Spring Break- MN

Met my sister in Des Moines and we hauled all the kids up to Minneapolis to see their grandparents and go to a water park 
(oh boy!)

My dad's birthday is near, so we had a little party. We had the best shrimp enchiladas I've EVER had and the kids got to decorate the cake!

Cake!

Getting ready for bed

Well, it was 70 degrees in KC when we left and we went on Spring Break to a place that we could go sledding

It was starting to melt, but they had SO much snow that you just sunk.  Charlie kept getting his boot stuck.  I was so deep and hollow, they couldn't up and down the hill!

Finally had to take the neighbor's stairs to get back up the hill

To the bottom of my thigh...insane

We were about to go  in when we thought we'd try the snow bank where they had plowed for parking

Wrestling and watching my Alma Mater play my sister's Alma Mater....it did not bode well for my Jayhawks

The girls wrestle NON STOP, Charlie was in heaven having those girls to roll around with, it was so nice to have them to occupy Charlie. 

We headed to the hotel to go to the water park

Charlie was terrified of everything at first.  But by the end of the first day, he was flying down all the slides and even going by himself!

They had a lot of big kid stuff, but they had this huge thing in the center for the littler kids. It was so fun for him.  Elise and Lauren even played quite a bit with him on it even though they were big enough for the real slides.

See the big barrel at the top?

About every 5 minutes it would fill and dump.  Usually when I seemed to be near it- ugh

That's Charlie in there!

Charlie grumpy to get his picture taken

Love these girls, I can't believe how old they are getting, they are young ladies!!

Oh, the things we do for our children......

Our hotel had a balcony overlooking the pool, the kids anxiously waiting for 9am so they can go down and swim again

A thank you to my sister for putting it all together and a thank you to my parents for graciously buying our room and passes so they could see their grand kids- water parks definitely aren't my thing, but man, it was fun to see Charlie and my two favorite girls have that much fun....

Heavy Rotation

)

Pretty sweet little video too

Challenge accepted!  Man I love naps, I'm pretty sure if I were a stay at home mom, I would take a nap every single day

About right....

ha ha- cats are dumb

My favorite internet doggie

I have no idea why I found this so funny

 

Definitely NOT above bribery

We were so close to being potty trained, we just couldn't get past waking up dry in the morning.  His cousin had a toy he REALLY wanted so I made this chart.  Wake up dry- get your cropduster airplane toy.  It changed everything.  We had a few hiccups, but this got him over the last hump of potty training.

It worked so well, I thought I could get some other good behaviors out of him. Again, worked like a charm and we got him another airplane toy (at about $6 each, it's definitely worth it)

So I made one with EVEN more boxes- he was really going to have to earn it.  And he did- no problem.  Plus, I found stickers books with 400+ stickers for ONE DOLLAR at Target.  Score.

So now I've made the mother of all sticker charts, look at all those boxes!  And I got rid of the columns, we ran into the problem of one column filling up too quickly.  Now, do something on the list, put a sticker wherever until it's full.  Plus, I made a little envelope for the millions of stickers that are taking over my life.  Also put pictures of the planes for uber motivation.

Dr Suess's Birthday

My first school activity with Charlie.  He was SO excited I was going to school with him

We ate green eggs and toast- it's lent, so ham is out.  We read Suess books and chatted with Miss Amy

Much better than last year I would say 

Annette's Turn

This is all going to look very familiar as this was basically the same party we threw for Pat when he retired late last year.

I'm not much of a bowler, so Charlie did most of my bowling for me- he loves it

Look at that stance

Dance for Josh!!  Is this kid a ham or what?

Jessica and Sheila (and Josh)

B showing Grandma something technical I'm going to guess

High five!  every.single.time.he.went

The teenagers.  Two are missing, we were sad not to have them, but getting this many in one place?  Difficult

 

Love this girl

Siblings

She got here very own ipad, don't know if that is for her, or for Pat...

'Hey1 Look up here and look surprised!'

This kid ate a man-sized amount of carrot cake

Champagne glasses of Vernors!  (reason #359 the McAuley's and the Divine's are polar opposites!)

This kid was partied out.  He slept until TEN AM the next morning- it was insane

Happy Retirement Annette!