Thursday, November 30, 2017

November Little Things

  • Colby 
    • "Silly goosey"
    • "You're not there at the cafeteria, so I get to eat what I want!"
Colby received the "something to hoot about" award for being the most improved. He is rocking this school year.
One of Colby's homework assignments was to disguise his turkey before Thanksgiving. Naturally Alice wanted to join in the fun. Their turkeys are pretending to be Angry Birds. 
  • Alice
    • Whenever she's excited about something she yells, "Wah-hoo!"
Alice's preschool art project (she's a rooster)
  • Claire
    • Came up this morning with the book, Corduroy, saying, "Is a puppy! Meow, meow!"
    • "Bye! Bye!" --What Claire says when she wants me to leave so she can do something she's not supposed to do  
Someone learned a new trick
Alice decided we needed a spur of the moment tea party
I love how she sweetly reminds me to put away the to-do list to make time for fun 

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Thanksgiving, Indian Bread Rocks, and Fort Bowie

We had another solo Thanksgiving this year.
But having my four favorite people around and really good food made up for it.
Continuing our new tradition, we went camping on Black Friday! The campsite was almost empty and we got there early enough to set up camp and explore the campsite. The kids wanted to tackle this:
It's steeper than it looks
Climbing with three kids, a camera, and my pregnant belly was harder than we expected, but we made it up by having Robb ferry the kids up one at time over the tricky places while I stayed behind with the rest. 
It leveled off at the top and our little mountain goats had fun exploring.
We started making dinner at 4:50, which was great considering all I had to do was cook spaghetti. But late camping dinners seem to be inevitable for us because it took 45 minutes to boil water and cook the pasta (Robb says I used the wrong kind of pot, I think it was pre-destination). 
Meanwhile we played several hands of Super Mario Uno and then the kids went off and played together on the rocks. I kept hearing Alice yell, "Don't worry, Colby! I'll help you!" and then see her grab his hand and pull him the rest of the way up. I love those two.
Robb started a campfire while I cleaned up dinner by moonlight (because by that point the sun was gone). He told me later that Colby and Alice were singing "Twinkle, Twinkle little Star" with Claire joining in with her own rendition.
We roasted marshmallows and made life changing s'mores (the secret is using Reeces Peanut Butter cups instead of the traditional Hershey's chocolate bar). Then we tucked the kids into bed after Robb told a "scary" (per Alice's request) story about three monkeys that were almost eaten by coyotes, but they stayed quiet in their tent and were safe...and several more stories along similar lines because the first was such a hit.
Robb and I sat out for another couple hours watching the stars, talking, and enjoying our fire before joining them. 
We woke up at 1:30 am when a group of drunk boys drove into the campground and started yelling (they realized the rock formations created an echo) and cursing at each other for a solid 30 minutes before going home. I almost went to talk to them, but Robb reminded me that if I went out there was a good chance they'd slash our tires, so I stayed put.
The kids let us sleep in until 6:00 which has to be a record for us and then Robb made us pancakes while I packed up.
We tried getting a National Park stamp at the Fort Bowie Historical site once before, but didn't realize there was a hike in to get it. Apparently, it's been haunting Robb since then.

It was hot and we made it the 1.5 miles, but we had to stop every 15 minutes and the kids were dragging along. Colby dubbed the first 1/4 mile the "slippy trail" because of all the loose gravel. There were things to look at along the way, but the kids weren't interested until we found water. That got us to the park station. We ate our lunch on a bench outside and patched up Colby's arm after a fall. A breeze started blowing and everyone seemed to perk up. The hike back was so much fun. Colby and Alice took turns being trail leader and we started "zooming" (running when the trail went downhill). We made great time and all three kids were laughing and the older two were cracking jokes.
 The kids became less and less impressed with the historical sites as hike went on.
 At the Fort
 My favorite part of the exhibit

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Halloween 2017

Colby started planning our Halloween costumes immediately after last Halloween and luckily he has two sisters who are willing to go with whatever idea he comes up with. So for Halloween 2017 the Hays family proudly presents: Mario Kart!
This picture looks really cute unless you know that Alice is telling me how much her earrings hurt (they came off two pictures later :) ).
I love these two so much
Things I want to remember from Halloween night:
  • Alice being paranoid about javalinas eating our pumpkin and wanting to scare them away with toy dinosaurs
  • Colby got tired of trick or treating first and kept saying how full his candy bag was while Alice kept saying she didn't have enough
  • Claire saying, "Thank eee" after getting candy
  • Colby and Alice passing out candy. Probably my favorite part of the night. Both kids kept wandering away from our house if we ran out of trick or treaters, looking for more. 
    • Colby yelling, "Do you want purple nerds?!?"...or whatever he had in his hand 
    • Alice getting really excited about all the candy we had to pass out and squealing excitedly