Easter Sunday 2013

As usual for Easter Sunday we headed down to Justin's cousin's in Texas City. We went to church for an hour before going back home and seeing what the Easter Bunny brought.  As turned out, going to church was a nightmare.  Even though our boys hadn't had any candy that morning and didn't eat much the night before either they were all super restless and difficult during the hour we went to church. We left feeling like it was the worst Sunday we had ever had.

The boys were all pretty excited to get their baskets.  The Easter bunny gives them some candy and some other items.  The funny thing is that Joel is the only one of our kids really likes candy all that much.  But he REALLY loves it to make up for Jeremy not liking it at all and Jacob only liking a few things.

Jeremy

Joel

Jacob

Best attempt at getting a pic of all my boys in their matching Easter outfits

After doing Easter baskets and once I got the rolls made, we headed out to Texas City.  Traffic was horrible trying to get to the freeway because so many people were going to later services at their church (and most of them only go a couple times a year anyway).  It made me wish even more that we hadn't bothered to go to church that morning.

Once we got down to Justin's cousin's it was time for the egg hunt.  Back at Easter our cousins there ranged in age from 11 years old to 15 years old so their egg hunt is much different than my kids' egg hunt.  They are hunting eggs filled with money and my kids don't care about money or understand what it is.  Justin's dad got some candy to hide for the kids, but with only one super-sweet tooth child that wasn't too enticing to them either.  They really liked playing on the trampoline though.

After the egg hunt we had a wonderful ham dinner and after more socializing it was time to head home.

We only thought traffic was bad headed down to Texas City, but that was because we didn't know how completely awful it would be once we headed home.  I'm pretty sure I've blocked from my memory how long it took us to get home, but I definitely remember being completely stuck on 45 just coming into downtown and having to have Jacob potty in a cup because we hadn't moved for 20 minutes.

We're grateful that we don't live in Florida like we did the first couple years we were married and that it is easier to see family.  But after the long drives getting to family and getting back home on Easter Sunday it really made us wish that maybe one holiday a year could be done at our own house.  It is really hard to have 3 little kids and cart them around to houses that are not child-proofed in anyway whatsoever.

Easter Saturday 2013

We celebrated Easter on Saturday (back in the Spring) with friends and then on Sunday with family.

On Saturday afternoon we dyed a few eggs with the kids.  Jacob was the most interested in the process.

After we worked on the eggs we were busy cleaning and cooking and sent the boys to play outside.  We then had a party with some of our friends!

Counting us there were 4 families and we had a potluck dinner where everyone brought a main dish and a side dish.  We decided that there are always plenty of sweets around for Easter so we didn't really do any desserts.  At least I wasn't supposed to, but I made these cute little pudding carrot patch cups anyway.

The carrots are made from orange starburst and green twizzlers

We all ate lots of yummy food and then we had an egg hunt for the kiddos.  We had each family bring filled eggs - 10 for each kid they had hunting.  Some of the kids went crazy looking for eggs (which we didn't bother really hiding and most were just out in full view.  My kids don't really get it and weren't super excited after the initial "I found an egg".

Poor Justin.  He is always so miserable for Easter.  Justin officially has the world's worst allergies in the spring.  People always tell me that they have bad allergies too, but I have never met someone who suffered as much as he does in the month of March and into April.  He really cannot even go outside because when he does his eyes immediately start swelling up.  When it gets really bad, he wears a mask that makes him look like an alien just to walk out to the car and drive to the park and ride.  And ever since he was so sick and on all those steroids his allergies are just debilitating.

That said, Justin stood inside and snapped pics of all the kids during the Easter egg hunt while all the other parents were outside with their kiddos.  So here are just some of the pictures that Justin took.

Things to post

I have plans to get all caught up on our family blog, but life happens and instead I keep falling further and further behind. The last 6 weeks or so have been incredibly busy and stressful which means that blogging has been one of the least pressing things on my mind. I do want to get caught up though and so I'm making a list of things that should be here, hopefully I'll check them off one by one over the next month or two.

Easter
End of school year festivities
Summer part 1 and part 2
Going back to work
Back to school
Halloween
Thanksgiving/Christmas part 1
Our first family vacation
Jacob turned 5
Christmas part 2
Our "new" car and our new car

Wish me luck!

Jacob got to go to the Rodeo!

Jacob came home from school one day in January with a note saying that the special education students at our elementary school had a great opportunity to go to the rodeo on a field trip in March.  There was a parent meeting at the end of January to give us all the information and answer any of our questions.

At the parent meeting they let us know that because one of our PPCD teachers serves on the committee for special needs kids for Houston she was able to get enough tickets for all our school's special needs kids, teachers, para-teachers, vice principal over special needs and a few other people at the school who work with our special needs kids.  Apparently this committee works with the rodeo every year and gives tickets for special needs kids, but for some reason it is really hard to come by the tickets.  Our school was the only one in our school district and she had to pull some strings to get the tickets this year for our kiddos.

Some parents were a bit concerned about the fact that parents were not allowed to chaperone the kids and go along.  But not only were they not able to get enough tickets for parents to go along, but you know how kids act different for other people than for their own parents?  They said that this type of thing is compounded for most of these special needs kids and they didn't want them confused about what was expected of them if they were there with both teachers and parents.  That and every adult going is qualified to work with all these special kids whose needs are all varied and while a parent might know how to handle their own child, they most likely wouldn't be able to help other children there.

We were assured that all the kids would be as safe as possible.  Shirts were ordered so that all kids were wearing the same shirt, they all had matching bandanas and they all wore wristbands with the teacher's cell phone number on them.  And almost the entire committee for special needs kids for Houston would be there making sure that kids stayed with their groups, all their needs were met, etc.

I was not one of the concerned parents questioning why the parents couldn't chaperone.  I was glad to hear that Jacob was going to have a chance to go to the rodeo!  The Houston Rodeo is a huge event here that goes on for 2-3 weeks and always begins at the end of February.  They have activities for kids and adults of all ages.  Justin and I had discussed whether or not to take the kids, but the truth is our kids are too young and disobedient for us to want to take them.  Jacob is getting better about listening to us (about time since he is almost 5) but back when this was being planned we were still having lots of trouble getting him to even acknowledge when we are talking to him, much less do what we say.  None of our kids follow rules (and then act all upset when they are disciplined) and we felt like the rodeo would be a difficult place to try to keep our kids under control.  We could imagine all the crying and whining from all of our kids (NONE of our kids are easy going).

All in all - we thought Jacob would enjoy the rodeo, but we had no intentions of taking him.  And the teachers promised to take lots of pictures and give all the parents CD's of all the pictures taken.  So without much more commentary - here are pictures of Jacob at the rodeo!

Things that drive me crazy

The toy box.

The twins started a game about 6 months ago that they thought was really great.  They would take turns emptying the toy box and then one or both of them would get in.  Then they would take turns piling toys into the toy box with whoever was in there (usually Jeremy piled toys in with Joel).

No matter how much fun the game was when they started the end result was always the same: there were toys all over my floor AND at least one kid ended up super upset and crying.

We tried to fix this by moving the toy box to the gameroom upstairs and then almost completely emptying it.  They didn't do it as often, but they still messed with it a lot and ended breaking the toy box.  Now they have no toy box.

Playing on the stairs.

For some reason my boys love to play on the stairs.  I think this originated with Jacob, but now the twins do it too.  If you are wondering why this drives me crazy it is because they always seem to fight over who is on a certain place on the stairs and one or all of them end up crying.  Awesome.  I'm waiting for the day there are broken bones from someone falling down the stairs.

It always starts out okay

How annoying can Joel

Now Jacob has to get involved too

Playing behind the couch.

For some reason it has become really fun to play behind the couch in our family room.  The kids like to stand in the window sill and lean over the couch and watch TV.  Or take all their little cars back there and line them up on the sill.  Like everywhere else they play - they end up fighting about who is in which spot and all around just being upset about life in general.  Not to mention that I am slightly worried about them breaking the window and hurting themselves.

The wrestling.

The boys wrestle all the time.  I hate it.  It always ends in crying, usually from all involved in the wrestling.  The problem is that even once they all get upset about it they. still. won't. stop.  So annoying.  People tell me that it is just life with boys.  Yeah - I remember asking for at least one girl here.