Week Off of School!

I'm trying really hard to catch up here in blogger world. Before I do a post on Mother's Day I really wanted to catch up. The week that the kids had school off (2 weeks ago), was a little crazy. First off Abbi had to be very careful with her arm. I had noticed that the past week that my ears and throat kind of hurt. Then it got so bad that I couldn't go without advil and tylenol. As soon as it would wear off I had to have more. I felt silly making a doctor's appointment for just me (I know a little crazy)! But I did. They couldn't get me in for 3 days. But by Tuesday I was in a lot of pain so I phoned and asked if I could be fitted in somewhere. So I got in on Tuesday. Dr. Smith looked at me and sure enough I had ear infections and strep. Ouch! So painful. I got on medicine that day. But by Thursday morning I was still in pain and my body was on fire and itchy. I reacted to the medicine. So I had to wait till the Dr's office opened that morning and I called in and had them change the prescription for me. So finally by Friday I was feeling somewhat normal! One of the things the kids did to entertain themselves was dress up Macy! Good thing she is such laid back dog! The girls dressed her up a few times!

Sick or not, I still had to keep the kids happy and busy that week. Oh I should mention that we found a nice young couple to rent the main floor of our house in Lethbridge. Yeah! Talk about showing it to so many people. I am very picky and we waited till we felt really good about who to rent out too. Anyways, I had to run in Tuesday to meet them and get the damage deposit and sign the contract. DJ had gone to his room just before we were to leave and fell asleep in his bed. So I hurried and called a babysitter to come and watch the kids.

I've been looking everywhere for one of those playhouse swing sets. I really wanted one for our backyard. The one I love was $1500.00. I just couldn't do it. My mom mentioned that someone made their deck into a playhouse. I thought it was a good idea and mentioned it to Richard. The idea was to have a slide coming off the deck and then building a little playhouse underneath the deck. Well Richard took it too heart and bought the slide, stuff to make a climbing wall, a steering wheel, and a telescope. He came and put it together that afternoon. The kids were besides themselves with excitement. It was so funny to watch them! I still need to get some gravel for underneath the deck so we can make it into a playhouse. But it's been great so far. The kids are out there playing on their slide and climbing wall all the time! Cadence giving me her "awkward" smile! Still so cute! She is usually very cautious about slides, but she flies down this one and loves it!

Abbi ready to slide down! Notice the mud on both of their boots! It's everywhere...on the deck, in the house and on every pair of shoe and boots we have! So nice!

Abbi climbing up the wall for me!

Cadence showing me how she can do it! I've added for more "rocks" to the wall since these pictures.

Cadence FLYING down the "water slide"! They had this bright idea of pouring water down then sliding. They flew off. It was a little crazy!

Brianna ready to go down! They played on the water slide for awhile. It was so funny to watch them go down.

Abbi going down with her hair flying everywhere. They were so dirty afterward that I gave them all a shower to get clean. DJ ran away from me when he figured out I was putting him in the shower (he was naked). I finished cleaning Cadence and Brianna and went to get DJ. I thought he just went to his room to watch a movie. But no he was running around outiside, butt naked! Crazy boy.

DJ has used the slide to send all his cars down, then he sends his car box down and then he goes down. He picks up his cars and comes back up and does it again. He did this one morning for over an hour. He thinks it's funny house the slide makes the cars launch far! When he first went down the slide he had his feet up and he flew up in the air and landed on his bum. It was so funny. He yelped, "OU" and grabbed his bum and then laughed. He ran up and did it again! He's now getting the hang of putting his feet down and catching himself! He had us laughing so hard the first few times he went down. It was pretty funny!

DJ went down and FLEW through the air and landed hard on his bum. He screamed and was grabbing is bum and was trying to pull down his trunks. He got grass all over himself. I guess I should of caught him instead of standing there and taking pictures! Oops!

He decided to be the water guy and get the slide wet. I finally convinced him to try again. Silly boy!

Cadence, DJ and Brianna playing with the slide!

Another exciting thing is we have new neighbours that moved in behind us. They have 2 little girls who are 5 and 3. Oh my girls were so excited! We had them over a few times that week, while their mom was unpacking. Tessa (5) and Calli (3) are so cute and get along so good with my kids. They just play and play and play! So it's been fun for my kids to be able to run over and invite their new friends to play with them. I've been getting to know their mom, Carmen, too. She's very nice and we've had fun talking while the kids play.
Here's Calli (standing by Cadence) and Tessa (up on bunk with Abbi) playing with my girls! They have so much fun together.

We had a really nice week, well I shouldn't say really nice. Because we had some CRAZY WINDY days, but the kids still went and played outside alot. So that makes it nice for me and them! We woke up Friday morning to crazy wind and snow which equals blizzard! ha ha! So we made a spur of the moment decision and decided to go to Kalispel for the weekend. I cleaned the house quickly and packed while Richard did some errands for work. We were out of here by 11am. Got to Cardston, which had more snow then us, but kept on going. Oh my the Duck Lake road was a little scary. I mentioned a few times that maybe we should turn around (which means it is bad, because it takes a lot to turn me around!)! But we kept going. I found Richard's ski goggles and that's how he drove. We got to East Glacier and got behind a semi. That's what saved us, because all we could see was his trailer lights and we just followed the lights. It was a whiteout and hard to see anything. So if that truck would of gone into the ditch, we would of followed him! But luckily he was a good driver and we stuck with him. We went all of 60 km/h till we got to the other side of Mariah's Pass and then we were able to speed up a bit. We found out later that they closed the pass a little bit after we went through. It was very crazy! Sheesh!

Our portable dvd player gave up the ghost on the way down. So that was one of our purchases down there and new set. It's a life saver for traveling. That's all I'm going to use it for, is trips. We checked into our hotel, the Hampton Inn. It was very nice and had an awesome pool area. We basically spent most of our time there at the pool. I didn't bring my camera, or else I'd have some super cute pictures! Oh well!

After swimming we went out to eat and stopped at Target to get a few things. We got some water toys for the kids to play with in the pool. When we got back we got on jammies and went down to pop some popcorn. Guess who we ran into, Great Grandma and Grandpa Spencer! The kids were SO EXCITED to see them. I think they chatted their ears off! So they came into our room and had popcorn with us. The kids went to sleep afterwards.

In the morning we had our breakfast downstairs and then went swimming. We swam for over an hour. Then we went with G.G&G Spencer to Costco. They agree to put our winter tires in their van to bring home, so we were able to get some new tires on. Then we went to McDonalds for lunch and said bye to G.G&G Spencer. They took off for home. We decided to stay another night. Went back to the hotel and Brianna and I went shopping at JC Penny's while the rest went swimming. We got back and joined them, then Richard ran and did some shopping at Home Depot. By the time we were finished swimming they were down there for almost 3 hrs. I got DJ dressed and he cuddled on the bed with me and instantly went to sleep. The poor guy was so tired. I woke him up an half hour later so we could go with Richard and get something to eat.

We stopped at Walmart first and did some quick grocery shopping. I also got the new portable dvd set there. DJ was trying to go back to sleep in the cart. He was one tired little boy. Richard kept him awake then we went to IHOP for dinner. We thought it was a terrific idea since our kids love pancakes. Well it would of been a good idea if we had a good waitress. Not sure what was up with ours but she had a bad attitude, was grumpy and slower then cold tar. By the time we got our food our kids were a little wild. I was past the point of caring, because I didn't blame them. Who wants to sit and wait for food for an hour. We ate, and the kids were starving so they ate really good. Then we paid and got out of there. Crazy IHOP, not sure if we'll go back. The food was delish but the service not so much.

We went for one last swim before bed time. By this time I was totally swimmed out! So I sat on the stairs and watched the kids play and have fun. DJ was getting brave and going deeper in the water by himself (with his life jacket). He didn't want me to touch him. He was in his own little world and having so much fun! The girls can go everywhere by themselves and do really good. We make all our kids wear life jackets. It's so much easier. Then we had popcorn and the kids went to bed. It was a fun day!

Sunday morning we woke up and ate and then we took off. We had to be back for church so I could play the piano. The roads were clear and we had our dvd player with a couple of new movies. DJ fell asleep by 9am and slept till 10:30. I think we wore him right out!

Totally random picture of Brianna and Cadence sleeping together. We came home from the temple one night and found them like this. Aaawww, so so cute!

So that was our fun getaway. Then the girls went back to school on Monday. So back to the normal routine! They love school and are going to be really sad when they are done, which is only in 4 weeks. Crazy!