Lazy 5 Ranch

I have a little list of places (in my head) that I want to go to before we move. I was able to cross one of them off the list last Wednesday.
I have been to the Lazy 5 Ranch twice previously on field trips with my students, but I haven't ever taken my own kids. I was so glad that Page arranged a group trip, so we were able to ride in the wagon at the discounted rate. :) Here are a bunch of out of order pictures with some captions, but for the most part you just need to know that it's kind of like a safari where you feed the animals from the back of your wagon (or, if you want to pay less, from your car window).
The group. This is not really a good pic of anyone, and you can't see most of the kids' faces, but I felt too cheesy to say, "Hey, everyone! Look and smile!"

That's my girl! She got so brave over the course of the ride.

One week old piglet

23 hour old llama (according to our guide)

Classic Kevin face. He frequently sucks on one lip or the other.

This was in the barn before we started.

There was a petting zoo after the wagon ride. We got to feed them our leftover food pellets.
Elena really wanted to make sure that the baby goat got some food. When another goat tried to sneak in, she said, "This isn't for you! You're not a baby!"

This peacock was seriously wooing the peahen (you can see her behind him). When another peacock came too close, he chased him off.

I was lucky that the peahen walked towards our direction. It was so cool to see this display in person. You can click on the pic to make it bigger if you want.

Catty

Elena got her first pet this week. On Tuesday Kevin found a caterpillar on the deck and Elena claimed it as her own. It's a girl and her name is Catty. We went to library and looked her up. She's a tent caterpillar - interesting stuff actually. They don't make their cocoon and turn into a little brown moth until mid-to-late summer, so I talked with her about the fact that we couldn't keep her until then because of the move.
Elena was the most attentive owner you've ever seen. Catty got new leaves each day, we cleaned the droppings out of her bug keeper (Thank you dollar section of Target!), and spritzed water in there once/twice a day. Of course her favorite thing to do with her pet was to let her crawl all over her and get exercise. It was really adorable: "Catty, I'm going to sit your cage right here, so that you can smell the dinner that we are eating." "Do you like crawling on my arm, Catty?" "Catty, it's bedtime. Would you like to come in my room where it's nice and dark?"
Sweet Catty started to get homesick last night, and I noticed that she wasn't eating for the first time since we got her. Today she hardly moved, so I talked Elena into letting her free. Elena could see that Catty wasn't doing well and wasn't hardly moving at all, but still she was so sad to let her go. I felt terrible that Elena was crying, but I thought it better that Catty get to die/live in the wild rather than in a little plastic container in Elena's room.

Can you see the love and pride in the pictures above? She's enjoying showing Catty off. Hopefully all our sweet caterpillar needs is a little fresh air...

La camara nueva y los deportes

My parents got me a camera for an early birthday gift! It was on sale at Costco, had good reviews, and I had been resenting our old 2005 camera (4 megapixel) for over a year. Here is what the new one looks like in all of its awesomeness:
With such cute kids and big occasions like graduation coming up, my mom agreed that it was time to update. I love it! It is awesome and small and smart and takes such clear pictures!

The secondary purpose :) of this post is to show Elena's last day of field hockey and first of soccer. All pics where taken with the new camera.

Go Deacs!

Practicing:
Getting instructions before a scrimmage:
Kevin kept himself entertained (Yes, he's trying to eat the net in the picture below):
This was the best group photo that I got because there were about a million parents all trying to get the shot. Elena is towards the middle of the front. This is all the youth players and the coaches (Wake Forest players). Elena had so much fun. I already looked it up online and youth fh where we are moving is $75. Yikes!

She enjoyed soccer, but so far takes things very slowly. We should kick a ball around at home to help her get used to it. She has her second practice this week. This picture is during one of the drills.

I was so happy to see that Caleb was at the park for soccer too. We really miss him. Elena copied his pose. Look at his angelic face!

Bonus picture of Kevin playing with the merchandise at HomeGoods. This could be considered sports-related if you take into account that he thinks he's a cowboy and he was saying, "Yee-haw!" the whole time.
Thank you Mama and Daddy for my fun new gift. :)

My boy loves BANANAS!

The only bummer about this hilarious video is that the camera stopped the recording (the memory card was full) only seconds before he pointed at the kitchen and said, "Mas bananas."
Because one is never enough. :)

House for Sale

Well, we officially have our house on the market.

I spent the entire week after Match Day prepping the house for our realtor to take pictures. Monday: we interviewed realtors, ordered mulch, and did prep work outside. Tuesday: Dan, the wonderful Ann Hiatt, and I spent many hours (the whole day) putting 10 cubic yards of mulch all around the house. I really wish I had taken pictures of that pile in the driveway or before pictures of the exterior of our house. During the rest of the week: I power-washed the siding, we cleaned up a bunch of clutter, Elena and I planted flowers and junipers, we removed a couple pieces of furniture, and packed some boxes.
This past week, we continued with the cleaning, touched up paint around the house, I changed our brass door knobs into brushed nickel, made many trips to Lowes and Home Depot, planted new grass seed, and we organized closets and the garage (very time consuming!). That's just a summary. I don't want to bore you with too many details. :)

(Did you notice the sleeping kids in the pics above?)

The result is that we have a beautiful uncluttered house with no toys in the front room (except blocks). The kids have been really good about watching us pack up 1/2 of their toys. It's so clean that it makes me want to go stay in a hotel until the house sells so that we don't mess anything up. I guess I'll just have to extra vigilant with cleaning up every night in order to keep the stress down. We had our first showing today. I'm so grateful to have had someone come and look at our house already. They ate some of the cookies that Dan made, but I don't think they took a house brochure that our realtor left on the sofa table. I'm keeping my fingers crossed anyway.

I wanted to put this post out there right now to say thank you to my awesome friends who helped out by watching the kids (Emily, Melissa, and Marianne among others), mulching (Ann), picking up stuff for the Young Women's garage sale (Hna Rivera), letting me change around the preschool schedule (Andrea, Aimee, Marianne, and Melissa), letting me borrow tools/equipment (Sis Schell, Ann, Dad), and my parents who always help out with stuff around the house when they are visiting. Thanks for staying up late with us last night to help with the cleaning, Mama! We are so blessed to have such amazing friends! We love you!

And the letter said...

Dan will be doing his residency at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk!
Now we just have to sell our house, choose a city to live in (Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Chesapeake), buy or rent a house there, and go! We are definitely bummed to leave this area, our friends here, our house, our neighborhood, the Spanish branch where we attend church, etc, but it will be fun to experience new things and meet new people (and live within 30 minutes of my parents). Dan is very excited about the hospital there (CHKD) and the program. EVMS was in his top 3, so we feel very blessed today.

Here is some documentation of the day's events:

Looking at the letters sitting on a table until noon was torture!

Emily was sweet to offer to take a family picture of us - all in green for St Patrick's Day.

Dan let Elena open the letter, and I was dying of impatience!

After dropping the kids off with Melissa (THANKS!), we went to a fancy luncheon and each student got to announce where they were going and put a pin on a map of the US.

Blueberries

Recently we had waffles for breakfast with blueberries on top (a favorite of both kids). Kevin got a little bit of blue on his lips, and I mentioned that it was cute. I left the room for a minute and when I came back this is what I found. Kevin loves to do everything his big sister does. She, of course, wanted to be "cute" too.
As a side note, Kevin started to call Elena "Nay-nuh" instead of "Da" last week. Despite the fact that he says hundreds of words, he never once called her anything but "Da" until Wednesday. :)

Big news for Dan: Today we found out that he officially matched! We'll know where on Thursday at noon.

Sporty Little Girl

We are so lucky! The university field hockey team here does a free 8 week field hockey program in February and March for 4-11 year olds. Elena started 3 weeks ago. It's adorable, and she has so much fun. She loves to say, "Field hockey is my first sport." She's on a little team of other 4 year olds. Each week they stretch, do drills, and scrimmage. The first two pictures are from week 1 and the rest are from yesterday.

Warming up:

Taking a shot:

Showing good ball control. :)

Her #1 fan:

Bookin' it:

Per Shelby's request, here's the a picture of my high school team that I scanned in from the yearbook (sorry, Shelby, I didn't go into the attic to get a real pic). I'm second from the left in the back row - kind of bent over. This was such a great team! We were a close group!