Science

the joys of being a science teacher's wife. Yes those books on the top of our shelf used to be on that shelf where a snake is in a cage. Caleb caught a corn snake and had kept him in his classroom; its now summer so he is home with us.

When we got home from our trip to the beach, Caleb came out of our bedroom and said do you want the bad news or the good news? the good news was he is harmless, bad news is the snake is out. that was Wed, Friday night Lydia woke up around 3:10am screaming Mommy Daddy, when I got there she said the snake was in her nightlight and then behind her bookshelf. We looked for a long time-no snake. Now its Sunday night and the snake is on the living room floor; Caleb is outside, so I take a breath and pick it up, taking it outside to him. The snake is now back in our bedroom on the bookshelf (with a better tape job on the lid) and I am a hero!

Father's Day

We bought a GroupOn for a River boat cruise and decided to use it for Father's day after church. Because its so hot we ended up having our picnic inside the church, in the stairwell of the 5th floor that looks out over the city. There is also a small chapel on that floor with a beautiful stained glass and a piano. We enjoyed the ac and exploring.

Then to the river, after parking as saw lots of dogs and checked into the boat. It was HOT, but we had a nice time, fortunately there was an ac inside but the breeze was nice and it was fun to see all the buildings

The girls made friends with the little girls at the table next to us.

Children's Museum

The group for story time!

Lydia is now over the age limit for the Baby Monday morning at the Austin Children's Museum. Caleb stayed home with her and I took Gloria to enjoy! We had gone once with just Lydia, once with both.

Her favorite thing was the dairy cow barn, she kept talking to and lining upm counting and naming all the cows. We also played with food, Mexican band dress up, building, balls and more.

Playing

They made belts! They have a friend who is very creative with scissors, tape and staples so always after playing with him we end up with fun creations for a few days.
Why is destruction so much fun?
A little Flapper. We looked 20s Flappers pictures online to confirm.
A funny hat tea party (I had a tutu on my head)

The Waiting Place (book review)

The Waiting Place by Eileen Button (I get free books from Thomas Nelson Publishing for agreeing to review them on my blog through BookSneeze.com)

I thought this was going to be a book about practical things to do to endure/enjoy/redeem the moments of life that are spent waiting; kind of a self-help book. Well it wasn't that at all, but I was by no means disappointed. The Waiting Place is more of a memoir of times that Eileen has had places she calls waiting places. These places are gut wrenchingly painful, funny, and normal; about death, health, friendship, life and love (I was reading one a night, but a few days I couldn't put it down and read more but the night of our 10 year anniversary was the one on her falling in love-really cool).

It is beautifully written; will make you laugh and make you cry (or at least it did for me). It was interesting that while we are all different (many situations I had experienced or agreed with, while others weren't in my realm of experience or had an issue with), there are common things to all women, parents, Christians (she did a great job of incorporating her faith in real life) and humans.

Highly recommended, especially to those who enjoy real life, slices of life stories.

11x13?

We like Portrait Innovations and have used them the past two springs (I was a little late this year as it was the end of May). I ordered their great $10 package with tons of prints of one pose. But what to do with a 11x13? Thanks but a 8x10 is big enough for us and the grandparents like 5x7s. So I decided to make it into a puzzle and we are enjoying it!

China Day!

Next was China. Breakfast was a lot harder-I didn't have any rice gruel or fried dough things on hand so we had a normal American breakfast.

We pulled up traditional Chinese music on youtube and watched beautiful nature, people and art backgrounds while the girls danced.

We read The Empty Pot and made a stamp from a potato (the girls saw an example from the ones hanging on our walls). Gloria requested a carrot design and Lydia wanted a Chinese character (I tried). We watched a few Nieho Kialan clips online.
Then jumped into our airplane to head to China Town on North Lamar. Its a huge shopping area with red palace designs. We met Russ & Stacey (who we went to London with). We ate family style at First Chinese BBQ surrounded by many Asian families and groups. We had shrimp fried rice, duck, pork, Chinese broccoli (its not like broccoli more like spinach) and asparagus soup. It was fun to read fortune cookies around the table. After Gloria threw up outside, we proceeded to the grocery store which has a coy tank and dragon statues outside. We walked around inside and enjoyed seeing different fruits, live (and dead) fish and crabs and all the packaged products, some of which have wonderful translations describing the joy of eating them. From there our last stop was a bubble tea shop. The girls got ice cream, I got a smoothie, Stacey got authentic tea with the pearls-I had had it once with Remy and didn't really like them.
Mulan looking at coy while eating a fortune cookie. Gloria and I wore red to be festive.

At the tea shop my parents called, oh no we were late, they were already at our home to celebrate Caleb's birthday... we should have saved making someone wait on us for another country as Chinese people are decently on time!

Europe Day

After being a little sad that we weren't going to London this summer and realizing that we won't even be leaving Texas, I decided we would travel the world through food!

First stop was Europe (yep we lumped the whole thing together).

We started the day by putting together our large floor map and talking about countries in Europe. Then we ate a traditional European breakfast (which I had all on hand) toast with honey, jam or Nutella, sliced meats and cheeses. Caleb even had tea, we also prayed for a college friend whose family is living in France. We read Madaline, and then looked through my Europe backpacking scrapbook. Then got in our 'airplane' to go to IKEA-we listened to world music and the Between the Lions Swedish story, we stayed at IKEA for 3 hours, browsing the furniture, reading the Swedish names, playing in the kids' bedrooms and meeting our friends for lunch. I got Swedish meatballs and Ligonberry drink (the kids got chicken tenders-oh well its mostly for us and partly for them!). We also got Swedish chocolate. As we drove home the girls watched Pooh Bear (he was British).

It then turned into the terrible horrible very bad day that had nothing to do with Europe and everything to do with broken trucks, broken garage door openers and waiting, but I won't get into that!