Vacation Part 1!

*I am breaking up our vacation into several blog posts due to the massive amount of pictures I have.

We went on our first vacation as a family of four during spring break. It was so much fun!!

I had this grand plan to incorporate geography into our trip. A little bit of history too. We were going to stop at half the states on our route to collect postcards one way and we would stop at the other half to collect them on the way back. We would take pictures, put a stamp on little passports that I intended to create, and I would read to them a little about each state that we passed. Sweet right?

Well that went to hell in a handbasket when we all caught a stomach virus before I could put together anything past my plan! It was a rough few days in our house. Four human beings. With a stomach virus. In one bathroom.

Cait was struck with it first. She went to bed perfectly fine. Suddenly Juan and I heard the unmistakable sound of vomit. This was only a few days before we were supposed to leave. We hoped it was food poisoning, cleaned up the mess (well Juan took care of the mess while I cleaned up Caitlin), and she fell asleep. Fine, a little hiccup, but nothing that would cancel our vacation starting Wednesday.

20 minutes later she puked again. 20 minutes after that, again. She continued puking every 20 minutes for 4 hours. Well, crap.

 

We brought her to the ER and learned that she had a stomach virus. The nurse said she had been seeing a lot of it lately.

"Is it contagious?" I asked, knowing damn well it was, but hoping, praying, begging, that she would say otherwise.

She just looked at me and lied straight through her teeth. "We'll see." I knew I was in trouble when she smiled.

Damn.

She sent us off with anti nausea meds and wished us the best.

When Jayden, Juan, and I started feeling off the next day I knew what to expect. I will skip the horrid details because this isn't that kind of blog. Luckily we were on the mend within 36hours. 12 hours later we were packed and ready to go!

It started off like this:

 

 We drove until they looked like this:

We stopped to rest and suddenly they were wide awake, excited to be spending the night in a hotel.

The next morning we left before the sun rose. Jayden was too excited to rest in the car but Cait napped a few times.

 

And finally we arrived in the sunshine state!

To be continued...

The past couple of weeks of Caitlin's Little Learners class went like this:

 She graduated from her Little Learners class!

 

Jayden has been building lego sets. He loves all things lego and does an awesome job following directions to put together and take apart his sets.

There is a new baby in our family! The kids have a brand new, long awaited, beautiful baby girl cousin and Juan & I have a new niece. This meant we had to take a trip to Build A Bear to create something fabulous for her.

In science Jayden is currently learning about measuring solids, liquids, and gases. Naturally we had to make a batch of nutella chocolate chip cookies since we are learning about measurements.

 

The kids have been fascinated with learning Spanish lately. Caitlin's favorite word? "Cooooooooooooooooooooooooooonchale!" She really stretches out that "o" to the max. Thanks a lot daddy! To help them learn more productive words, I found some free videos online called Salsa. It is a series of videos with puppets that Caitlin loves. Jayden does not though, so I will have to find something else for him.

 We finally picked up Jayden's karate uniform and he looks completely adorable in it!

I have been slacking on the blogging! Oops! Sometimes life gets in the way.

We have still be working on school. I have still been taking a ton of pictures. A whole lot of pictures.

Jayden is loving karate.

Starting off with a pledge which includes being a leader, eating your vegetables, and keeping your room clean

Warm ups!

Deshi helping Jayden with a karate move

Ending with the pledge

Grandpa & Lisa were visiting that weekend. So after karate, we went to their hotel and the kids went swimming. They were ecstatic to show off their new skills.

I don't know if it was the smaller pool or the bigger audience, but Caitlin felt confident enough to jump into the pool all by herself. Usually she wants her teacher to hold her hand. This time she said "I can do it by my own self mom!"

 And she did!

Hot tub

The following week we met up for our Minecraft game with Owen.

During swimming class later that week Miss Scarlett was pleasantly surprised when Cait jumped in by her "own self."

 

I love these kinds of pictures of Caitlin. You see her swimming her ass off!

Mr. Cool

During the week that I last posted we made a few changes to our curriculum. Jayden decided he no longer liked Time4Learning and Caitlin decided she wanted to try it. After a quick phone call to the company, the grade, username, and password were all changed and set up for Little Miss.