Egg hunt

We had an Easter Egg Hunt today. They loved it.

Zoo trip and publication news for me.

Today we went to the zoo with our friends the Holts. They have boys ages 4 and and somewhere around 19 months, so they make good buddies for our boys.

You may know that Stpehen loves birds, so first stop was the bird area. He especially likes flamingoes so I took this photo:

Next is this bird and turtle. Doesn't it look like they are kissing?

Unfortunately they are not, they are fighting. The bird apparently wanted the turtle off the rock, the turtle didn't want to give up. The bird bit him and everything! Eventually the turtle did slide off the rock and back into the water. Mean bird.

Watching all this good Bird vs. Turtle action was this guy.

Then we tried to leave, but we had to deal with this guy first! *he looked mean in real life*

Here are some pics of the boys walking around the zoo. *Stephen in green, his friend in yellow*Here is Stephen on an aligator. and you thought I was an overprotective mommy!

Here is Ethan and his little friend. How cute is that "Thing 2" romper? It was sunny so they have squinty eyes.

Here is Ethan with an aligator. The consenus of all the boys is that they "think" it's not real.

I'm pretty sure this one is real, so we just looked, didn't touch!

The kids almost fit though these bars, either aligators only eat fat kids, or the zoo only cares about fat kids. *kidding, there was another fence*Arn't these pretty? Our zoo is a "Zoo and Gardens" and they take the garden part seriously. The sign says African Daisy. Now I'm not a gardner and rarely get to see flowers from young and all, do these petals uncurl and just turn normal? See how they look really interesting? Especially in this second pic. well in the first you can see that on the same plant some are all weird like this and some are flattened out and look like normal flowers. So do all daisies do that? Anyhow I really like them curled. :)We also went on the carousel. Our zoo has the best one, all types of animals on it. Ethan rode elephant, Stephen rode some spotted cat, I think a leopard. *leapard, leapord, Katie, what is it??* I know I've posted photos of it before.

Then we had a snowcone. It was the fluffy kind, you know what I mean? I consider myself somewhat of a snowcone expert. This was a top of the line one.

They have stingrays now at the zoo but you have to pay $3 a person to SEE them. I'm not paying $9 so Stephen can tell me how scarry they are and Ethan can stare off into space. I think you should have to pay to feed or touch them, but you should be able to go near it and look with your eyes for free. Whatever!

In other news I was published in a magazine! It's the Just Cards! magazine, Volume IX. Here are some photos, the cover (which I'm not on) will be first.

There are more, (9 total) but I feel sketchy taking more than a few photos from a magazine. Anyhow this time I took the time to email all the vendors of the stamps I used and let them know I got their stamps published. I really did it with a few at first because I was excited for them, I use a lot of smaller companies' stamps and I love to see them get their names out there. Anyhow they responded with "Great, pick some free stuff!" and so I emailed the rest and almost everyone said that! From this one magazine I'm getting a TON of free stuff. It's perfect because it's all stamps I LOVE, that's why I used them on the cards of course! One funny thing about publications like this, is that I sent this stuff a LONG time ago. Its always funny to see how my style changes and all. :)

So my computer is giving me fits! FITS I tells ya. We are getting a blue screen of death, randomly it shuts itself down and my CD drive isn't reading anything. I'm not thrilled. I wanted to use the CD drive to back up all my photos and writings and stuff, because I'm afraid the computer is going to just explode or something, but I can't! It has caused high tension here. This computer is less than a year old. I just noticed there is a phone number for tech support right here on the side. I wonder if it would help to call it ever? Probably not, they will be like, "Do you have it plugged in?" and I will scream at them and they will hang up.

Easter Weekend

Thursday I drove down to my mom's house. Brian couldn't miss any work, so it was just me and the boys. We stayed there until around dinner time. They call my mom "Grammy" and she's their "Flower Grammy" because my mom is a Master Gardner. I'm not just saying that, she really is a certified Master Gardner. And her yard looks like a park. Like a garden park, not a playground one. I wish I had taken photos of that. But I did take photos while we were visiting, and so did my mom. Here are the photos:



Mom and Jack love blimps, Ethan LOVED this blimp too. He carried it around quite a bit.

Stephen loved this umbrella. He's pretty cute with it.
After that we drove to my dad's house, about 30 minutes south of my mom's. We were there through Sunday. Saturday morning we went to this Easter Egg hunt. The boys were too late to find eggs. It was sad, I could tell Stephen was really sad, he didn't even have a fit, he was just sad, he's still talking about it. Break my heart! I might hide eggs here later, he will never know the difference. Anyhow they had a firetruck you could climb on.
And hay to play in. Actually this hay is where the eggs were hidden, but none here.

Don't worry too much about them! Look at all this Easter Loot the Bunny left them! SCORE!
After Church on Sunday we went to my Grandparents' house for Easer Lunch.

this is my Papa, my Grandma, me and the boys. Look how red Stephen's hair is!
My dad is pulling Ethan's ears. Ethan LOVES my dad. He looked for him this morning but we are back home. It was a little sad, but mostly cute. He was happy to have his Daddy back, so I think he's fine. cupcake face!

More cupcake face
And look at these cute rainboots! They are from my mom to the boys. They have Birthday's coming up. Her Target didn't have the full selection of boots, so I picked these up today, but they are actually from my mom.


My kids have everything. You would not believe all the stuff they have gotten in the past week! Build A Bears, candy, clothes, toys, art supplies... then they have birthday stuff pileing up all over! The thing is they are really FUN to buy for. They love everything, they really take joy in all their stuff, and they are always cute and thankful and stuff. But yea, they have a LOT of stuff.

I do not have cancer

I went today for my followup on my bad mamogram. They showed me the spots they were concerned about. They were definately spots and icky, just two of them. Anyhow they did more images with different plates on the machine. Then they printed them *or whatever they do with them* and the Radiologist read them right there while I waited. He had me go in a little room and he said right away that it was all good news. Then we talked about the importance of monthly exams and getting an anual exam and all that good stuff.

One freaky thing is he recomends the genetic test for me. I'm not sure about that yet. I rekon I'll talk to my OBGYN at my next visit.

For right now I'm happy to be healthy! :)

Never go over mine fridge

Favorite game of my boys is "never go over mine fridge"

This game is played by blocking a doorway and shouting "Never go over mine fridge!"

I THINK that they mean "bridge" and they are like bridge trolls when they do this.

It's a careful game, sometimes it will offend them highly when you pick them up and move them to get by, sometimes they will laugh.

It's best when Ethan plays it, His arms doing actually span the doorway that they most often play this in, so he sorta pongs from one edge to the other with his cute little arms stretched. You have to take him very seriously though, as if you could not possibly cross without his permission. He will say, "Mine fridge" over and over.

The whole statement is funny because of the outstanding toddler grammar. First of all Stephen is all about absolutes right now "NEVER" this, "ALWAYS" that. Then you have the use of "mine" instead of "my". This will probably be something that Stephen's kindergarden teacher will have to break because Brian and I are powerless to resist the cuteness. We dream of getting him to say "Mine souffle!" *Futurama referance*


In other news the Dr. called and they FINALLY have lab work on all the poop I collected. Turns out they have some sort of yeast/fungal infection of the intestine? Hurts my brain. Anyhow it won't go away on it's own, althought they seem lots better. So I purchased $70 of medicine yesterday to combat this.

Brush your teeth! *with video*

Oh, the cuteness!

You cannot resist.

Here is a video.

And if you can't load the video here is a still shot.

Disney World!

Our plan was originally to visit my friend Tracey two weekends ago. With our poop illnesses that didn't work out. Then this past weekend didn't work for her family. So we needed a plan B.

Turns out there was a GREAT deal on Disney tickets if we bought them RIGHT THEN. So Tuesday we decided to go to Disney. We got up at the crack of dawn Wednesday and drove down.

Wednesday = Animal Kingdom.

We enjoyed it. Animal Kindgom closed at 5 but by then we felt we had seen all we really wanted to see. It's a beautiful park, but not a ton of rides and stuff. What they did have was very nice. One thing that stunk about all the parks was that you have to wait in long lines not to see any characters. There was ONE Mickey Mouse at the park and it was almost an hour just to see him. You couldn't even SEE him without waiting. He was in a special room and all. So we didn't see him. We saw him on a parade and in a show, and that was enough.

After the park we checked into our hotel. It was the Palms Hotel and Villas. It's really close to the parks and there is even a shuttle. It was nice. We were in the "Villas" part and had a cute little suite room. Hotels are boring, that's all I have to say about ours. Oh, wait, there was breakfast too. I love breakfast.

Turns out Stephen is afraid of characters anyhow, here he is crying about Pooh Bear. Ethan liked him though.
When we had to wait in lines Ethan liked to "honk" Brian's nose.
Here are Stephen and Mommy on a safari ride. *the safari ride is the best thing there, don't miss it.*
Ethan saw his first tigers. He loves them in books and stuff and he LOVED them in the park too.

More Tiger joy.

Thursday = Magic Kingdom

We went to the Magic Kingdom on Thursday. To get there we took the shuttle from the hotel, then two monorails. Monorails are cool and fun. The kids loved that.

In the park we started in Tomorrowland. I rode Space Mountain, and we all rode the Buzz Lightyear ride. We actually rode that a few times. Stephen refused to go to the Monsters INC show because "Monsters are Scary". We all went on the speedway too, where you can drive cars on a track. They actually let Stephen drive a car! I had to do the pedal. Then to Mickey's Toontown Fair. Stephen rode his first rollercoaster, The Barnstormer. he got a cute little "first rollercoaster ride" card for that. Ethan is too little so he played in the Donald Duck boat. It's a water thing, but the water was off so it was just fun. After checking out some other stuff we took the train. They love trains. Hmm, we did teacups, "It's a small World", Magic carpets ride, The bird show Tikki Room, the Haunted Mansion, Stephen and I went on Thunder Mountain. Just tons of stuff! Oh and I ate one of those huge turkey legs. We also saw a Woody (from Toy Story) Parade.Mommy and Ethan in Donald's Boat. He loved this map thingie.

Brian and Stephen on Stephen's first ever rollercoaster.

Daddy and Ethan in line for "It's a Small World"

Mommy and Stephen. The drama is real, for some reason Stephen did not want to go on It's a Small World. He did admit that it was awesome later.

This is actually Cinderella's Castle, but Stephen insists it's Mickey's Castle. This is as close as we ever got to Mickey Mouse. But the castle is lovely. :)

Friday = Epcot

Epcot was our favorite park. If we had it to do again I think we might have gone to Epcot twice and skipped Animal Kingdom. We spent like 5 hours in Future World. We did almost everything there. Stephen rode Test Track, which is a new ride that puts you through all thest car test conditions and all, then goes really super fast on a huge track. He loved it of course, talked about it all day. We all went on the Nemo ride, it's super cute, you ride in clams. There are real fish and projected fish from the Nemo movie. Super cute. We also did Living witht he Land, Spaceship Earth, Journey into Imagination with Figment, Innoventions where you can create a robot, a real plastic one and take it home and everything, Brian and I did Mission Space which is an intense ride. We also did all the countries. We ate in Morocco, super yummy, and a belly dancer did a show while we ate. We also saw these awesome acrobats in China. Super cool and I was right up close so it was awesome. We did all the rides and little shows and all that. The boys especially liked the ride in Mexico, and it had Donald Duck (Stephen loves Donald Duck) and there was no line at all, so we did it a few times.

After all that the boys fell alseep in the stroller then slept all the way home. We drove home Friday night.

Me and the boys waiting for Brian who was on a ride. Ethan, self portrait.Ethan has the camera again. Stephen They choose Ethan to be in a little parade!He's so cute in the parade, I thought you needed another photo.

Seriously, ADORABLE!Stephen and Mommy in some sort of tribal head thingies. I know those are blurry, but it was soooo cool in real life!