Landa Park Aquatic Center

We had a BBQ and went to this great Aquatics center with the same group of friends that we go to the beach with. Here are some of the manly men BBQ-ing the manly meat:

 After lunch we went over to the water. They have got something for everyone there. They have a lap pool and a kids are. But their biggest attraction is the river pool. A clear as glass river runs through the park and they captured the river to make this huge pool. The entire thing ranges from 6 to 9 feet deep. You can't tell in the pics but the water is clear and you can see pretty far down into it. The boys had life jackets and Lillie is a good swimmer so we had a nice time. Here is Lillie coming down the huge slide:

 The boys on the little blue slide:

G:

 S:

1.  Tim with some of the Young Men that came. They spent a lot of the day racing, and trying to outdo each others silly dives into the water. It was a super fun day and a great way to start out the summer.

Fun Projects

Refinishing furniture is one of my favorite hobbies. Lillie got some of my furniture from when I was a little girl and had this dresser to get rid of. Unfortunately I did not take any before and after pics. Picture a 23 year old white dresser with 80's flower decorations and brass hardware. I made it boy for my 2 big guys. They loved that I was painting this for them. They loved even more when I went to Hobby Lobby and bought colorful handles for it. But what they loved the most was filling it with their clothes and organizing all of their Hot Wheels and wooden models on the top. Have fun boys! And please don't climb on top of it to see out of the window. It will fall over. You will break something on your body. 

 At the same time I was painting the dresser I re-did these end tables. I found them as a dumpster dive. What was even more awesome is that they were bare wood so I could do anything I wanted with them. They each had a corner that had been chewed up by a cat or dog but hey, that just adds to the character! I didn't want to spend any money so I just used whatever paint supplies we had in the garage. They now sit on either side of our desk and have helped to clear up lots of space around the computer. I love it when people get rid of perfectly good stuff that I can use!

Mother Daughter Trip to Ohio

Lillie and I took a trip to Ohio for 7 days in May. We went to visit my Best Friend Dale and help her out. She was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in February and has been going through Chemo treatments. The chemo that she is receiving now is not nearly as toxic as her first round and it doesn't have all of the terrible side effects of it either. But it does make her extremely tired. So I went to visit and help take care of her kiddos for the week. She invited Lillie to come as well and it was great to bring her. It was pretty special to take such a big trip just the two of us.

Here we are in the plane as we head out of SA:

 Dale has a little girl named Lauren that is the same age as Lillie. They were shy at first but by the end of the car ride from the airport they were the best of friends. They stayed up late every night and Joe (Dale's Husband) ended up with the nick name "The Enforcer" as he would sit by their bedroom door each night to make them fall asleep. I caught them early one morning down in the basement playing kinectables. 

 We went garage sale-ing and found matching angel costumes for $1. They ran around in these all week and put on lots of "shows" for us to watch.

 I took the kids to see the movie "Mirror Mirror" while Dale got some much needed rest. They loved the movie but the best part was at the end when the credits were rolling. The girls and Dale's son Jacob started dancing to the music a little. Then they started dancing more and more and more. They ended up moving out into the aisle following the dance moves of the characters on the screen. They were dancing up and down the aisle completely oblivious to the fact that the audience was watching them and not the screen. It was pretty cute!

 The girls helping Joe plant a vegetable garden

 Jacob as Batman. The kid ran around in this costume every single day. He also had a Robin costume that I had to wear a lot. We were good crime fighting buddies!

 As the week went on Dale's tiredness began to wear off and we were able to do some fun things together. Here we took the kids to the Columbus Zoo:

 This Polar Bear was so cute and entertained us with a lot of water tricks.

 These bats are called Wolf Bats (I think) and they were huge! It made me think that if Vampires were real and they actually turned into bats then this is what they would look like. 

 Took a drive through the OSU campus

 ...and couldn't resist getting a shot with Brutus.

Here we are, Batman and Robin, the unstoppable duo!

 Audrey and Dale. Twelve years ago a cancer diagnosis for one of us would have felt unbelievable. To me it still feels unreal. But Dale is one of the bravest people I know and a serious fighter. Her friend summed it up best when she said "Cancer picked the wrong person to mess with!" She is right. I don't know anyone more competitive than Dale and she wants to win this fight bad. She does everything that she can to give herself and her family the most normal life possible right now. And spending time with her and seeing her perspective has helped me to cherish my own life even more. From the scans that she has had it looks like all of her treatments are working and the tumors are shrinking. She will be done with Chemo at the end of June and have a double mastectomy in August. She will then have to be scanned every three months and have to wait a year to be deemed cancer free. When that happens they are throwing a big cancer free party and I told her, "I will be there!" I love her so much and I am so grateful that I know her! 

Grant's Trip to the Dino Museum and Potty Training

Grant likes Dinosaurs. A lot. So when I found a good groupon for a dinosaur museum my friend and I bought tickets and took our boys out for a morning of fun... or so we thought. They hated the place! It was dark and loud and poorly done and they were absolutely freaked out about the entire thing! We spent about 15 minutes trying to get them to like it until we finally gave up. They only posed for these pictures because we were on the way out and they could see the front. Oh well, I guess every date can't be a winner!

 Grant and Kelton posing with their "favorite" dinosaur:

 The museum was really a store in the mall. So afterward we killed some time in the play area then took them to lunch. I think the boys were satisfied. 

Potty Training

In other more awesome news, Grant is now potty trained! The kid has been ready for about 8 months now. But when it comes to developmental things in parenting I like to take the path of least resistance. I'm sure that I could have had him potty trained about 6 months ago if we had given two months of our lives away to stress and irritation. But I decided that $150 worth of diapers and wipes was worth it. We gave unsuccessful tries here and there but none of them stuck. The kid is just so stubborn! (I'm sure that he doesn't get that from Tim at all...) He would go a day or two with a dry diaper choosing to go potty all the time. Then we'd try underwear and it would be nothing but accidents for two days straight. So back into diapers he'd go. Finally, 2 Sundays ago I said "Grant, tomorrow is your last day in diapers. It's underwear after that." I had it in my head that I would give it 2 weeks. I was willing to clean up 2 weeks worth of wet and dirty clothing and carpet hoping that in that time he'd realize that he didn't like being wet. Well, I didn't have to do it. I don't know why it happened to click, but it did. We started underwear on Tuesday May 15th. He had one accident a day for the first three days. After that he has been completely dry. We started going out immediately with a 2 hour trip to the gym on the first day and so far he has had zero accidents while out of the house. What's even better is that a few days into the entire thing he started being dry at night too! I have never had such an easy "training" experience I tell you! I am so glad that I waited. 

Good job Grant! We are so proud of you and we love to see how proud you are of yourself in your big boy underwear!

Fiesta Float Parade and Author's Day

Fiesta Float Parade

Each year in April for nine days the city of San Antonio has a Fiesta celebration. Something about taking over the city from Mexico. Mostly it's like a mini Mardi Gras and people come from all over the country and get drunk. However, there are some really cool parades and fun historical stuff too. We don't go to any of it. We've tried a couple of times and the events are way to packed to be any fun. I think Tim and the kids got stuck a the Battle of Flowers Parade for about 7 hours last year. After that we swore off Fiesta events forever. Fortunately, the kids school makes a very big deal of it. So much so that Samuel is convinced that "Fiesta" is what happens at his school. They did a big float parade where the kids make a float with whatever theme that they choose. Then they have a big carnival for the rest of the day. Last year we did shoe box floats. That's what the flier that was sent home said to make. But when we got to the school we saw that people really go above and beyond. So this year, we did too.

Here is Samuel with his Hot Wheels Monster Jam float. We mounted it onto a little ride on toy. 

 And here is Lillie with her Fiesta Princess float mounted onto our wagon. I showed her how to make the paper flowers then she took the rest of the project into her hands and I didn't have to do a thing. I thought she did a great job on it!

 Viva Fiesta!

Author's Day

This is one of our favorite days of the school year. All week long the kids celebrate reading and do different fun activities on different days. Unfortunately this year we got the flier about it the day before Lillie and I went out of town to Ohio. We were scheduled to fly back in the day before author's day. "How on earth am I going to get these costumes together?" I thought. Fortunately things worked out. Lillie's current favorite books are the Little House on the Prairie series and she wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder. Sweet. I called up my mom and she dug out the old pioneer day costumes. This was our best, (and easiest) costume yet! 

 Here is Samuel as a Power Ranger. Now, normally I do not allow these kinds of characters for authors day. We were going to do something cooler (author's day cooler I mean) like "Put Me in the Zoo" by Robert Lopshire, or "Rude Giants" by Audrey Wood. But when it got to be 8pm the night before and we were just settling in from a week away from home I decided that the stress wasn't worth it and I let him go as what he wanted to be in the first place. He did look super awesome!

I love that my kids love books and they are both excellent readers. What with their mom, and Grandma Dianne, and Grammy, and all those Whaley sisters that love to read it's not really that big of a surprise I guess. They are each the top reader in their class and before the end of Kinder Samuel has passed almost all the reading levels that are required to graduate 1st grade. They've got great reading genes!

Samuel's Done With The Thumb!

Samuel and his thumb have been very good friends from birth. We were happy and content to let him stop the sucking on his own. However, we were well into his Kindergarten year and the sucking was not decreasing at all. Tim decided to give him a little push that he could take at his own pace. Samuel and Tim went to Target one Saturday morning and Samuel was allowed to pick out anything that he wanted. He chose Hot Wheels Wall Tracks. The toy went to the top of the fridge where he could see it all the time. Tim made his a happy face chart. He was allowed to be caught sucking his thumb a certain amount of times a day with that number of times decreasing as he made improvements. Once he had been 2 weeks without sucking his thumb once he would be able to get his tracks.

Well, he made it through the chart with flying colors! It took about 5 weeks to make it through all of the levels, but after the first week and a half he never sucked his thumb again!

Here he is with his prize for his accomplishment:

 He loves these tracks but I think what he loved the most was that he didn't have to share them ;)

You did a great job Samuel, we are so proud of you! What a huge and awesome accomplishment!

Easter Season 2012

This Easter sort of crept up on us. I don't like to do all the egg coloring and hunting on Easter because frankly I don't see how any of that ties to the holiday whatsoever. 

Here, we made Resurrection Rolls the night before Easter. They were pretty cool. You wrap a marshmallow dipped in melted butter, cinnamon, and sugar them wrap it in a crescent roll. You leave a small opening in the roll and them bake them. When their done the roll has melted and you have an empty tomb. We used it as our FHE lesson to teach the kids about the real meaning of Easter. They thought it was pretty cool and those rolls were dang tasty!

 Here we are coloring eggs the day after Easter I believe. I think we might have eaten them right away. Boiled eggs taste so much better when they are warm; why wait?

 The Easter Bunny decided not to leave too much candy this year. He's noticed that the Doolittle children have much better behavior when their sugar level is seriously decreased. So here are the boys playing with their Easter basket bubbles. I think the baskets full of toys were the enjoyed more and for a longer time than the candy baskets ever were. 

 The monday following Easter we had an FHE egg hunt. Grammy and Grandad came to hide the eggs and hide them they did! It took the kids about 15 minutes to hunt down all the eggs and they had a blast!

Happy Easter Activities!

The Latest On Lillie

Career Day

In March the kid's elementary school had a career day. Samuel was sick. He had a fireman suit which he wore the next day. I could swear that we got a picture of him in it but I can't find it anywhere. Here's Lillie though:

 She decided to be a veterinarian. I did my best to turn a white t-shirt into a lab coat.

 Lillie's Art Shows

This Spring Lillie was invited to be in 2 different art shows. One was called "Los Leones Art Festival". The selected children could put a price on their art work and try to earn money. Lillie selected not to sell the original but to sell prints for $5 a copy. She came out with $18 (there was a 10% fee to the host of the art show) and was pretty excited to realize that her art could earn money. Here she is next to her piece entitled "This is Life"

 Two weekends ago (in May) Lillie was invited to the Northside ISD art show. Her piece which was a rattlesnake head won a teacher award. These were the only awards given. Out of the hundreds of pieces in the show including everything from elementary grades through High School only about 30 awards were handed out. We are very proud of our budding artist! Here she is below with her art teacher Mr. Rodriguez.

 And here is her rattlesnake:

 I think she chose to draw a rattlesnake because she has been doing a research paper on desert life lately. 

City Wide Bike Rodeo

In February Lillie placed 1st in her school's bike rodeo so she was invited to the City Wide Bike Rodeo. We went downtown this past Saturday (5/26) and she competed with kids from all over the city. They had the participants stagger their arrival throughout the day which was very nice. We walked in, registered her, she went right through the course and we were done! 

 She was not nervous at all and rode through the course like a champ. 

 Here she is getting her participants ribbon. We don't know yet if she placed. They did the awards at the end and you could come back to hear them but we went to a water park with friends instead. If she happened to win then her school will let us know. 

You did a great job Lil'Star!