Nashville Zoo

Today we took a trip to the Nashville Zoo and had so much fun. We went with the Hatcher's and had a great time with friends. I know 4 hours to get to the zoo?!?!?! but the playground was totally worth it! And that's only part of it!! There is a ton more to play on!!!We bought passes so we can go back again and I think this summer we will be planning trips Nashville even if it's a Friday/Saturday trip. It's really fun and there's so much more of the town that we would love to see. It's the only other city in the country that I would consider moving too. I just love it and the zoo sure has helped that.
We didn't have to drive the whole way there today b/c Emily let us all crash at her house last night. This morning the kids were up and super excited to get on the road. The Zoo was easy to find and was a little busy but not too bad. There were lots of animals and they are super nice since you can bring in all your food for lunch. That saves a ton of money for us. The kids had a great time and they were all tried after walking and playing all morning long.
After we left the zoo, we did take a short side trip to downtown to look around. We didn't get out this time but the girls seemed to like it. I promise next time we will find Big Machine records and take a picture :-) They were all asleep as soon as we left downtown and slept for most of the way home. Katy slept until she needed a potty break and I like that.

In all it was a great day and now tomorrow it is time to start my project for school and Steve needs to get back on the computer and well...be busy all day long!

Here are some pictures :-)

I am so glad that we got a new battery charger so we can finally use our camera again!!! I forgot how nice it is to take pictures and capture the girls having fun!!! We went to the museum yesterday just to get out of the house and the girls had a lot of fun. You can look for hair changes in the girls too :-)

The girls all together

Katy through the looking glass

Ruby really interested in something.

There they are together. Hair cutters unite.

Ruby looking through the looking glass.

Hannah's turn through the glass.And my favorite picture of the day.......
YES, that is the bear Katy is deathly afraid of, but not my Ruby :-)

Since my last Post....

Well we all know that Steve wrote the last post about how hair and scissors don't make magic, unless someone that knows what they are doing is working their magic. I guess that the girls did NOT understand that whole concept because the little girls have cut their hair two more times since then. I guess that I didn't realize that we had so many pairs of scissors around the house or that they could find them when I hid them (or at least I thought that they did). Other than me being really mad and sad all at the same time with my girls not having much hair these days, we have been able to get somethings done around the house.

Saturday we were able to get the beds moved for the garden into the back of the lot with the help of the missionaries. We sorta had to bribe them to help us in the morning because Steve promised to go and help them in the afternoon. That's all good b/c there was no way I was strong enough to get those things moved way out there in the yard!!! With that part one of our garden was done!

I left that morning to go and find out how much the dirt would cost to fill those bad boys up. I took Katy down to the Co-op in town to get the scoop on dirt. There were a few things against me to start out before I even walked into the place. First, I didn't drive my truck. Second, I was a girl and coming in with a small child at that. Third, I was wearing my wild bell bottomed pants that I only garden in. So with all of that I walk in and there are like 10 guys behind the counter!! Hahahaha.....I go up and ask about some dirt for my garden and get told that it was $1.99 a bag and I could take my choice. They would even help me out to my car with it. HAHAHA!!! I have 5 beds that are 4 FEET by 16 FEET and 16 inches deep!! I don't think that one bag of dirt for a $1.99 is going to cut it. Although that would have been really nice. :-) So I explain about my garden and how many I have and hope to convey at the same time that I have done a garden before, so I know a little of what I am talking about. They do get some numbers together and they told me that I need 6 TONS of dirt!! WOW!! I didn't realize that we would need that much dirt to fill up our beds, but 6 tons it is. Nope can't get it delivered since the day before it rained 5 inches! The pile of dirt was basically MUD, so we are waiting for it to dry out a little bit before we can get out dirt. We only really need 3 tons of top soil because we will get 1 ton of sawdust and 2 tons of compost to make our 6 tons. Now I am just hoping that they can mix it all up in the truck so we can just put it in the boxes! But that will be part 2 of our garden.

Sunday was fun. We had an appointment with the stake president that we knew about for 2 weeks! That part was not so fun. The waiting. I am not so good at that at all, so it just about drove me nuts. It's all good though because the calling was not for me anyway. It was for Steve!!! He is going to be the Elders Quorum president. It should be interesting because church is small but we will see. I know he will do a great job!!

Yesterday I took the girls to get the supplies to make a homemade balance beam! I am proud of making it. Granted it's not to level to the floor, but it gets it done. The girls are happy and that's all that matters. First thing Ruby wanted to do was a back walk over! Crazy girl, but I showed her how to stick her thumbs together and there she goes!! With a little spot of course, but she has no fear and loves to try anything!

They love to practice gymnastics and going to class is the best part of their week. I never realized how strong my girls were until we got them into class. Hannah had a great night in her practice! There were only 4 girls with 2 teachers last night, so she got a great workout. She was able to get her pullover on bars!!!! That's a big thing for her. One more thing checked off to end up on team at the end of the year.

Well that is how things are going this week so far. Busy and having fun. Spring break is cloudy with treating rain all day long and not really warm, but we are making the best of it. I promise to get out the camera today and take some pictures of the hair cuts, the garden, and the beam. I'll just insert them or make a new post, since we have plans to go to the museum today. Catch up with everyone later!

Monday, Monday...Nah Nah, Nah Nah Nah

Ok, so Alicia went to a Relief Society dinner this evening, and so excitedly I decided to watch the girls OUTSIDE because they wanted to go out on this beautiful day. It was indeed beautiful, so I let them jump on the trampoline, sing, and just be girls. While the merriment continued I decided to continue something on my own: the "Garden Boxes" project. so I started by getting some of the mesh on the bottoms of the boxes to help keep out the weeds and such. While I was doing this the girls continued to play, but got rather quiet and luckily I caught them early...Ruby and Katy had grabbed the scissors and began to give each other haircuts. Now, with boys when our neighbor Bethany in Las Vegas (I think Daniel and I were 8 or 9 or something like that) decided to cut our hair, it was easy to buzz it off (a buzz I think stayed with me for many years thereafter). So I assume it was not that big of a deal (you'll have to ask my mother on that one). Well I have to say after "kindly" taking the scissors from Ruby, I asked what it was they all thought they were doing. Now while Hannah was not cutting the hair, she seemed to be supervising (as usual, so that way she can't get in trouble, right?) The response I got was amusing.
"Daddy, you know Easter is coming up right?"
"Yes girls, it is"
"Well , we need to make the eggs and get the baskets ready."
"What does that have to do with cutting hair?" I asked.
Hannah's response, "Well dad, we have to have hair for the baskets to put the eggs in."

Oh right, silly me. Of course you would need hair for the baskets and of course it makes sense to cut our hair off. For the baskets. Because where else are we going to get the hair.

LUCKILY I caught them before some huge damage was done, but you can definitely tell it was done. Now the remaining mystery: When will Alicia find out or notice? Do I dare tell her? Maybe she'll read this post and discover it, or maybe she'll discover it after she gets home. Maybe I'll put a poll on Facebook and have people make a guess as to how long it will take her to notice.

I guess we'll see! One question I have though: how do you scold your girls for doing something that was clearly not the right thing to do when all you can do is laugh at their reasoning and the looks on their faces as I question them? My oh my...I'm not doing so great at this fathering thing...

Our Saturday Together!

It was so nice out today for Alabama. I almost thought that it was spring time! Steve and I decided that today was the day to get our boxes ready for our garden. No, not flowers and all the prettys in the world, but for fruits and veggies! Stuff to feed our growing family of girls.

We had talked about doing boxes that were 16 feet by 4 feet and that sounded like a good size to us. That was until we started putting them together. They were HUGE and we made FIVE of them. I did some math and that is 320 square feet of garden space! I can't wait to get out there for our next weekend adventure of moving our boxes and filling them with dirt and worms!

Here is where our garden is going to go.....Here is when we were just getting started....Here is when we were done....I also was able to get a few pictures of the girls done today too! They needed something new. It was just a few quick shots since the sun was already going down. We get to take pictures next month with my friend, Erin and I can't wait. It's my reward for getting through my first semester of school, mother's day present, and my birthday present all wrapped into one. Plus we haven't had really nice ones done since Katy was a year old. My pictures in my hallway need to be updated too. Katy's last good picture was at 6 months old, Hannah has her 4 year old preschool picture up, and well Ruby is the only one with a new one from the fall. Sorry, here I am off topic again. Here they are....I just love their cute little legs! Can you tell who is who?? All their knees are just about the same height! :-)

Friday Night Family Activity

Steve working hard a work + empty shelves of food = Friday Family Night at Sam's Club

Steve had a really good month at work, so we were able to get a few bills paid and were able to set aside some money for a trip to Sam's Club. Over the last few months we have really gotten down to the bare minimum on food storage and it hasn't been fun, but we have had full bellies. That I am thankful for, but tonight we were able to pile the kids in the van and head to Rome, Georgia. (Isn't sad that we have to go to another time zone and STATE to go to Sam's??) The girls were amazing tonight and stayed right by us the whole time. Ruby did have a minor break down while we were getting our new cards, but that was it. The girls slept the whole way there and that helped a lot I think. We didn't even have any fighting tonight with any of us and that's a major accomplishment for this family of 5!! I even took my handy calculator and started us out even a little under budget just to see how we would do. It was fun and the kids really got into all the prices of things. It was a fun night of numbers and helping. They were rewarded for their awesome help with a new DVD :-)

We were able to stock our shelves with enough treats and food for a few months. The best thing was that we were still under budget by 20%!!! I did learn that shopping for that much food to feed a small army is a lot of work. It took a lot to just get all the food in the house and even more to get it all put away. I won't lie. There is still stuff that isn't put away, but it can wait.

Ruby and Katy helped me get all of the chicken and hamburger put into the smaller freezer bags. That was fun for me because I hate doing that all by myself. Steve won't help....wait let me take that back. He would rather not handle any type of raw meat, so I am the lucky one that gets to put it all away instead. Tonight the little girls were great! I was the one who put about a pound of hamburger in the bags and they squished it up so the bags would lay flat! All I needed to do was seal them up and they were done! We all got 20 pounds done in just a few minutes. Now I don't have to look at these huge tubes of meat in my fridge that would be begging for attention!! Plus my hubby will be proud because it is all done and put away.

Tomorrow I get to take another 30 minute trip to Aldi's and stock up on our canned food. Veggies and Fruits are much cheaper there and it's a fun place to shop. Don't forget your quarter for the cart though!!

Well that was our family activity for tonight. I am worn out and hopefully the kids will get to bed soon! It's after 10 already!!