Spring Break Swimming and Shopping

It's spring break this week, so I took the kids to Santa Fe to go swimming at the fun, indoor swimming pool.  And of course, if we're going to Santa Fe we have to stop at Target and Sam's Club.  

Here are a few things that I learned today:

• Always check to see if you have everyone's swimming suit before you drive an hour to the swimming pool.  
• If you happen to not have a swimming suit for your almost-five-year-old then park as close as you can to the entrance of Target and leave your kids in the car while you run as fast as you can and buy the first swimming suit you see.  
• Kids can be excited about getting new socks if they have their own little plastic bag to carry them in.  
• Jack's totally okay with wearing pink flowered flip flops to the mall, if he knows that I'm going to buy him new "boy" flip flops.  
• If you go to Sam's Club during nap time after going swimming, be prepared to have your little guy fall asleep while you're shopping.  (Lucky for me, Kate wanted to ride in the cart, so she held Ty while he slept. 
• It's hard to push a shopping cart full of diapers, food, an almost-seven-year-old and a four year old while holding a toddler that's trying to fall asleep on your shoulder.  
• A 15 minute nap in the cart at Sam's Club was the only nap that Ty needed to take today.

Days like today bring back memories of trips to Provo when I was growing up, except without the visits to fabric stores.  Good times. :)

Across the Street

Our kids love playing in outside, but not in the backyard.  They love playing across the street from our house.  Kate and Jack haul the little table and chairs across the street and play for hours.  They've sold perler beads, dancing lessons, and books from it.  But yesterday they decided to relax with some apples, chocolate milk and books.

Pizza Maker

Jack got to make a pizza at Papa Murphy's yesterday with a few other preschool age friends.  I was very impressed with his pizza making skills.  

 Never mind the cell phone picture quality...

Jack was SO excited that he made dinner for us last night.

Dinosaur Feet

I've been doing a little preschool on Mondays with Jack and three of his boy friends.  Every week we have a theme that boys love (like trains) or if it's a holiday we do boy-approved crafts and worksheets.  This week we learned about dinosaurs.

They made these great dinosaur feet...

After school Kate came home and made herself some purple and yellow polka dotted dinosaur feet.  Super cute!

Bandelier

We went to Bandelier National Monument yesterday to take some pictures of Kate with Flat Sadie for her friend Sadie's school picture.  We've been to Bandelier lots of times in the last couple of years, but the kids don't seem to get tired of it.  

They love climbing the ladders to get into the caves.  Ty walked a lot on this hike and had to go up every ladder.  Dave carried him up the ladders since this is how high he can climb.

Ty inside a cave

Kate with Flat Sadie

 It was fun watching Ty walk by himself on the hike.  He would stop to look at random pieces of grass or to sit down on a little "seat".

 Ty had to be up on the big rock with the other kids.

 Since Ty walks slow, the kids ran ahead to hide behind something so they could scare us when we caught up to them.  Jack picked this great burned log to hide behind.  This is him jumping out and scaring us.  A few seconds later he started crying because we were laughing at how black he was.  

 Jack told me later when I was giving him a shower, that he looked like a man (because of his ash beard).

 I didn't have enough wipes to clean up the blackness (on his face, arms and legs), so Dave helped him do a quick wash in the creek.

Then Jack had to try to cross the creek which ended up with him having some really wet shoes.  Boys will be boys, I guess.

Bombs

We've lived in Los Alamos for almost four years now and haven't ever taken a picture of the atomic bomb replicas that they have at the Bradbury Science Musuem here.

Kate's friend, Sadie, that lives in Colorado sent us a "Flat Sadie" (like the book Flat Stanley) to spend a week with us.  We've been taking some pictures of her with us around Los Alamos and then we'll send her back to Colorado with a little scrapbook of her visit.

Here's Kate with Little Boy (and Flat Sadie)...

 and with Fat Man.

Go Jimmer!

In preparation for the BYU tournament game today, Jack made this sign to cheer Jimmer on.

It reads:

JIMMER

WIN

GO BYU RA GO

COUGARS

Jack wanted to write out the whole BYU fight song, but we stuck with just "RA" and "GO COUGARS".

The kids have been making up some Jimmer knock-knock jokes too.  Anything about Jimmer is super cool.

Knock Knock
Who's there?
Jimmer.
Jimmer who?
Fredette about it.  

Kate's Music Performance

Today was the day of Kate's big music performance at school.  She's been talking about it and practicing for it for a couple of months.

Too bad all the pictures I took turned out really bad.  Kate did great though.  The first and second graders sang lots of songs.  Their music teacher is in our ward and she is excellent!

Superman

Guess who just watched Superman?  Masking tape to the rescue.

Popsicles

It's snowing outside and the kids wanted to eat Popsicles.  Jack and I made some Popsicles this morning thanks to Disney Junior for giving Jack the idea.