Reed's Fourth Grade Field Trip

Yesterday Reed and I went on his 4th Grade Field Trip to Austin to see the capital.  The entire 4th grade, the teachers, the principal and a few parents made the trip down on 2 coach buses.  A few parents followed behind the buses, but I chose to ride the bus with the kiddos... there were definitely pros and cons to that idea. :)  Here we are getting on the bus - it was about 5:45 in the morning.  

I had on a motion sickness patch and took a less drowsy Dramamine and I was able to read a book the whole time!  It was awesome and really helped make the drive go by faster.  The kids were all so excited, so it was chatty on that bus.  Each seat also had a foot rest attached to the bottom of the seat  in front of it.  They would go down when you put the weight of your feet on them and then pop back up if you took your feet off.  All I can say it that those things were in some serious need of a can of WD-40.  The squeaking nearly drove me crazy.

There is a sweet little girl in Reed's class that whipped out her cross-stitch to help pass the time.  Seriously, how cute is that?

This is Reed and his friend Austin.  They were my group to chaperone.  

We finally got there, unloaded the bus and headed to the Visitors center.
Gaston, Reed & Austin

Our first view of the Capital.   

We lucked out on the weather.  It was beautiful - sunny, slight breeze and in the low seventies.

In the visitors center, we had a great little tour where we watched a movie about the capital and how it was built and with what materials, etc.  It was narrated by Matthew McConaughey (of course). :)  They had little activities for the kiddos to do...

Ande here is my little Goddess of Liberty (the name of the statue on top of the Capital dome).

After the visitors center, we went over to the capital.  This is the kind of stuff boys do while waiting. 

We headed in the building and the tour guide asked questions (the kids did great and knew all the answers.  I, however, am sadly very ignorant about Texas history.  This trip definitely made me want to learn more about it.)  In the dome area, our tour guide told us that if you stood right in the middle of the star on the floor and said something,  you could hear an echo. It was pretty cool. :)

Reed listening to the guide.  He loved the tour. 

Next we went underground (which I actually didn't even know it existed!).  They have skylights at ground level and the guide showed us this one where we could see the entire dome.  Pictures don't do it justice - it was really neat.

The tour concluded and we grabbed a class group shot before heading off to lunch.

We had an awesome picnic on the capital grounds.  

A quick pic of the entire 4th grade...

Then it was off to the Bob Bullock Museum.  On the walk over, we saw the 10 commandments on the Capital grounds.  I love Texas. :)

We spent a while looking around the museum and after visiting the gift shop, we decided to sit down and rest.  Did I mention that it was also my kiddos 10th birthday?  How did that happen so quickly? 

We saw a couple of 30 minute shows in the theater on the 2nd floor of the museum where I promptly fell asleep in the cushy chairs.

Yep.

 It was comfortable, cool and dark. I was tired. I am not ashamed! :)

It was funny because the first movie was about weather, so there was rain (and a real mist in the theater) wind (I guess they turned the air on full throttle), loud thunder and lighting (LOUD cracks of thunder and bright flashing lights to go along with the lightning).   I remember jumping because it woke me up but I think I fell right back asleep.  The second movie (which I barely remember ANY of), had something actually move across your bottom in the seat.  Everybody screaming woke me up... I was told later it was supposed to have been a snake. :)  

One last 4th grade pic in front of the Museum...  

And we loaded back on the buses to go back home.

I was hoping the kids would be tired and go to sleep... Uh, no.  They were the opposite of that.  Austin rode home with his mom, so Reed had his seat to himself.  He started out like this...

But ended up like this...

I dozed off a couple of times, but those squeaky footrests were just too much. :)

We pulled into the school parking lot about 8:30.  Reed and I went to Sonic and grabbed a burger (all were brought were snack food for the bus ride).  We got home home about 9:00.  It was a long day, but we had a great time.  Reed rated it a 8 1/2 or 9 on a scale of 1-10.   

Only 4 more years and I'll get to do it all again with Hudson. :)

Teeth

I've been fighting a sinus infection for over a week now and have felt pretty crummy and I ended up going to bed early last night. I woke up this morning to my baby boy holding a dollar bill that the tooth fairy had brought. 

He lost his other front tooth and I missed it! Here's a better picture.

Brian said he went to bed and must have bumped it because he got up with it bleeding. It was very loose because Brian said he pulled it and Hudson didn't even realize it was out. Reed lost one of his molars last week... We got teeth fallin' out all over the place. 😊

All this teeth stuff grosses me out, but I know I'll miss it down the road.  These boys are growing right out from under me. 

Exciting news!

So here's the biggest news in our lives at the moment... we have started building our house!  We have been in the planning stages with house plans and such for about 6 months and now we have recently finished dirt work and started the forms for the foundation. I'm going to keep all of the house stuff on our other blog that I started when we moved here, so if you're interested, check it out here!

Hudson's Kindergarten Field Trip

On Thursday, I went to Hudson's first ever school field trip.  The Kindergarten classes go to the zoo and it is one of my favorites!  As a chaperone, my group was Hudson and his little friend Jordan.  Hudson was SO excited and full of energy.  

Hudson's class picture.. he's in the front row smack in the middle.  

Just for grins, check out a close up of this... the kid with swagger to the right of Hudson is Jordan.  As you can guess, we had quite the day.

After the class picture, we started on our way.  I asked "What do you guys want to see first?" with which Hudson replied "Let's go see the werewolves!"  Um... what??  I laughed, told him there was no such thing and he didn't miss a beat and said "Well, the elephants then."  That kid is too funny.

Sweet buddies...

Checking out the snakes...

These guys were map lovers.  We had to stop and look every few minutes to see where we were and where we were going.

My little stinker on a kangaroo.

We had a great day.  I'm so thankful that I am able to stay home so I can go to all the fun things like this in my kids life.  I'm a blessed momma. :)

SB - Day 6

We got up bright and early to eat breakfast (our time was 6:45), finish packing, and get off the ship.  Since we had so much time to kill before our flight that night, we decided to go to Universal Studios. The same driver that picked us up at the airport, came and got us at the terminal and drove us over.  Hudson fell asleep on Brian.

I didn't give Reed a dramamine that morning, so he ended up throwing up in the van - luckily I had a bag handy.  Poor kid.  He was feeling better by the time we got there.

We got in line for the Transformers ride, but after seeing what it did, Reed decided his tummy was a little uneasy, so he and I decided to sit it out.   We watched the Termonator 3d show (and had to get a picture in front of the Terminator (that Hudson wishes he could buy),

we saw the  Shrek 4d thing, the Twister "ride...

The Simpsons ride (which almost made me sick with dramamine in my system AND a motion sickness patch behind my ear).  We still had a little bit of time before the shuttle to the airport and since there was a movie theater right outside Universal, we watched Mr. Peabody & Sherman.  I slept through about half of it. :)  We got to the airport, flew home, and got in the car about 10.  Both boys lasted about 10 minutes and they were OUT.

It was a great trip.  SO glad to be home. :)

SB - Day 5

Today was our day to stop at Castaway Cay, Disney's private island.  We could get off the ship at 8:30, so i wanted to get off as quickly as possible 1) to avoid the crowds, 2) to get a great spot on the beach and 3) to see the water before it got all stirred up by everybody.  The boys and I got up early for some breakfast and were able to see another gorgeous sunrise.

The post office at Castaway Cay.  You can mail postcards from here and they have their own Castaway Cay postmark.  When we were there it was closed, so no fancy postmark for us. :(

It was on the cool side of comfortable that early in the morning, but the water was gorgeous!  The boys had a blast in the water, making sandcastles and burying each other. :)

After a few hours on the beach, it started to get really packed with people so we decided to go eat lunch.  After lunch we stopped for some souvenirs and made our way back to the ship. The boys were covered in sand, so they took a shower  but then decided they wanted to swim in the pool.  Tons of people were still on the island, so the pools were fairly empty.  Brian ended up riding the Aqua Duck with both boys.  We had a little time to kill before dinner, so Reed and I went to play bingo again. Wednesdays dinner rotation landed us in the Enchanted Garden which was meant to look like the Palace of Versailles.  Very girly and floral. :)

Hudson relaxing in a porthole.

Our last towel animal of the trip - so sweet. :)  

We went ahead and got to bed a little early since we had to be out of our stateroom by 8 the next morning.

SB - Day 4

On Tuesday, we were at sea all day.  This was our view for breakfast.. as far as the eye could see.

Since we were at sea, that meant the pools were crowded.  We tried to find more inside things to do.  There was a giant movie theater and they showed movies periodically.  After breakfast we went and watched Frozen in 3D.

We played 9 holes of mini golf...

While Brian and Hudson did the detective game again,  Reed and I played Bingo (one of our favorite things from the whole trip)...

We watched "The Golden Mickeys", a Broadway type show - singing, dancing, etc.  I thought it was cute.  It was in the Walt Disney Theater which reminded me of Bass Hall, but on a smaller scale of course.  

Our dinner rotation for tonight was at Animators Palette again, so we decide to skip and do our own thing.   Reed wanted to see Monsters University in the theater and Hudson didn't, so we went up on deck and he ate chicken strips and fries and watched Cinderella on the big screen for a while.

Then he decided he wanted to go see Monsters, so we went in the theater, sat down by Brian and Reed, and watched about 30 minutes of it before he decided he wanted to go (There's evidently something a little scary about that movie to him).  We got some soft serve ice cream and then went back to the room where our towel elephant awaited. :)