Weird?

Today we went on a nice family drive. As much as we dislike Walmart, we drove over and hour to Connecticut to go to one. Not just any Walmart, a SUPER Walmart. Nothing special to west coast people but here they are very rare. It's the only one in the state. The ones here are small and most of the time the shelves literally have hardly anything on them. No kidding!!
So we were in crazy heaven stocking up on a few things and happily paying 3 dollars less for milk than we do at the local grocery store.
We stopped at Wendy's to eat on our way home. We were sitting there and Payton said,
"Mom, look at that weird guy."
"What weird guy?" I didn't see anything odd.
"That guy has orange hair."
I looked to see a middle aged red haired man eating a hamburger.
"Payton he's not weird. He has red hair just like Halle does."
"Oh!"
We just laughed and shook our heads because I've never heard him say that before. And that's surprising since we live in NY, the melting pot of the world. Muslims, Jews, African Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, Koreans, Goth's, Cross-dressers, the 'Naked Cowboy', and all sorts of "different" looking people and he's never seemed to notice. He picks out a guy with nicely combed red hair as "weird." Could always be worse I guess.

Jesus Loves Me

This weekend we had so much fun visiting our good friend Mike in Connecticut. The kids just love 'Uncle Mike', especially since staying at his house means having a sleepover on the big bed.
Every time we go, however, Halle turns crazy with excitement and can't seem to fall asleep.
Mike has a new picture in the living room of Jesus smiling. The kids haven't seen this one before and were very intrigued. "Look mom, he's smiling cause he loves me!"
The cutest thing though was when we had to keep getting after Halle to calm down and go to sleep. Payton said, "Halle, you better go to sleep cause Jesus is watching you." He was indeed.

Liar Liar, Pants on Fire

After a long day of swimming, we went upstairs to check out the arcade. They had a lot of fun games and the kids quickly found their favorites. #1 Dance Revolution. Oh yeah, our kids can get down! They even get the whole pout lip out, I'm cool look and everything. Hilarious!

So difficult to get a good shot because she was running around like CRAZY!

OK, so here's the moment of truth. Confession of non super-parents #1. It's very hard to go to arcades with the kiddos cause WE want to play and WIN! Well, while it was difficult, we finally let Payton and Halle shoot the balls themselves and wreck, I mean, drive the cars. But he and I are obsessed with the ring where you punch the button and if you land in the middle you win a gazillion tickets. I tried several times and always got the one next to the jackpot. On the 4th try the ticket machine got jammed after only giving me 2 tickets. Well, we needed 8 more! So I told the guy it was jammed and he came to fix it. I then went to play with Payton while he fixed it. I came back to see Andy and Halle with a pile of tickets. The guy thought we must have won the jackpot! Guess only losers would tell him it's jammed for a few tickets. D'oh! Andy and I looked at each other and then said, OK, this is the moment of truth, what are we gonna do?

Dude, we kept the tickets! With our additional tickets we had about 600! Well, when we went to get the kids some prizes they had nothing! Totally lame prizes. The best thing they had was a pack of playing cards, SERIOUSLY. So we won a big pile of tootsie rolls and some GI Joe's for Payton. We didn't feel bad at all cause we'd spent $20 on playing arcade for lame prizes. Yep, we are terrible people. No wonder we can't sleep good at night. I just thought it was the neighbors, oops.

Batman

I won!!

40 Degrees, Let's go Swimming!

It has seemed like a very long winter for the kids and I. Without a car during the week we can only do so much in the house. Andy wanted to get away for the weekend so we found this indoor water park close to our friends house in Connecticut. I didn't realize how many of these places actually exist. It was a ton of fun for the kids, once they got used to the water anyway. (Not as warm as I would have liked). It's a little different swimming in 100 temperatures outside. It was decorated really cool with life-like beach paintings on the wall and palm trees. I loved not having to worry about sun screen.

Basically the have a huge building with all sorts of slides, big and small for all ages. Rope swings, water basketball, and a lazy river which was our favorite. And then there was this gigantic playground/slide. It had an enormous bucket at the top that would fill and dump water every few minutes. Looked cool but the kids were scared of it, especially Halle. We learned to time it though so they could enjoy the kiddie slides. And thanks to Grandma Gold, they new they'd love the spa and spent most of their time there.

She sure LOVES her swimming suit.

They had cute holes all over that sprayed water up.

It was great fun but I still think I prefer being HOT in cool water. Must have been just me but I wished the water was all warm like the spa. :) The kids loved it though and I was so glad we went. They now are counting down the days until we can go swimming outside! Until then, we'll just have to stick to long "Bumble" baths.

Happy Valentines Babe

I have the most romantic husband. For Valentines we said we weren't going to do any gifts. We were just going to have a family day. Well, my awesome hubby just can't hold back and surprised me with this. Being the awesome wife I am though, I gave it back to him in return for Valentines.

For real though.. We were watching TV one night and this infomercial came on about this small oven that cooks in half the time. It has magical powers and is practically got Hogwarts written all over it. I laughed at it and funny enough it showed up in a pretty package a few days later on my doorstep. I was very skeptical but didn't want to hurt my man's feelings on this very loving gift. So we gave it a try. Andy loves it and this is him anxiously awaiting his steak. I put it in frozen and it cooked in 35 minutes.

It cooks with convection, and two other types I can't remember...Anyway, it steams and can do dehydration, and all sorts of mind boggling things. It actually turned out great. AND because he ordered at a certain time they through in a bunch of goody stuff like a pizza flipper and a blender of some sort. Anyhoo, My hubby is happy to have this for him, I mean me for Valentines. :)

Blue snow?

The other day we got, yet, another snow storm. The kids put their gear on and were excited to go out. Poor Halle just gets all the hand me downs that don't quite fit yet. It was so funny watching her try and walk in over-sized boots and overalls.

Good thigh exercise. Not that it exactly works for me, but maybe it could you. Good old airplane with the kids. A daily activity at our home.

Every time I take a picture, Payton insists on having at least two more 'pose' pictures. This is his sad face. My poor sad child.

OK, so I stole this idea from my cousin. It looked so fun that we started doing a color day. This was our first day and the kids loved it. Payton has had a hard time with colors and this seems to really help. The color they chose is of course blue. We ran all through the house finding blue. They basically just threw it all in a pile. No way to really show it nicer. Just a pile of blue! They picked out blue clothes and/or jammies. If I was a super-mom, I'd be creative and do blue food or whatever.Oh well, maybe I'll try and be super next week.

My sweet girl

This face just makes me smile every day. Yes, she is full of that Spicy Huntsman blood but I love her for it. Keeps me on my toes.
I've been trying to get some cute pictures together for several projects I've been wanting to get started. Plus, if I don't send some pics to all the grandparents soon, they may start to dis-own us.
This particular pic was just a random one from the other day. I love it though.
She's been really fun this week and constantly giving me hugs and I love yous. Her favorite place is right on my lap and who doesn't like being adored?
Today we decided to get out of town for the weekend and found a fun place to take the kids swimming. She couldn't stop talking about it all day. We started packing our bags to leave in the morning and as soon as she spotted her swimming suit, she HAD to have it. Being the miss independent she is, she tried putting it on all by herself. Not sure exactly how she managed but it was twisted and stretched every which way. Her arms just sort of stuck out in opposite directions, while covering her face. "Mom, can you help me?"
She then proudly ran to show daddy. When I told her it was time for bed she had the biggest alligator tears. She did not want to take it off, she was going swimming tomorrow!! So I gave her a kiss and put her to bed...in her swimming suit. She is quiet content.

Museum Of Natural History

We finally were able to see 'Rex' at the front of the museum. Last time we went we only saw the dinosaurs in the dinosaur area, however, this time we found what we think they tried to create in the movie, "Night at the Museum." At least that's what we tell our kids anyway. :)

This was our 2nd trip to the museum and much more enjoyable than the first time. We were able to cover more ground since the kids are older. We had a fantastic time and saw a great deal that we somehow missed the first time. Well, I know exactly why we missed it. The dang place is gigantic to say the least. With a little help, we happily found 'dumb-dumb'. I tried giving him some dentin gum I had in my pocket but nothing happened. Maybe he likes the actual "bubblicious bubble-gum". Oh well, it also wasn't dark yet. ???

Some of our other highlights included, seeing a 3 ft lobster, a monster jellyfish, another enormous floor of African mammals, and the hall of ocean life. (this was closed last time)

We still skipped two whole floors and a ton of the museum! The kids were great though and we wanted to keep it that way. Plus I think Andy secretly wanted to get back to watch a game.

Payton took his camera he got for Christmas and is now a 'professional' photographer. He had a blast taking as many pictures as he wanted. It made him so much more interested in everything too. I think he literally took pictures of almost everything we looked at, but we hadn't adjusted the camera yet so the flash messed up most of them. oops! We hope to go one more time before we move though so next time bud...:)

Halle also had a great time. She "ooh" and "awed" everything. This is seriously one of the best places to go with kids if you get a chance.

Halle loves getting her picture taken and saying 'cheese'. However, she stops smiling to say cheese. Gotta work on that one. One of Paytons proud pics.

One big Celebration

We had a fun time celebrating Andy's birthday. He is so spoiled I swear. He had 3, yes, 3 little happenings for his gettin olderness.
Our first fun event was a family dinner with our good friend Cindy. We decided to try a new place close by. Andy said it was a pizza place, but after looking at the menu, we quickly realized it wasn't. I couldn't pronounce half the stuff on the menu and even the spaghetti description didn't make me believe it was actually spaghetti. It turned out ok though. We then had home-made sundays and let the kids terrorize Cindy's dog Oreo. It was a lot of fun.

Date #2 the kids and I spent the whole day planning for dad to come home. We made home-made cards out of foamies, glitter and stickers. We then drew a huge card on the wall and even attempted to make pictures of ourselves and our dog. Next, we made another big poster of dad and put all sorts of pictures of things that remind us of dad. That was so much fun. It's actually still on the wall and the kids keep adding to it daily.

Payton and I even made a ginger bread man cake. Ginger bread men are Payton's new current obsession. I let him to it mostly himself and it turned out...ok. :) Na, it was great! (I realize this doesn't actually go in order of the pictures but hey, I didn't want to re-do them.) :)

As soon as dad came home the kids and I waited quietly behind the couch. When he opened the door we yelled, "surprise!" They laughed and gave him big hugs. Payton then gave one of his famous tours throughout the house and showed him all we had done.

Last but not least, the next night Andy and I went out alone. Wow, that doesn't' happen too often. Thanks to our good friend Afton we had a nice night. She watched the kiddo's while we went to Ruth Chris' Steakhouse. This was 'our' not Andy's first time at a really nice place. We had to laugh that they even had fancy little gadgets to get the crumbs off the table between each course. It was very yummy, but we'll probably stick to Wendy's. It's slightly less expensive. :)

All in all it was a great Birthday. Payton is now counting down the days until his.

Everything's bigger in TX

One thing I miss about Texas is how everything seems to be bigger. In NY, everything is smaller.....small apt, small dogs, small family, small portions, smaller wallet (for us), smaller parking spaces for---smaller cars. Payton asked me the other day on the freeway if we were ever going to have a big truck and our dog Boo. I told him, hopefully soon. Then a tiny little car zoomed past us on the freeway like it was going to the the back nine on the golf course. A chase was encouraged/ensued and we pulled right up along side the "smartcar" and peeked over into the tiny window-- and yep------- it was a nomadic hippie who then flashed us the "NY peace sign". Payton had never seen that sign before, so he flashed it back...sort of...I've heard it said that your vehicle is usually compensating for something, but at least with these dad gum "smart cars" they spell it out for you. Happy Groundhog day y'all.