Megan's Show

Last weekend Megan did another one of her shows, a combination of a fashion show and concert. She didn't advertise it like she normally does by hanging posters all over the house, it was all spur of the moment. She charged us 50 cents per person admission for this show and Paul covered everyone's, plus he paid for a backstage tour and an autograph session (25 cents more for all of us.) She started the evening with her fashion show.

This was her picture taking outfit.

This one was her school outfit.

She had other outfits too but I'll stop there! After that it was onto the singing portion of her show. She did 2 songs, here's part of her second song.

When she was finished she took us on a "backstage" tour. The backstage was the living room and we got to see where she put all her outfits. Then onto autographs! Of course we had to pose for pictures too.

I wonder what kinds of things she'll add next time. She does keep it interesting.

Look what Zach got!

Two fish!

You can't see them in the pictures but they're in there. Pop pop gave him the aquarium and the fish. He's always checking out the fish at their house so now he has some of his own.

Paul set up the aquarium after Zach was asleep last night so he didn't get to check out his new friends' home until this morning. He was super excited coming downstairs this morning.
I asked him while he was eating breakfast what he was going to name them. After many suggestions he settled on "Doc" and "Mater," two of the characters from Cars.

All day long he kept checking them out, then he learned where the light was and he kept turning the light on and off, those poor fish!

Zach's 1st Dentist Visit

He did great! He didn't want to sit in the chair at first until the dental hygienist gave him a stuffed dinosaur to hold. After that things went smoothly. Jill did a superb job with him. She explained what everything did before using it. He liked the water sprayer, or as Jill called it "Mr. Thirsty" and he also liked the suction thing. He even got fluoride put on his teeth once the dentist came in and checked him, he picked cherry flavored.

Here's his clean teeth afterwards:

I think his first experience far exceeded all the girls' first experiences. I mean, I think they had good experiences too, his was just excellent. Jill said that since he was such a good boy that he could pick 4 prizes. Wow, was he thrilled with that part, plus he got to pick what color toothbrush he wanted, he picked purple.

Glad it all went well, it'll make him want to go back!

Museum of Natural History

We can't miss $1 Tuesdays during the month of August! I know I posted about going here last year too. One major rule about going during $1 days is to go EARLY. We were the second car in the parking lot and were the first ones to enter.

Here's the gang as we waited till the museum opened. We were early by 8 minutes so we posed by the turtle. Last year Zach was very uncooperative and wouldn't sit on the turtle, at least this year he seemed to like it.

We saw the dinosaur display and talked to a guy about carnivorous plants then headed straight to their new exhibit, Deep Sea Treasures. We were the only ones in there the whole time we stayed in that room. That's the second rule I have, hit the special exhibits first while everyone else is roaming around the rest of the museum. My kids did the activities as many times as they wanted without having to wait.

I will say that I liked last years special exhibit better, it had something to do with chipmunks, it seemed to have a better appeal to young kids. There were a few interesting areas in the Deep Sea Treasures but it definitely wasn't anything special. There was one station where you could feel how cold water is in the deep sea. It was pretty cold.
This one was neat. You pressed a button and a big clear tube filled up with water. The tube had holes in it and the water would of course come out the holes. The question was why did the lowest hole squirt the farthest? I'll let you all google that answer if you don't know. :) Or just ask the girls.
There are squid in the deep sea so the kids put together a puzzle of a squid.
There were also port holes that you could look through, when you pushed a button you would see the fish, a few other exhibits and that was about it for that area.

We left there and headed to the Discovery Room, a popular place for little kids. That room was just boring this time. Last year they had squeeze bottles and you had to try and guess the smell, the year before they had some kind of matching sound game, this year nothing. It was just the usual. Zach liked the big aquarium in the corner, he always has. The other thing he played with in there was this: It's a magnetic bug table. You hold onto the magnet under the table and move the bugs around.

Lauren learned that she's about half the size of an ostrich.

Kristin learned that she's taller than an Emperor Penguin.We finished touring the rest of the museum and once we looped around back to where we came in the kids wanted to check out the auditorium to see what movie was playing. Last year we happened to see 2 dinosaurs mating, how fun! Thankfully they were not showing that movie again but one about the deep sea. It would have been neat to watch, they were talking about the glowing fish that look like they're see-through that live at the bottom of the ocean. Unfortunately Zach didn't want to sit still long enough for me to watch much of it so we left.

Definitely worth the $5 it cost for us all to get in. Can't wait to see what next year's exhibits are like.

VBS

Last week our church had VBS. The youth of the church always run it so this year Kristin got to join in on the fun of helping. Lauren helped with bible stories, her 3rd year doing it. She really likes doing that and probably will never switch to anything else. Kristin's job was to help in the nursery with the 2-year-olds. That was the perfect job for her.

Megan and Zach just went and had fun. On the last day they always have a little program where they sing the songs they learned. Here's a few pictures and short videos from that.

This year's theme was a swamp/crocodile/bayou theme. The church was decorated with lots of Crocodiles and fishing stuff. Very neat looking.

The very first day of VBS was cancelled due to a storm that passed through the night before and caused the power to be out. Let me tell you, that was one wicked storm. I know first hand because I was picking the girls up from their VBS meeting and while we were driving home the storm started. The rain came down in buckets and the wind was blowing it all sideways. About halfway home I heard a very loud thunk on the top of my car, I was sure a tree branch hit us. I wasn't about to stop and find out though and once I did get home I couldn't find a thing wrong with my car. I sure got lucky. Thankfully the rest of the week was fine, a little hot and humid but at least no more thunderstorms.

Zachary's Pirate Party

Yesterday Zach had his first official party. The past years we've just celebrated at the beach but this year I decided to not only celebrate at the beach but have a party for him too. I decided on a pirate party a few months ago, not sure why, just trying to get away from Cars and Thomas for a little while I guess. At this age I still get to pick the themes, probably starting next year, he'll be picking the themes!

For a pirate party you have to have a treasure chest so I slaved away at this treasure chest cake:
Literally, I slaved away. You had to cut the cake and stack it then create wedges from the leftover cake then frost the whole thing. Then I had to support the lid by sticking some gold coins under it. The easy part was putting all the candy around it. I think we're sticking to store bought from now on.

If you're going to have a pirate party you need pirates! Here's Zach getting the finishing touches right before people arrive. The only thing he's missing is his eye patch and his gold earring.

To start with the kids played in the pirate ship pool. It's also a sprinkler but no one except Zach liked it so that part got turned off. Everything else about it was a hit though.

We had water balloons too, mostly for the older kids but the younger ones got into it too.

What a cute pirate!

The kids started using the pirate hats to scoop up water and pour onto the others. Here's Annie pouring a hat full of water on Zach.

Can't forget about Lehlan. He makes a pretty cute pirate too!

For food I kept it very simple, I ordered pizza! We had a few minutes until the pizza arrived so the kids used their hook hands to hook some pretzels.

After eating the kids had to find the treasure chest by following clues leading them from color to color. Finally the last clue led them to a rainbow and there was the treasure chest.

Cake time! Zach is now a pro at blowing out candles.

Onto presents. He got so much cool stuff, a truck, some dinosaurs, a firetruck, a pirate piggy bank, $, clothes and a Pirate's Cove Thomas set.

Time for another game, this one was a pop-up pirate game. You took turns putting the swords in the barrel until someones sword makes the pirate pop out of the barrel.

Lehlan liked jumping on the ring toss game. It would blow back up as soon as he got off.

The girls stayed around after the party for a little while and played with Zach. Here he is posing between his two "girlfriends."

Not only did the kids have fun but I think some of the adults did as well. Not only did people dress up...

...they also participated in sword fights.Whew! It's over. Zach had fun and I had fun finally planning a boy party.

Happy 3rd Birthday Zachary!

So far Zachary has always celebrated his birthday while we've been at the beach. This year not only were we at the beach but we went to Phillips for their all-you-can-eat seafood buffet for dinner. Yum! We always look forward to gorging ourselves on seafood. When we were close to being full Paul asked our waiter if he could bring something out for Zach. Paul got to see the look on Zach's face better than me and he said that he looked absolutely amazed as a bunch of waiter and waitresses sang happy birthday to him. The brownies and pudding actually came from the buffet, our waiter just jazzed it up with the candles.

Lauren had bought him a Spongebob card that makes noise. As you can tell he loved it.

Here he is finally blowing out the candles on his ice cream cake. We waited till almost 9:00 to do the cake since we were still so full from dinner.

I know he had a great 3rd birthday. He played on the beach, had a good dinner, was surprised with a special dessert and then had even more cake right before bed. The only thing better would be throwing in another Go Kart ride sometime during the day. (See the post about the beach about the Go Karts.) Here's wishing you yet another good year Zachary, maybe you'll get to celebrate your 4th birthday at the beach too, who knows.

My Silly Boy

I was going through some of my pictures/videos on my computer when I came across this video. I used to watch Crime and Investigation network while we ate lunch and Zach always loved watching one of the promos they do for other shows. Towards the end of the promo one of the guys starts to open a gate and then you see a house blow up. Here he is watching it, I believe this was taped around Easter time.

I don't really remember why he was laughing but I somehow got this crazy picture of him mid-laugh.

He can be a handful at times but mostly he's a lot of comic relief in our house! He sure keeps things interesting.

It's Official

I kept this quiet just in case it didn't work out but this morning I had an interview and am now an assistant teacher at a preschool working with 2-year-olds.

Background story: One of my neighbors (who happens to be Lauren's friends' mom) had called me last week wanting to know if I would be interested in being her assistant for 2 mornings a week. She told me all about the job and she gave such a good sell that I said sure, I would definitely be interested. Of course it was all contingent on getting Zach into the preschool too. So about an hour later the director from the preschool calls and she sets up an interview for this morning. Oh, she also said there was no problem with getting Zach into the preschool, there were spots in either the 2 or 3-year-old rooms.

So, back to this morning. The interview went well and I got offered the job, of course my neighbor pretty much said it was a done deal before even going there. Even the director said it was just a formality. She decided to try Zach in the 3-year-old room even though he's not potty trained yet. Oh boy, we've got some work to do to get him ready.

My pay really sucks. :) I'm sure most teenagers are making more than me! Once you figure Zach's tuition into the mix (I do get a discount for him) I really won't be bringing much money home at all. I know I am over qualified for an assistant position but my long term goal though is to move up to a teacher position and of course, make more. Since I've been out of the loop for so long I figured this would be a good way to get back into it and find out if I like it there. And if I don't like it then after this year I'll go back to being a full time stay at home mom again, sitting around watching tv, eating bonbons. :) (At least that's what Paul thinks I do!)

Rehoboth Beach

Once again we went to Rehoboth Beach. My parents' neighbor offered his place again to us so my mom, me and the kids went down for 4 days. Paul even came this year and spent one night with us. Boy was that room crowded! It's a studio room that only sleeps 4 but with blow up beds and Zach's crib we squeezed 7 people in there for one night, 6 people the other nights. Here's a few pics from the first day we were there, Monday.

Zach having fun on the beach.

Kristin on the beach.

Megan and Zach enjoying an ice pop on the patio.

Ice cream time for Megan.

On Tuesday Paul came down. We spent some time on the beach, hung out in the room so Zach could take a nap then went to Grotto's and did some shopping on the boardwalk.

What happened to my kids?

Wednesday morning was foggy so we didn't get out on the beach until later. Not long after we were on the beach we heard thunder and felt raindrops. Luckily there were no storms but the sun kept coming and going and eventually we just gave up and packed our stuff up. Zach did get to play with his new dump truck we bought him on the boardwalk the night before.

Got all 4 kids in this picture! Lauren remembered to bring her ipod to the beach today.

Zach showering off before going to the room. He's trying to get the sand off his belly!

After Zach's nap we headed to Funland to ride some rides. I don't think Zach was quite awake yet, he didn't look very excited in any of the pictures. He did have fun though.

Kristin and Lauren rode something that flipped them upside down.

I can't believe Zach was big enough to ride FreeFall. It's the ride that takes you up and drops you, over and over.

A closer up look after a drop. Look at Lauren holding onto his leg, that's something I would do!

Megan really wanted to ride the Sea Dragon (also known as the Pirate Ship) but none of the sisters wanted to go with her. So guess who went? She kept coming out of her seat so here I am holding her head.

On the way back to the room we stopped to get a group photo. Well almost a group photo, someone had to take the picture.

So Paul left to go home Wednesday after dinner and after he left we just stayed in and watched some shows on tv. Here's Zach jumping on Kristin after we let him out of his crib Thursday morning.

I took Megan, Kristin and Zach to the pool Thursday when they opened while Mamaw and Lauren cleaned what they could of the room. After the pool we strolled the boardwalk one last time, did our last minute shopping, then came back and ate lunch. I loaded up the car while the rest of the cleaning was done and then we were out of there.

It was a fun trip, our first time to the beach in '09. What I love about that place is that it's right on the boardwalk and for 4 days I didn't have to drive anywhere. Between the beach, the pool, the boardwalk and Funland we kept ourselves occupied. Thanks Mamaw for taking us again this year.