Chalkboards and Chocolate: April 2010

I sent my oldest child off to Space Camp today for the next 3 days. I'm a little worried. He's never been this far away from us for this long without a family member close by. I hope he remembers to shower, put on deodorant every morning, and brush his teeth. And I hope he comes home with everything I sent with him.

I'm a worry wort.

I saw the Dr. today to discuss my lab results. Everything looks pretty good. I don't have diabetes like I feared. I need to work on raising my good cholesterol levels and lose weight(duh!). She did say my kidney function has been compromised a little which could be from when I had gestational diabetes with Lauren or from being sick. So to try to help and preserve my kidneys I have to drink plenty of fluids which DOES NOT include diet Cherry Dr. Pepper. It's not on my list. The only thing on my list is WATER. WATER, WATER, WATER. Well, that should help with losing weight. And I'll sure have to pee a lot.

Lauren pooped in the potty today all by herself. I'm so proud! It's the little things that make us moms happy, right?

The more bills, wants, needs, obligations I have, the more I realize money just doesn't go as far as I want or need it to.

I have a cool new Scentsy car freshener for my smelly van. The gal I ordered from sent it to me as a thank you gift for being her first customer. I love gifts! My van sure needed it with 4 smelly kids in and out of it all day.

My hubby treated me to lunch today and a mint chocolate chip Italian creme soda. Ok, so that's not on my list either, but it was yummy and I did have water with my lunch.

Baby chickens eat a lot. Or maybe it's the baby goose. But they're really cute.

One example of why I can't be on the computer: In the time it has taken me to type this little post, Lauren has opened four Capri Suns and emptied them into the trash can. These are part of her two older brothers' snacks for school. Grrrrrrrr!

On that note I will have to say hasta luego!

How did I let half a month go by without posting anything?! I enjoy reading other blogs so much that I neglect to update my own. I also get caught up in all the cool craft and home improvement projects that I see on other blogs that I want to try, but never make the time or have the money to do. *sigh* Oh, well . . . guess I better get to updating here.

First, hmmmm . . . oh, yeah, Easter.

We had a nice Easter lunch and egg hunt with my parents and some friends from church. We decided not to go to the big Gregson family egg hunt this year. It's just not what it used to be. I have mixed feelings about it because that's one of the reasons we wanted to move back home after Ian got out of the Navy, so that our kids could be a part of the family traditions I grew up with. But I really enjoyed sharing the day with close family and friends and not having to worry if there's enough food to feed everyone. So, having said all that, here are some photos from our egg hunt.

Lauren had to use Grandma Gregson's Easter basket to hunt eggs with. It's kinda small but she couldn't be persuaded to use her other one.

Here are Melodie and Lorie searching for eggs. These two cuties belong to my friend Toni.

Ellie had to check out her loot as she went. She's another one of Toni's cuties. (FYI---Toni (and her hubby, Aaron) have four girls and one boy so we've decided that our children are betrothed.)

Miss Sadie found the prize egg!

He cracks me up! No words needed.

Matt and his stash.

Todd, his buddy Thomas, little Miss Melodie, and my friend, Toni.

Paw Paw and the kids looking for more eggs.

Lauren won a baby with an egg she found. She also won bubbles which she later gave her baby a bath with.

Todd and his loot.

I have no idea how many real eggs we brought home, but I can tell you that that's all Matt and Lauren ate for about 2 days.

Zack's field trip to the Exploreum:

This one should really be before Easter because we went at the end of March, but we'll pretend it's next because I'm not gonna try to rearrange this thing. I'm not about keeping things in order. If you don't believe me, come see my house. Wait. Better not. I have four kids. It's not pretty. Anywho . . . .

I was put in charge of these two riff-raff, James and Zack. They were very impressed with the T-Rex.

Zack and some of his classmates on the back of a T-Rex stuck in a tar pit.

The entrance to the dinosaur exhibit.

This was inside at the hands-on exhibits. All the kids liked this one because you could only see their heads on the platter.

This contraption tested your upper body strength by timing how long you could hang on to the bar.

Zack played with this for the longest time. It was a maze inside a cube with holes all along the outside of it and you had to use different shaped rods to coax the ball through the different chambers. Very cool.

I liked this one. It was the WKRG channel 5 news room. The kids could pretend to read the news or do a weather report. They both look like very tired reporters. LOL!

This exhibit taught them about using pulleys. It was much harder than it looked.

I wanted to put a video in here, but it's taking a reeeaaallllly long time to upload. As soon as I figure it out I'll get it on here. It's a hands-on thingamajig that has to do with noises our bodies make. Yeah. Uh-huh. I bet you can guess which one the boys played with the most.

Easter Pictures from before Easter:

See? Told ya I'm all outta order.

Since Easter Sunday and General Conference happened to be the same day, I let the kids wear their Easter clothes to church the Sunday before.

For some reason I don't have one of Matt by himself. Not sure how that happened. Maybe because they weren't being very cooperative that day. Yep, that's probably it.

On to the Gulf Breeze Zoo!

Now this one is in the right order because we did it last week. Woohoo, I'm catching up! But then I'll be behind again because tomorrow is the official start of baseball season. (I'll keep my comments to myself . . until tomorrow at least.)