The Strawberry Patch

Peyton and I saw a painted wooden sign that said "Strawberry Patch" on the way to our favorite Mexican Restaurant. We thought it would be fun to take the kids and let them pick strawberries. After we went to Frankie's Fun Park during Spring Break, we went straight to the patch. Caroline fell asleep, so for the first part of picking I was holding her while trying to take pictures of everybody else.

They got right to it, they were old pros!

Show me whatcha got! (and try not to look at the camera:)

Ethan started with this little basket

then upgraded to the bigger one because "it holds more!"


Look how huge this one is!

Caroline woke up and got right to work. I asked her to show me what she had and she took a huge bite and said "my bite".

I think we ended up with about 20 pounds of strawberries. We filled up 4 of those baskets full!

They keep asking me when we're going back to pick strawberries. That might have to be on the agend for this weekend.

Frankie's Fun Park

The Friday of Ethan's Spring Break we took a trip to Frankie's Fun Park. We didn't do much over Spring Break so I wanted to make sure we did something memorable. There is so much to do there. We started with lunch and then hit the park. The first thing the kids wanted to do was go on the big slide. Ethan took his time going up, you can see through the steps, but he made it up no problem. Peyton had to go down with Caroline.

Ready, Set, Slide!



Next, it was off to play Putt Putt. I thought it would be funny if Ethan stuck his head in the alligator's mouth for a picture. Caroline wasn't sure what he was doing and had to check it out for herself.

This was Caroline's first time playing and Peyton was giving her a crash course in putting and proper form :) She drug her putter around the course until she got tired of it, then I got to carry it.



It was such a pretty course and there were lots of places for photo ops.

Ethan and Riley were old pros! I love Riley's hand on hip pose! She's so prissy!


Here they are under the waterfall. I couldn't get Caroline to cooperate for most of the pictures. Oh well!


Ethan accidentally hit his ball in the water and Caroline thought that was really cool, so she did it on purpose. Peyton was able to save it the first time, but when she hit it in the pond, it was a lost cause. Note to self: grab a few extra balls next time!

Off to the bumper boats. Ethan drove a boat by himself and Riley rode with Peyton. Caroline didn't get to ride and it broke her heart. Life's just not fair when you're a tiny little thing! She cried the whole time they were out there.

Everybody got pretty wet. Their boats bumped and Peyton's tipped forward and water splashed up in the boat. He got pretty wet. Ethan's behind was soaked! Both kids agreed "that was sooooo much fun!"


Next was the go carts. Caroline was still upset about the boat incident and wanted a drink, so Peyton took her inside to get something and left me with Ethan and Riley. Here's Ethan getting ready to drive. Poor baby has short legs and had to have a booster put behind him so he could reach the pedals. He was so excited to drive by himself.

Riley was equally as excited, at first! She was a little apprehensive in this picture.

And they're off!


This is one of the only pictures I got of them at the same time. I think this was Ethan's third go round. Still Riley's first! She was going so slow, she would press on the gas and then just coast, and then press the gas and coast. Ethan was constantly looking beside himself, not in front and bumped her.


Speed Demon!

Slow Poke!

She's had enough at this point. She started crying really LOUD! She drove to one end of the track and just stopped. The guy had to go out and bring her in. When she got to me I asked her why she was crying. She said she was going too fast. I couldn't help but laugh!


I think we managed to pack a week's worth of fun into 3 hours. The kids had a blast for the most part. But it wouldn't be a day out with my family without some drama. They can't wait to go back.

Stavros Flatley

You may have seen the youtube video of web sensation Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent. While watching her video I noticed a couple of other videos from the show. I was quite intrigued by one titled "Stavros Flatley-Dancers". When I think of Flatley of course my mind goes to Michael Flatley from Riverdance. I LOVE RIVERDANCE! I went to see it with Carrie and Aunt Janet in Denver. I was filling out my Top Fives of live concerts on Facebook last night and asked Peyton if I could count Riverdance as a Live Band Concert I've attended and he said a very emphatic "NO!". Oh well! So all that to say that I clicked on the video and since embedding from youtube has been disabled for this video here's the link. I won't say anything else except that you should go check it out. And as one of the judges said, "that came completely out of left field" I loved it!

A thought from Peyton

Some of you may know that I've been thinking that I want another baby. 4 will make it even, one child on each hand for me and Peyton. But, Peyton gave me a little perspective the other day with his deep insight into our children. Ethan was the perfect child, still is for the most part. He would wait in his bed for us to come get him in the morning, even when he was in his big boy bed. Sweet boy! The worst thing that he ever got into was he used to pull all of my tupperware off of the baker's rack and play with it, but he stacked it or lined it up, and if asked, he would put it all away, starting at 9 months. At Jenny and Papa's house, he liked to unload their spice cabinet and line up all the spices in the kitchen floor. He got hold of a pen and wrote all over himself when he was 1, but I blame that on Peyton for not watching him;) The only other thing that he did was he scraped out a whole pack of watercolor wonder fingerpaints and wiped it all over himself. That stuff is like Vaseline if you're not familiar with it. I had to pull out the Dawn to get it completely off of him. But that's it. Riley came along and got into a little more than Ethan did. She got into my lipstick and put it all over her face and then painted her clothes with it. Whenever she found a pen, crayon, pencil, anything that she could write with, she did, all over the walls. She once held a crayon to the wall while she walked down the stairs, ALL THE WAY DOWN the stairs. We were in Colorado for Easter in 2007 and I scheduled the kids to get their Easter pictures taken and she cut her bangs all the way up to her hairline the night before. She said she didn't want bangs anymore. I had to explain to her that you have to grow them out, you don't cut them off. She took all of her curlies out of the very organized containers in her bathroom closet and put them on all of her stuffed animals and Barbies. I'm not very organized, but this was a low blow, it was about the only thing in the house I had organized when we first moved in. I'm still finding them and this was 6 months ago. And then came Caroline. Our tiny child. At 2 1/2 she's the size of an 18 month old, but she's a little pistol. I call her my little menace. She doesn't just mess with things in plain sight, she goes looking for trouble. Refer to this post or this post. Peyton blames Jon & Kate Plus 8 for the chocolate baby. She loves that show, and there was an episode where they painted themselves with pudding. Just last week she pushed a stool over the counter and opened the sugar canister, then got a spoon out of the drawer and scooped sugar all over the counter and into every dish and item on the counter. Yesterday, she found Ethan's chocolate bunny from Easter, and after being told she couldn't have it, managed to get the box open and eat half of it, well, 1/4 of it was melted in her hands and smeared all over her face before I caught her (sue me for taking a shower). I bring up another baby occasionally to Peyton and he came back with "every child we have gets progressively worse, do you really want to chance that?" So true! Then last weekend he asks me, "Do you think if we just keep having kids that we'll get our own TV show?" LOL! Probably not, we'd have to have multiples or more than 18, those families already have shows. But, maybe if we move into a tent and completely sustain ourselves from the ocean we might get our own show!

A great new resource!

I was reading through one of the blogs I follow this morning and she had a link to a website called Productive Parenting. I couldn't help but check it out. I set up an account on the spot. They give you a daily (if you choose daily) activity to try with your child(ren). It's recommended for children up to age 5, so really Caroline is the only one to fall into this category, but I know Riley will enjoy the activities too. I try to do some activities with the kids every day, but sometimes it's nice to have them planned for you.

Try It Tuesday

I really need to update my blog more often! This week's try it is not something that I've tried personally, it's something that Peyton did. And it's not really a Try It, it's more poking fun at him, but he's so cute and resourceful! He let his Dad borrow his safety goggles while they were cutting wood for our built-ins in the kitchen (picture to come). Since he loaned his glasses he threw on his Snow Goggles. They're not just for snowboarding people, they are all around eye protection!


So cute! His "just kill me now" face! I believe his exact words were, "just take the picture already woman!". LOL

Paw Paw Marvin, measuring twice, cutting once, or at least that's what's supposed to happen! Thanks for helping with our projects!

Try It Tuesday

This week's feature is my favorite vacuum, the Dyson. I have 2 Dyson Vacuums. One upstairs and one downstairs. Upstairs I have the Animal DC17. It works great on carpets and bare floors. We have 4 bedrooms, a loft, and 3 bathrooms upstairs and this one covers it all. I have the DC25 Ball downstairs. I only have 2 rooms with carpet downstairs and everything else is wood and a tiled bathroom. This vacuum is great for bare floors. I've had vacuums that just spit stuff out the side, but this one doesn't do that. It sucks everything up in one pass. Trust me, it sucked up baking soda that Caroline "sprinkled", rather Dumped all over the kitchen. You're probably wondering why someone would need 2 vacuums cleaners. Well, when we had the movers come to our house in Lugoff, Peyton didn't have them load the vacuum cleaner (we only had the Animal at the time) and instead he took it to my friend Cynthia's to store with our household cleaners in her garage until we moved into the new house in Summerville. Well, we're at the new house and if you've ever had new carpet, you know it sheds, so I told Peyton that I'm glad our vacuum was coming with the movers. That's when he told me he took it to Cynthia's. He claimed he told me, but I don't recall him telling me or we would have picked it up before we moved in. So I told him that now we'll just have to go buy a new one. I believe my exact words were "it sure would be nice to have 2 vacuums so I don't have to lug this one up and down the stairs." He agreed and now we have 2.

Animal DC17 DC25 Ball

Sick, Sick, Sick

That's what's been going on around my house for going on 3 weeks. Someone has been sick nonstop. Only now, it's me! Allergies are rampant right now. My ENT doctor said that Oak pollen is drifting around and that most people's allergies stem from that. YUCK! On top of having allergy issues, I've had nonstop headaches. Migraines if you will, just not severe enough to keep me in bed. Haven't had one of those in almost 3 months. Spring Break officially starts at 2:10 today. We're going on a Stay-cation. Staying home, but getting out to explore our own town. I'm hoping to take the kids to the aquarium, maybe to the beach if it's not too cold. No water play, but I'll bring all the sand toys. There's a lot to do in the Charleston area, it's just up to seeing how brave I am about taking the kids by myself. We haven't been to the Children's Museum yet, so that's probably going to hit the list too. For now, have a good one, I'm going to take some Claritin!