Easter eggs

I wasn't gonna post any Easter egg pictures but I changed my mind. Really, this is the first year I have done this with my kids. The thought of little kids and LOTS of dye sort of turns me off from dying eggs. However, I decided I would try it out with the kids this year. Yes, my sister called me a mean mom for not letting them do it before! I just think I wasn't brave enough! Let the fun begin...

Something must be interesting...

Joe decorating his eggs

Our dyed (not decorated) eggs
A 'fancy' egg
Ike loved dipping his hand...
This is the face I got when I told him to stop..
Joe's hands
Max and his finished eggs
Sam and one of her finished eggs (notice her hand)
Sam wasted no time in killing and eating her egg!!

Robin's nest

We have this magnolia tree in our front yard...About a week or so ago I noticed a robin building a nest in it. Very cool! We can watch the mother sit on eggs, and then watch the baby birds once they are hatched. Well then I did not see any bird in that nest for at least a week. On Friday I was snooping again and saw a mother robin sitting in it. YAY- she is back! I'm sure the bird feeder only a few feet away is a major perk for her. I tried to snapped photos of her and her nest without bothering her. Didn't go so well! I did get one but it's hard to see. (look in the yellow circle). Then she flew away. oops! So we left her alone and went in the back yard instead.



Mama Robin after she flew out of her nest. She did not go far!

MUD

the muddy mud pit in the back yard is a huge attraction to the kids. Below are pictures of a "cleaner" playtime in the mud. Really this is nothing to what I have walked out and seen! Usually I can't even see skin color on feet, hands and part of their legs and arms.

Joe

Ike

busy

I think I have been neglecting my blog! With the weather starting to warm up we have been outside much more. I have also gotten through all my pictures from our Wisconsin Dells vacation (from last summer) and posted them on my website. It took me long enough but I finally got it done.

Last Fall we redid our deck. We still need to finish the last parts this Spring/Summer. Like figure out what we what to do for the shading/roof and re-do the steps along with a new concrete slab at the landing. Then after all that we also will be putting rocks under the deck to expand the kid's play area. But for right now we have all the dirt from those big holes under the deck. The kids LOVE the dirt. They like to pour water all over it so it is all MUD. They then decide a mud bath sounds good and proceed to cover themselves with mud. Lets just say the kids have been getting baths a lot more than normal! I think there are at least 10 pairs of muddy shoes out back. Oh well, they have fun.

Hope everyone is enjoying Spring. Now, I need to catch up on my blog reading sometime.

a few pictures

Here is picture of my favorite daughter!! I took this while on Spring break. It was to show that she is getting freckles.

Here is one that Sam took of Me and Joe.

Here is Ike and his big brown eyes.

What? none of Max? I will have to look for a good one that was recently taken and post it.

Don't you love it when...

*** Do NOT continue reading if you are eating! Just warning you!***

Don't you love it when you are finishing stuff up on the computer (like that last blog post) when your little 1 year old comes over, climbs up and sits in your lap? Except your trying really hard to ignore that smell! Then your leg is felling warm. You think- maybe your leg is cold and he is warm. But then again, you think it could very possibly be something leaking out of a certain someone's diaper. You look down..... and you see this.........










OH MY!! Ike got a bath right away!

DnyaVox V -- Max's voice box

Laura has asked to see pictures of Max's voice box. I am finally getting to that. He still only uses it at school and not so much at home. It is also still pretty new to him considering all the stuff on it. It comes with tons of pre-loaded stuff. You can modify it any way you want. Add pictures, change voices, use your own voice, add links (although we have not got that far yet), really - anything you want to do on it, you can probably do. There is a lady that comes to school and tries to show us how to program the thing. She does one or two items each time in hope to not overwhelm us! I think most the people at school are probably better at programming it than I am. I know his para is is! I think she is the one who has done most the programming on it. The pictures actually did not turn out that well.


Here is the carrying bag. We only use this to transport it back and forth from school


As it starts up... (and see the black carry handle? One could use that or a strap that goes across the chest diagionally. Max has a cary "bag" that his Para put on it- her mom made it)
Here is Max's 'home' page.

A page where we have added pictures that states who we are (this is in the video)
And it is acatully a computer with Windows on it! We have it password protected so Max cannot get the the Windows screen. It has internet connection (we have not set it up yet)
And for laughs... a bathroom...
Can you read it....


Yep, for all those boys out there- It comes preloaded with "fart" on it. (see video!!)

OK- I have never added video on here before so here it goes! I used one true media opposed to the blogger one. I notice most poeple use OTM and there must be a reason. I had 2 video but it made it into 1. The first part is just showing you the voice and screen navigation. The last part is for anyone who wants to hear it fart! HaHa

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Super Mario Galaxy

My kids have been obsessed with Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii for a while now. So much so that Joe tells anyone and everyone to call him Mario! If I say "Joe", he quickly says, "I'm Mario!" I got the game for the kids around Christmas time. It really is a very good game. Problem is- the kids cannot play it entirely by themselves. They can play the 'easier' parts but it gets harder and harder.

Mario Galaxy is a game where Mario tries to save princess Peach from Bowser. He goes through the universe and defeats enemies on all these different planets, collecting "power stars" from each. The power stars power a special 'space station' and once he has 60 stars he goes to the center of the universe to fight bowser. He fights bowser pretty much at the end of every galaxy discovered. Once he has beaten Bowser, Mario collects 60 more power stars. Once that is done and Mario has 120 power stars, he fight Bowser again. Then the game can be played with Luigi to collect all 120 stars again. That somehow will give Mario 121 stars total. The game is beat. YAY!

I should also add that the kids are so obsessed with Mario Galaxy that if they are not playing the game they want to watch it on Youtube! Mario- Mario- Mario!

So the kids and I have been playing this game for a couple of months now. We have 114 power stars. Only 6 more to go and we can play with Luigi. Sam is looking forward to that. Some of the stars were easy to get, some took lots of practice and others may have been pure luck. The last 6 are kinda hard ones. At least 2 are pretty hard- I have yet to pass them. Today Max, Joe and myself were playing the game. I went to go do something else and left Max and Joe playing. I could hear Max yelling at (I'm guessing) Joe. Nothing concerning- Max always yells! Later in the afternoon Joe and me turned on the Wii, started Mario Galaxy and I was shocked! I'm pretty sure Joe did this.... Every single character we play with (there are 8 slots) had been deleted!! All 114 power stars gone! We have to start the whole dang thing over!! I could not believe he did this. All those hours and hours of work to collect the stars are now gone. The bright side- at least we should be much better and faster on collecting all the stars -- again!


***EDITED to add*** I think Joe may have reformatted the whole Wii. When Sam went to play her game Petz- Dogs 2 everything was gone. Yeah, we were getting close the end of that one again (I think!). I get so tired of doing the same thing over and over again. I haven't looked at Wii Fit but I'm pretty sure it will also be all gone. However, last week Joe was nice enough to erase me Mii so I think that means all of my stuff was gone anyway! I even had a golden piggy bank- all gone, I'm sure. And if that is what happened, we will have to unlock all the games again.

Does anyone know a way to back up the Wii???

edited again to add-- I realize I have some of the above info wrong (like the # of power stars at the end, blah, blah..) but you get the idea!

Home from Padre

We had a great time in South Padre Island! The drive was long but wasn't too bad. The weather was great the whole time. A little windy at times. We were there during the official Spring Break week. There were tons of college students everywhere. However they all left over the weekend and we left on Tuesday. So Monday all the crowds were gone. The beach was nice. The water was a little cold but the kids didn't notice! Lots of digging in the sand, running from the waves and just having fun on the beach. We saw lots of Portuguese Man of Wars. All washed up on the beach in the sea weed. We saw one other jelly fish the last day. It was big, clear, round and had the clover mark in the center. It was more than likely dead but Pete put it back in the water for good karma!

I think I gained at least 5 pounds in one week. The food was good every place we went. Pete's parents are down there for the winter in their RV. We stayed with them. We only went out a few times the other times we ate at the RV.

We went to a nature trail and saw an alligator. There was a sign saying Danger: alligator zone or something. But we were pretty sure the sign was there to keep us on the wooden foot bridge (with railing). Nope- there really was an alligator in there. One guy that was walking (a regular there) said he usually sees a female that is 15 feet long there. We also went to a sea turtle rescue place. We saw turtles and left. We saw hermit crabs in 'cove' like areas. The kids thought they were pretty cool.

The drive home felt longer (of course!). We left at 5:30 am, and got home around 12:30 that night. An entire day in the car, with a few stops of course.

I took lots of pictures. However, my camera is still in the car. Once I get my pictures off the camera, I will post a few.

a mix of everything!

Well, I am behind in posting so here it is!

Let's see... Ike is doing great sleeping in his "big boy" bed. He generally cries for a few minutes and knocks on his door but that is short lived. I'm waiting for him to figure out how to open doors. Then the fun will really start! I do have the door knob covers. I should put one on before he figures his door out. They never seemed to work for my kids though. They always figured them out within a day. Maybe my kids are just too smart! haha!

Max is using his device at school at times. He doesn't really use it at home. But I generally know what he is trying to say so that is easier for him. He has used it to copy some sentences for homework at home but that is about it. I had his IEP Friday. That went fine. His speech goals are always so vague it's pathetic but as long as they are working on it that is what counts. He dropped PT his last year of Pre-K just because he no longer needed it. He is now in 1st. Now they are dropping OT for the same reason. He doesn't need it anymore. We can always add it back but really he doesn't need it. His OT has always said Max is a "rock star" and is impressed by his fine motor skills. Fine motor has always been a strong point for him. He gets speech every day for 20 minutes then resource (special ed) for an hour each day. We may up that to 90 minutes. Plus I think his resource teacher has him longer times a lot. I really like his resource teacher and Max generally loves her. The last few weeks he has not. She said it is breaking her heart. But she believes he is getting away with stuff with other people and she doesn't put up with that. She makes him work so he is not too happy about that. He'll get over it.

The kids have Spring break next week (this coming week), Really I guess it started Friday afternoon! Last minutes plans we have decided to go to South Padre island for a week. Not looking forward to the 1000 mile drive but the beach sounds good!

I think that is it for now. Everyone have a great week!