black, white, and pink

Mary (my mother in law) asked Gary (my father in law) what they should do for their 38th Wedding Anniversary, February 1st.  Gary in a slightly joking manner says...Why not go see the kids. 

Shortly thereafter we received a call from Mary asking if they could come and visit for the weekend.  Without hesistation we yelled YES!

We had a great time.  For their anniversary we enjoyed the SaltGrass Steakhouse.  We also enjoyed the beach, Galveston Island where there was a Mardi Gras Celebration happening.  Beads (no breasts) and parades were everywhere.  The high school bands were fun to listen to.  Madison had a wide eyed look when the band was blasting the music.  The day was really fun!  Of course, my beach bunny (aka the snow bunny about 2 months ago) enjoyed running like a crazy girl on the beach.

We also celebrated Madison's birthday as well.  The big 2 is right around the corner!  Zebra cake and pink frosting made by Momma was a hit!  Grandma and Grandpa bought her the new Minnie Mouse LeapPad App (which is a big hit) and also a box of candies for Valentine's Day ;)  Madison enjoyed the cake...ALOT and was on a sugar high that evening.  Dancing like I have never seen before!

Catching Bubbles

Love this picture!

tot school

I have always wanted to develop some sort of "school" for Madison where we focused on different things to learn.  I mentioned this to my neighbor Lynn and she informed me of Tot School. Basically this learning format is geared towards hands on learning with crafts and activities.  For example we focused on learning the color yellow (which was not completely successful but hopefully more exposure will continue to help) so we had activities like, playing with all the yellow toys we have or coloring with yellow highlighters.  We also sang you are my sunshine alot and wore a yellow shirt (we only had one of those for the week).

While I stay at home I want to have those fun activities for Madison and hopefully a few bits of information will sink in as well.  I have a few learning toys that I hope to get for her as well.  I figure this is the time to buy those because learning games will not be fun at 13. 

Here are a few pictures from our Yellow Week.

 

This activity had Madison put Cheerios on a pipe cleaner, trying to work on fine motor skills and colors.

Instead apparently she was a little hungry and enjoyed ALL the Cheerios

Carson enjoyed watching his sister learning.  Maybe a few bits of information will sink in for him as well ;)

I also have learned alot about organizing for the week.  Many items were flops only because we either did not have something or the day would just get by us.  Now I have an excel sheet with 3 activities for the day.  I feel like having a direction has helped (well, this was only the first day, so I will blog next week to give you the official word!)

benefits

Whenever I have a day where I miss the mountains or am sad that camping is never going to be the same I think of our first day at the beach.

Toes in the sand

Feet splashing the water

Smiles on all our faces

I remember this too will be wonderful.  The warmth of the sun majority of the year and the benefit of just letting Madison run all over the beach and not worrying about her falling off a cliff (lol) are just the few benefits of Houston.  And the wildlife (is that what it is called in the ocean?!?!) is great.  Sharks, Stinging Jellyfish, Animals I have never heard of, Dolphins and amazing, edible saltwater fish are awesome.  I mean it is like an adventure every time we go, never really know what we might find.