Nate & Kate Update

Nate found himself a new love. Actually, she's the one who claimed Nate and won't let him go. Meet Kate. Not his sister Kate. A new Kate. Kate's brother is in Nate's class at school and I'm friends with their mom. When Kate sees Nate's class walk out to the pick up line at school, Kate runs up to him and plants a big one right on his face. Similar to the one below. He's quite the ladies' man.

Kate's First Movie Adventure

I took Nate and Kate to see The Lorax, which happened to be Kate's first trip to the movie theater. She was so funny. She was yelling out things about different scenes and repeating funny lines immediately after they were said. She lost interest for about 30 minutes in the middle so I just gave her a bottle of hand sanitizer to bathe in for entertainment until she regained interest in the movie.
What's a movie date without dinner? We hit up McDonald's afterwards.
As if that wasn't fun enough, we woke up the next morning and went to the gymnastics place Nate has been asking about since he got home from Minnesota and realized Kathryn did something fun while he was gone.
Kathryn showed him around since she was an open gym veteran.
With all that fun there has to be at least one un-fun activity. He had to go to his school church and sing during one of their church services. It wasn't really a requirement for him, but when his mom is a teacher there he gets sucked into doing these types of things. Back row, green shirt. You can barely see him.
At least he got to mess around with the drums while there. By the way, he wants a drum set. I don't know if my nerves are ready for that though.

Mace & Master Boomba

This is one of my favorite videos of all time. I want to make sure to post it before I forget about it. Mace went with us to watch Nate play soccer on his last visit. Kathryn is convinced she's Mace's master.

Here is another old video from Kathryn chatting with Paw-Paw on the phone in Nate's pick-up line at school. Apparently she didn't want me to be a part of the conversation.

More of the same. It's cute to show how she acts when she's on the phone. I'm going to have to get these kids their own lines with as much as they ask to talk on the phone.

This is what Nate thinks about a post solely about Kate....

Actually, he was showing me the splinter he got in his finger after climbing on the wooden fence.

Re-enlistment Ceremony

Steve was asked to re-enlist a friend of his. It was a low-key ceremony with only the kids and me in attendance.

Their little flag holder was easily distracted.
There she is falling over.
Nathan went through a quick flag obsession, so Kathryn did too. She gets so excited when she sees an American flag she yells "Amerinan fwag, Mommy!" What can I say, she loves her country.
Remember when Nate used to beg me to take him to see the airplanes in South Dakota when he was 2 years old? Well, he's way over that and doesn't care about looking at airplanes anymore.

Cruisin' With the Dolphins

The kids and I met up with Uncle Joe and Jessica in Destin for a dolphin cruise a few weeks back.

I don't know what was more exciting, watching the guys cut up their fresh catches that day or seeing dolphins.

Kathryn couldn't keep her hands off the dead fish on ice. I about lost it when she stuck her finger through one of their eyeballs.
After watching the guys slice the fish all up, Nathan decided that he would like to have fish for dinner. What?!?
Something really gross... Jessica kept trying to eat the ice.

Taking in the beautiful scenery.
Jessica got in some good cousin time.
They handed out popcorn to feed the birds. The birds would swoop down and eat the popcorn right out of your fingers.
There's Uncle Joe making Jessica feed the birds.
Jessica and her daddy got some good quality time together.
Look at the bird coming in to get that popcorn out of Nate's hand.
Kathryn enjoyed watching the dolphins.

Here they are splashing and playing.

Happy Birthday, Steve!

The blog is kind of all over the place, but I have a lot of catching up to do for March. I'll start with Steve's birthday bash with the kids and me. We went to Hallmark to pick out a card. Of course, Kathryn picked one with a cute little kitty on the front. Nathan was busy shooting lasers at people in the store and pretending they were doing the same to him. That's how most of his time is spent these days. Here is Kathryn signing her name to the card.
We ate cupcakes after he opened his birthday gift. A pair of purple and yellow tie-dyed underwear made specifically for him with love. You'll have to take my word for it because he didn't want to model them for the blog. He bought himself a humidor and some cigars as his real gift.

Kathryn went ahead and started sticking her fingers in the cupcakes. Here she is getting caught in the act.
Mad that she was caught but not willing to stop.
Do we know how to party, or what?!?!
There's the birthday boy!

A Decade of Mace

I can't believe my first baby turned 10 years old. To celebrate we hung streamers, sung "Happy

Birthday" and ate cake in honor of Mace. It's a good thing he was the cutest puppy ever because if he wasn't he would have been right back at that Petsmart begging for another home after he chewed up everything from the carpet to the couch to the lamps and pretty much every other household item I owned. Oh man, was he bad or what?!? But then every time I looked at him I couldn't help but forgive him.
Look at how mischievous, yet adorable he managed be.
Happy Birthday Mace! We love you!

Paw-Paw and Nathan's 5th Annual National Parks Trip: Mammoth Cave

It all started in 2008 when Steve went TDY to Las Vegas and Nate and I joined him. Thinking ahead, I invited Paw-Paw to fly out to babysit so that Steve and I could go out. Paw-Paw was newly retired and up for an adventure, so he agreed to it. In addition to hanging out in Vegas, Paw-Paw planned a trip to the Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon. It was on that trip that Paw-Paw realized just how awesome Nate was and we decided to continue this theme for years to come. It's 2012 and Paw-Paw and Nathan visited their fifth National Park together in Kentucky. He said this year was a "boys only" trip and he was sorry that Lady, Kathryn and I couldn't join them. What a thoughtful kid.

On the drive up to Kentucky they planned to spend a couple of days in Nashville. I decided to join them. I had a trip to Knoxville planned so I left early and tagged along with Paw-Paw and Nathan on their Nashville adventure.

Spring Break with Paw-Paw and Lady

So sorry for the long blog break, but between Nate and Kate knocking the laptop off the sofa on a weekly basis it was bound to break. When we finally got a new computer I was just too busy to get around to it. I don't have any excuses now, so here I go.<div><br>Nate and Kate spent Spring Break with Paw-Paw and Lady again this year. Here is Kathryn on the drive up. This seems like a perfect set up to me. Pass out with your hand in a bag of Cheetos just to wake up and start eating more Cheetos. It's a dream come true.

When we made it to Georgia Nathan had one thing on his mind.... Hungry Hungry Hippos. He had been discussing how much fun that game looked with Paw-Paw and Lady for about a week before our trip. Here he is in all his hippo glory.

Nate and Paw-Paw paired up and Lady and Kate became the hot new item. If you know Nate and Paw-Paw's relationship you can imagine an identical relationship with Kate and Lady. Everything is "Yiddy" (Lady). Nate and Paw-Paw took their annual National Parks trip (that will be a post all its own) and Lady and Kate stayed home together playing dress up and anything else Kate wanted to do.

Nate and Paw-Paw decided to go to Nashville on their way up to Kentucky. It sounded like fun and since I was going to Knoxville anyway I decided to just drive to Nashville early with Paw-Paw and Nate.

Nate took off running nonstop up the steps. He loves visiting capital buildings mainly for the steps.
I might have had something to do with this picture.

Nathan informed Paw-Paw that he doesn't mind not celebrating St. Patrick's Day because he doesn't really like beer anyways.
He thought this horse was funny.

Paw-Paw had never been to a Dick's Last Resort so I suggested it to get him to step out of his comfort zone. I had no idea he would get such a kick out of it. I think he enjoyed Nathan's reaction to our waiter more than anything. It was St. Patrick's Day so there was a lot of celebrating going on. A guy was on stage doing shots and our waiter came over and said, "Pay attention, kid. This is what you're going to be doing in college." Then Nate kept talking about how the waiter sat our drinks down and threw a handful of straws on the table. Then when Nate couldn't take the rudeness any longer he told the guy that he wasn't being a very good waiter. Paw-Paw was laughing and laughing at Nathan.
Later that night we went to Chick-fil-a where everyone is super friendly to make up for the rude lunch. The green ice cream made it even better.
One the most exciting parts of the vacation was getting to play Hungry Hungry Hippos in the hotel room.
Before Nate agreed to go on this vacation he made sure Paw-Paw was going to continue to play tic-toc after bath time in the hotel room.
Again, on the second night.
While Paw-Paw was in Tennessee swinging Nate around, Kate made sure Lady was doing the same for her in Georgia. I've created monsters.
Of course, I stocked up on Tennessee clothes for the entire family. Steve put an order in because wearing Tennessee clothes around here helps him make friends.

Back at Paw-Paw and Lady's house the game of tic-toc continued. I don't know why I ever started this game. I have definitely learned my lesson on doing anything else fun with my children.