Fire pit

Last year for Father's Day, we got Mark a fire pit.  I know these things are kind of trendy, but we actually enjoyed using it in the evenings.  Now, we originally just had the fire pit on our little back patio, but once we filled in the pool, in opened up some extra space to put stuff.  Not to mention we had to do something with the big mud pit.  So I had a vision:

But nicer, you know?  And less flammable.

Much better.  It took almost a whole Saturday, from after Body Pump to about 3, and 3 trips to Lowe's, but I am pretty happy with the finished product.  Once it was done, we had to try it out!

Ahhhh!  And then the grand finale.  They keep trying to not have the marshmallows catch on fire, but I think they secretly like it.

I like the sm'ores, and so does James!

Andy is a mess, as always!

I really would like to cook a whole dinner out there, but we haven't done it yet!

Trip to Texas

 As the kids get older, it gets harder and harder to the get cousins together.  Everyone is just so busy, am I right?  But finally a weekend opened up, airplane tickets were not completely horrendously expensive, and the times were good.  I took the boys to Houston

James and Andy had a great time flying for about 20 minutes.  Then they buried their heads in their kindles and were absolutely fine the rest of the trip.  It was awesome!  I even read my book.  

The first thing we had to do once we got there was each some Mexican Food.  YUM!  Note to self, it was super cold in the restaurant. I forgot how cold it was in Texas this time of year.

After dinner, we warmed up outside and the kids practiced cartwheels.  This is Andy.  

Now, just because we had a free weekend, doesn't mean the cousins didn't have anything to do.  We got to watch Charlie's soccer game!

And Audrey's dance recital:

Getting ready for Audrey and Annemarie's Frozen party:

And of course, did normal cousin things.  The boys wrestled, played wii, and built legos:

The girls did girl stuff.  And AM painted my toenails!

I was really worried since it was such a short weekend, but we were exhausted!  These kids sure have fun together!

Breakfast for dinner

We have a little tradition here in our house.  Mark has hand bell practice on Wednesday nights so the kids and I are on are own for dinner.  We come home from school, do homework and then its breakfast for dinner!

First homework.  I really don't enjoy this part and getting two kids to get the homework done is pretty stressful.  James usually has about an hour a homework a night and getting him and Andy to focus and not touch each other or play with each other, UGH!

Andy gets done first, and James has to keep working.

Sometimes Andy gets impatient and starts without me.  Here he got the bowl, both flours, and started measuring.

He gets pretty feisty when he is hungry for pancakes.

The rest of dinner consists of sausage links, some sort of fruit, and then the waffles or pancakes.  The waffles and pancakes are always syrup on top - cut up, syrup on the side, or with snow.

To be honest, making the breakfast for dinner also is stressful.  It all has to be done at the same time and then the clean up.  But the kids love it and it is something to look forward to.

Chattanooga! Day 2 - Ruby Falls

A very important part of this whole adventure was the hotel.  We stayed in the Embassy Suites mainly because, well, its a suite.  It worked out well that we had 2 rooms for Mark and I to be up at night and the kids to be up in the morning.  They also had a great breakfast and an indoor pool.

For Day 2, we had a couple of options, but it was suppose to rain all day.  Suppose to.  I'm not so sure about the weather app on the iPhone.  At any rate, we decided to go to Ruby Falls since it was not out side.  Ruby Falls is a underground waterfall and you have to hike walk on a paved path through a cavern to get there.  After buying tickets you take an elevator down like 200 feet.  That is ~ 2 Tom Winkopp buildings!  That part did freak me out because you can see the rock sliding past.  But then you get to the cavern and its just fine.

Honestly, I didn't take many pictures because it was dark.  This was not like a government run park, this is a private business.  In some ways it was good because there was flat screen tv's down in the cavern for the history lessons, and lots of speakers.  In some ways it was bad because of the mood lighting and the cheesy music.  However, Ruby Falls was pretty cool and very dramatic how they did it.  They play cheesy music as you were walking up and just at the crescendo, the lights come on and there it is.  Very dramatic.

James loved it.  He loved all the rock formations and asked lots of questions about them.  Andy.  Not so much.  Why are we talking about more trips with him?

Outside the falls, there is a nice playground set up where I made the kids run around and play on and picnic tables.  You can kind of see it here.  

There was also an overlook to the valley below.

After we ate our go picnic lunch, we went back to the hotel.  Again, it was supposed to rain all day so we just planned on letting the kids swim and Mark and I worked out.  And we had plans for the afternoon.  We really did, but Andy, bless his heart, something happened to his eye and he was really inconsolable.  We gave up on doing anything else and just sat in the hotel room with Mellow Mushroom pizza and watched Shrek on tv.  Not really a bad way to end a night.  

It was a very nice venture into travel with the kids.  They are so easy and fun at this age (sorry Becky) and although Andy whined the whole time we were there, now he says he "wants to go back to Tennessee!"  Good times.

Chattanooga! Day 1 - Tenneesse Aquarium

Did I spell that right?  At any rate, in the fall Mark and I wanted to go to Chattanooga for a very important reason.  However, we didn't have a free weekend until recently and um, don't remember what that reason was.  But, we still went to Chattanooga.  It was a nice little vacation, especially now that the kids are old enough to really be fun.  It took us like 3.5 hours to get there and the first thing we did is drive downtown to go see the Aquarium.  The Aquarium is part of a large complex that is right by the river.  It has all these walkway bridges that go over these pretend river.  A great place to run around after being in the car for 3.5 hours.

The Aquarium is actually divided into 2 separate buildings with the Tennessee water life in one and ocean life in the other.  We started with the Tennessee one.

To get to the stop of the building you ride up a LONG escalator.

South Carolina does something similar where it teaches about the different types of water ways in the state.  Some of it is pretty like mountain streams, but some of it is swampy yucky water.  One of the exhibits was with sturgeons, I think, which are these huge ugly fish that are endangered.  They actually had a touch pool where you could touch on.  Yuck.

After the Tennesse theme one, we went to the ocean building which is more of what you would expect from an aquarium.

The coolest thing they had was a butterfly room.  Mark, James, and I were enchanted seeing all these beautiful butterflies up close.

Andy.  Not so much.

Andy's favorite part was the penguins.  He watched them for a long time!

James and I had fun in the shark cage!

After we were done, we walked along the river.  There is a very nice walking path and of course the boys found sticks.

Then we walked across a pedestrian bridge over the river.  This was probably my favorite thing we did.

Then we drove to our hotel and ate dinner at Abuelo's!!  Ahh, I remember when this was just a simple mom and pop restaurant in Lubbock.