Camping & Playing in a River

Is there anything more fun then playing in a river? I have childhood memories that make it seem like the best playground in the world. The boys seem to love it too. Water, rocks, critters, beautiful views, rivers are awesome.

We went camping at Pedernales Falls SP. The falls were very small since the river was small from no recent rain, however that made it more fun to play at the river. We caught tiny baby fish and tadpoles, skipped rocks, looked at miniature clams, beautiful flowers and more. Sarge played fetch and swam; we looked at the stars late at night, blew bubbles, played hide and seek, made s'mores...

Dinoguy and Trainboy played and played and played. Camping is just awesome. Munchkin watched and observed a lot. She is so easy going and happy wherever we go.

House decorations

Mom! Did you see the front of the house?

Wow. If you can't draw on the sidewalk because its wet, decorate the house! I think my favorite is the new pink numbers. They were very thorough in decorating all different parts of the house. They were also proud of their handiwork and it washes right off, so what can you really say? Besides wow! Wasn't expecting that!

Sewiing lessons

Whenever I bring out the sewing machine to mend something, Dinoguy asks for a turn. I have given him a turn just sewing on a piece of fabric in circles, and he's had fun with that, but now he wanted to make something. Searching through pages of kids sewing crafts, he chose a potholder project, and Trainboy wanted to make one too. So off we went to the craft store for fabric quarters, heat resistant material and bias tape. (Already had the felt.)

The boys did pretty well, though applying the right amount of pressure to keep the fabric flat and not allow bunching while not preventing it from moving forward is tricky to explain. Once I figured out that running the pedal was the most important part to them, we got it done pretty successfully.

After the potholders, Dinoguy wanted to make a pillow too, which went easier, since it is less fabric layers. He also got to practice hand sewing to close up the pillow after stuffing. He was very proud of his handiwork when finished.

Munchkin photos

Sunday I was taking pictures of Munchkin while her brothers danced around crazily, releasing all the pent-up energy you get after church. Munchkin was amused by these antics and faster than I could blink, she had lunged to her side and was going after one of her brothers.

Oh, Hi Mom

You won't mind if I go crawl after my brothers will you?

What do you mean I'm too young?

Okay she can't quite crawl yet but she is trying! Kicking and pushing her legs she can scoot around in circles and occasionally moves backwards. If you give her something to push on, she'll move forward. What happened to my tiny newborn? She's growing so quickly.

Home Depot / Lowe's for May

Fixitman took the boys to Home Depot for the project this month while we were in El Paso. Though we didn't remember their aprons, they had fun building a mini wheelbarrow. Then this past weekend we went to Lowe's kid project since we finally remembered to sign up. They made little planter boxes and got a tiny plant to put in it. All the hammering was very loud. It seemed to have a lot more kids than the Home Depot one. Lots of building fun!

Trainboy has gotten pretty good with the hammer, though he still needs a bit of help. Dinoguy is quite fast, which may stem from his desire to always be the fastest.

Pool Play

Dinoguy has been asking for weeks if we can get out the mini pool in the backyard. (The one that Sarge decided to bite a hole in last year. I don't know why he decided to try and "kill" it, since he likes sitting in the cool water too.)

Since it has been COLD and rainy every time he asks (Texas cold at least) the answer has been no. But in El Paso, it was 90+ degrees, sunny and HOT! So they played in the pool! Then they dug a hole in the yard somewhere and made mud and got filthy the next day after church. I didn't get pictures of that (though I should have). But here they are having a blast in the pool.

El Paso museum visits

While in El Paso we visited the Border Patrol museum and an Archeology museum near where our friends lived. With a full size real helicopter available for play, the Border patrol museum was a big hit. There were a ton of other free museums but we weren't in town long enough to go to them all.

Carlsbad Caverns

Carlsbad is really breathtaking. It is also overwhelming. We did the main loop walk, which is 1.25 miles after you ride an elevator 750 feet underground. The 1 mile walk down the natural entrance sounded fun, but wasn't a possibility with Fixitman's knee and after doing the main loop I'm glad we didn't attempt both. Just the 1.25 mile loop took about 2 hours. It has steep and twisty sections and strollers aren't allowed, so we were lucky to have the boys old enough to walk themselves and Munchkin small enough to easily wear for that long.We first watched a video about National Parks with caves while waiting for them to open and I learned a new word for scrabble - Vug. Then we went down the elevator and started on our self-tour. The guided tours don't allow children younger than 4 or 6 depending on the tour and we decided not to get the audio self tour, so it was just us on our own.The hardest part of the cave visit was keeping our voices to a whisper because things were exciting and cool to see. Munchkin didn't really like the dim lighting and so we had to hold her near lights to keep her happy. I think she thought we were trying to put her to sleep. She did fall asleep after about 45 minutes, which was nice.Dinoguy loved everything and learned the terminology quickly and started using it. Every formation was declared "the best ever". Trainboy enjoyed it at first but was ready to be done by the time we were halfway over. I heard him saying to himself "I've gotta get out of this cave" but he didn't bring it up again since we let him use the camera to take some pictures. Dinoguy would have gone thru again I think. He really wanted to stay until dark to see the bats fly out of the natural entrance.Our camera is not great at low light photos, even on the low light setting. The expanse of the underground rooms can't be captured by it unfortunately, though I tried. It was interesting to notice that it did capture some droplets falling from stalactites in some photos. It was irritating to discover I held my map in a visible spot on some photos. Doh! Anyway, we had an awesome time touring Carlsbad, though we were sore the next day!