Happy Birthday to my Mom!!!

Because I love her SO much, I'm not going to say which birthday this one is. Suffice it to say, it's one that ends in a zero! We love you and wish we could have been there to give you a birthday hug and help you celebrate!

Happy Birthday, Mom!

School photos

Claire's school does their school photos in the spring and they just brought them home in their backpacks on Thursday. Here's a peek at Claire and her class this year:

For sale to a loving home...

 

Our trusty Hyundai Elantra is up for sale on Craigslist and at the "lemon lot" (used car lot) here on base. It has faithfully served us since January 2001, when I bought it new as a single gal. It traveled to Germany and saw many adventures in Europe. It then traveled to Washington, where it became Phil's drive-to-work car. Now that we bought the van Phil will be driving the Volvo and the Hyundai has found itself looking for a new, loving home. Hopefully we can find it one soon!

Easter egg hunts

As I mentioned before, the girls participated in four organized Easter egg hunts. If the Easter Bunny decides to hide eggs here at the house tomorrow they'll have hunted five times! I think it's a bit out of control but they seem to think it's great fun (and Altus isn't exactly chock full of other activities for the kiddos!). Here are a few photos of the festivities:

Easter bonnets

Claire's preschool had an Easter bonnet parade this week. The preschoolers were supposed to make a crazy bonnet at home and then they all paraded around the school to show off their neat hats. We managed to find some white hats at Walmart and Claire and Maddie decorated them with fabric paint. Their hats weren't very "crazy", but the girls had a ton of fun making them and I think they turned out beautifully:

By the time Easter rolls around, the girls will have each participated in no fewer than 4 egg hunts. I have never stuffed so many eggs before in my life! And their stockpile of candy is rivaling the bounty they brought in at Halloween. Good thing they didn't give up candy for Lent!

Snow!

Altus didn't get left behind by the cold snap that moved through the country. We actually got snow! My tomatoes, bell peppers, and annual flowers probably didn't appreciate it, but our little girls did. Claire got all bundled up and went outside to check out the fluffy white stuff. She even got down in the snow and made a snow angel. Maddie liked looking at the winter wonderland from inside the house but was totally uninterested in playing in it after she discovered that snow is, in fact, still a cold thing.

Snow Angel

Ice skating on the back patio

It was over 70 degrees today, so I would imagine this will be the last snow for us until next winter!

Maddie's haircut

Our little Maddie likes to suck her right thumb. This leaves her left hand free to do her OTHER favorite activity: twirl her hair. Unfortunately, she ends up making some pretty big knots in her hair with all that twirling and then she gets annoyed and pulls out the knots. This left her with a rather punk-rock sort of hair do, in which one side was significantly shorter than the other. I finally took her to the salon today to see what they could do, and the gal there evened it up nicely. So Maddie got her very first big-girl haircut today - a cute little bob.

What got her here:

Before - notice the one pigtail is longer

During the haircut

After - and they gave her Smarties candy (her favorite!)

It's a ... baby!

We had our chance and are keeping it a surprise! I went in for an ultrasound on Tuesday and got our first look at kiddo #3. Very cute, and pretty sedate for a 21-week old baby. The tech got lots of good looks and said that she knew in the first five seconds but didn't tell us (per our request).



All checked out well and baby's heartbeat was 150...

Trip to Chicago

So, what do you do when you get a new car? Well, I test that baby out! Phil had a two-week trip to Alabama so I loaded the girls into our van (with 76 miles on the odometer) and headed to Illinois to visit family. Because there's nothing quite so enticing as Chicago in February/March.

Now, for those of you not familiar with the military there is a certain rule of thumb. Whenever one's spouse goes out of town something major immediately breaks. I thought I'd duck that rule this time by getting out of town myself, but I was mistaken.

We stopped at my friend Sarah's house for the night on the way up to Chicago. Boy am I glad we did! In the morning we came out of Sarah's house and discovered one of my beautiful new tires was FLAT! She's pregnant and I'm pregnant and we were not going to be changing a tire. Thank goodness for USAA Roadside Assistance! They sent a very nice gentleman to change my tire and the lovely Honda dealer by Sarah's house patched up my tire for me that day. Broken thing: handled.

We were able to have a nice visit with them, in spite of the drama. In fact, Claire is STILL talking about Monkey Joe's bouncy house place.

We joined the club...

...the minivan club, that is. Evidently we didn't spend nearly enough money in Puerto Vallarta, because almost as soon as we got back we upgraded the family vehicle to something that will better suit a 3-kiddo family. Here it is, with its predecessor, the wagon, in the background:

From 2009-2

PV highlights

OK, so long-time no blog. I'll save the excuses and put up a few pictures. Will that work? Here are some highlights from our trip to Puerto Vallarta. Suffice it to say that if you're going to take a tropical vacation with your two young children, it's a GRAND idea to meet up with both sets of grandparents! We've never had so much help! We had a wonderful time (obviously!) and didn't really want to come back home to rural Oklahoma.

A trip south of the border

We just got home from our little sojourn to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. It was a great time and a welcome break from Altus!

There will be more pictures to come, but here's a quick journal of our days there (care of our newest blogger: Claire)...

A nice overall composition