Bunny Treats!

For snack today Cade took "Easter Bunny treats" for everyone . We made carrots (bunny food) by filling clear icing bags with cheetos and adding a little green tissue paper and shredded paper to the top and tying it shut with green ribbon. They were fun to make and turned out cute. They were a big hit!

My sleepy eyed boy ready to head to school with his "bunny treats"

Bunny Craft!

Today I had all of my boys (with Cade on Spring Break) plus all of my extra kiddos so we had a full house. The kids love to do crafts and I usually try to have some type of craft for them to do for each holiday. It rained a ton yesterday so the ground was too wet for them to really get out and play (although they did spend some time on the drive way this afternoon) so today was the perfect craft day. With Easter just around the corner we decided to make Easter Bunnies. They all enjoyed this craft and I was pleased with the results.

All of our bunnies.

click collages to enlarge
Cooper hard at work.

Chance worked for a while and then took a break and finished after rest time. Takes a long time to scrunch up enough paper to cover the entire bunny!

Cade worked non-stop until his bunny was complete. He loves to do crafts!!

Used empty pizza boxes as the back for our bunnies. Easy to cut out and makes for a sturdy craft!

The Zoo!

After visiting the Children's Museum yesterday we headed to the zoo. The weather was perfect for a trip to the zoo. The animals were enjoying the weather too. They were out and very active. We got to visit the Teton Trek (the zoo's newest addition) for the first time. This holds elk, grizzly bears, and timber wolves. The grizzly bears were a lot of fun to watch.

No collages this time so prepare yourself for a bunch of pictures! I have a hard time narrowing down the ones I want to post. I just love zoo pictures...well I just love to take pictures period!!




The boys always look forward to getting treats at the zoo. We get in for free (Tuesday afternoons with TN drivers license) so we splurge and let them get treat while there. They love to get shaved ice when we go to the zoo but we found out that the shaved ice was only sold during the summer. They were a little disappointed but found something they could live with....cotton candy, frozen lemonade, and a long sucker. I know that may not seem like much of a splurge but $3.50 for a bag of cotton candy is quite a splurge for us!!!



The boys (mainly Chance) talked and talked about riding the carousel before we even got to the zoo. We were all set to ride it and walked up only to find out it was not working. Bummer!! The kids could climb on the animals though so that's exactly what they did. Hopefully we will be able to ride it on our next visit!








My sweet boys after a full day of fun!

Children's Museum!

Because Chad and Cade are on spring break this week we wanted to take one day and go do something fun...a mini vacation! This morning we got up and headed to Memphis to spend the day going to the Children's museum and then to the zoo. I'll post zoo pictures tomorrow! The boys loved the museum. We've gone to the children's museum in Atlanta, GA and this one was the same type of place...just with all different things to see and do. I highly recommend it to anyone with small children. We spent 3 1/2 hours exploring and playing and only left because we needed to get to the zoo if we were going to have time to see everything. I've made collages for all of the pictures because I had so many I wanted to post (I didn't post even half of what I took). If you'll click on the collages you should be able to see them a little bigger than they appear here.

Here are the boys inside the UPS cargo plane cockpit.


Here they are in the dentist office learning about how to care for our teeth.


I forget what this section was called but the boys enjoyed climbing in different "community helper" vehicles and climbing a sky scraper (maybe one of their favorite things in the whole museum) Just realized I didn't post a picture of that. There was a section for small kids that Cooper just loved.


Here the boys are snow boarding. Can't see the screen but it showed them going down the slopes and they leaned on their boards. Chance is looking at books in the "home" section of the museum, and they are connecting tubes to roll a ball through. Lots of fun things to do!


This was a neat section (the tree house I think it was called) where the boys could make paper airplanes (and do other things paper and wood related but they really liked this part) and then watch them fly into the holes in the wall after they slide them through the little machine. If you look closely you can see Cade's plane (that Chad made) going through a hole.


Here are the boys shopping in Kroger. This was a cool section set up like a real grocery store with a cash register that really worked!! The boys had to scan the bar codes (they learned what those were) just like in the real store. We got actual receipts for the things we "bought"!

Come back soon for pictures from our zoo trip!

Ride a little horsey....

Cooper loves to play with his horses. Lately his favorite thing to do is make a corral out of lincoln logs and line all of his horses up inside using the small lincoln logs as their food! Well yesterday I walked in the room where he and Claire were playing and found them both "riding" their horses. It was a funny sight!

All huddled together

Cade is home for the week because of spring break! I walked in the den yesterday afternoon and found everyone huddled around Cade watching him play a game. Thought it was a sweet picture. They are enjoying having him home and I think he's enjoying this extra time spent with them too!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Went to eat lunch with Cade today and was surrounded by a sea of green! Nearly every child was wearing something green! The only green I had on was the thread to one of the buttons on my shirt which I made sure to point out to the kids! They said it was enough green (thank goodness) and the fact that I had green lettuce on my hamburger helped! Kids are funny! Holiday's are so much fun! I was told an announcement was made before school saying "there would be no pinching"! Hope the announcement worked!


The boys enjoying a green snack


The cupcakes I made for Cade to take to school today!

Wedding Weekend

Friday afternoon my friend Arika and I headed to Mississippi to spend the night with some of our college girl friends and to see one of them get married. We had a good trip over and stopped in Memphis to run in target for a few things. It hit me when I got out of the car that I had forgotten to grab my clothes for the wedding. Really not all the surprising coming from me but still very aggravating. We are 1 1/2 hours from home at this point so what could I do....I could buy a new outfit!! Wasn't in the plans for the trip but who doesn't like new clothes!! Didn't take me long to pick something out..that's a first...and we continued on our way. We arrived just as they were finishing up rehearsal and headed to eat. We timed that perfect!! We enjoyed eating with Beth and everyone else and then headed to the house for hours of talking and catching up. When I say hours of talking and catching up I seriously mean hours! We stayed up until 3 o'clock in the morning laughing and talking and then got up at 7! I'm a person who really loves to sleep but it was well worth missing some sleep to get to hang out with that group of girls!


Dede (my college roommate), Arika, Malaika, Amanda (didn't stay the night with us), me, and then Beth is in the front.


We were all in Bradfield dorm in school. We had a lot of fun times.


Beth looked so pretty and was just so happy!


This was taken during the ceremony. I just love how happy she looks!

Trip to the farm!

Yesterday Cade was out of school due to a staff development day for Chad so we headed to Savannah to visit Papa and Clara Ruth. Happened to be on a day I didn't have any extra kiddos so it worked out great! The boys always love going to the farm. It was rainy yesterday so I wasn't sure we would get to go outside much but we did get out for a little while. One thing the boys always want to do while at Papa's house is ride the 4-wheeler. Just so happened that the 4-wheeler was in the shop this trip so they got to go for a ride behind the lawn mower this time. I even got in on the fun! I decided after that ride that the saying "Nothing Runs Like A Deere' is so true! That lawn mower pulled a trailer, me, and the boys all over the place..including through the creek! I was impressed! My sister Amanda came out and had lunch with us! I enjoyed getting to visit with her for a while. We enjoyed the trip and the boys are looking forward to going back.





Before heading home the boys made "moon cookies" with Clara Ruth. They even got a mini lesson on the different stages of the moon and about Neil Armstrong landing on the moon...ha! They turned out good and we are still enjoying them today.
We stopped by to visit with the cousins before coming home. It was a good day!

I just ate ALL that!

At supper Cooper was dipping his carrots in ranch and "painting" his raw zucchini squash. Chad said "look at Cooper painting his squash" to which Cade responded, "SQUASH!, That's not squash, I don't even like squash and I just ate all that!! It's really cucumbers!" Hilarious!! Looks like cucumbers but is NOT cucumbers! I think he may like squash after all!

Cake Thief!

I was busy earlier tonight cleaning and getting ready to head to Chad's moms house to eat and hang out. I walked in the kitchen and found Cooper up on a stool having himself a little snack. We were just about to eat supper. Guess he was hungry and thought leftover birthday cake would be the perfect thing to eat! Sneaky! Just noticed when looking at these pictures that he came in from outside with grass all in his hair. I'm sure that got in the cake too! Yum!

I said, "Cooper Thompson, what are you doing?" He said, "I just wanted to eat some tate (cake)!" I see that!


Guilty!!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

As most of you know this week was Dr. Seuss's birthday. I for one love Dr. Seuss books. My kids love them too. My kids can sit through even the longest Dr. Seuss books (and some are really long!) and not get bored. I'm sure it's due to the silliness, repetition, and rhyming they see and hear. Whatever the reason I'm glad they love these books. We did a few activities this week to celebrate Dr. Seuss!

On Tuesday we had a birthday party for Dr. Seuss at story time. The kids enjoyed cake and juice boxes for snack after listening to a few Dr. Seuss books read to them by our librarian.


Made these cookies for Cade to take to school and share with his class. We all enjoyed some of them here at the house too. If you can't tell, there are red and blue fish to go along with the book. I also did some Seuss hats! They aren't perfect looking by any means but they work!


Did this craft to go along with "10 Apples Up On Top"!


And of course there has to be green eggs!! No ham this time though!!

Right Way or Wrong Way?

Guess that depends on how you look at it!! I had a very hard time trying to convince Cooper that he was wearing the Hulk mask backwards. Actually I never could convince him! When I put it on the correct way he would take it off and say he wanted it the other way. I tried explaining that we couldn't tell who he was with it on that way. I guess when he had it on backwards he could see the Hulk face which made it seem right to him! Funny how little minds think!