The better question may be where HAVEN'T we been? Life has been crazy lately so I'm sorry we've kind of fallen off of the blogger world. Sadly it was a combination of getting behind on blogging at Christmas and in January, then the death of a camera in March, and then just everyday busy life. A few weeks ago Taylor's mom was cleaning out some drawers and found a paper she'd left for a babysitter years ago when she and Jeff had gone away for the weekend. It detailed when to pick up and drop off each kid and filled an entire page in small writing. She handed it to me laughing and I just stared in horror. Pick up this one, drop off that one, literally all day from 4:45 am (maybe I'm rethinking allowing my kids to be swimmers- 4:45 is NIGHT TIME, morning absolutely should NEVER start before 5AM and even that is insane!) to after 7pm. Not looking forward to that life. Sadly, it's sort of started for us already. Here's my basic Tuesday/Thursday schedule: 8:30 drop Ethan at Kindergarten 9:30 drop Isaac at Joyschool (unless I'm teaching) 11:20 pick Ethan up/make lunches to eat in the car 12:00 pick up Isaac 12:30 drop Ethan at Spanish school/naps- Yeah! 3:30 pick up Ethan/go home/do homework 4:30 swim lessons for Ethan and Isaac I'm already feeling like I spend my days in the car and can't wait for Isaac and Miles to learn to buckle themselves in.
So where have we been? Here- at the pool! And we love it. The real reason we've added daily swim lessons to the crazyness of our lives is that our backyard is connected to and open to Taylor's parent's backyard. They are in essence just one BIG backyard and his parents have both a pool and hottub in their yard. Several times this fall and winter, we caught the kids walking across the cover- sometimes with water or ice on it and sometimes without. But each time they seemed to think they were perfectly safe and this greatly disturbed Taylor who had several friends growing up drown in pools and he started having nightmares our kids would die drowning. So while it's been a bit of an added burden to get kids to and from the pool and dressed and undressed, it's helped Taylor's peace of mind.
And Ethan's got a killer backstroke so we've got that to show for our 3 months of swim lessons too!
This tire is off of one of the "haul trucks" that we refered to as monster trucks. They're basically huge dump trucks and they're so big that the driver has to climb a set of 20 stairs to just get into the cab. Trust me we know since Ethan made sure to count them all. If you want a true perspective, look at how small the kids are next to the tire, then look at the last picture and see how small the monster truck is next to the mine behind it. Crazy! 
The Visitor Center was really neat but of course the boys prefered being outside in the rain watching the action. You drive through this part which was very impressive. 
And then you come around the curve to this... they've literally carved out the mountain. It's 3/4 of a mile deep! 
The boys were fascinated by these trucks so we watched them getting filled by large diggers and then driving up and down and around all the roads and finally to where they dump car size boulders into a machine that crushes them to the size of basketballs. Ethan was most impressed by the fact we read that just one of these trucks could hold 6 humpback whales. He kept repeating this to me in an astonished voice and as we drove away he finally asked me- "mom, why do they put whales in the trucks?" 
So who really knows what they learned from our little adventure but they loved it! Did you know that the mine is so big you can see it from space? 
Later that day we went to cheer on Ethan's soccer team the "Sharks" which actually is Taylor's team now too since he's taken over coaching and reffing duties for the other coach who has a 3 month old and 3 older kids and a husband in medical school residence- yep we thought she deserved some help. 
Several times over the past few months we've woken up and found Ethan in his little corner of the toy room sitting on his tiny couch reading books. What a wonderful kid I thought! He's up early which is fine since he's quiet and he's even reading books to himself. So when he later asked if he could get himself a snack in the morning if he was up early and hungry I said yes. And later discovered that his snack of choice was mixed nuts- which most of the time he ate all of them but sometimes they fell behind the couch or under a book. We knew this because Isaac has brought them to us to throw out (thankfully he's old enough to know what nuts are and that he shouldn't eat them). And so we've had lots of discussions with Ethan about the danger of nuts to Isaac. And so Ethan's been more careful. Unfortunately, on Monday I woke up with the cleaning itch and decided to dive into my spring cleaning. So I moved and vacuumed under the toy room couch and of course I was followed the whole time by one little blondie who wanted to pick up and play with everything I was moving. Somehow in the shuffle of things I think he found (and ate) a nut before I found it. He was throwing up less than an hour after I'd started but of course I didn't realize what had happened (I just thought he had the flu) until hours later when he woke up with this wicked rash and then was able to keep down 2 bottles and 5 pieces of toast. He was very insistent that's what he wanted. So not the flu if you just throw up twice in quick succession and then end up with a crazy rash. I may not be the sharpest mom out there unfortunately. 
