Monday:
This is the day I thought we might freeze to death on the walk to school. I guess Emily thought so too.
Haha, yeah, the wind was blowing really hard, so I told her to cover up her nose and mouth. So she just dragged the blanket up over her whole face and head and rode all the way home like that. :o)
Taking a warm and cozy nap later.
Daddy brought her a new puppy dog home from work.
She named it Bo-bo. (Bilbo? Hehe.)
Then she got to go outside and help him work on his car.
She came back in wearing one of Matthew's old helmets.
"Emily, whose helmet is that?"
"Matt-Matt and me. It fits!" :o)
To prepare him for his trip to JA Biztown, Joshua got a job!
He is now assigned to work at the TV Studio as "Broadcaster 2" where he will be making $8 an hour. Oh, and that's his account number (Hehe). And he's so excited! He said that he's really good at speaking loud and clear, and that his job will be to ask lots of questions and report on the news, or the weather if there's no news. ;o) Go Broadcaster J! (And in case you're wondering, his trip is on April 18th).
While the kids did homework, Emily read some of her books.
And Matthew finally gave us his Valentine's Day card.
Haha, he brought it home last month, but wanted to wait for Daddy to get home from work before we opened it. Well, of course we forgot, and then Chris was gone for a few weeks, and we just found it again! And it so sweet! Better late than never, thank you Matthew! :o)
Then we took Evelyn to Gymnastics.
Check her out -
That girl is so cool!
And here's a picture of Matthew with a monkey.
Why? Just because. :oP
Tuesday:
Joshua's been working on his writing skills for the iLEAP - which is just like the big LEAP test that Evie will take next week, however it's not a pass/fail for 5th grade. (But it's still important for him to do well!)
Anyhow, before school, I looked over his practice rough draft and this is what he wrote -
"Cocked and ready, I have my AK-47 ready to fire. It's midnight on April 19, 1942 and I'm in a marsh. I am located in Panama, Central America..." AHAHAHA!! Dramatic much?? Maybe I shouldn't smile so big when reading this because of the whole gun thing and all, but seriously, this is awesome! :oD It certainly grabbed my attention and I enjoyed his story of how he and a capybara (rodent-animal thing) defeated the jaguar that was hunting them. Oh, what imagination! Good job Joshua. ;o)
Quick pic before school.
And another on the way to school!
Joshua noticed how cool our shadows looked on the house we were walking by. :o)
Goodness, those fools make me smile. :o)
And check this midget out!
"Congratulations to Evelyn Nutt and Britanie Rivera for winning the 2012/13 Leap T-Shirt drawing contest!"
Yes - she won!! Woohoo!
She was so excited! Isn't that awesome?! And now, she gets her shirt for free. ;o)
Oh - and she got a book in the mail. It goes with the books that she got from Barnes and Noble last week. There are 3 books in the series, and she said that since she got the hard cover edition of the other 2, she wanted this one in hard cover too, but Barnes and Noble didn't have it. So she ordered it from Amazon when she got home. You've got a lot of reading to do Evie! :o)
The kids didn't have church class because of Holy Week, so they were able to knock out their homework pretty early. This was in some work that Matthew brought home from school.
They had the kids re-write Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star using a Thesaurus (which, by the way, is a great way to get them using one) and I love his first 3 lines -
Blink, Blink, Small Sun,
How I Respect What You Are.
Awake Over the Earth So Shrill...
:o)
Then he got to work on his "Living Museum" project. He had to pick what career he has in the future and write a 2 minute speech explaining what he did at his job, what education was required, how much money he could make, etc. He would also have to dress up as his future self for the Living Museum, where parents could walk around and hear the speeches of all the students, etc.
Well, I asked him what he wanted to be and he said, of course, a Scientist. I said - what kind of scientist? So we got online and searched through all the different kinds - Biologist, Cardiologist, Astronomer, Physicist, etc. and guess what kind of Scientist that fool picked...
A Computer Scientist.
Seriously Matthew? You couldn't pick an easier one to research? *sigh* Lol, but it was all good. We got to show him how to google, how to copy and paste his info in a Word doc, and how to decide what information to put in his speech, etc. Man, it wasn't easy, but he worked hard and was very happy when he finished it. :o)
(And I have no idea why he's laughing in this pic, but he's cute, isn't he?!) ;o)
Wednesday:
She walked in and stood there posing for me, so I took her picture.
Hi Emily!
"No - I'm not just cute, look! I put my own shoes on!"
Awww, she did! And they're on the right feet too! Good job Em. :o)
Headed out the door to deliver some pom-poms and cheer shoes because somebody forgot they had practice that day until we dropped her off at school. ;o)
Once they all got home from school, Matthew got right to work on his Living Museum project again. He also had to make an informational poster and make note cards to help him make his speech because it also had to be "mostly memorized". But man, he's so awesome.
It took the rest of the evening, and both Daddy and I helping him through it, but he got it down! :o)
Joshua had no homework (shock!) so we let him play outside for a while. (Sorry, I didn't realize the sun was trying to be in the picture, but it just makes him look even more awesome as he draws his sword to prepare for battle.) ;o)
Evelyn had a meeting and practice for softball that evening, so as soon as gymnastics was done, we ran over to the field.
:o)
The meeting wasn't until 7, so it was pretty chilly, but Evelyn was happy to get some practicing in. The coach's daughter is one of her friends, so she got to help out and show off some of her skillz. ;o)
During the meeting part, some of the other parents were trying to keep their kids quiet, shushing them and stuff, so Emily turned to me and Evelyn and said, "Shhhh! Kite!"
Lol, because yes, that's what she says, "Kite!" She means "Be Quiet", and often says it at church or when I'm on the phone or something. "Kids! Kite! Shhh!" Haha. :o)
Thursday:
What a gorgeous day we had!
Well, Emily wasn't too impressed. Haha, she never actually lays down for naps, she just kinda passes out, yeah, sometimes on the floor, and if we're lucky, sometimes on the couch. :o)
Then Daddy came home early so we could all go to Matthew's Living Museum!
Please meet Dr. Matthew Nutt, Computer Scientist!
Doesn't he look so sharp?!
He also has a little blue "button" on his hand that people could press to hear his speech.
He was a little nervous and kept practicing to himself, hehe.
But he did GREAT!
He ended up delivering his speech about 10 times and never missed a beat!
So proud of her big brother. :o)
(By the way, Emmy had a great time running around, pushing the "buttons" on other "exhibits", but she usually didn't stick around to hear their speeches. :oP)
Gosh, it was so nice to see all the practicing and hard work he put into this project really come together and turn out so good, you know?
Quick group pic of those rascally 2nd graders!
Yes, that's our boy, hahaha! By the way, we now learned that he made a 100!
So proud of our future Computer Scientist! ;oD
Later that afternoon, we took Evie to her make-up gymnastics class.
Emily made friends with one of the coach's daughters, and since there were only a few kids there, they got to play on the little trampolines.
Yeah, we might have to look into getting her one of those - she had so much fun! :o)
And there's Evie!
Doing that creepy backwards-crab-walking thing again. ;o)
Then we went to Holy Thursday Mass that evening and Fr. Billy requested that the Altar Servers stay for Eucharistic Adoration following the Mass, so Evie and Joshua got to be extra holy! ;o)
Quick pic of those cute kiddos, who got out of school early!
By the way, Emily likes to tell cars to stop. Like, when we're walking to and from the school. We'll see a car headed down the street, and before I can even get to the crosswalk, she starts yelling at the car, "STOP! CAR - STOP!!" And she holds her arms straight out with her hands up, just like a traffic cop. And she holds those arms out, pointed at the car, the whole time we're passing in front of it, haha! Bossy little thing, but at least she's being cautious, right? ;o)
After a great Good Friday Mass, the kids spent the rest of the afternoon playing outside.
Matthew excitedly showed me how he rigged up this mesh bag to use as an "Adventure Backpack" to carry his "supplies" - his DS game, an empty gatorade bottle for collecting rocks, and giant old spoon for digging in the dirt. :oP
Hehehe. :o)
Emily helped me put together some puzzles.
She's not too good at it, but she tries really hard. :o)
I tell her, "Oh, we need the pieces for her hair bow." And she'll find the pieces for me, then I show her how to turn them until they fit. Or I would just nudge the piece she needed closer to where it went so she would notice it and try it, haha, lots of fun.
Look - We did it! :o)
Saturday:
So we were getting ready to go to a little Easter celebration here on base, but somebody got up too early or on the wrong side of the crib or something, because she was in the whiniest mood ever. But oh my gosh - it was sooo funny!
She wanted to put her own clothes on, so I said, "Okay, here are your clothes." Well, obviously she couldn't do it, so I tried to help, and she just started crying, saying, "No! I do it!" So I laid her pants out for her on the floor, "Just put your legs in Emmy," and I walked off. So she stopped crying, and she got them on! They were crooked, but on! So I said, "Okay, let me help you with your shirt." Again, "No! I do it!" (This was gonna get old real quick.) But I laid the shirt out for her and pointed to where she should stick her head in, and she didn't do too bad... until her arm got stuck... and that's when it got funny.
Lol! I'm so sorry to post crying pics of her, but she was stuck! And I said, "Here, let me help you."
And she screamed, "No!" as she cried!
And I just laughed and took pictures. (Oh gosh, I sound like such an evil mother! But dude, she woulnd't let me help, so what else could I do??) Every time I reached out to help her, she'd pull away, and I really didn't want to get mad at her, she was just being grumpy. Soooo, I finally turned the TV on to distract her and kinda "helped" her every time she wasn't paying attention, until eventually we got the shirt on. "You did it Emily!" "I did it!" she said with a smile. Lol. What a great way to start the day. ;o)
Well, after a little nap, we made our way over to meet the Easter bunny!
:o)
I made sure to tell Emily about going to see the bunny, "We can tell him to hop hop hop!" So when she saw him, yes, she told him to hop! :o) And then she anxiously waited in line to take a pic, so yeah, she was quite happy to stand there and smile. :o) (Not like when I sprang Santa Claus on her and expected her to be okay with the dude, hehe.)
But the best part of the Easter fun were the Bouncy Houses!
There was one for the little kids and one for the big kids, and dude, they probably bounced for a good 40 minutes before taking a break, and then bouncing some more!
Snackin' on some chips during their break. :o)
And then Dora showed up!
And Emily wouldn't turn around and say cheese for a picture because she wouldn't take her eyes off of Dora, haha. But awww, she wasn't scared and got to say hi and hug her too! Yay!
When we got back to the house, the big kids ran out to play with their friends, and Emily ran to the garage to help Daddy.
"Cheese!"
"Now leave me alone so I can get back to work."
Lol, Chris said that she messed with every tool and part he had sitting out there, hehe.
Then it was time to dye our Easter eggs.
I asked the kids if we could skip dying any eggs this year, because we always make too many and then we're eating deviled eggs every day for a week! Haha.
I told them I'd put out a hundred plastic eggs with tons of candy and they wouldn't even miss the real ones.
But they all said no, we had to at least dye some eggs. :oP
And yeah, I guess I'm kinda glad they said no, it was a lot of fun to dye eggs with those crazy kiddos.
:o)
Emily liked decorating her eggs with stickers.
"Emmy, show me your eggs so I can take a picture."
And then she started banging them together. :oP
Lol, yeah, those 2 were completely cracked up, haha.
Great job midgets!
Later that night, we started watching The Lion King (which I don't think Emily has ever seen!) but then we remembered that we had an early Mass the next day, so we turned it off and told the kids to go upstairs and get ready to lay down. Well, I go up there and all 4 kids were sitting on our bed watching The Lion King again! I said, "What are y'all doing?" Evelyn replied, "We were just waiting to say goodnight, so we decided to watch a few more minutes of the movie until you got here." Hmmm... Well, it was really cute to see them all sitting there on the bed quietly watching this totally awesome movie, so we all watched for another half hour or so. But then I made them go to bed. (But first I impressed them with my ability to sing along to every line in the movie!) ;o)
Easter Sunday:
And what an early morning it was!
There was a 7am, 9am, and 11am Mass, so we decided to go the 9am. They were asking for volunteer Altar Servers, and Joshua said he wanted to serve, so I went online to sign him up and realized that there were 3 people signed up for 9am, and only 1 for 7am... *sigh* Yes God, I know, I don't want to, but we can totally make it to that Mass, so yeah.
Those fools were up by 5! :oD
(Note that it's still dark outside the window! Haha.)
The kids got enough sleep the night before and were all bright-eyed, excited for Easter, and ready to go on time. :o)
And when we got there, Evelyn decided that she wanted to serve too. :o)
Happy Easter!!!
They all look so big! :o)
:oD
Yeah, I couldn't stop taking pictures of them.
They were being too silly for this pic, but it was cute anyways. :o)
And then we went home and had our egg hunt!
Lots of plastic eggs and real eggs for everybody!
:o)
The kids agreed that big chocolate bunnies were not a good idea this year because they never finish them and they don't taste all that great anyways. So, we gave them some chocolate Bunny Dollars and a few small Reester Bunnies too (Peanut Butter Cup bunnies!)
Yeah, Emily couldn't even wait 5 seconds for me to take a picture before digging in to hers.
Nom nom nom. :oP
And then we did the best thing ever -- we hopped on a ferry and rode over to New Orleans!
We really haven't done much exploring since we moved here, but I've been talking to some adventurous moms and they inspired us to give this whole tourist thing a try. :o)
The kids were really excited about the ferry ride and had tons of questions.
Emily was trying to figure out what was going on too, hehe.
Pic courtesy of Joshua. :o)
We didn't have any real plans or stuff we wanted to do, we just figured we'd have fun looking around and gosh, it really was so awesome!
The ferry dropped us off by the aquarium and we just walked around for the next couple of hours.
Joshua got into an argument with this bronze fellow.
Matthew partied with the Monument to the Immigrants.
And then we came by at just the right moment and got to listen to the music of the Steam Calliope on the Steamboat Natchez. Seriously, there was a dude up there playing the steam pipes! The children were amazed. :o)
Emily begged us to buy her this artwork in Jackson Square.
But, sadly, we had to say no. :o)
Wow, just wow. I know there's not much to it... I mean, we've been there/here before, almost everyone has been there before, but that still doesn't take away from how completely awesome it is, you know?
Can you ever really get enough pics here? Really?? Nope! :o)
Evelyn and I had a blast looking at all the masks and clothes in the little shops and boutiques.
And of course, those boys liked looking at all the gators and sweets. Pralines anyone? ;o)
We stopped and had lunch at the Cajun Cafe in the French Market.
Daddy and the midgets made their own music while waiting for their food, hehe.
And check out this face.
Haha, I don't know why she was eyeing my Crawfish Nachos like that, but yeah, I shared with her. :o)
:o)
We headed back towards the ferry after that.
But first, Evie had us stop to listen to a trumpet player.
She ended up leaving him a tip, so he played Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star for her. :o)
Matthew had some quarters in his pocket (from a couple of plastic eggs from our hunt) so he wanted to have a look across the river.
He enjoyed looking at the bridge and the ships on the river and made sure that his brother and sister got a chance to look too. :o)
(And by the way, Joshua brought his quarters with him too, but he noticed that they had a tip jar back at the Cajun Cafe, so when he got done eating he said, "Man, that hot dog was really good, can I go put my quarters in their tip jar?" Haha, yes, yes you can.)
And then we rode the ferry back across the river.
What a great way to make a special day even more memorable. :o)
And as we were driving home through Algiers, we saw this.
That blue box may not mean much to you, but it was certainly something to scream about to us Doctor Who fanatics. And scream Evie did - "Mommy, it's the TARDIS!!!"
I didn't even see what she was screaming about, but she was so excited, so we drove back around the block, and yep, there was that blue box, set up as an entrance to The Crown and Anchor English Pub. Ahahaha - I've never seen that nerdy part of our midgets get so excited before!! Hehehehe.
And for those who don't know (which is probably anybody not living in our crazy house) the TARDIS is the Doctor's time-traveling space craft, and it's disguised as a blue police box.
Oh, that was just the icing on the cake to make this a truly epic day for our little nerds. :o)
We got home and snacked on some yummy Easter treats.
And then we played outside for while too. :o)
Daddy and Emily worked a little on his truck while we got our Easter dinner put together.
And the big midgets helped us make Resurrection Rolls!
You put big marshmallows in butter and cinnamon sugar, then wrap them in crescent rolls.
Jesus is the marshmallow and the crescent roll is the tomb, sooo when you bake it, the marshmallow melts and you're left with an empty tomb! Get it? So cool.
And they were some really yummy empty tombs. :o)
And that was our week, and our Easter. See? Awesome. Told you so. ;o)
This week has been pretty busy again, but we're hanging tough. The kids are preparing for next week's testing, so lots of studying and practice tests. But it's all good in the 'hood. Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter and is enjoying a greet week! :o)
Laters!
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