While Away

We are on vacation!  And have been for over a week now.  Where did we go?  To my parents' house.  What are we doing?  Working.

Kitchen ready for an update!

That's not entirely true.  Troy has been working.  He helped to prep their kitchen for granite countertops and then went to work putting in some beautiful glass tile backsplash.  And on top of that, he's been doing work on our rentals, getting them ready for the next steps (whatever that means).  

The kids and I are vacationing.  We've been keeping quite busy while still managing to enjoy some indulgences, like excessive snowballs and TV watching.  Here's a string of photos to get you up to speed:

A trip to the Waterlife Museum (Yes, we are still checking things off the list)

Looking at the bayou

Counting the turtles

It wouldn't be a trip to Mamita Donna's without a trip to Chick-fil-A

Dinosaur arts and crafts

Playing the rain

Eating ice cream sandwiches

We've done a bit more, but I tend to forget to bring the camera along.  Give me a break!  I'm on vacation!!

And finally, if pictures weren't enough.  We've got video.  

3...2...1...

And we're back!  Well, I am at least.  I don't think that anyone else ever really went anywhere.  For the past month I've been plagued by a series of unfortunate events.  Allow me to explain.  Wait, there is no time.  Allow me to sum up.

After 3 weeks of on and off excruciating mouth pain, my mouth pain became tooth pain and I needed a root canal.  Problem: the nerve in the tooth was necrotic.  During all this I developed a sinus infection and was put on two rounds of antibiotics.  After all that was done I developed a bladder infection and was put on more antibiotics.  After kicking that I got the flu.  I was pretty certain I was going to die.  Just ask Troy.  Now I'm about 82% of the way to better.  I'm left with a sore throat, cough, and congestion.  My voice has all but left me.

A day with Dad

So today was a great day to be me.  My loving husband, who has been taking care of me without ceasing for the past 3 days got to go back to work.  I'm sure he was elated.  Seriously.  I'm pretty demanding as a sickie.  Not to mention melodramatic.  Not to mention that there were 3 kids in the house to take care of too.  Phew!  Just thinking about it gives me the cold shakes.  But it was a great day because we finally got to get out the house together!  No, seriously.  Being trapped in your bed, in a room, in your house without leaving for 3 days is enough to drive a well person crazy.  This former sickie needed to get out!  And here's where I thank God for our local Chick-Fil-A.

The people who own this franchise must have children.  They are constantly having family nights and cool things going on.  And I mean really cool things.  The other week they had a "Build a Bot" night where they were doing robotics.  A few weeks before that they were doing a dinosaur presentation.  Tonight was the Houston Zoomobile!

The Houston Zoo has a Zoomobile that you can rent for an event.  They bring transportable animals and skulls and furs for the kids to touch and learn about.  It was a great time.  The kids loved to listen to all the animal facts and they even got to touch a baby alligator.  Annie loved it because it was a baby.  And since it was such a nice spring day, they had the event outside (I'm sure it was more because of the whole live animal thing).  So we didn't even have to go inside the Chick-Fil-A!  Instead we hopped in the car and drove to our standby diner.  The 59 Diner.

We enjoyed our burgers and fries and cold lemonade.  I enjoyed the idea of not making/cleaning up dinner.  Everyone was happy.  And now for an earlyish bedtime.  I've got to not overdo it.  More blogging to catch up on later.

Cliché-Fil-A

I love it when the stars align, so to speak.  When things go better than you could have ever planned.  

Speaking of planning, we are going on a mini vacation tomorrow.   We are headed to Austin, TX to see the bats!  I call it mini because we will only be gone for three nights.  I call it a vacation because while I am gone I will not be cooking meals, washing diapers or clothes, or picking up after my wild things (although I can't see the hotel staff being all too pleased if I just leave the place without straightening up somewhat...).  I can't see into the future, so I don't know what the stars have in store for us.  But when I do find out, I'll let you know.  

This evening the stars did align, if only for a moment.  Or a meal.  

Since we are taking this mini trip, we decided to head out for dinner tonight.  Leftovers are in short supply around here and Mama doesn't feel like doing any more dishes (I wish for once that I believed in buying paper plates)!  Since we had a coupon to Chick-Fil-A for a free kid's meal and Chick-Fil-A is one of the only places that uses canola oil to fry their french fries (which contain no soy), we decided to head on over and grab a bite to eat before shopping for supplies for our mini roadtrip.  

Our kids love Chick-Fil-A.  When I say "our kids", I really mean Orry and Isaac.  Sure Annie loves the nuggets and dipping sauces, but the boys love the indoor play gym.  Oh, the indoor play gym.  Land of germs, sweat, and stinky little feet.  So we went for the food and got the added bonus of letting our kids get out their wiggles.  But the story doesn't end there, oh no.  As we were eating we noticed a nice young lady setting up various board games in another section of the restaurant.   We asked her what was going on, to which she replied, "It's Family Game Night.".  Awesome!!  You know we love games, so this was fortuitous.  

We decided to stay a while longer and play a game of Hi Ho Cherry-O, Connect Four, Kerplunk (Toy Story style), and Chutes and Ladders.  It was awesome to revisit some of the games that I played as a child.  And it was great to learn a new game along with the kiddos.  Another one of the great things about this event was that we were the only family taking advantage of such a great offering.  Our kids really had fun playing some of the games all by themselves.  Annie sure loved to fill the whole Connect Four board and bang the dominoes on the table and chair.  

By chance I had my camera in my purse, so I get to share some photos with you.  Lucky you.  All in all it was a win-win situation.  We got some game time and Chick-Fil-A made a couple more bucks off me (I just had to buy an Icedream cup).  We were all pleased as punch.  And we thanked our lucky stars.