Safari Birthday Fun!

Miss Mia has been an animal fanatic for as long as I remember. So, for her birthday party I had a genius idea to take a few of her friends to the zoo. The night before the party, I switched game plans for fear that the zoo would be crazy on a no school Friday. Since the party at the zoo was just going to be an exploration with a breakfast break, I had to come up with some games and a out door venue. The venue was easy and next to the zoo...Japanese Gardens that I love. Games--well they got creative. We started out with a tour of the gardens so I could set up the clues for the scavenger hunt. We happened to find a cute little turtle trying to find its way to the water
After we eat some deluxe waffles for breakfast. Too bad I didn't take into account that the wind would blow up dirt and get in the whipped cream. Most girls found away around the dirt nonsense.




When everyone was "full" or at least incapable of swallowing any more dirt, we started the scavenger hunt. As a funny side note, some kid was doing a photo shoot for his senior pictures. One of the camera helpers had brought his kids who were bored and found some of our clues around the garden. They took the clues down, but had the decency to confess and return the clues. I made up the rhymes for the clues quite late at night and had to remember various spots of note in the garden to hide the clues. I also felt driven to tie in the animal theme since it was supposed to be a safari b-day party. The goal--find a lion that escaped from the zoo. To give you an idea, one clue for the bridge with vines had references to camels and water divine (so we could rhyme with vine). They eventually found the lost lion under the waterfall.

The next game was a creature drawing game. The idea was to take a tri-folded paper and draw one part of an animal. Everyone had to draw one head, one torso, and one feet area. The girls switched papers after they drew each portion. So in the end, the creature would have been created by 3 people. Confused, well, the girls were too which made it even funnier.


I had two more games, but we had run out of time. I asked the girls in the car if they had fun. Resounding YES! I should have left it there. I then made the mistake of asking if they were sad that we didn't end up going to the zoo. Again, Resounding YES! Oh well. . .Mia loved it and said it was her "best birthday ever"!

Birthdays!!!

This week of April is always a marathon week for me. Fernando and our two girls share this week in birthdays. Fernando starts it out on the 14th and then we hit the next two on the 16th and 17th. It is always a trick figuring out how to make each day special and avoid eating way too much cake and ice cream (yes. . .it is possible. . .at least for little kids and my backside). It turned out that school was not scheduled for Friday and so it made for an easier arrangement of friend parties and family parties. Talia who is in love with Princesses especially Rapunzel from Tangled (aka the only Princess movie she has seen) kicked things off with a Princess Party:

After everyone was gathered and finished dressing their paper doll knight or princess
, we ate a royal feast of "gold and jewels". I just had my daughters favorite foods like macaroni and cheese to look like gold, green and purple grapes for jewels, and royal carrot scepters. While the kids ate, I read to them the book Falling for Rapunzel by Leah Wilcox. In the book, a prince tries to get Rapunzel to throw down her hair so he can rescue her, but she mishears him and throws down random objects from her room instead including silky dresses , dirty socks, cantaloupe and a swine (instead of silky tresses, curly locks, rope, and twine).

I told the kids that we needed to help out Rapunzel. We sat in a near by room to go on a "Rapunzel Hunt" which was simply an adaptation of going on a "Bear Hunt".



I tried to help them imagine jumping over gorges, walking over bridges, cutting through tall grass, and snorkeling under a wide stream.

I luckily had my mom here and she hid upstairs ready to throw down some of the things from the book like socks and dresses. I told all the kids that the Queen had special treasures for each of them but that they were hidden in the mess that Rapunzel threw down to the prince.



After the kids found all their treasures, we went to decorate sugar scepters that they could use magically to change the color of their frosting. I wanted to read another favorite book of Talia's called Alice the Fairy. She uses her magic wand to do all sorts of things. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it. So I just had the kids use their scepters and funny magic words to repeat as they stirred in the food coloring.


Next came tower building for Rapunzel. Good thing they didn't connect the fact that the tower was actually a bad thing. I needed something to fill the time with that would work well with 3-4 year olds.
Accepting one little girl who wandered most of the party, the kids were really cute and seemed to really get into each random activity. They would listen to the books and even enjoyed putting together puzzles that one friend gave as a present.

Thank heavens for my mom's help with all the prep work including cleaning the house. Let's be honest, she was rockin' that orange rhinestone wonder! Also, great thanks to a wonderful mom that stayed so we could have all the really cute pictures. Happy Friend Birthday Talia!!

St Patrick's Day

Years ago, when we lived in MD amidst all the amazing community events, we attended several St Patrick's Day thrills. Except for dyeing the San Antonio River on the Riverwalk green, there isn't much to do here. So I decided to make our own little fun event. Because of the dynamics of our ward (ie 120+ primary kids), we had to find some line of demarcation on invitees. I opted to limit the invitation to our neighborhood boundaries. We still had a good 20+ kids in attendance.

I originally wanted to split the families into 4 groups to rotate among the activities. Then I remembered that I am not really a true proponent of agency. I am the dictator in my family and when we do parties, I love to extend that dictatorship to those around me. With all the moms looking on, I spent the next hour making a slight fool of myself and loved every minute of it.

The stations were more glorious in my head than in actuality. We started off in a group explaining the stations and that after we became St Patrick Day experts, a leprechaun might lead us to the rainbow's end. The first station was Leprechaun training. Training meant picking pretend clovers (although my grass has plenty to pick, it was on the wrong side of the yard), whistling, dancing a jig, ducking into small hiding places, and clicking your heals into the air. I wish I could have taken a video.
They were adorable. Some kids were really concerned about their abilities which made me giggle. Then we went to get face painted and color St Patty coloring pages. After they finished, they dug for gold coins (which are surprisingly hard to find in stores the day before St Patricks Day). I buried them in our rock pile. Each time they found a coin they had to tip toe up the stairs to the slide. They would have to slide down and drop it into the Leprechaun's bucket. Finally they got to design a Leprechaun's home via chalk drawing.

While the children drew their pictures, I pulled on of the older girls aside to dress up like a Leprechaun and lead the kids around the block back to my house to get some otter pops (thanks wendy for the supply). The older girls only had whistles to communicate and the kids were strictly warned not to touch the leprechauns. Too bad the follow the leader bit lasted for only a few moments. When I came outside, I found a crew of moms walking back the way they went hoping to meet the kids at my home as they ran full speed around the block! Talia came in very last, but was still really proud of herself. I can't wait to try again next year.

Spring Break

Texas celebrates spring comparatively early. Thank heavens it coincided with the time change because we have taken awhile to adjust. Also I am glad that two fantastic holidays of non import occurred during the week to help break things up. On Monday we celebrated National Pi Day (thanks Albert Einstein and Math nerds!) Our fun neighbor friends invited us down to be amazed by their 97+ numbers memorized past the decimal (3.14 etc) and delicious pie. The delicious pie and amazing pi feats were all them. For our part, I made us late to the party and brought nasty pie and couldn't even get confidently past the decimal. Oh well. Friends don't let friends get too concerned about such details.


(these glasses were worn by all adults and made the pi reading that much more exciting).

Amidst chores and "homework" and fighting, we found fun activities like Miss Honey Buzz Bee at a local Garden Center. She has a magical way of telling stories and allowing the kids to get involved. We enjoyed a Birds Tale on Tuesday that involved a worm saving bird illustrated with gummy worms and magical beans and marigolds.




Then on Thursday she dressed like a Leprechaun who had to learn not to take things that don't belong to him. Monkeys, lions, bunnies, and an orange puppet of fuzz (a flamingo I believe) helped reform this naughty holiday figure into a gold sharing wonder. As an added bonus, the kids always get lemonade and cookies along with some plants to take home. We scored another marigold and a tomato plant on this trip.


Today we opted for a riotious storytime with Miss Anastasia whose raspy voice and over the top animated readings make for a whole lot of giggles. She was celebrating spring and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. You know it is a successful storytime when Tiago even gets involved. Talia couldn't help getting into the storytelling action and the kids loved sticking green stickers on construction paper. Genius.


Last, but definitely not least, we drove up the street to my favorite garden in San Antonio. The Japanese Sunken Garden. Beautiful and peaceful. We ate a little picnic lunch and went to explore. We had to figure out how all the Koi fish made it around the little lake. We discovered turtles and Tiago seemed overly interested in the consequences of "accidentally" falling into the water.


Wondering about that bump?

Well, the ones on my legs are unsightly and painful varicose veins that always rear their ugly selves while I am pregnant (all 25 weeks pregnant that is with our second baby boy)! Just a little treat for those who endured the recap of the week.
Now I will break from this post and save all the St Patty fun for tomorrow.

Buried Treasure

Spring break happens early here in Texas because the weather turns to Spring earlier than our northern states. It just so happens that St Patrick's Day falls during spring break so we decided to celebrate early. Dawning our greenest shirts, we shared a fun lunch with Mia at school. We came with rainbow cupcakes thanks to a play group party minutes before lunch. Fernando, who was on nights, was able to join the festivities. One must forgive him for his shirt color. . .he was slightly comatose.




The fun continued at home as the kids played bury your sibling in our rock pile pit on our playground.

A New Park To Love

We love living so close to Sea World, but unfortunately, it isn't open year around. So, when that outdoor venue is unavailable, we get into a boring rut of lack luster parks that are kind of out of the way.

That is until recently. While driving in my dog pattern to the grocery store one day I glanced over into a near by neighborhood and saw a beautifully new park. Each time I drove past after that, I hungered to explore its potential. Concerned that the park was meant only for the neighborhood, I just drooled from a distance. Finally, I could take it no longer and was rewarded greatly for my curiosity.
ZIPLINES!



MERRY-GO-ROUNDS!


MERRY ME GO ROUND


BALANCE BEAMS


AND SO MUCH MORE! Ok, not that much more but enough to use our bodies and play pretty much all by ourselves most days! Thank heavens for new discoveries!