The london eye

Yesterday we decided to take the kids to the London aquarium...it was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, and the kids were wired from sitting still on the train. So, we decided that spending $80 so that we could yell at/time out our children in side a crowded aquarium rather than for free outside, was a silly idea. So, we played at a park and rode the London eye...much better idea! First we gave them jelly beans, because we have no learning curve as parents. They spent the first 15 minutes pinging from one window of the "capsule" to the other like flies in a window sill...
Eli kept lifting his shirt to show his belly button to the "little cars and little peoples". Ava kept trying to climb the wall when we weren't looking...a barrel of laughs these two!
Eric loves heights...the kids definitely got the from him!
Look kids, there's big ben!
One more boring scenic picture

Riding the train...before the trip and after (guess which one is after!) Sisters can be so mean....



Me and the kiddos on the Millennium bridge.
Here are the kids at the park. All the kids stepped and climbed all over each other to get to the top. All the other kids were bigger, but ours were scrappier!
This was right before we fed the kids lunch...the smiles are fake, attitudes are slipping....must...have...french fries....
A really good day all in all!

This every happen to anyone?

Yesterday I left work, tired and carrying my lunch (that I hadn't had a chance to eat!), through the same set of double doors I always use. The first set of automatic doors opened, I walked through, and waited expectantly at the second set of double doors. Nothing. I waved my arms, jumped up and down...wouldn't open. So I turned my tired self around and drug my feet back to the first set of doors...wouldn't open. I repeated the arms waving, stomping motion several times at each set of doors with no success. Rats, I'm trapped in a little glass foyer in the hospital. Everyone is gone for the day and my phone will no longer dial out. (Several trips through the washing machine, dropped about 50 million times, and one incident involving a two-year-old and the toilet, and the phone will do nothing but randomly hiss at me.) Anyway, after several minutes of "dancing" in front of the doors, a small temper tantrum, and a few choice words, I did manage to get one finger in between the doors and force them open...free at last! Anybody else this "talented"?

"Little Man" No More

It just does not seem appropriate to call him that anymore - now that he is in school!!! Yes, Eli "Little Man" went to school this morning with great excitement. ("I so 'cited!") This was the picture of him before we went out the door.

And so we can now correctly state that both of our children attend public institutions. Ava begins Kindergarten next week and Eli has one day of Pre-school behind him. (It should be noted that Eli thinks that he is going to "Pretty-School". Apparently Ness thinks so too, because he went to his first day with toe and nail polish - bright blue. Very pretty.)

Nettles and peanuts

My kids are awesome, they really are. Today I had to wrestle the military bureaucracy with both kids in tow...often a recipe for disaster! In the 20 minutes it took me to get a new drivers license, my children had to go to the bathroom no less than three times (complete with vivid description of what needed to go on in there...I really need to teach them to just say "one" or "two"...) In between trips to the bathroom the kids entertained themselves by drawing very anatomically correct dinosaurs (and describing these as well...loudly). Nothing turns the wheels of the painfully slow bureaucratic system like two little children discussing the size of a T-rex's "peanuts" for all to hear!
The rest of the day went like that...
So, I really needed my three mile run tonight. Feeling brave, I took a new route...bad idea. I went quite a long way down a footpath in a field behind our house before realizing that the path would never cut back over to where I could get home. It was getting cold and starting to thunder...things were looking desperate. I ran a little further, following a creek full of green slime...no bridge over the creek of green slime. At this point, it was dark and I had lost all feeling in my frostbitten legs and arms...so I decided to jump the "creek of slime". The "foilage" that grows along the creek of slime is mostly nettles...quite unfortunate for the girl in the short shorts and tank top. But I slid down the creek bed and leaped the creek...probably would have cleared it too if not for the short, now numb, legs. The really fun part was then tromping through a freshly plowed field (did I mentioned it had rained buckets today?). Needless to say, I arrived home covered head to toe in mud, shivering, and numb from cold...which may have been a blessing. Apparently I'm a little allergic to nettles and now that the feeling is back in my red, swollen, hive covered (sexy huh?) legs, I sorta wish they were numb again. I think tomorrow will be a treadmill day....

And a bonus picture...
If you tell your naughty four year old to go to her room, she just might take out every baby outfit she has ever worn, attempt to try them on herself or her dinosaur (which is now apparently a girl). Maybe I should shorten time outs...