Here's as pic I took of one of Avery's friends that I'm really happy with....

Kite Flying and Allergies

Wal-Mart has simple kites for $1, so we decided to get some for the kids and give flying them a try last Sunday. There was some wind, but the town we are in has a lot of trees which is a good thing, unless you are trying to fly kites or you are allergic to those trees. More on the allergies in a minute, but here are a couple of pictures from our kite flying adventure at a friend's house. I didn't get any of Benjamin, he's on a picture taking strike. He runs as fast as he can when I point the camera at him. The back yard we were in has less trees than any park I've found, plus it's huge, fenced in and has a trampoline! I'm thinking of 'renting' it for Avery's birthday party in the fall. We had a nice time with grilling hot dogs and just enjoying the fleeting day of spring.

Now, back to the allergies. The kids have been waking up every morning completely congested and miserable. I feel so bad for them. Benjamin finally realized that all he has to do is blow his nose and he will feel fine, but Avery is a bit more dramatic and has a harder time with it. She was up at 6:00 this morning feeling bad, but went back to bed and slept until 8:30. (Elijah is now not getting up until we do at 7:00, so some mornings he will run Benjamin to school for me. It's so wonderful after so many years of him getting up at 5:30 or earlier!!) Avery does has a headache this morning, but I gave her some Motrin and we are going to go get her some Benadryl later because it seems to work better for her than Zyrtec. To give a quick example of how bad the pollen is here, the boys washed my car for me the other day and this is what it looked like just a few hours later. Another good argument for cleaning out the garage so I can park in it!!!

Benjamin's Journal

Every once in a while, Benjamin brings home these 'journals' for the month. I haven't seen one in months, and February's was blank, but the one from January had some great stuff in it. I guess his teacher uses this as a time filler if the kids are done with their work early or get to class before the bell. I'll do my best to not fix any spelling errors, however hard!

I used to live in Tennsee. I'm going to visit agein somtime. I miss Tennsee.

The blue state is Tennessee, orange is South Carolina, I think that the light yellow is Georgia. He knows most of his states, but especially the southern ones!!

He had lost his red Buffalo Bills hat at school, so this was his next entry:

Have you see my hat? I lefet it here. I's red.

I saw a real whalshark befor. It was 20 feet long. It was a kid.

I actually figured out my new scanner, so this is the entire page on this one. The whole US wouldn't fit on my little scanner:

If you can't read it, it says: The USA is a good place to live in. I'm lucky. I love the USA.
The "Me too!" is from his teacher.

The last entry:
I like you Mrs. Singleton. I love yuor classroom. I like yuor shirt.

So high....

As most of you have probably heard by now, Avery received her first sports injury the very first time she participated in any kind of sport. She was giving me a hard time about going to bed last night, and I assumed it was because she was missing Elijah since he now has a pretty big role in putting her to bed. She kept coming out saying her chest hurt, but I would send her back to bed because she seemed fine. Then all of a sudden she started screaming like I have never heard her scream before. A constant, blood curdling scream. She had a hold of the side of her neck and wouldn't let go. I thought maybe one of the ants we are trying to not let take up permanent residence here bit her, but I didn't see anything. If you even tried to get near it she would freak out. I took her to the ER and after a quick reminder from Elijah that she had started gymnastics, I told the ER doctor and they stopped trying to see if she had some sort of problem in there. She apparently sprained/strained the muscles in the left side of her neck badly enough that they were spasming bad enough to make the entire ER think she had ruptured her ear drums. I think they got confused and thought their ear drums were rupturing from the insane screaming she was doing. I have never heard her like that. Elijah is out of town, so I had to take both kids with me to the ER. I have a wonderful friend who came and took Benjamin back to her place so he could get some rest. They gave her happy medicine that made her absolutely hilarious. The video is cut short because people were calling and texting me to check on Avery, but you get the idea...

Here she is on a much better day playing dress up:

Every once in a while Benjamin's school has "Spirit Night" at various places. Generally they are held at local restaurants and a portion of the proceeds of that night go to the school. We don't go often, but the one we have gone to twice now is Family Night at the local bowling alley. This place is really, really expensive, but on school nights it is only $8 for two games of bowling and shoes. This particular night it also came with 18 holes of indoor glow golf. Benjamin has been begging to do the mini-golf, so we decided to invite some friends and go out on an actual Friday night!! By the time we finished bowling, it was already coming up on 8:00 and so our friends headed out to put the baby down, and I was fine with that myself but to appease Benjamin we headed into glow golf. It was kind of neat, and oddly the pictures I took eliminated the black lights and paint and the animals came out looking really cool. Avery started getting pretty tired and it was really crowded, so we rushed through and got out as fast we (I) could. It was a fun night. The best part was the silent auction. I'm not one to usually participate in these, but when I looked no one was bidding on the BJ's (like Sam's Club) memberships and mine is up on the 31st, so I bid just $10 on a $35 membership, and I won!!! I love saving money.....

I told the kids to put their heads together for a picture, but Benjamin got a bit rushed and they

bonked heads. I would have put money on Avery being more hard-headed...

Pearl's Birthday Party

I found Avery a bathing suit today for pretty cheap, so I went ahead and bought it. She's all excited because it's Dora. I like the fact that is a shirt and a bit more modest. It did however come with a bikini top, and I went ahead and tried it on her and she jumped up and down and was SO excited because, in her words, it came with a 'brought' (bra). I love the way they talk!!