Last Day of Preschool

Brooks finished up preschool for the school year today. They had their classroom party on Monday. Ryan and I were both able to attend. The kids sang a couple songs and then we ate. I brought in lemon bars to share.

I found some really cute reusable bags at Target to wrap the teacher gifts in. They were a blue bandanna print. I should have taken a picture because they turned out really cute. I baked banana bread for each of the teachers and also got them a Starbucks gift card. All 3 of them seemed to really appreciate it.

Brooks will be moving down the hall to the older kid classroom next year, so he will have new teachers. Hudson will have Brooks's current teachers in the fall. He is pretty excited!

Family Retreat

We spent the weekend at Brown County State Park in Southern Indiana. Our church held a retreat for families with young kids. We all had a great time! Ryan got to do couple early morning mountain bike rides, the boys got to hike, and we all enjoyed being with our friends. The weather was beautiful!

We stayed in a cabin again which the boys really like. This year the inn has a new aquatic center, complete with a lazy river and tall water slide. Hudson wasn't too sure of the place the first night, but on Saturday he was going down the water slide with us. As soon as we would splash down in the pool from the slide, they were asking to go back up. I think they will love Holiday World this summer!

Brooks and Hudson playing soccer with Melissa.

The girls thought it would be fun to make Hudson their ping-pong paddle.

Spring Cleaning Recipes

In celebration of Earth Day yesterday, I thought I’d share some of my cleaning recipes. I have stopped buying commercially made cleaners. I don’t like all the bad stuff they have in them. I feel much safer cleaning around the kids when I use my own concoctions. They can even help me without ingesting toxic fumes! I use microfiber cloths to clean with. Newspaper works well on mirrors and windows.

There are just a few basic ingredients you need that you probably already have in your house. White Vinegar, Baking Soda, Liquid soap and essential oil.

Vinegar kills mold, bacteria, and germs due to its high level of acidity.

Scrub

*I use this on the tub and shower. I also use it on the sinks.*

Baking Soda

Liquid Dish soap or Castille soap

Mix the liquid soap in until the mixture has a consistency like frosting.

All-Purpose Spray

*Dollar Tree sells empty spray bottles. This spray works great on everything, even mirrors!*

1 cup Vinegar

Water to the top of your bottle

Few drops of your choice of Essential Oil (I like to use Lavender for it’s great scent and antibacterial properties.)

Squirt of liquid dish soap

Shake until mixed.

Toilet Bowl Cleaner

Vinegar

Baking Soda

Dump some vinegar in the toilet and then sprinkle some baking soda on top until you get some good fizzing action. (The boys love to watch this!) Let it set 10 minutes and then scrub the toilet.

Weekend in Cleveland

We finally got to meet Baby Beck! He is such a little cutie and the boys were so sweet with him. Hudson was really cuddly with him and was always giving him hugs and kisses. The boys had a fun time playing with Uncle Dan's old cars and trying to find the cat.

We walked the boys over to a school playground near Jess & Dan's place. Brooks quickly made a new friend there, it was fun to watch them chase each other around the playground. Hudson was pretty daring and went down the tornado slide by himself.

The boys were really good travelers, especially during the 6+ hours in the car each way. Brooks is pretty happy as long as he has his trusty notebook and pencil. His new thing is writing his name.

Other observations...Ohio drivers have some lame personalized plates. Really.
I wanted to cook Mexican for dinner Saturday night. We couldn't find a Mexican grocery store. I thought I maybe could find tostadas at Giant Eagle. Nope! I had to make fajitas instead. I guess I'm spoiled by our abundance of Mexican markets here. But, they had a Thai market. Maybe should have made Thai food.

Really, Beck is only 10 weeks old!

I didn't get any good pictures of Hudson, he is constantly on the move...

Brooks really likes downtowns. He thought it was pretty cool when we drove through Columbus at night.

Wordless Wednesday

Happy Easter!

We had a very nice Easter. Ryan played trombone in both church services this morning. I brought Brooks with me to the service so he could see Ryan play. He lasted until the offertory, so I think he did pretty well.

We had lunch at Maggie & Abby's house. Pam #1, Pam#2, and another family from church joined us. It was a good time with good food. The boys pigged out and then played with their friends. 6 kids under the age of 4!

Quick update

It feels good to sit down and put my feet up for awhile. I've had a busy day at home. I've whipped up a double-batch of banana pancakes, made butter cream Easter eggs, washed and folded several loads of laundry, washed lots of dishes, baked yeast rolls for tomorrow, made some Jello jellybeans, cooked lunch and even took a shower! Phew! Ryan is out for a bike ride and the boys are napping.

Hudson got accepted into the Lab Preschool for next year. It will be nice to have the boys in one place. They are splitting the classrooms next year, so he will be in the 2-3.5 year olds, and Brooks will be in the 3.5-5 class. He is excited about going!

The boys got to do an Easter egg hunt at the Y the other morning. We had the aerobics room door propped open, and I got to see Hudson running around trying to find eggs. They both came home with quite a haul of candy. The Y really does a great job with the kids activities. Brooks and Hudson love to go play while I workout.

I took a Thai cooking class on Wednesday evening. One of the graduate students in Pharmacy taught it and she insisted that I come. It was held at Purdue's International Center. They have different classes every week. I've always wanted to try one, but never have. I want to take Ryan with me next time, it would be a great date night. We made a couple different Thai curries, pork satay, stir fried veggies, cucumber salad, sticky rice with mango and a custard. I had actually never eaten a Thai curry before. It was really good and pretty easy to make! We got to eat all of the food when we were done. Yum!

Other than that, not much else is going on. It's nice to have a quiet weekend at home.

Wordless Wednesday

Spring Break

Houston we have a problem

After a week in Mexico, it was time to pack it up and head home. We arrived at the airport 2 hours before our flight to find an already long line at Continental. We found out that their computers were down and they had to hand write the boarding passes. So that meant we did not get our boarding passes for our connecting flight in Houston.

We ended up leaving the airport a half hour late. We were hoping to "make it up in the air" (why can't they always just fly faster?), and ended up only being 15 minutes late to Houston. The flight attendants reassured us that there would be plenty of assistance in Houston to help us all get our boarding passes so we wouldn't miss our connecting flights.

When you fly international, you have to go through Customs at your point of entry into the US. You then have to get your checked bags from the baggage carousel, recheck it and go through security.

Customs had a long line, but went pretty fast. No problems. We got our checked bag and then headed towards security. We got into line, got up to the guy and he told us we couldn't go through since we had a hand written baggage tag (due to the mishaps in Zihua). We then got in a huge, slow moving line for Continental so we could get our bag retagged and get our boarding pass. It was now 20 minutes before our flight was supposed to leave. It was chaos, there were many people in the same boat as us and many people that had already missed their flight. Ryan finally got a Continental employee's attention, pretty much by yelling at her, and I ran and got our boarding passes from a kiosk and she took our bag and said she would get it tagged. Yeah, we had a lot of confidence that bag would make it onto our plane that was leaving in 10 minutes!

We ran up the stairs and found out we had to take a train to our terminal. We then sprinted to our gate to see the plane still there (and they had changed the departure time to 10 minutes later). We boarded the plane and sat down. And waited. There were several people they will still waiting for. Ryan was pretty sure that they would leave as soon as there weren't any more empty seats.

We finally were airborne. It was after 7pm now so we were pretty hungry. Lucky for us, I had a surplus bag of Cheetos in the backpack. Yum yum. We landed in Indy to yucky, cold, rainy weather. We headed to baggage claim with dim hopes of seeing our bag. And wouldn't you know it, as soon as the bags started coming down the chute, Ryan got paged to Continental's desk. Yep, our bag was still in Houston.

The Continental lady in Indy was super nice and said our bag would be delivered to our house the next afternoon. And it was. And everything was still in the bag.

They use stair cars in Zihua!

The boys had a great time at Memaw and Pawpaw's house. Thanks again to everyone at the "compound" for taking care of them while we were gone!

It's been a little tough getting back into the routine this week. Hopefully next week goes better!

Wordless Wednesday