Nacho Libre!!!

So, Sunday after church we had dinner and I usually take Kailey's dress off while she eats, so she won't get it dirty.  After she was done eating, I noticed her tights had crumbs on them, so I took them off.  My dad took Kailey and started playing with her while I was doing dishes.  A couple of minutes later, he comes in the kitchen and asks for Kailey's tights--he said that she looked so cute in her tights and onesie, that he wanted to take a picture of her.  So, I hear my dad wrestling with Kailey trying to get her tights on--comments like, "how do you gets these things on" to "Are you sure these fit her".  Needless to say, it took my dad several minutes of wrestling to get the tights on her and then I heard him calling her "Nacho Libre."  Next thing I know, he comes in the kitchen to "get something."  Well, a couple of minutes later I finish the dishes and walk out to the living room to behold this sight:

My beautiful, innocent little girl with a mustache!!!

I just had to laugh!!!!  For some reason, my brothers and Dad love to draw on my kids with marker.  Ethan has had multiple mustaches, goatees, muscles, etc drawn on his body and luckily until now Kailey had escaped the marker.  My dad said it was just too good 

of an opportunity to pass up.  Anyways, Kailey's new nickname is "Nacho Libre."  For any of you who have not seen the movie, Jack Black is a wrestler in it and wears stretchy pants--it is such a dumb movie, but is hilarious.  Anyways, Kailey and Jack Black have similar physiques, so you can see where the correlation comes in.  Anyways, as my dad and brothers say, "we only draw on your kids because we love them so much!!"

Weenies and S'mores!!!

Saturday, the weather was up in the high 60s, low 70s and felt great.  My dad had a great idea and we went over to a park near us, called Castlewood Park, for a hot dog roast.  After roasting hot dogs and making s'mores, we played on the playground and had a rock skipping contest, which my dad dominated at!!  This was actually the second time we went and did this in the last week.  The first time we went, I was in capris and got eaten alive by mosquitos--I literally had 20-30 bites all over my legs.  The amazing this was that my parents, nor the kids got a single bite--I must be especially tasty!!  Anyways, we had a blast this time at the park and the kids just had so much fun.  I am so glad that spring is almost here!!!

Videos

I have been making some short videos of the kids to send to Eric.  I tried to upload one of them to blogger, but it wouldn't work.  So if you want to see a couple of recent videos of the kids, I put them on youtube.  Here is the link to one of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuiGdeStLqk.  One day Kailey was lying on her stomach and Ethan came up and started riding her like a horse--it was pretty funny.  I thought she would be upset, but she just loved it.  There is also a video of Ethan doing a trick (he always does tricks for us--standing on one leg, hopping, etc), and another one of Kailey jumping in the jumper.  Enjoy!

Texas Part II

So, the second half of the week we spent with my parents at my dad's meeting.  We stayed at the Gaylord hotel which was enormous.  This first picture is the view from our hotel room balcony.  The hotel had a stream running through it, a miniature town with trains, fun restaurants, fish ponds with koi, etc.  We had so much fun walking through the hotel and exploring everything and only got lost a couple of times!

So, the meeting we went to with my dad was called "Commodity Classic."  It is a big meeting that NCGA (National Corn Growers Association) has every year.  They partner with the soybean association and this year with wheat and sorghum and have a big trade show, there is lots of meetings and every night there is entertainment and dinners.  I didn't get to see any of the entertainment, since the kids needed their sleep, but the two big acts my parents saw were: Phil Vassar and Pam Tillis-both country singers.  Anyways, the trade show was the best part!  It was in a big convention center and there were tons of booths set up about grains, pesticides, fertilizer, etc.  You have to remember that the trade show is directed towards farmers and products they use.  For us non-farmers, we had a great time going to all the booths and picking up the free stuff.  We got tons of free pens, pads of papers, yo-yo's that light up, shirts for the kids that say "Grown in America", tape measures, cloth bags, etc.  The best thing I got was this super nice swiss army backpack.  It would probably cost at least $100 to buy in the store.  I saw some people getting the backpacks and I wanted one.  The only problem is you had to be a farmer, because you had to fill out a survey about your farm, acreage, crop, etc.

I didn't think I could pull off faking my way through it.  So, my dad asked one of his farmer friends and he went and got me the backpack.  If you saw this thing, you would want one too!!  By far

 our favorite part was climbing on all the farm equipment.  They had tractors of all sizes, combines,  and tons of other things.  It was so much fun!!

 The day the trade show opened, we were waiting to get in and my mom saw a friend of hers that she hadn't seen in a long time.  This friend had twin girls that were three.  Well, Ethan was sitting in his stroller eating popcorn and next thing I know, the two girls had his popcorn and were feeding it to him!  They were taking turns putting popcorn in Ethan's mouth and he was just sitting there so content.  He is only two and he already has girls waiting on him hand and foot--every man's dream!!   His dad would be proud of him!

Another day, there was a big meeting in the morning where they had a comedian and motivational speaker come.  Usually it is pretty interesting, so I decided to 

take the kids to it.  It was in this HUGE room and the plan was to sit on the side, so we could make a quick exit, but my dad had other ideas.  We ended up sitting three rows from the front, right in the center.  There were probably at least a thousand people there, so we were really in the front.  Anyways, they had this guy come and he got up on stage, had music going and started going to town on this chalkboard.  We couldn't tell what he was drawing, but it was fun to watch him.  Finally it turned out to be a road, which represented the road of life and he talked about how we live our lives determines how we travel the road of life.  Decisions determine your destiny.  He was a really interesting speaker, had great anecdotes and was very humorous.  He had this ugly dinosaur with little arms that you could put on your hand and he said when he bought it he took it over to his mom's house and put it in the toilet, put the lid down, but left one claw hanging out--he thought that would be a good tip off.  He said a couple of hours later he got a call from his mom yelling at him and saying she almost had a heart attack she was so scared.  He said, when he has his first baby, he is going to take the dinosaur along and when his wife asks to see the baby, he will wrap the dinosaur up and show it to her and say, "isn't he so cute, the doctors think something is a little different about him and your mom thinks he looks like me."  Anyways, he was pretty funny.  In the middle of his talk, he made this loud noise that scared Kailey and she started screaming.  Of course, since we were in the front, he started making jokes about bringing a baby and then he held up the dinosaur to see if it would calm Kailey down, but she started screaming even louder, it was pretty funny.

Well, I could go on and on about what a fun time we had.  We just had such a relaxing and fun time and I am so glad we got to go to Texas and sorry our trip is over.  Thanks for such a fun time and we look forward to visiting again!

Fort Worth Zoo

So, this past week, Ethan, Kailey and I flew down to Dallas, Texas for the week. We spent the first half of the week with Eric's grandparents and then the rest of the week with my parents who had flown down for a business convention. We had such a wonderful time, enjoyed great weather, ate way too much good food, and had a hard time coming home. Anyways, we did so many fun things that it is going to take me awhile to post it all. So here is the first installment of our trip.

When Eric's parents found out we were headed to Texas, they decided to come down and visit also, so they could see the kids. Gary (Eric's dad) ended up making it a business trip, so he had to work during the day, but Annette (Eric's mom) got to hang out and have fun with us. Tuesday we took an excursion to the Fort Worth Zoo, which in my opinion is one of the best zoos (and I have been to a lot of them). It was so much fun, had so many interactive displays, you could see all the animals and they were fairly close...we just had so much fun. Eric's uncle and aunt were nice enough to play hooky from work and come spend the day with us. It was great to see them and to spend time with them.

One of Ethan's favorite parts of the zoo was where you got to feed the birds. They had an enclosed area with birds flying all around and you could buy little sticks that had bird food on them and feed the birds. Ethan was so much fun to watch as he was feeding the birds. At one point while we were feeding birds, I looked up and there were two birds sitting on my mother-in-law's head. I have a great picture of this, but have been banned from putting it on my blog. It was pretty entertaining to see!

Another fun part of the zoo was this interactive barn for kids. They had all kinds of fun things kids could do--slides, crazy mirrors, things to climb up in, you could milk a cow, etc. The one that Ethan liked the most is pictured at the right. You can't really see, but there is a wheel where Ethan is standing that says, "turn to make manure." When you turn the wheel, it makes balls come out of the cow's bottom, representing manure. You are then supposed to take the balls and put them in holes in front of these fake plants. Anyways, it is supposed to teach you that you use manure on plants, which helps them grow and then you eat the plants. Really good thing to teach kids--who wants to eat your vegetables when you know that cow poop helped them grow?? It is a good thing that Ethan didn't realize what the balls represented. Sometimes I wonder, who comes up with these exhibits??

We had such a fun time and the weather was so nice--it was the most perfect day to go to the zoo. We had lots more fun seeing the animals and there are plenty more pictures to look at in the slide show below. Stay tuned for the next installment of our Texas trip!!