Fun time with Grandma part 1

My mom, AKA "Noni" as the kids call her, came to visit us with two of the kids' cousins over the weekend. Boy did the kids have fun! We had a jammed pack weekend, but still there is so much to see and do here that we didn't get to. Warning - the next few posts will have a bunch of pictures... as always, click once to enlarge.


Silly cousins in their matching jammies. The kids had a lot of fun with two of my sister's kids, Jack and Maya. Here's the kids at the entrance to the Albuquerque Balloon Museum.

Having fun at the museum.


It was a cool museum, I didn't know that they had hot air balloons back in the 1700's! Since we live in the balloon capitol, we'll have to go up in the air one of these days....


Later that day we had lunch at Chuck e Cheese. What kid doesn't love Chuck e Cheese? In my opinion it is just an overpriced pizza place and they all look so old. I think it's time they renovated or updated their look! But of course, the kids had fun putting coins in machines and pretending that the knew how to play!


Kevin didn't like this ride too much!


Darci and grandma.


Paige trying to figure out why the machine wasn't giving her any tickets. Next picture she's eating the sucker that took 30 tickets to buy!


Kids in front of the Albuquerque Temple

St Patrick's Day

Lucky Leprechan Juice - So the plan was to make these sherbet juices with lime green sherbet, but of course I didn't really plan ahead and when I went to the store yesterday all they had was rainbow sherbet, but they still turned out good, especially with a squeeze of fresh lime!



We had about a day's notice that Derek needed to make a leprechan trap for school yesterday. They left them in their room overnight and he said when they got there, nobody caught one, but the little guys sure made a mess! Chairs were turned over, there was paper everywhere and they even left some little green cookies for the kiddos.

Random pictures of the kids

This week is going to be busy... I start orientation for my new job tomorrow and have that for a few days and then my mom will be visiting at the end of the week with some of the kids cousins so we're going to have fun with that. I'm looking forward to working again, I miss working at a hospital and dealing with the sick and wounded. I miss all the blood and guts!! It'll probably still be another 3 weeks before I'm actually working on one of the units. It sounds like they're going to train me to work on more intensive units, so I'm really looking forward to it.

We still have not sold our house in Gilbert... don't know if it would ever sell in today's market. It's sad... we did everything right, bought a modest home that we could afford and now we're paying the price for those that didn't. It's very frustrating when you know your house is worth a certain amount and because of all the foreclosures you could never sell it for that. Everyone in Arizona knows what I mean. The good news is that we found out that can still qualify for another home here in Albuquerque even with our Arizona house because we have excellent credit. The bad news is that if we do a short sale our credit will be shot for at least 3 years! So, we're probably going to rent out our other house until we find something here and then I hate to say it but who cares what happens to it then. Who knows, maybe the market will improve in a year.... doubt it though. Anyway, enough of housing stuff, it makes me so mad to even think about it... Here's some pics of the kids...

Derek the dinosaur digger

I got this dinosaur egg at the dollar store and he's been digging and sweeping away at it trying to get to the dinosaur bones hidden beneath the dirt. He's been working on it for days and still doesn't have it done. After he finds all the bones, he can put them together to find out what kind of dinosaur it is. Best dollar I've spent in a while! He always says he wants to be a dinosaur hunter when he grows up.

Kevin the sleepyhead

Kevin sat in this chair after church and fell asleep while the other kids were playing around him. Sundays are hard without naps!

Paige the pretty princess

We've made friends with a family in the ward who has some girls and they adore Paige and Paige loves them. They were over the other day and of course had to paint her fingers and toes and put makeup on her. She was in heaven!

When she's not being silly and running around everywhere, she sure is a sweetie!

The shirt says it all....

Happy birthday to me!

So for my birthday and with a lot of input from me, this was my present! I'm very excited to start making some vinyl for my house that I don't have yet!

Flower Child

I've been having a lot of fun the past few months making bows and flowers for the girls. Here is one of the super huge flowers I made. Isn't she cute?? I just realized how to stretch and make the photos larger in the blog post, I can't believe I didn't know how to do that before! It kind of blurs it, but I like the bigger pictures.

Derek's Field Trip

Can you find Derek? This was Derek's first field trip. We went to the Albuquerque Aquarium. I was one of the many chaperone's and brought along Paige and Kevin too. It was really fun for the kids, but I was a little disappointed in it because it was so much smaller than I expected. About 30 minutes would have been plenty of time!

Touching the crabs... trying to jump in with the sting rays



Looking at the sting rays



Jellyfish

I love this picture of Kevin with the light coming down in the water.



These sharks look like great white sharks, but I can't remember their names.

Paige kissing the big white turtle

Smelling the flowers