Branson: Part 1

Well, we're back from Branson, Missouri. Okay...so we've actually been back since Saturday. But nevertheless...we're back. We headed out to Branson last Tuesday. I must say, I've never actually driven through the Ozarks and all I can say is 'wow!' It sure was a beautiful drive. There were more curves on those roads than I'd have ever expected. So despite the fact that we got turned around (aka: lost) twice, it was very picturesque. Once we got there we all just sort of chilled out for the remainder of the day. The houses that we stayed in were right by the lake shore and a boat dock so we spent the majority of the evening feeding the ducks, throwing rocks in the water (the kids), and fishing. Josh's sister JanDell and her family were there from England and Alex is really fond of their son, Caleb. They became fast friends to say the least. Once everyone made it to our destination then we relaxed and chatted it up for the night waiting for the next day to begin. We woke up to a super awesome breakfast, courtesy of my sis, Heather. AKA...the Breakfast Supreme Queen. (She has a gift for making breakfast. That's for sure. Yum!) Then it was straight to the pool. This is where it gets tricky. All of Alex and Abby's cousins are fish in water. They can survive quite well I'm proud to say. My kids? Not so much. The closest thing to water they've swam in is a tiny plastic pool from Wal-Mart. This, combined with my horrific fear of my children drowning made me a nervous wreck. But Josh insisted on getting Alex in the water and so off we went. They had an indoor and and outdoor pool. With Alex's asthma, we had to go to the outdoor pool so the chlorine levels weren't so dangerous to inhale. Miss Clingy, otherwise known as Abby, was really interested in the water, but Josh had his hands full with Alex on a floaty. So guess who had to buck up and get in the water? Ahem. That would be me. I've been adamant on not being seen in a swimming suit by pretty much anyone. And thanks to Mandy and her massive swim suit collection, I brought one 'just in case'. This, combined with a pair of jean cut-offs is about as close as I was gonna get to public displays of postpartum damage. :-) I got in the water with Abby and it went relatively well. It's gonna be a while before my anxiety about kids and water is cured.

After the pool, my father-in-law rented a pontoon and two kayaks to enjoy some lake water fun. You should know that my fear of murky lake water is pretty severe. But my nieces so graciously prayed that I would go tubing with them. I was firmly against this. Seriously...if I fell in I'd drown from my state of panic (okay...maybe not drown, but I'd panic). I've seen what lives in that water. NO thank you! I did, however, go kayaking with my niece, Lauren. And I was all set to avoid being pulled on that blasted tube. That is...until my almost four year old and my two-year old both made me look like the biggest pansy in the world. They both got on the tube and were pulled around the lake. I was still hesitant and freaked out when Alex and Abby were on the tube in the middle of the water. And yes. We all wore life-jackets, but still. And just before we were about to check in the boat I challenged Heather. Ugh...I should have known better. She had yet to go and mentioned that she really didn't want to do it. So I said I'd do it if she did. (This is the part where I float up out of my body and start screaming 'You idiot! what are doing?!? Shut up!!') Big surprise here (sarcasm). She took that challenge. I pretty much just wanted to prove to myself that I could defeat this fear. Hands shaking like a leaf and heart skipping every other beat...I went tubing. It was fun but I couldn't see anything for all the water in my face. We had a great time and I was surprised how wonderful my kiddos were without me. I enable their fears by projecting mine on to them. Ya know...like any good mother. ;-) In hind sight, I'm glad I temporarily conquered my fear but I still can't stand murky water.

So one big BBQ, seven exhausted kiddos, and and one fun day later, it was time for bed. Here are some of the pics from our fun water sport day. I have about a hundred photos so I'm gonna just share a few of the good ones.

Alex & Abby were excited to be on the boat.

And the first to jump into the water? Bro Ben. That's Kate on the sidelines waiting to be lowered in after her dad.

Left to right: Alex, Abby, Megan, and Linsey

Josh and his mom on the kayak.

Me and Lauren on the kayak. My shoulder felt like someone punched me after all that rowing.

Heather and Lauren on the kayak.

Alex...my almost four-year old. On a tube. In the lake. With his dad. I'm still biting my nails from this. And that's Stephen (Bro-inlaw) and Caleb on the kayak.

My two-year old. With dad. On a tube. In the dark murky lake. Pardon me while I mentally rewind for a moment and re-freak out. She did awesome!

And she was so excited and proud afterward. :-)

Lauren and Megan waitin' for the boat to pull them.

Heather meeting my challenge with open arms.

Me. Defeating my fear...for the moment.

Side Notes

There really isn't much to blog about right now. Well, nothing exciting to blog about anyways. It's really been just same ol' same ol' around here. So I suppose the best way to blog about it is with side notes. So these are just a few of the things that have been going on around here these days.

On August 12th, Josh's Grandpa passed away. He was 96 years old. What an amazing feat to live to such an age! He was a survivor Pearl Harbor and lived through so many of the ever changing times in America. The things he must have seen and experienced in his many years must have been countless and fascinating. I am honored to have known him and blessed to have been a part of his long life. It was very emotional to watch the funeral of a man of service. The folding of the American flag was inspirational and the presentation of the flag to his wife was heart wrenching. He was a wonderful man and will be missed.

Alex and Abby are still very much in Wiggle overdrive. Sometimes, I must admit, it can be a bit trying for me. They want to wear their Wiggle shirts nonstop and I don't enjoy doing laundry that often. But in the end, it's all good because I know that every child has something that they love dearly. Mine just happen to love shirts instead of teddy bears and blankets.

We got the last major vaccine for the kids this week. I was holding off on their chicken pox vaccine until they were old enough to handle the itching of chicken pox. Yes. I know the vaccine is supposed to prevent the disease. But due to it being a live virus, my kids are the small percentage that just so happen to actually react to it. With the MMR, both kids got full body rashes. Alex's was much worse. It was pretty yucky. It turned out that it was basically a mild case of the measles. (non transferable of course) Apparently a small percentage of kids react to live viruses. Who knew? Both Alex and Abby have gotten some mysterious pock-like marks on them this past week since getting the vaccine. So if that's the worst of it, we'll be good.

Tomorrow we are heading out on another summer adventure. Josh's sister, JanDell, lives in England with her husband and two children. Every other year or so, they visit the ol' U.S.A. for a month and this year the plan is to meet up with Josh's family in Branson, Missouri for the week. I've not been to Branson since I was a wee little thing so I'm not sure what to expect. But it will be nice to see everyone and the kids will have fun playing with their cousins. Unfortunately, the plans involve a lot of water. And in case anyone was wondering, I have a bit of a fear of jumping into dark mysterious water. Seriously, have you seen what a gar looks like?? Sharp teeth. Beady little eyes. Creeeeepy! I'm not sure the joy of water sports will trump my fear but we'll see. If I do get in the water and something moves past my leg then trust me...you'll know. People will hear my blood curdling scream at least four states away.

And of course, we have one joyous, final little note. Warning: You are not experiencing Deja vu. Though it may seem like you are hearing this for the umpteenth time...wait a second. You are hearing this for the umpteenth time. Josh got laid off...again. Happy happy...joy joy. As fun and as exciting as this info is...um...yeah. That's about all I can really say. (please note: the term 'happy happy...joy joy' is actually intended as sarcasm and does not mean that I am experiencing any happy joy-joyness over this repetitive situation.)

Otherwise, enjoy the beautiful weather if you're lucky enough to be having the same weather as we are. I already miss summer and it's not even over yet. I smell fall on it's way in.

The Wiggly Circus Finale

Well, with only seven more pictures left to share, I find myself...well...ready to blog about something else. Actually I really have almost nothing exciting to blog about at the moment which is why I've been blogging about this for so long. It's rather same ol', same ol' around here. Now, the rest of the show...

These guys all played the drums and it was really impressive. I'll post the video at the end.

Captain and Anthony doing a drum duo.

Captain...he does his own stunts. And hes great at it!

Captain and Jeff doing a head stand. I wish I could be as fit as these guys are. Awesome!

Play your guitar with Murray!

The finale. They sang Twinkle Little Star and Hot Potato then the show was over with a big confetti and streamer drop from the ceiling. Alex collected up a big wad of the streamers to take home. He still has them. :-)

A nice lady took this picture for us after the show was over. Abby wasn't willing to smile at the strange lady with mom's camera. But it's still a good photo. We forgot to give one of our roses to Dorothy, but she'll get it next year. We can't wait to go again. These guys really are amazing and I'm thankful that the world is blessed with good, moral entertainers that really do know what they are doing when it comes to kids. God bless the Wiggles and see ya next year!

The Wiggly Circus: Part 4

And so continues our Wiggly Circus photo album...

A good shot of all the side characters: Henry, Dorothy, Wags, and Captain. And that's Anthony doing a hand stand in the background.

Getting Strong!

Getting stronger!

So this is the part of the show that I (personally) got a little flustered over. Anthony Wiggle came into the audience. I wasn't expecting it to happen so suddenly and, seeing as how we were so close to the stage, I was caught off guard. He picked up Dorothy (Hello muscles!) and went right down the aisle...just two tiny seats away from me. So I proceed to awkwardly leap out of my seat to grab my camera and turn it on. Naturally the camera took it's own sweet time loading and I was mentally screaming, "Come on you stupid camera! Turn on! Turn on!" I mean, seriously...Anthony was literally right there....four feet away from me in all his...um...wiggly glory? He was followed (being spotted I assume so as not to drop poor Dorothy) by none other than Captain Feathersword. A two for one special for ol' mom. :-) I did get the camera on...eventually. And I managed to get a picture before he passed me...er...I mean passed us. I think I giggled a little and I imagine my cheeks were a bit on the red side.

(I think I just giggled a little again.)

I love how they use the whole stage for their show.

Human pyramid.

This song is a classic. Fruit Salad. Sam Watermelon, Jeff Apple...

Murray Banana...and...

Anthony Blueberry. (Fruit Salad...yummy yummy!)

Ringo Grapes.

Sly Dog

I'd like to take this Wiggly Circus intermission to bring to you two genuine toddler moments, courtesy of Alex. He's become quite the sly little thinker these days. He's always trying to figure things out. Rather, he's always trying to figure out how to get what he wants.

Telling Time: A conversation with a 3 1/2 year old

Alex: Mom, can I play video games?
Me: No. Sorry...no video games right now.
Alex: But I want to play video games.
Me: Sorry, bud. No video games.
Alex (while pointing to the clock): Look mom! Do you see the clock?
Me: What about it?
Alex: You see what it says? Hmmm...(pretending to study the time on the clock) It says 'time to play video games!' Yay! It's time to play video games!

Growing Up: A 3 1/2 year old thinking it through

Every night after the kids go to bed, I watch DVDs of my favorite TV shows. We have a combo VHS/DVD player and the kids have been watching VHSs so I left my disc in the player. So the other morning I was in washing dishes when I heard the theme music to Smallville. I went in the living room to find Alex and Abby intently watching an episode of Smallville. I smiled and turned it off. Alex asked me what it was and I said, "It's Smallville, one of mama's shows that I watch." So he thought for a moment and then asked me, "Can I watch it too?" I told him no and he thought again, "Can I watch it when I get big like you?" I smiled and said, "Yes. You can watch it when you get big like me." He got up on the couch, climbed up onto the arm of the couch and stood as tall as he could. With arms up in a moment of pride, he exclaimed, "Look mom! I'm as big as you are! I grew up! Yay! I can watch Smallville now!"

All I could do was hug him and laugh. Cute.

The Wiggly Circus: Part 3

And now for the slightly delayed (but just as wonderfully fun) continuation of our Wiggly Circus photos. Okay, so we had something incredibly exciting happen. If you're not familiar with The Wiggles, then you should know something. The Wiggles and their dancers go into the audience throughout the show to do certain things. One of these things is to collect roses for Dorothy and bones for Wags. Generally, Jeff and Murray go into the audience for this part. So what luck was it that Sam (Alex's favorite) went into the audience this time...and right on our aisle!! Seeing as how our row was empty, we scurried down to the end so Alex and Abby could give their roses and bones to him. Okay...please keep in mind that this is the closest I've ever been to anyone famous when you see the following photos...so no judging, k? Alex gave Sam his rose and his clay bone for Wags...

and we were so excited! We were just feet away from Sam Wiggle! At this point, miss Abby was clutching to me for dear life because she didn't know why we were getting up and 'leaving'. You see Alex's head in the corner? Yeah...well I had miss Abby's kung-fu grip around my throat and couldn't get a good picture. Josh was so wowed that he didn't feel me knocking him to take the camera. That is Alex's bone in Sam's hand. And the orange rose is his too. So Sam looks down to Alex and says hello to him. Then...

Alex gives him our little 'thank you' plaque that we made for the Wiggles. He tells Alex how lovely it is and thanks him. Then he proceeds to tell Alex, "Hey! You look just like me!" And believe me...Alex has not forgotten this. I can't pry his yellow Wiggle shirt off of him this week. He's been 'Sam' all week and won't let it go. So then, Abby realizes that Sam Wiggle is right there in front of her and proceeds to get all happy. She gives him her pink rose and bone for Wags and gets all smiley at him. She warmed up faster to Sam than she does to pretty much anyone else in the world. Adorable. Josh finally takes the camera and snaps this photo of Abby saying hi to Sam...

and you'll notice the incredibly giddy look on my face and the stars in my eyes. I was...well...starstruck. Sam was so wonderful to the kids and it was the most memorable moment I've had. I uh...think I'm sorta crushin' on Sam Wiggle now. Move over Anthony! Sam's in town! :-) Then there was one more snap of Sam with the attempt of getting Alex in the photo (and failing). But it's a great photo nonetheless.

Another Sam photo.

Henry the Octopus! Abby got a doll of him too. She adores this guy.

They were tumbling all over each other. Captain and Jeff in the giant hamster ball. Hilarious!

Wags the Dog!

Wags and Henry.

Muscle Murry was 'Getting Strong." It's one of their songs. Also a nice shot of Anthony.

To be continued tomorrow. If you're sick of The Wiggles...well...too bad. :-) It's gotta be done.

The Wiggly Circus: Part 2

Where did I leave off? Ah, yes...introductions. Alex and Abby were so in awe of their heroes dancing right in front of them that they forgot to do much dancing and jumping. They did, however, clap and 'Wake up Jeff!' when the time called for it. I would say that I was the one who made the most noise of the four of us. The show was pure entertainment at it's finest. These guys know that the audience is probably 50% adults so they make it enjoyable for everyone. I think they've perfected it because Josh and I were laughing our fool heads off. They are really good at improv and critics don't lie when they say that parents will more than likely have just as good a time as (if not better than) their kids. I'd say that this was the coolest thing I've ever got to experience. I have so many pictures that I'm just going to put up ten a day until I'm done. I took over a hundred, but I'm only posting about forty. I hope you enjoy them half as much as we enjoyed the concert.

Jeff! He's Abby's favorite followed by Murray. She also loves the side characters too. Pics later of them of course.

Sam and the Captain. Captain cracks us up! This guy is trained in opera and does all his own stunts on stage. He gets better every year too from what we can tell on the DVDs they release.

I love this picture. Look at Sam's face. Captain was 'singing' like a bird.

They also are capable of playing a plethora of instruments and each one of them does it well.

A great shot of Alex staring in awe at his heroes.

They all are very strong apparently. They were always doing stunts like this one.

Captain was a box of popcorn. The two in the background were normal popcorn. Captain? He was Disco Pop. He started to disco and groove. We were rolling! You should have seen this guy shake his hips. (Helloooo, Captain!)

Murray and Dorothy the dinosaur. He was introducing her so that they could collect roses from the kids in the audience. I got some great pictures of that but I'll save that little story for tomorrow's blog. :-) Abby bought a little stuffed Dorothy that she is in love with.

They sing songs from other cultures. It's great for the kids to hear songs from around the world.

I still can't believe Jeff is 57 years old. Look at Jeff go!

The Wiggly Circus

Pre-show with Alex and Abby outside. Those are the roses for Dorothy and the bones we made for Wags.

Three days, 800 miles, and one awesome time later, we are back from our adventure to The Wiggly Circus. And it...was...AWESOME!! We had the most wonderful time and I can't believe that it's over already. It all started on Thursday night. We originally decided that we would leave after Josh got home from work (about 8:00 p.m.) and drive halfway then get a hotel. When we turned on the loaned GPS, it told us that we would reach our destination by 2:16 a.m. So plans changed and we drove the whole way while the kiddos slept away the trip in their car seats. Of course, Abby didn't really sleep well. She never complained, but woke up sporadically and stared out the window until drifting into dreamland again. We got our hotel and had the joy of sleeping in without worrying about the mad rush to the theater.

So the big moment was upon us. We reached the Verizon Theatre in Grand Prairie, TX about two hours before the concert started. We discovered that the doors only opened one hour before the events and ended up sitting outside in the blazing Texas heat for about an hour. The kids (and us as well) didn't care because it was well worth the wait and the anticipation was part of the fun. They let us inside and we directly went over to the merchandise booth and loaded up on Wiggles stuff. Each kid got to pick out something special and a t-shirt (which neither kid has taken off). From there we were directed to our Hot Potato Seats that were so close to the stage that I was flabbergasted. How lucky could we be to have such awesome seats? The attendant originally seated us in another row but she put us in the wrong place. Some snide lady got all snippy and rude before we could explain ourselves and the attendant moved us to our right seats. But the jokes on her, dumb lady. We ended up meeting Sam. And Anthony walked about two feet away from me. So take that, little miss snotty. Ha! We were two seats away from the aisle and our whole row (save two seats) ended up being empty. Sweet!

Can you tell they're excited?

Alex and Abby were dancing around to the music being played over the speakers until the show started (all Wiggles songs of course) and they were beyond excited! Then the spotlight popped on and Ringo, the circus master, greeted us all and prepared us for the circus. He was hilarious!

Within moments, the circus began and the Wiggly dancers were all over the stage. It was surreal to see the dancers up close and live. We've seen them on the dvd's dancing along with the Wiggles for so long that it was strange to see them for real. Then the Wiggles were introduced one by one. Jeff was the first out and let me tell you...this guy can move! He is 57 years old and I watched this man do stunts that most 20 year olds can't even do. He is Abby's favorite Wiggle and she was more than thrilled to see him. Next up was Sam. This guy has an amazing voice and I swear his voice is even better in the live show. Alex couldn't stop staring when Sam popped out. He was in total awe. Anthony (my personal fave) came out on stage hiding behind an umbrella and when he popped out...well...let's just say that every mom in the room was screaming...including yours truly. And last, but most certainly not least, Murray came out playing his guitar. Awesome, I tell ya! Captain Feathersword came riding out in between with his scooter. Then they came back out on stage driving, none other than, the Big Red Car!

A-W-E-S-O-M-E!

Here's a video I took of the introductions. I missed Jeff's intro because miss Abby was being clingy and I couldn't get the camera on in time. And yes...that is me in the background going all ga-ga over the Wiggles. (Hey...don't judge me. :-)

For now, I'll leave you with part one of my Wiggly Circus blog. I'll continue tomorrow because I have so many pictures that I could never post them on one blog. I am hoping to print my blog into a book with a cool website I found and all my good pictures are being put on here so that I don't have to deal with photo albums anymore. So until tomorrow...keep on wiggling!