Springtime in Paris

Well, it was spring break and we were in Paris, TX.  That's as close as we are getting right now ;).  It was a fun day trip with the kids to get to experience a fun town not too far away from us.  We had originally planned for Wednesday, but when Nathan took the van keys our trip got delayed to Friday.  That ended up working out really well though because the museums we visited were only opened on Friday and Saturday.  Then we were contending with rain storms.  It was crazy.  We got to see the cemetery when we first arrived, but then the rain came.  We headed over to the museums and while there it hailed.  It was a bummer to not get to spend more time outside, but overall it was a great trip!

The first museum we went to was about the history of Paris.  One of the interesting stories was about the big fire of 1916, 100 years ago!  Plus there was a lot of antique stuff that we got to see up close and personal!

Check out that piano!

 The fire of 1916.  The map shows the path of the fire over the map of the town.

 Photos of the damage

A picture that helped motivate the people after the fire.

 Tiny Alamo toy house!

 Clark demonstrating how people used to bathe. 

Sandra with an old school roller skate

The touching table!  Time to experience the past!

 Grant

The guide showing the kids the snow cone maker

 Grant demonstrating the donkey pack

Mhari in the telephone booth

 Learning about the iron lung.

The Paris, TX tower

The Paris, France Tower!

Panoramic photos of Paris ... which one is which?  These were in the restrooms!

 Entrance to the restrooms:

Much better once you open the door ;)

The mighty hail came while we were inside.  Gus took a beating!

 Decent size hail

Our second museum!  This one was across the parking lot and holds rotating exhibits.  They also had fun activities for the kids to do. 

Real motorized dinosaur head!

 Craft time

 Of course there is a cowboy hat on top! 

We made it to the Paris tower!

Fun dragon statue and the local college ;)

It was an adventure for sure!  So glad we got out and enjoyed a cute small town!

Let's Go Fly a Kite

We have decided to sell our home in Mansfield and move up into Arlington, TX.  We found a house that has great potential and put an offer in.  After negotiating we settled on a price and we had a contract!  We were shocked really.  I don't think we actually expected to really find something that would work for us!  That also meant that we needed to sell our house!  I think that is maybe even more terrifying that getting a new house.  Plus it all happened so fast!  We got the house ready for pictures and showings and before we knew it we had showings!  

This particular day we ended up with very little notice.  We did what we needed and headed out to the neighborhood park to fly kites.  The kids had a blast and it turned into a great FHE night :). 

Sandra seemed to have the magic touch and never tired of flying the kites.  She even helped her siblings get their kites up in the air.  Jeff met up with us after work and he jumped right in helping with the kites.  It was a very nice evening.  Too bad the wind didn't last just a little bit longer!

Grant 

Talmage

Me helping Mhari

Lorna loves her kite, even if she's not that good at flying it yet :)

Bigness

 Talmage trying to get his kite flying. 

Daddy helping with the tangled kite string.

Clark's kite had gotten stuck in a tree, but after a little help we got it down and fixed up!

Parading Through the Town

It's that time again for the annual Pickle Parade!  We walked the parade with our 4H group  and had a great time!  This time it was our whole family participating!  We lined up with our group and then it was time to walk.  We saw friends from church and homeschool along our path.  Nathan and Tiffany were even there to enjoy the parade! 

Here are some fun pics from the festivities!

Ready to go

 Lorna and Mhari

 Sandra

So much green!

 Walking the path

Lorna was a good little trooper.  She did get tired by the end of the route though.

After having won the volleyball championship it almost felt like a victory parade :) ... almost.

Even though Jeff was there, doesn't mean he was very festive.  I did get him to try on these glasses, for like 2 seconds. 

But he did keep the green bow on the whole time ;)

Happy St. Patty's day everyone!  We had a blast!

Flaming and Rampaging

Over the last few months the kids have been working on a 4H robotics competition.  Talmage and Sandra ended up on a team with Lawson and Grant was on a team with Layton, Max and Ian.  The kids learned a lot about programing and building the robots.  The hardest part was getting the robot to perform the tasks of the game challenge.  Every time something is programed it has to be checked and if the robot didn't start in the same starting position then it would throw the rest of the program off course.  It got pretty stressful up to the official competition, but we came with robots and programs that were ready.(The most stressful part was that Grant had to redo his program from scratch twice right before the competition.  I think that stress won't be easily forgotten!) 

The hardest part of this competition was that no one in our club had ever done it before.  We had so many things happen while there that would have been obvious if we had already done this before.  First, we didn't bother to bring the board and such to practice with before it was time for the competition.  We tried using the mat on the floor, but the robot didn't run the same on the concrete.  We also found out that once the robot is going that if you touch it you have to restart it in the corner of the mat, not the starting position.  That totally killed Sandra and Talmage's team on their first round.  We had board measurement and design issues because of how we read the instructions.  The last thing was that people purposefully just programed one skill, picked up the robot to restart it, and didn't plan the whole route at one time.  There is a touch penalty, but it's minimal compared to how many points a team can earn.  If we had really planned for this then the kids' programming would have been much less stressful.  The teams only ran 2 times.  We drove out to San Angelo for 2 runs.  I was pretty bummed when I figured this out.  At a different robotics competition the teams would run over and over again, so this was really a surprise. 

After recovering from all of the things that we weren't prepared for we had a good time.  We scored in the middle of the teams, but at least we didn't fall at the bottom (like 50 teams).  The kids had a good learning experience, and if we ever do that game again we will be so much better prepared! 

Here are some pictures from the competition:

Sandra and Talmage getting the robot in position

Sandra and Lawson

Rampaging Robots:
Max, Layton, Ian, and Grant

Flaming Sheep:
Lawson, Talmage and Sandra

Grant getting his robot measured and ready to run.  His program was the best on his team and was ready to complete all of the tasks no matter how the board was set up.

Robot doing it's job :)

Talmage and Sandra's team getting the robot set up.  They had one program set up for no matter how the board was set.

 Robot running the course.

2nd time to run!

They had Ian run his program this time.  His was set to a certain set up.  I wasn't sure why they didn't give Grant's program another try to do better.

2nd time for the Flaming Sheep!

Did much better the 2nd time around.

After finishing up this competition we were exhausted.  It was a great experience and we made great friends, but we sure didn't want to see a robot for a while!

BFF!

It was my Bestest Girlfriend's birthday!  Tiffany and I are really awesome friends!  I am so glad that she and her family moved to Texas several years ago.  We started homeschooling the same year and have been loving our time together ever since.  I know life has been really crazy recently since she had her foot smashed by a pallet of books and her husband is studying for the bar exam, but it's always better when we are together! 

I stole Tiffany and took her out for several hours for her birthday.  We went to Red Robin for her free burger and hung out at the mall having a blast!  We even went to Sam Moon (my first time) and got matching best friend jeans ;).  I brought that awesome sparkly headband for her to wear all day for her birthday too! 

I know life is not done being crazy, but I'm glad I have an awesome friend to share it with!

Had to show off our awesome jeans!

Happy Birthday Tiffany!!!

Tootless Dog

Clark has lost his first tooth!  He has been waiting for his turn ... you know, with all of the older siblings loosing teeth all of the time and now he has classmates loosing teeth!  It was a hard earned lost tooth too!  Clark showed me it was wiggly and I told him to keep wiggling it.  He really wanted it out and after a few days of keeping up with the wiggling he accidentally ate his tooth with his Ritz cracker.  It's OK, as long as the tooth was gone :). 

I was so impressed with his determination to stick with it, even though it seemed like the tooth may never wiggle out! 

He's growing up so fast!

We love our little bigness toothless!