Spring Break Part Two

We took the kids up to Mt. Bachelor to the superblast snowtube park. It was C*O*L*D, but it was a lot of fun! There is a daycare in the lodge that we took Little Guy to, since he wasn't tall enough to go on the tubes. There were 6 well groomed trails to ride down and a rope tow to haul people up to the top on their tubes. After two hours, they were cold and ready to head back to the cabin.

Spring Break Part One

We took a little family vacation to Eagle Crest Resort for spring break. We had such a great time. Here are some snippets of our trip:

We rode bikes

We enjoyed the Sunbursts
We ate (too much)

We had our cousins, Pete and Kelli over for Easter dinner with their three cute kids. Hank, Pete, and JJ got into a roaring game of Monopoly. Guess who won? JJ did, much to the chagrin of the "experts", who claimed to have superior negotiating and real estate skills.

Hank wondering how this happened?? Notice his many "mortgaged" properties.

More to come...

BasketBrawl

Several times a week after Hank gets home from work, we have a Father/Son basketball game (brawl)

At this point, they've each won about the same number of games. They're both extremely competitive, but one of them (I don't want to single anyone out, but he's the one wearing shorts) gets REALLY mad when he loses and the whole neighborhood hears about it. Tonight I had to lay down the verdict. No more outbursts like that or the competition is off.

Pooper Scoopers

A little background first. A few weeks ago, we had our lawn aerated. It's done with a rototiller-like machine that basically pokes big holes all over the lawn to allow it to get more oxygen blah blah blah. The problem (for me, anyway) is that it leaves behind all these ugly little poo logs. It's not really poo, of course, but it looks like it. It reminds me a little too much of nutria. Ughhhhasdjjl;dlfkja;lskdfj;alskdjfa;sldkfja;ldkj.

This is what they look like up close


So, anyway, the other day we had another nice SUNNY spring-like day. The kids came home from school and were playing around outside. I had this hare-brained idea to have them pick up all the little poo logs. They weren't as excited about the idea as I was. So I came up with an even better hare-brained idea. I told them I would pay them 1 cent for each poo log they picked up. They still didn't jump. Until one of them started thinking. Hmmm. How many poo logs could I pick up in one minute? Oh, probably about 60. Let's see...that's $0.60/minute. That's $36/hour, give or take some for the "exhaustion factor." All of a sudden, it seemed like a GREAT idea to them and a really STUPID idea to me. But the bribe had already been spoken. And as anyone knows, once it's been spoken, there's no taking it back. It's like chaft in the wind. Or something like that. Never mind. It was some poem I heard about gossip once.

Reed managed to make $10 before his back started killing him

Montana hung in there for $5.86

JJ, who recently celebrated a birthday (read: just raked in a bunch of cash) wasn't feeling quite as motivated as the others. She got $2.43 and then talked Little Guy into pushing her around in his little plastic car.

Although I was out $18.29 when all was said and done, I was quite pleased with the results. The lawn was walkable and playable again. I thought Hank would be so surprised when he came home. Oh, he was surprised all right. The kids ran to him as he walked in the door and told him how much money they had just made in such a short amount of time. He was like, you did what? He came to find me, only to inform me that those little poop things were supposed to stay on the lawn. He said it was all part of the process, blah blah blah. He then reminded me (very nicely) that I was in charge of the flowers and he was in charge of the grass. Oops. I guess I had forgotten that part.

Birthday Fun

JJ on the morning of her birthday.

She got to choose anything she wanted for breakfast. She chose blueberry shortcakes with whipped cream. Well, actually she chose strawberry shortcakes, but we couldn't find any good strawberries.

At her Chuck E. Cheese's party with her friends

Little Guy had fun checking out all the rides

Montana was the ticket queen. She won a lot of them!

Reed trying to stuff his 6'2" frame into a race car made for little kids