, what is up with that?"

Ethan didn't seem to care about my awful smell he followed with "i love you more than the whole world!"


Hope your having a great start to your week!

1000 words

They say a picture says a thousand words...

Countdown

12 days and counting till the pool opens! I'm not sure who is more excited, Mommy or the kids!

First year of the pool when we will have to use NO SWIM DIAPERS!! woohoo!

6 and 1/2 days of school left! I know who is more excited for this but i would have to say i am pretty excited as well. We will be spending lot's of days at WOF and the pool this summer!! I have learned the best way not to go crazy during the summers in our tiny house with all 4 kids home is to get out and stay busy. The two little one's naps are quickly approaching an end as they rarely nap during the summer!

We had the annual "amazing race" that our ABF class at church puts on. So Fun! We started out great finding the cat in the field quickly and getting out in the lead. We opted not to take the 8 minute penalty in order to use gps or internet access on phones. We lost time at the Oak Park Mall when we searched for the next clue for about 15 minutes and we got a little lost in Gardner for about another 10-15 minutes later but we finished 2nd after 13 legs of the race. We had a blast and actually work together pretty well under pressure besides a couple of "shut up and listens" that was probably caught on video. John tends to want to keep talking when stressed and i just want to concentrate :) I'm just glad that he does all the nasty food eating because i would never keep it down. It was durian fruit this time and the smell every time someone burped after eating it was bad enough to possibly kill a small animal!

Here is our kitty, (our first clue) and the remaining legs of the race

We are rapidly approaching our trip to Mexico. We are getting so excited!! The kids are jealous that we get to go on a plane. One of these days we will take them all on a plane...that might be way down the road!

Hope your having a great start to your week!

Orchestra

Trey had his final 6th grade orchestra concert last week. He would rather crawl under a table than have us take pictures of him at his concert but sorry Trey...you will thank me someday :)

They did a great job. I especially liked when all 3 grades played Canon in D!

on a different note, i can't believe this guy is going to be in 7th grade next year!! We are at 10 and 1/2 days on the countdown till school is out! But, who is counting?

Little blonde scoring machine

Ethan has had so much fun playing soccer this spring! He plays his little heart out, He has one more "game" before his session is over.

he learned to dribble the ball

to dribble and run at the same time...

he played lots of freeze tag

He was a little scoring machine! Great job Ethan, loved watching you play your first season of soccer!

A night at the K

Avery's choir at school had the opportunity to sing the national anthem at the Royals game last night. She came home from school the day before yesterday and said "i have exciting news, my name was drawn to go out on the field early and watch batting practice".

Avery was worried sick that we wouldn't make it in time since we were stuck in lot's of traffic but we made it in plenty of time much to her relief!

hanging out on the field watching batting practice. avery got a ball and the officer tossed ethan a ball that the player hit back so ethan was pretty pumped about that!

it was pretty neat seeing the choir walk out onto the field! they did a great job singing!

of course had to take a picture of them on the jumbo tron!

and then they were brought up to us up in the sky section/nose bleed section :)

and hung out with friends the rest of the night. We stayed till the start of the 10th inning, and they won the game soon after we left. Fun night and something i'm sure avery will never forget!

Midnight run

Trey and i stayed up late Friday night and went and ran a Midnight 5k benefiting the Special Olympics. Weather was awesome for running, very windy but perfect temps for running!

I have a only ran one other race with Trey and that was back when he was just starting to run. A cross country season and track season later and boy he is a different runner! We ran the whole thing together until the very last stretch when he turned it on with a sprint and mom didn't have the sprint left in her. His finishing time was 23:54 and i followed 2 or 3 seconds later. We have joked about how much longer i was going to be able to beat him and it seems that has officially come to an end.

He placed 40th overall out of 377 people and 5th in his age division (10-19). He got passed by two 14 yr old boys right at the end that we had been running right with the entire time so he was kinda bummed that they got by or he would have gotten an award.

I completely enjoyed my night out with my boy running and look forward to doing some more with him this summer hopefully!

Here is my poor quality picture that we had someone take with my camera phone but it's a picture nonetheless.

Great job Trey! You obeyed well when i said to "time to kick it in", guess i need to work on my kick a little so i can "kick it in" with you! :)

A noisy day

A couple of weeks ago we started yet another project around here. We bought pavers at a really discounted price 2 years ago to redo our back patio. It was in really bad shape, cracked and sunken down in places. Last year Johnny attempted to build some forms and was going to go over the patio with the pavers but that was going to end up being way too high so we didn't end up getting it done last summer.

He decided to rent a jackhammer and get the concrete out of there. He had four hours to get it out so he took no breaks, kept that thing going the entire time. It did not look like any fun at all to me...

the kids and i were the rock carriers. trey stuck with it all day! the other two were kind of in and out.

ethan found a way to move the rock...he made trip after trip this way

this is what raegan though about the jack hammer

this is what our patio looked like at the end of the day. all of those rocks are now removed and in a massive pile in the backyard. phase one of the project is complete. phase two is getting the rock out of here and dumped! phase three will be building the new porch, our old one had rotted, (it's amazing someone had not fallen through it) and then finally phase four will be getting the new pavers down! The plan is to hopefully be able to get to enjoy the completed back porch and patio area this summer!