StrollerFit Easter Egg Hunt

Royal and I and the kiddos went to the 2nd annual StrollerFit Easter Egg Hunt today. It was a lot of fun, and while I am going through a ton of pictures and videos that I’m going to be editing and putting together for Tonya’s blog, there were just a few funny things that my family did today and I just can’t not share. :)

The unique thing about the StrollerFit Easter Egg Hunt is that the kids are allowed to get out of the strollers (usually they need to stay in strollers during workouts) and find the eggs, but it’s whats in the eggs that makes all the difference. They aren’t filled with candy, they are filled with pieces of paper that have exercises on them. Things like pushups, ice skaters, lunges, hill runs, squats, etc…



Royal did all the work today, as I was taking lots of pictures, so I took pictures of him doing the work.

Running…



Ice skaters…



Push Ups…



And then there was the bunny hop sack race. I got to get out of it because of my bad knees, and I wanted to get some pictures, which I am so glad I did because Royal did the most hilarious thing.

Here they are at the starting line…



Hop, Royal, Hop!





Then comes the funny part. Royal thought this was the finish line, he didn’t realize you had to turn around and hop back. So, in order to insure his victory, he dove across the “finish line”. It was hil.ar.i.ous.



And just so Willow’s not left out of this post completely, here’s a picture of her doing the kids easter egg hunt! :)

Feedin' Time

I love how Jayden and Willow crack each other up. Jayden wanted to help Willow eat some raisins, so he got a spoon and started feeding her. She thought it was hilarious…

Kid Quote :: 6

Jayden : Mom, when I grow up, I’m going to ride horses

Me : Sweet. So, are you going to be a cowboy?

Jayden : No. I’m going to be a horseboy. But I’ll always be a Jayden.

Outside

I love when the weather is nice enough to play out in the backyard.  It was a little windy today, but at least it wasn’t snowing!  And now that Willow is walking, it makes it much easier!  I don’t have to carrying her around, because scooching was not that effective on the grass.  :)

Jayden asked me to take some pictures of them swinging today.



Willow always wants to swing hanging onto 2 balls. I think partially because she can say the word ball now, so she can yell, ‘BALL!!’ and I’ll go get what she wants. Where in other cases she just yells and I obviously go get the wrong thing because when I bring it to her she swats at it and yells more. :)



Willow is also loving slides these days.





Jayden pushed her just a tad hard on this one…she kinda went flying off the end…

Welcome, Easton William!

My sister, Kaylee, finally had her #3 bouncing baby boy in the wee hours this morning, at home in Phoenix, AZ! She then proceeded to make me wait a good 6 hours before she got on the computer and Oovoo’d with her sisters, so that we could see him. I don’t know, she said something about being tired or something….

Welcome to the outside world Easton William! I can’t wait until I actually get to hold you!!! We love you so much already!!!

Phoenix Time!

We made it to Phoenix without too much trouble, and the cousins have been having so much fun with each other ever since.  Everyone is tired from excitement and swimming and sun and waking up early, and my poor kids are dealing with a 2 hour time difference.  It has been loud and exhausting, but I love seeing the 3 cousins together, they just love playing with each other.










My sister Joanna also is down here visiting with us! And all the kids are loving having Aunt Jojee around too!!! (plus she always comes with gifts!)

Willie Made it to Wichita!

ayden and I look for Willie every time we go to the store. Jones Soda is always on the top shelf, the shelf I can hardly reach, but I stand on my tippy toes and climb up the shelves and pull all the bottles down and we look at them one by one and then always put them all back because we’ve never found him. Today I went to the store alone and I actually thought about not even going down the soda aisle to look for him, but Royal’s out of chips and the chips are right across from the soda, so I figured I might as well check. Today was my lucky day, in the 4th container I took off the shelf, I found one bottle with his picture on it. I couldn’t believe it. But I didn’t want to buy the 4-pack and only have 1 bottle of Willie and then 3 other random ones, so I pulled the rest of them off the shelf and found 3 other bottles with Willie’s picture.

It’s totally bitter sweet. I’m so glad to have actually run across one of his bottles here in Wichita, but sad that the only way he can come visit me here is on the label of a bottle of soda.

So, if you’re in a store that sells Jones soda, go check the Berry Lemonade bottles and see if you can find Willie too!

What the?

Welcome, Spring!



WELCOME!

Guess Where We Went?

The zoo! Again! We go a lot. :) It’s Friday, so that means no StrollerFit, and it’s suppose to be a pretty warm sunny day, so I wanted to get the kids outside and do something, especially since it’s suppose to snow tomorrow. Freaky Kansas weather….



We hardly ever get around to see ALL the animals, so each time we go we try and start with some of the animals that we didn’t get to see last time. Jayden wanted to start out at the orangutans. I said to him, “I like the orangutans because they are orange, why do you like them?” Jayden says, “I like them because of their crazy hair!”



We stopped by the lion’s den again, since they were so active last time. Not so much this time, they were all out laying in the sun.



Then it was onto the dead zebra. The dead zebra is a statue outside the lion’s den and there is actually a speaker that looks like a rock that roars when you come near the zebra. The sign near the dead zebra says that the lion that killed this one was already pretty full, because he didn’t eat much and he only took off with the head, leaving this lovely carcass behind. We have to stop and see the dead zebra every time, which of course starts Jayden on a course of talking about guts and death and meat and killing. I personally think this statue is gross, but the kids are pretty interested in it.





My favorite animal of the trip this time was the bears. We have never got to see the bears this close, they are usually in their caves when we go by and all you see is a big brown furry lumps. Jayden spotted them this time though going down to their watering hole which is right in front of a viewing area.

Rachel's Brilliant Bracketology

So, the madness begins again. I am pretty much good for 1, maybe 2 weekends of all this basketball. But by the time Sunday rolls around on the 2nd weekend, I just can’t take it anymore. I am going to have to find something for me and the kids to do outside of the house, because I know Royal will be in front of the tv most of the time and he’s not gonna be very happy about kids jumping all over him. Really though, to me, it’s not that big of deal. Royal is really good about not insisting he gets to watch sports every weekend, most of the time he misses the games he wants to watch so he can play with the kiddos. So, I guess once a year I can be okay with him wanting to watch sports all day. :)

However, even though I really don’t care that much about college basketball, I’ve still filled out a bracket again this year. Every year Royal and I bet a quarter on our brackets, and every year I’ve lost. No big deal, whatever, I can part with a quarter. But Royal came home yesterday and told me he bet a friend of his lunch over the outcome of one game. One game! Are you kidding me? And I get a quarter if I win the whole thing???? So, I’ve upped the stakes for Royal. I have been wanting to get a travel trailer for our family for a couple years now, and we’ve been saving for it. We actually have been out shopping the past couple of weekends trying to figure out what we want. Then we got some notice saying because our house is no longer in a development that is building houses, we’ve been bumped to a different tax bracket and we owe a bunch of money. Have I ever mentioned that Kansas has the most taxes ever??? I hate it!!! So, that pretty much squashed me getting my trailer anytime soon. That is, unless I win my bracket. If I win, I get to get my trailer anyway. If I lose, well, I’ll wait until we’ve saved up the money again.

So, for my brilliant bracketology this year, I think I’ve done some good reasoning. If any of you have been following this blog for awhile now, you’ll know from 2009’s post, and 2008’s post that I pick based off of seeding, school colors, the ferocity of school mascots, if the school is in a town I might want to visit someday, things like that. And I always lose, but whatever, no need to change my methodology now! Here are some of my most creative picks this year. I have put #5Butler and #4Vanderbilt to meet up in the second round, and I’ve picked Butler to win that game because I think it would be really nice if I had butler around here (or a maid, but there’s no school playing this year with that name) I have #10Florida picked to beat #7BYU in the first round because Florida sounds really nice this time of year AND I like orange juice. I have Syracuse making it to the final 4 because, if you’ve read 2009 post, I really dig cream-sicles and their colors are orange the white. This year in the final I’ve got Kansas (sorry Tonya, please don’t punish me on Monday for letting Syracuse beat K-State, I promise to share some cream-sicles with you) and Duke. I had Duke picked to win it last year. Why? Because of my favorite Duke sweatshirt. Obviously it’s a sweatshirt I really like.

And really who would win in a real life fight?

A blue devil? or a Jayhawk ?

I’m sorry, but the Jayhawk pretty much just looks like a parrot with tennis shoes on, and my parents have had a couple of those, well minus the shoes of course, and boy are they annoying. The blue devil’s name came from French soldiers in WW1, and soldiers have guns and to win all they’d have to do is shoot the made up bird (combo of blue jay and sparrow hawk) down!

Jayden Sings :: A Medley

I asked Jayden this morning to go into his room and pick out some green clothes so I wasn’t forced to pinch his buns all day. No big surprise he showed up in his dinosaur costume. “This is green, right mom??? Now you won’t have to pinch my buns”

Then today at lunch, Jayden decided to bust out in song, so I recorded it for you. Not just one song friends, 3 songs. You are a lucky bunch!

Kid Quote :: 5

I was working on some sewing projects when Jayden brings down the game Uncle Wiggly to play with Royal. Jayden has lost to Royal the last couple of times they’ve played, and he’s had a little bit of trouble dealing with that. Competitive much??? Totally not sure where he gets all that from… :)
So, as Royal is getting the game set up Jayden says to him, “I’m gonna win this time! Last time I losed, this time I’m gonna win!”

Royal says, “I like your attitute! Remember, always come to a game believing you are going to win!”

To which Jayden says, “Remember Dad, always come to a game knowing you are going to lose.”

Accessorize

I love watching the difference between having a boy and a girl. Jayden pretended everything was a car or airplane and drove or flew anything around. Willow, while she’s picked up on the airplane thing from her brother, tries to put her own shoes on, goes through the laundry and finds a shirt to pull over her head. She puts on hats, and scarves, and glasses, and necklaces. She just cracks me up.

Yesterday we were playing in the basement and Willow comes out from the toy area like this.




What can I say, she loves her accessories!

Jayden Sings :: Old McDonald

I bet you didn’t know that Old McDonald has dinosaurs living on his farm!

And in case you didn’t know, a t-rex says “roar” and a long neck says “smack”. Smack would be the sound of it’s tail hitting a t-rex. (explanation given by Jayden)

Lunch and Tea

I betcha didn’t know that the best way to eat mashed potatoes was by sticking an olive on your finger and using it as a scooper.





Yea, Willow didn’t know either… and that would be because she has yet to experience a Thanksgiving at the McComb household. Olives are really for scooping and throwing mashed potatoes across the table. :)



After you’re all filled up on lunch, well, you have to have a tea party.





Jayden likes to put one of the “desserts” into his cup, so he can have whipped cream tea.



Delicious!!!

Willow Walking

After a few days practice, Willow is now cruising around the house. That is, if I remind her to just walk. She has a tendency to want to sit down and scooch, but once I tell her to walk she gets this look on her face like, ‘Oh yea! I am so doing that!’ And then she just takes off!

Here is an updated video for all my long-distant peeps. I know that last one was pretty dark and blurry. I thought it turned out kinda bad because it was at night and our room wasn’t very bright, but then today when I was trying to take more videos of her walking, things were still kinda blurry. I turned the camera over and I found a perfect little greasy fingerprint covering the whole lens, I’m gonna go with it was probably Jayden’s. Once I got that cleaned off, the picture came out much better!

Impossible?

We weren’t sure it was ever gonna happen. But at 15 months and 13 days, Willow decided she would try out this thing we do called walking. :)

Another Zoo Trip

It is finally warming up and that means the animals get let out of their inside cages at the zoo. My parents generously gave our family another zoo membership this year, and the kids and I go all the time, well once the weather warms up a bit. It just isn’t fun to go when it’s windy and freezing, not that we haven’t done it before, but I’d rather not :) So, since it was suppose to get near 70 today, the kids and I, and a few of their friends spent a good few hours at the zoo this morning.



There was a new baby donkey at the zoo too. She was 8 months old, but this was the first time we had seen her.



We spent a lot of time at the giraffe’s exhibit. Jayden and Willow both really like them, and to be honest, they are one of my favorites too.



We got in on the giraffe feeding today too!

This was 1 of the 2 kid giraffes and he’s not tall enough yet to reach over the feeding platform’s railing. He is actually the same age as Willow!



Look at that tongue!



The lions were out and 1 of the 2 boy lions who are less than 2 years old got all fired up when Jayden and his friend Noah brought over their stuffed tigers. He was pacing around and kept batting at the window trying to get at them (the kids or the stuffed animals, I’m not sure…). It was pretty fun to watch, but made me a bit nervous…I mean, how strong is that glass really???