Keeping Busy

We're managing to keep ourselves pretty busy and well occupied despite the never ending rain and gloomy weather.

Friday night Ava wanted to stay up late and have a movie night. The kids piled up pillows and blankets and cozied up to watch The Clone Wars. I was very surprised that they watched the entire movie with only a few breaks to have a light saber fight. They ended up being up until 9pm, which is pretty late for them (normally it's lights out at 8pm). I was hoping by letting them stay up late that they'd sleep in late and I was right! Ava got up at 7:40, but went back to her room to read and Maddux didn't get up until almost 8:30 and that's when Ava came out as well. Pretty nice for me!

Saturday we went with our neighbor to Plaza Fiesta. Originally, the plan was for Ava to go with them and Maddux & I would stay home or do something else, but it was so rainy I decided to just take him too. I wasn't sure he'd like it since he'd be by himself and it was really crowded, but he had a blast. We went to McD's afterwards for dinner and made a trip to Wal-mart after that. When we left walmart I had to holler all the way home for Maddux to stay awake. Plaza Fiesta really wore him out, but I didn't want him taking a nap at 6pm! They were off to bed at 7:30 and I didn't hear a peep out of them until 7:30 this morning.

This morning Kevin's parents, his sister and her 2 boys came over to see the kitchen counters and tile and let the kids play. Then we all went to Beef O'Brady's for lunch. It was a nice way to kill a few hours of our day.

When we got home the kids wanted to do their new craft that they picked out at walmart yesterday. They were Martha Stewart hand puppet kits. Ava picked a blue bird and Maddux picked a kitty (no surprise there!). I was a little skeptical about how they would be, but I am really impressed! The "paper" bag is actually made out of fabric so it won't tear and all the other pieces are felt. You just peel of the sticky spots and put them on the bag and you end up with really cute and durable puppets!

Now the kids are off playing. Aunt Angel brough them each a drawing book. Maddux's teaches very basic ways to draw animals and Ava's shows how to do pencil sketches of all sorts of things... fairies, princesses, animals, etc. It's going to keep Ava busy for hours.

Sometime today I want to clean out our dining room, aka the toy room. It's gotten quite messy lately and needs a big clean-out and reorg. We'll see how much I can get the kids to cooperate!