Science is for girls: Zoey turns 5!

How can Zoey be 5!  Boy time flies.  Zoey wanted a science party and life was too busy to organize much, so I found a place in town that did science parties.  It was so much fun.  The older kids do slime, but for younger ones you can do a circus theme one with cotton candy.  I am not a circus fan in general, but it was more about the people side like balance and bouncing.  The kids and adults were all entertained. 

 

 

I got the big girls shirts made.  They are a current favorite.

 

 

 

The big 5!

 Fiona loved the ballons.

Her tongue is out.  So cute!

Sweet baby!

Balancing.  They had to do hands down, hands out, and hands up to compare. 

I think she liked the cotton candy!

A science party, but Avengers cupcakes.

 

 

Messy face!



Happy birthday to a sweet, spunky red head full of life!  Her name fits her so well!

Post 401: February flies by

I had not even realized the last post was my 400th!  Yikes! 

 

 

Here is the miscellaneous assortment of February activities.

 

I sometimes shop at a neat charity thrift store near us, and when I was pregnant I found these elephant pants.  They were new with tags, so I took a chance and bought them not sure if they would even fit.  They do and I love them!  The perfect pants for me :)

 

 

 



 

Fiona turned 8 months.  It is hard to get the panda picture now as she often just crawls away.  I try handing her things but she is so wild.

She loves her food.  Eats a lot of variety. 

Zoey is a great playmate.  Here is the short lived game of Fiona in a basket.  When I put the camera up, Fiona flipped the basket and crawled out.

 

Playing in Fiona's room.

 



Fiona adores swinging!

 Nick just completed his packet for third year review.  He has had a tenure track job for 6.5 years, but had to give up years with each move, so he is being counted as a third year.  This is a big review to set the goals for tenure, so it was a lot of paperwork. In fact, all said, it was about 1600 pages.  He had to write summary reports but also include syllabi, example assignments, example feedback to students, etc.  It consumed his life for weeks, including a few late nights on campus. 

Samantha had another gold cup piano competition.  She worked so hard in the end and got two scores of 5 out of 5.  So proud of her!  She also won a State Award of Excellence for her photo in the Texas PTA competition. She was not selected to go to the national level, but only about 1% of entries got an award of excellence!

Lots of fun park time in the nice weather we have mostly been having.

And a friend's birthday party at the local airport.

The dad is an engineer and used a blower motor to make a hover board plane.  So cool!

Bathroom renovation

I still need to do the post on the big renovation, Nick just downloaded his phone photos, so now I can, but here is how he and Papa spent our winter break. We went to an auction before the big renovation and bought a certificate for a tile store thinking it would be good for the renovation, but we got supplies through our contractor.  So we needed to use it for the bathroom, which had a mold problem we could not tackle even with strong cleaners.  It was a good thing they did this as the water was leaking and some of the wood was rotting and mold was actually coming back up through the unsealed grout.  We will keep up with sealing and hope to not have to gut it again anytime soon.  The place we had the certificate for was expensive with limited options, so I found a neat pattern on pinterest and we made it our own with a few tweaks.   I love my new bathroom!

Tile and wall down, rotten boards out.

Wood and concrete board back in.

 Tile going in.

Dad was our tile man!

This was how Nick cut the tile to try and not get soaked.

 The after picture.  Nick painted the tub spout and glass rails.  No more 80's brass.

Close up of the tile pattern.

And the before from when the house was listed, during and after.

El Jardin Beach

It was a mostly mild winter, so we even got to make a beach trip in January.  We stayed close by, this nice little one is only about 20 minutes away.  I thought it was too cold for the water, it was cool and windy, so we just played in the sand with friends.  Nick was busy, so I took all three by myself.  Thank goodness we met friends.  

Dallas and Paris

Samantha opted to have a birthday trip in lieu of a party.  She chose to go to Paris, Texas (a la Fancy Nancy).  We added on a night in Dallas on the way up and went on MLK weekend for an early celebration.

The girls before the Dallas Zoo.  It was a neat zoo and bonus if you brought food donations, entrance was free.  But next time we will not eat at the cafe!

Neat elephant statues.

A cool view of the lion exhibit.

The cheetahs were in a training area and super close!

The girls both have camera and had a blast being photographers.

They had cool lego scultures.

A snake up close

I was there too!

And the next day we saw the tower.  It was the tallest besides the main one in France, then one in Tennessee was moved to a platform, making it taller, then Texas put the hat on, and then Vegas built one way taller.  We thought there would be lots of gift shops and the town would play it up more, but we were wrong.

Still a fun trip and a great way to celebrate 8!

Raspberries

Blowing raspberries is one of Fiona's favorite things.  She was doing it all the time, but now it is more when she is tired.  Here is a video from January.

Not sure why, but it only works in Chrome for me.