Spring interrupts February...

Well, the winter weather is back.  But, for one glorious week we had the most amazing weather and just in time for mid-winter break!  This year during mid-winter break we did activities like this...

Yes, the bounce house was up in February!  While last year our mid-winter break looked more like this...

I'm not going to lie.  I was a little disappointed to not go skiing over mid-winter break this year.  I would have loved another trip up north in the winter to ski and sled or even a day trip out to Alpine Valley, but man, the spring temps and all the time we spent outdoors more than made up for it.

We started our weekend off with taking Evan out to breakfast at Bode's where he watched a train go by while eating pancakes and me working in Sean's classroom for a few hours.  It was so fun to surprise him and to get to see what they do on a typical day in Kindergarten!  I know I've said it many times, but I really love his teacher.  He lucked out big time this year.  I pulled him out for the afternoon and we joined up with Scott and Evan for a quick lunch at McDonald's (yuck) and a trip to the Ann Arbor Hands On Museum.  It was a really fun afternoon!

The rest of our weekend was spent outdoors playing in the bounce house, digging in the dirt, playing t-ball and soccer, going on a bike ride downtown, picnic lunches, and spending as much time with the neighbors as possible.  It was so refreshing!

The fresh air did us all good!  I went back to work on Tuesday feeling like a new person ready for several more months of teaching.  Well...ready for the rest of the week at least.  Since Sean was still off of school on Tuesday (different breaks), I decided to take him to work with me.  We packed his bag full of activities and he did so great!  In fact, he didn't even ask for the iPad until my 3rd hour.  My students all loved him and we were able to sneak out for lunch at Leo's during my lunch and prep hour.  It was a good day!

As the week came to a close, the winter weather returned to us in the form of thunderstorms and hail.  It made for some crazy weather at pick-up time on Friday coming home from work.

While Scott's birthday lasagna baked in the oven the boys enjoyed jumping in the puddles after the storm blew through with another neighbor.  Jumping in puddles turned into a huge mess.  So, we did a quick shower and some laundry before starting Scott's birthday celebrations.  He requested lasagna and we made him an ice cake as tradition.  We spent the rainy evening in watching Big Hero 6 for our Disney Movie Night while opening gifts and eating ice cream cake.  Yum!

Last night the boys spent the night at Nana and Pops' house, Bailey spent the night at a new doggy daycare, and Scott and I went back to some of our favorite stomping grounds in Clawson and Troy for dinner and drinks to celebrate his birthday.  I ate wayyyy too much food, but it was so worth the extra points and possible pounds on the scale this week!  Speaking of, I'm down 10 pounds with Weight Watchers and am 6 pounds away from my initial goal.  I'll be in a bathing suit in about 4 weeks so between losing some winter weight and running 3 times a week on the treadmill, I'm hoping I'll look decent.

February Fun and Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

This morning was a struggle getting out the house.  What with making a special breakfast on their new Valentine's Day plates (thanks, Target!), taking a picture, making sure all their Valentines and class party treats were packed and ready to go, and giving them their gifts.  Whew, it was a whirlwind morning!

Sean got a new Shark book, "Foozles" (those little capsules that turn into sponge shapes in the bath), a Twix treat, and a Moana travel cup.  Evan got a Moana book on CD, a Moana lunch box that the kids use to store different toys, a Twix treat, and some "Foozles" as well.  Sean was enthusiastic about his new goodies, Evan was pretty indifferent.  Maybe it was that it was 6:45am.

This year Evan chose to do Moana Valentine's.  It's the first year I bought boxed Valentine cards, but we put our own twist on it by adding little bags of Sweedish Fish since Moana was worried about the fish on the island.  He managed to sign all 24 cards over two different afternoons.  Sean did a heart-shaped maze with a Valentine's pencil and a Hershey's heart in a ziplock bag.  He breezed through writing his name on all 27 and loved packaging them up.  The boys also gave their teachers a chocolate covered strawberry that I bought at Kroger the night before.

Speaking of Kroger, holy amazing shopping experience last night!  I went after work before Sean got off the bus to do our weekly shopping.  It was a big trip, but it was actually enjoyable.  The store was pretty slow, I got a beautiful yellow rose for shopping, and they were making the chocolate covered strawberries right in front of me.  Yum!

Back to today, after I picked up the boys from school they couldn't wait to rip open all their Valentine's.  They sat in the living room and sorted candy and cards.  So much fun!

We ordered our special pizzas from Jets.  Every year we do heart-shaped pizzas, whether they're homemade or from a store.  This started back when Scott and I were dating in Kalamazoo (Bilbo's pizzas were so yummy!).  They weren't the best this year, but we'll try a different place next year.  We had some chocolate covered strawberries for dessert and get this?!  We went for a walk after dinner to the park since the weather was actually tolerable for being outside.  I mean 50 degrees on Valentine's Day - I'll take it!

And now that the boys are in bed, I'm finally sitting down completely exhausted.  Holidays with kids are utterly exhausting.  Fun, but man, are they so much work!  Not to mention working with high school students on Valentine's Day takes a special kind of energy too.

In other news, our February has started off strong!  Scott finally wrapped up another successful basketball season coaching.  One team took the championship trophy and the other team took second place overall.  The boys loved seeing the trophies come home after the game!  And I'm just glad that not only is football TV viewing season over, but so is basketball coaching!  Our weekends are just the way I like them now.

While he was at his championship game I took the boys to Barnes and Noble to do some browsing and sit around for story time.  They weren't too interested in story time.  I guess all the books to look at totally distracted them.  Sean ended up picking out a Lego Batman hardcover book and Evan picked a...Moana book with sounds - shocking!  I love my educator discount!  20% off makes buying the books even more fun.

Sunday morning we took the boys to see the Lego Batman movie.  We all thought it was great and the song in the credits will definitely be played on repeat in our house!  I seriously love going to the Emagine theater with the reclining seats.  And who can beat $5 tickets?

In case seeing a movie wasn't exciting enough, we went right after the movie to go bowling with Scott's family to celebrate his birthday.  The kids did great!  They both bowled without the ramp and then Evan needed the ramp for the last few frames.  They both tied with 73 their first game.  I was even surprised at how well I did considering we hadn't bowled in a year.

We ate at Chili's for dinner afterwards and had some yummy pie for dessert.  Evan went home with Nana and Pops since it was going to be his Nana day the next morning (saved her a trip back out to Plymouth).  It was so weird coming home with just Sean and putting only one kid to bed.  But, we all enjoyed our weekend and made some great memories!  This unusually mild weather is doing wonderful things for my soul.  I just hope we don't get doused with a foot of snow in a week...I'm already in spring mode and we're only halfway through February.  Yikes!

Getting ready for Disney!!

54 days away from trip #2 to Disney and I am so excited!  There's an exciting buzz going through our house as the days fly by and we get closer to Disney World!  The boys have known all along since we booked that we were going back.  It took quite a bit of convincing on Scott, but deep down I think he knew he was going to cave.  I mean, last time was so amazing, how could he say no?!

We decided this trip to change things up quite a bit.  Last time we stayed on property at Old Key West and did Disney the entire trip and it was fabulous!  This time, we knew we wanted to go for a little longer, but see some other things.  So, it just made sense to book off property for our resort.  We're staying at the Lake Buena Vista Resort Village and Spa this time and it was significantly cheaper, yet still reaped so many rewards.  For example, we're staying in a 3 bedroom villa that has a balcony with a fireworks view.  The pool has a huge pirate ship with a slide built into it!  And it's only 6 miles from Disney World!  Win-win.

We'll fly out on separate flights (my parents and the boys earlier in the day while Scott and I fly out later in the afternoon since we have to work that Friday or we get docked our pay).  We'll all get checked in and settled.  The following morning we're surprising the boys with a day at Legoland.  They have no idea and I'm beyond excited to break the news to them.  The plan is to bring some Duplo bricks along that have the words, "We are going to Legoland today" on them.  They'll have to find the bricks in the hotel and put them together to make that sentence.  Sean can read the words so we're in good shape for that!  I decided to make them some special shirts to wear that day.  I didn't want to pay the prices that were on Etsy, so I decided to try an Iron-on transfer that I printed from my computer.  I think they turned out great!  They will be so excited!

The next 5 days will be spent at Disney with one day in each park and two in Magic Kingdom!  We're trying new reservations at different restaurants and we're ditching the park hopper passes to just stay at that park all day and hopefully all evening.  It might be an intense schedule, but they can nap when they need to in the stroller.  We'll do one half day at the pool in the morning and then swing over to Animal Kingdom since that's our least favorite park and we're crossing our fingers to get into Jedi Training at Hollywood Studios.

After that, we'll check out of our hotel and drive down to Clearwater Beach for the next two nights.  We found a hotel that has suites suitable for 6 guests and it's right on the water.  We're planning to go to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium where they filmed "Dolphin Tale" in the morning and just relax at the beach after 6 days in amusement parks.  I'm sure the boys will love the Gulf and the sand!

In preparation for the trip, we've been doing a daily countdown and just recently started Disney Friday Movie Nights!  It's taken some planning, but well worth it considering this is our last big trip to Disney for a while.  The first week to kick things off was Cars!

I found all the printables on Google Images/Pinterest and threw it together Friday when I got home from work.  The boys were so surprised and loved it!

The next week was Peter Pan!  This time I didn't surprise them with the movie.  They knew going in and it wasn't as fun.  But, they loved, loved, loved the movie (even though they saw it a year ago which prompted me to do Evan's birthday as that theme).  They insisted on playing pirates after the movie was over.  Swords, Lightsabers, and shields came out.  Oh boy!

This weekend we did Cinderella and went back to making it a surprise.  The boys chose the live action version instead of the animated and it didn't keep their attention as much as I thought it would, but we still had fun!  Homemade pizza and lots of goodies for the movie, as per tradition.

I've been pulling together some Tinkerbell gifts and other random things we'll need for the trip.  I've started laying out shirts so that we're all semi-coordinating each day (except for Epcot...that will be our one day to wear whatever).  I need to go through their shorts from last summer to see what still fits and their sandals too.  Park tickets are bought and we even splurged and bought new Magicbands with characters on them as a surprise too.  I'll be making Fastpasses at 30 days out, which stinks with staying off property, but I'm feeling confident that since we'll be in the parks all day/evening, we'll be able to go on everything we want to.  I can't believe how fast it's coming up!  As much as I'm excited for our trip, I'm making sure to enjoy the planning process before it comes to an end.

See you soon, Mickey!!