The Future Madam President of the United States

When we took the girls to Crown Center to visit Kaleidoscope and the Easter Bunny, we stopped at Funville. It's an area of Crown Center that changes themes every month and most of the time it's an area for the kiddos to run around and let loose. This month's theme was Funville - what do you want to be when you grow up? So without further ado, I present to you the future madam president of the United States of America:

When I told her that's what this little booth was for - she got really excited and starting screaming 'I'm the boss'! Why yes you are little lady. There was a red button on the desk that when you pushed it played patriotic music, and when she picked up the phone a recording was playing addressing the president. She thought it was fantastic.

In case the whole president thing doesn't work out, she can always be a bull rider, or a teacher. Basically we've got all areas of potential careers covered!

Gracen was definitely not as interested in being the president - you can see her rolling her eyes at the mamarazzi.

Clearly she has better things to do, like becoming a news anchor. That's much more her style. She had no problem talking into the pretend video camera, just like her Mama, that girl can talk to a brick wall!

Regardless of what they do or become, they'll always be my little babies. Gracen just turned five the other day, might as well have been 25! Lady loo will be in kindergarten in the fall, I'll blink and she'll be driving off into the sunset to KSU...

Here Comes Peter Cottontail...

Last weekend we took the girls to go see the Easter Bunny, and I was pleasantly surprised at the success of the visit. Both girls have recently stopped taking naps - which may or may not be a good thing, and the bunny was at noon. So not only was it lunch time, but also potential meltdown time from being tired.

There was a basket of stickers next to the bunny for the kids after they got their picture taken. The Mr. had to take a walk with Had for misbehaving while we were in line, and while they were gone Gracen was asking about the stickers. At the same time there was a little girl bawling while her Mother was trying to get a photo with the bunny, and Gracen very seriously said 'You only get the stickers if you behave, crying does NOT get stickers!' I couldn't help but giggle.

This is actually the first year we've taken them to see the Easter bunny. I've never really made it a priority, because he doesn't talk... so I'm not entirely sure what the point is? Except to have a cute picture in Easter clothes. But of course one week prior to Easter in KS meant a 10 inch snow storm, so we have on boots and puffy vests :)

Although I am kind of sad to say I don't have any disasterous photos of them with the Easter bunny, some of the pics from when I was little are pretty humorous!

 

I mean who doesn't laugh when looking at that? ;) Happy Easter!!

Kaleidoscope

When I was little, one of my absolute favorite places to go to was Kaleidoscope. So it's been around for a while :) Hallmark created it as a way to engage kids imaginations, and so that all of their leftover materials for their creative department didn't go to waste. It's really quite amazing, and if you've never been I highly encourage you to go. I mean seriously, it's FREE! The inner cheap-o in you is dancing right now, ha!

During the week, they have "sessions" for kids, but they have to be 5 in order to participate, because parents don't go with them. I can very vividly remember the first time I ever went, when I was 4 years old. My Mom took us on a random weekday to get us out of the house, and when we stopped to get our tickets, the lady at the entrance asked me how old I was. I proudly announced FOUR!! Well unfortunately 4 year olds are not allowed in. I started to cry, and was so upset that my sisters/whoever else we were with got to go and I didn't. The  lady came up to me and let me know that sometimes almost 5 year olds got to go in too, and today was one of the days they did. I seriously think I was so overjoyed I almost couldn't calm down enough to go in. Hallmark had one heck of a lady working that day.

I think my girls share in my excitement - getting ready to head inside!

They now have Saturday open family sessions, so we decided to take the girls. It was kind of surreal to be back there with my own kids. They still have the big box full of pins that you stick your hand under and feel them and make shapes with - wow that was an awesome description, haha, sorry I don't have a reference photo we totally brought the camera, just to find out it was dead, wah wah.

And they still had my favorite part! Where you get to color a picture, and they turn it into a puzzle!

Gracen is very hard at work here. Her favorite part was, well, everything. It's like stimulation overload, so she didn't know which way was up. We got there a little late, so we only ended up spending about 40 minutes in there and trust me, we could have spent all day. We only got through about half of the place. Hadley's favorite part I think was the dark room that used black lamps. She painted a picture frame with glowing melted crayons, and she didn't want to leave. Neither of them did really! It was a pretty great way to burn some energy and get out of the house before we were snowed in... again!

A holiday recap (part one)

While I know it's almost Valentine's day, 2013 has been jam packed for us. So I haven'e quite been able to update as much as I'd like. So I'm just now getting around to post about the holidays.  #blogfail.

Thanksgiving came and went, and not very many photos were taken. We headed North to Des Moines, and enjoyed great food, great family and of course great shopping. Black Friday shopping is a long standing tradition in my family, and this year was no different. Well not entirely different. We started Thanksgiving night this year! I know we're those cray-cray people. And while I DO NOT AGREE with stores making their employees work on the holiday, I hypocritically joined in on the festivities. At 10pm at least, that's after all the feasts. That's how I'm justifying it anyways.

Standing in line at Target, wrapped all the way around the bulding. It was quite the experience.

December was another full month for us, thank goodness for pictures to remember it all. The girls were thoroughly spoiled, and we had lots of fun with friends and family.

 

The girls were so excited to help put up the Christmas tree and decorations. We had a ball dancing to Christmas music and looking at all our favorite ornaments we've collected over the years. We have a purple and silver theme, but we have a few special ornaments we've gotten as gifts over the years with sentimental value that we add. Eventually we'll have 2 trees up, one classically decorated and one with all our special ornaments :)

Gracen's Christmas program is one of my favorite parts of going to a Catholic School. She was an angel this year, and she practiced every day, all day for a couple weeks. It was so precious! Unfortunately, all the pics are blurry/bad lighting. Inside the Church just does not make for a good photo op. We do have it all on video, but I'll spare you :) Aunt Jaime got to come and watch this year, and then we had cookies and punch afterwards! At 11:30am.... right before lunch.... awesome idea...





















After her program Aunt Jaime and I took the girls down to crown center to play at Crayola land and to see Santa! We were all so excited, and were going to stop at Fritz's, where they deliver your food on a train, for lunch first. Hadley woke up with a cold, so we made sure to pack up on kleenex. When we sat down for lunch Gracen kept complaining that her ear hurt. Well we didn't know if it really did, or if she was just trying to get in on the sympathy that Hadley was receiving. Lunch was rough. They didn't want to eat hardly anything, and it was inching in on nap time. So since no one was feeling well, we ate what we could and headed down to Santa. The beauty of going on a week day is no line! We walked right in and Gracen hopped on his lap. Hadley was still very hesitant. Which is funny, becuase since about Halloween time she'd been prepping herself for this visit. She would tell us how she was ready to go see Santa and sit on his lap and tell him what she wanted for Christmas. It didn't really help that she wasn't feeling well, So this is the best shot we got.

This year the girls asked Santa for flashlights. You read that right, flashlights. It made me laugh, and Santa found it quite humorous as well. He kept saying are you sure that's all? Yup just a flashlight please! Thanks! and then they hopped right down. Last year they asked for toothbrushes (and Santa/Uncle Adam happily obliged) so this is a step up. But still incredibly humble for a 3 and almost 5 year old :)

After we got home from crown center (and dealt with a meltdown from Gracen and her ear hurting) we got the girls down for naps. When they both woke up, they still weren't feeling well so I begrudgingly headed to the doctor. Luckily our doctor is open late on Mondays. And I say begrudgingly because I really dread going to the doctor without an appt. Usually it goes one of two ways - they either tell you you're over reacting and send you home (and still charge you and outrageous amount) and make you feel bad for dragging them out for nothing, or they tell you oh yes this is really bad and make you feel bad for waiting so long. This was in the latter category. We really went for Hadley who started to run a fever, and just had the doctor look at Gracen too since we were already there. Turns out Hadley had the croup and needed a steroid. Seriously the croup still exists? I keep thinking where's Anne of Green Gables when I need her?? Luckily she started to feel better almost right away. When the doc looked in Gracen's ear, that's when she said oh yea this is bad, she's got double ear infections - here comes the guilt trip. But luckily we got our prescription and headed home two hours later. I was just glad this was all happening a week before Christmas, so that we could hopefully all be healthy for when we would be traveling. Two days later we ended up back at the doctor with Hadley, her croup was better, but now she had ear infections as well! Quite an eventful Monday I'd say.

Stay tuned for part 2! And I must say I'm impressed if you made it this far :)

Under the Sea

I was super pumped when I found out that the SeaLife Aquarium was coming to KC. First off I absolutely love Crown Center. I spent much of my childhood there, it's just a very special place to me. And the fact that I now get to bring my children there is an amazing feeling. One of the very top reasons I wanted to move back to my old stomping grounds.

I'd been looking for an excuse to go, but unfortunately its on the more expensive side. (And yes I know that's a relative term considering I'm a cheapo right now since we're on a mad crazy budget) But considering how many free activities there are around the city, and one of our other favs Deanna Rose is a whopping $2/person (free on the weekdays!) $20/person seems a little steep in comparison. So when Father's Day rolled around (yes I realize this was months ago...) I decided to surprise the Mr. and get tickets to go the Aquarium on Father's Day. He's not really big on gifts, but I knew he would enjoy it as much as the girls so it was a nice compromise (it is literally NOT possible for me to not get/do something for every occassion no matter how many times he says not to).

If you decide to go definitely make sure you order your tix online. There's a seperate line for you to enter so you don't waste half your day standing in line. One of the coolest parts was by far the little pools that let you pick some things up. But warning, it's not that big and always very crowded.

 

 



Overall it was a neat place. But I have to say I was dissapointed. It's incredibly cramped and small. We went through the whole thing in about in an hour. We'll probably go back again some day, but it won't be a regular stop for us. I think I just built it up so much in my mind, and was thinking it would be huge and pretty wide open, but the girls had a blast and we got to spend the day celebrating the best Daddy in the world :)