Bike Parade Through The Years

Our precious preschool puts on a bike parade each year. Now that all three children have participated, it's fun to see just how much each of them has grown! 

2014 was our first year here and it is incredible to see our big, grown up, almost 3rd grader here on a balance bike! Look at how precious the "car wash" is for these kids to go through! I don't even think we had our moving shipment delivered yet at the date of this parade, so I certainly was not put together enough to decorate the bike. 

2015 was the year I learned at that inflated balloons are a bad idea to tie to the back of a bicycle. The colorful balloons were instantly tangled and popped and dangled as a limp clump of color at the back of her bike the whole time. This little ray of sunshine didn't mind one bit. She is all smiles and energy this year too. 

Alex joins in on the fun in 2016 with his blue scooter. His lefthanded-ness had become clear when he started scooting, using the opposite foot to propel himself. He is a natural scooter-kid.

Gretchen is still enjoying the parade - and I have a rare year of having all children participating in the bike parade, and I was able to take photos without chasing anyone around. This was the year I was pregnant with Graham.

The absolute height of my decorating skill was 2017 when Jon brought home this fantastic balloon "G" from a work event. It fit perfectly on Alex's bike handles and he thoroughly enjoyed having a decorated bike. Note that this was our "cold" year at the bike parade. If I remember correctly it was around 70F and everyone is in jeans and long sleeves. Texas is funny like that.

Alex graduated to a larger, SpiderMan bike in 2018. It's the little things like the slight bend in his elbow and his long-looking legs on that big bike that let me know how much he has grown since last year!

Welcome to the bike parade, Graham! 2019 is your year, where you inherit Alex's blue scooter, he follows suit by bringing his big red and black scooter, and you both have precious letter decorations courtesy of cousin Lydia. I am pretty sure Graham is right-handed, but he uses the same foot as his brother to power this scooter and I find it adorable. 

2019 is the last bike parade year for Alex. It is also a new location for their preschool, and I am thrilled that this tradition lives on.

Easter in Dallas

Growing up, "visiting family" meant going to Wisconsin. Lots and lots of my extended family live in Wisconsin, and those that didn't would also periodically return to visit the dairy state. This meant that in order to see my cousins that didn't live in Wisconsin, we needed to match up our yearly trip with their yearly trip - and that only happened some of the time. 

Luckily now that we live in Texas, we are able to drive to see some of this extended family who live in our home state. I have a number of cousins, aunt and uncles that live across the major metro cities in Texas, so now we can visit family more than once a year, and spend weekends or other small gatherings together without any major travel involved. This is what we did for Easter. We headed due north for a nice weekend with cousins, staying with my Aunt Linn and Uncle Greg. As an extra bonus for the holiday, we had additional cousins come in from Colorado to match nicely with our kids and keep us out far too late one of the nights. 

My uncle John invited us to an Easter egg hunt and party where we made the MAJOR mistake of arriving 1 minute late. This started our Easter celebration off with utter chaos - "We're not going to get ANY eggs!!!!" - and a few tears. The joy of Easter. Note the lack of eggs in Gretchen's basket. We learned a bit about gratitude and appreciation that morning, and the tears quickly dried when her sweet cousins offered to share the melted molten lava chocolate candy that comes from holding an egg hunt in Texas at midday. 

Here is 40 year veteran Ranger's employee Papa John with some of the kid troop. All smiles, and a beautiful day.

Look at the soft side of Uncle John!

Gretchen and Justice are two peas in a pod. Insta-friends, like-minded, it's really great to watch them together. 

The end of the egg hunt was a brilliantly crafted raffle. Each child received a ticket, waited for their number, and then EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM won. The ticket dictated the order in which they could choose their present, but every child left with a gift. Incredible. 

Waiting for raffle numbers

WINNER!!

Beautiful Julia calling out winning numbers

The rest of our day was spent at my cousin's gorgeous new pool, dying eggs and grilling out. Lots of fun, laughs and I even snuck in a nap. It was a great weekend, with lots of plans to see these cousins far more than once a year. 

Wearing gloves during egg-dying: J'Vette's mom-mastery!

The water was juuuuust chilly enough to keep this one on the side.

38 years young

We left early enough on Sunday morning to make it back home and celebrate Daddy's birthday. Happy Birthday Daddy! Happy Easter Everyone!

Thanksgiving 2018 on Anna Maria Island

It's Thanksgiving! Family Time!

We opted for a destination Thanksgiving and chose Anna Maria Island, Florida. I had never heard of this place until we booked the trip, then I realized that many people know of this gem and I hadn't been paying attention. We rented a nice big house to accommodate our growing family, and brought aunts, uncles and cousins together for a week of fun. While this vacation is a much needed break for me personally, I am still impatiently wading through my chemotherapy regiment. My blood counts are low, my treatment is delayed more often than it's not. While I'm not tied to a hospital bed, and I'm thankful that I can travel during this time, I still need to have my blood checked each week to see if it has crawled back up into the acceptable range. Two separate times during this week, my dad dutifully drove me to a lab in Bradenton, FL to have my counts read. Both times I failed the test. I packed the chemo pills with all intention of taking them, but my body said no, and I packed them up again when we returned home.

As far as the fun side of sightseeing goes, we had lots of adventures. We took a boat tour with Egmont Key Adventures where we immediately saw a pair of dolphins swimming around the docks. The water was a brisk, November temperature so I stayed on the boat, but Grammy, Uncle Chris and the girls were brave and got in to snorkel and hunt for sand dollars. They found lots of live sand dollars, which are just the most bizarre creatures, and a few shells too.

After exploring the underwater creatures, we rode to Egmont Key Island. This weird little island is on the National Registry of Historic Places, is a Natural Wildlife Refuge and a state park. There is a lighthouse on the island that dates back to 1848, when Robert E. Lee advised that the island be used as a strategic defense location. It was a holding place for Seminole natives to be held, a sanctuary for southern, pro-Union people during the Civil War and used as a military prison for the Union. 

Despite it's colorful, and sometimes grim history, we refer to it as Turtle Island. There are tortoises roaming the island freely - and they're everywhere! "I found a big one!" "Not as big as this one!" "Here's the grandfather giant one!!" It was fun to roam and scout for turtles on this semi-creepy, historic place.

The "big kid" cousins

I got some sweet lovin' from my big kids.

At the recommendation of a friend, we spent a day off of Anna Maria Island at the Florida Aquarium. We were told to expect a variation on your average aquarium, this facility has a focus on saving the habitat of native species and rehabilitating injured animals to prepare them for release back into the wild.  

There were tanks of colorful fish, and tanks of artificially grown coral. We saw gigantic sea turtles eat and beavers play like kids at recess. 

Uncle Chris joined, and helped Alex be brave about touching the stingrays. They were almost pet-like as they rubbed their wings up against your outstretched hands. A group of stingrays is called a 'fever', now you know. 

Alex got so brave after his experience with the fever, that he pet this fun little shark!

Manatees seem like the most gentle, strange and exotic creatures, I was really hoping to see one in the wild. We got the next best thing, and got to watch this rescued manatee as she swam around the tank and smooshed her whisker-nose into the glass on repeat. The kids just about matched her smashed nose on the glass in response. 

We were also able to just enjoy the water. Our house had a nice pool, so the cold-tolerant folks spent time swimming in the water. For the little ones, they were more of a float, either with this cool head inner-tube for the teeniest of our crew.

Or the arm-float variety that Graham used for the entire week. 

It was a special little joy to be able to watch my baby brother love on his new baby girl. This sweet little ginger was a content joy all vacation. 

The fawning didn't stop at Robbie, Gretchen got a turn holding her baby cousin. 

And Grammy is all smiles with this pink little girl. She was easy to hold and unafraid of having so much attention focused on her.

Let's not forget the beach!! Graham and Papa Mas were the first ones up each day and Papa Mas was nice enough to take his coffee to go so that he could watch Graham on the beach and let the rest of us sleep/wake up at our own pace.

Grammy kept a careful eye on all of our sand crabs, it was the perfect weather for enjoying the sound of the waves and digging endless holes in the sand.

We rented a golf cart from Fun and More Rentals, had a delicious catered dinner by The Loft 5 and took lots of pictures on the beach. Anna Maria Island was a great place to spend a holiday.