April Showers

April was so busy for us! We thought the weather was getting warmer...and it was...but it also rained a lot! We had several inches in a few days and the water had nowhere to go! It was very muddy for quite a while. GET READY FOR PICTURE OVERLOAD

We went to the park a lot.

I told them to look like "normal people" haha

Lots of play indoors too. They love that window

he loves hats

bro time

Dominic, this month, has really excelled in trying to read. I have been trying ALL school year to teach him how to read....but if anyone knows Dom, they know that he does things in his own time. He doesn't like people telling him what to do. I was looking at this set of videos . They have tons of awards and they are not cheap- meaning they probably work. But I just couldn't get myself to buy such an extensive video set for that kind of money. Once kids know all that stuff, they never watch it again. My kids never liked baby Einstein videos, and I feared this would be the same.
Luckily, I found the sight words collection at our local library and guess what? Dom fell in love with it. I thought it was quite boring....haha. But Dom absolutely loves it! It took us about a couple of weeks to get through all three levels and he remembers most of them. They make it so easy for them.  Dom goes around finding words all the time. He's starting to kinda read level 1 books....but I"m just glad we've already started with sight words. Then at a garage sale, we found some begginer reader books with a talking pen. You slide the pen tip over a word and the pen (talks to you) and says that word. Its actually really neat- and only $2! That means, we can try and spend all summer trying to learn how to read. The preschool prep academy sets also have colors, numbers, math (add and subtract), blends, diphrams....it's seriously a super complete set for learning how to read....but I just don't have enough kids to use it...haha. They also have workbooks, and coloring books, and flashcards and all sorts of extra supplies to help them with it. The library only has the videos- but that seems to be enough for Dom. I bought him a sight word book from zulily.com last month and we'll keep practicing all summer long with that. It's a thick book.  I have also signed him up for several things this summer. He wanted to go back to bible school- so that's up first. Then he's got tennis and swimming....for now. He's gotta keep busy or he'll drive me crazy!

Got to go golfing with Dad

He really likes it.But I think he'll
like tennis better.

he's obsessed with legos! He loves building anything with them. He can make cranes, animals, trucks, houses....minecraft stuff (he's watching a lot of that in youtube...I still have no idea what it is) and mario brothers stuff. Maybe this next month, we may try to actually go to the lego center in dallas, and fullfill his little heart's desire for everything lego. For the most part, he will look at a pic online and figure it out (or just from memory like the luigi from mario brothers). The more complicated ones like the tractor actually came in the instruction booklet in the lego box he got for christmas.

luigi from mario brothers (he later made an
actual mario)

duck

cameleon

elephant

construction stuff

tractor

overflowing toilet (he thought this was SO funny)

They also did the mother's day program this month (because school ends pretty soon) and they invited all the moms. They sang a few songs for us and did a small play. They also drew us and we played "guess whose mom this is?" Apparently, my favorite color is pink (that was a popular one within the moms haha), my favorite food is texas roadhouse and my favorite thing to do without kids is to hide in the upstairs room .....lol...yes, he actually said that. He's such a goof.

The play

Apparently, I look like this. And Dom pointed out
that I love ladybug dresses ( I don't own anything
ladybug by the way)lol

signing time

Dominic also had the opportunity to do four egg hunts this past month. One of them was at school (last one ever for him...doubt public schools do anything of the sort) and one at our house, grandma's house, AND a city one. In the school one, he was only allowed to have 12 eggs (he was so meticulous to make sure he didn't take any more). In the city one, there was just so many kids, none of my kids got more than a few (maybe 10) eggs....all filled with one tootsie roll....not too bad. It was the two at my house and grandma's that filled up their baskets. We still have halloween candy around, and we'll probably have this one for a while too haha.

Ethan was not having a good day

They seriously fought over the SAME eggs

waiting for the city egg hunt to begin. Poor kids
they had to wait 20 minutes!

Once we got in there, we still had to wait like 10
more minutes....so we're waiting....you gotta give it
up to all the kiddos for being so patient.

He has also shown interest in wanting to go to school full time. He really wants to take a lunch. He's really excited for kindergarten. I'm a little nervous....so much bad stuff on the news doesn't ease my anxiety, but we'll see. We're still waiting for him to get into the charter school...we were #5 in the waiting list. I've been told by several people that's close to enough to get in, but I haven't gotten any responses, so I'm trying to not get my hopes up, but it would be so nice if he got in.

School egg hunt...Dom is clearly the runt in the pack. He needs to
eat more

Ethan is doing a lot better. He loves trampolines right now- A LOT. He jumps all the time on my bed, his bed, the sofa, he just jumps everywhere. He will probably end up taking gymnastics at some point. we're thinking about buying a small trampoline (for toddlers) and just let him get the wiggles out daily. He is also starting to understand what school is (he'll go next year). I think he'll like it. He loves having people over and playing with the "babies". I ask him if he's a baby and he says "NO...no Ethan baby". So he knows he's ready for the next thing. Sleeps thru the night and eats pretty much everything....he's a good kid. He's just got too much energy right now. Both kids after dinner (and dad gone for work)....it's too much for me. I usually end up with a headache. I try to relax them by doing puzzles or legos...sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt. I'm trying to get better at putting Dom to bed by 9pm, and sometimes he'll actually go to bed and snore within minutes....and sometimes.....he stays awake until 10:30pm (and he doesn't nap)!!!! I have NO time to myself...it kinda stinks sometimes.


Spencer has been super busy this month. He had an opportunity to travel to Miami for a conference. He worked the night before (arriving at 3 am) and then plane left at 9 am! He hardly slept that day. he was so grumpy (rare for this guy) AND then, at the airport they threw away his hot pad because it was clay and over the 3oz limit. That sent him over the edge. It was a good conference though. He got to see one of his old Vanderbilt professors give a presentation and met with old classmates. He walked a bit of downtown, but not too far. He refused to take uber because they were too expensive, so he didn't get to see the beach like he intended. Besides, it was only three nights, and he was in the conference pretty much all day. He said it was too populated for him.
 He even got to travel back home in FIRST CLASS....what a lucky duck. All paid for with reward points. I thought he would run into someone famous for sure (coming from Miami) but apparently it was just a bunch of doctors discussing the masters (golf tournament). He was probably the youngest kid in there. He was in heaven haha.

getting on the plane. He got lunch 

so fancy....when i travel i get peanuts lol

dessert

he was showing me how much legroom he got.

City of Miami

hotel room all by himself....he was watching golf
the whole time. 

He was also busy with landscaping....his true dream job haha. He loves going to the local nursery and looking at plants that will look good on his lawn. He planted more grass in the shade to make it plushier. We're starting to plant veggies and starting to make room for a bigger garden. It's set up, I just need to move more dirt over there, and plant the tiny tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers. Our snap peas did not sprout...bummer. We'll have to find something else to plant later on. For now, it's just those four. Some onions would be good too, and I have my own salsa garden. Oh and watermelon- we only got one, but it was delicious.

He also took this month to redo our fireplace. So, it all started with wanting to switch the trim around it. When he started taking the ugly caulk out and the old trim, we noticed that the actual brick (our fireplace is all brick) did not go all the way to the wall...surprise surprise. Its ok- things like this happen in custom homes too.  So, there was no way to change the trim, because the gap was so big. What was there before wasn't even trim...it was just pieces of wood (which is why Spencer wanted to replace it to begin with).

you can see the trim leaning on the window...
so ugly and all the gaps from the brick

Since we could not find a nice trim that wide, we decided to go another direction. I found a decorative plywood that looks like shiplap. We decided to just glue that to the brick and make it look a bit more "natural" that way. Believe it or not, that took us ALL month. Either Spencer was out working (or in Miami), and I just couldn't keep up with that and the kids (they NEVER let me do anything) OR amazon lost our concrete glue and we lost two weeks because of that.

Spencer had leftover mortar from our master bath
job so he decided to patch it up a bit to make sure
the plywood would stick to something up there.

you can see the gaps. AND THEN the paint behind
the trim was white (we got lucky and had a bit of grey
paint still left) so we had to cover that up. 

The material is easy to cut. We had it ready to go as soon as the glue showed up, and then we discovered that it wasn't enough. So we had to wait another week for the others to show up. It's definitely a learning curve. Why not stone? or real wood? This is a starter home, while I would love the look of those things, I would never get my money back on them. I would NEVER expect granite in the kitchen or stone fireplace in a $180K home around here.....and neither should anybody else haha.....you need to go up in price significantly for such finishes. Ours looks nice, I like the way Spencer did it. He was so afraid because its concrete glue...once it's on...it's on. And while the product said that it would dry quickly....I don't think it did. We had to hold the pieces in place for about an hour, then overnight we had pieces of wood kind of holding them there.
Phase 1 is complete. Phase 2 would be to find someone that can make us a nice dark wood mantle to cover up the brick mantle a little bit and coordinate with the shiplap.....at a good price haha.
If it still looks like it needs some more....Phase 3 includes white washing the brick.....but that will be way into the summer. We gotta stay on budget around here.

We had to clean the brick (so the glue would
stick- never done that before) and it was nasty!
Spencer got to enjoy Miami, I got to enjoy dirt. 

Product we found at lowes to cover up the brick.
It only costs like $15-$20. And one of them did the
job just fine. 

PHEW.....that was a lot. This month, we're painting and finishing up the shed out in the backyard, and I'll show off our landscaping and garden. I'm so excited. Oh and hopefully we'll have the mantle up too. This is what it looks like for now:

WHAT DO YOU THINK? any input is appreciated right now....I know we're gonna have to paint the gold in the doors sometime, but other than that....should we keep it the same color...or should i whitewash it?
And here is May....another busy month! School ends in a couple of weeks and we celebrate our 10th year anniversary!!!! Yes, it's been ten years....and we got something up our sleeve. Hint...i'ts NOT in oklahoma haha.