Bright sunshiny day!

Another bright, beautiful 75 degree NC February day means that we headed out to a park again! I could really get used to this! Today we went to Blue Jay Point. The park itself is nothing to get that excited about, but the 0.2 mile hike down to Falls Lake and the amount of fun that we have down by the water makes this a favorite to our kids (and to me)!

There is a LARGE sandbox, which makes for a very happy Kate! Brett doesn't like the sand that much, but gladly runs around with any other big kids that are there.

Heading down to the water

Taking a rest on a log

Follow the yellow dots to stay on the path

Silver princess shoes aren't the ideal choice, but she made it work!

Looking for rocks to throw in the water

Digging for rocks and leaves

Brett insisted that I take a picture of the tree that started to fall

It didn't take long for Kate to start digging in the mud, while wearing brand new spring clothes. Awesome.

One part of me is glad that she's a "dig in the dirt" kind of a girl... the other part of me is cringing at the laundry that will follow.

Climbing is always fun!

The shoes are off and the toes are in the mud too!

Rinsing off so we can head home

Peeuwwww!

One of the many beauties of living in North Carolina is the random warm weather days in the middle of winter. As much as I love the warm weather, I'm not ready for it to be permanently warm yet, but I really do cherish the random warm weather days, especially when they don't involve red and khaki and flinging drugs! I picked up the kids from school last Thursday and talked about how beautiful it was and how we should do something outside. I started asking if they wanted to go to the park, and which park would they want to go to. Our kids are really funny about parks - they have many criteria to consider. They both want to go to an outside park - check. Brett wants to have plenty of things to climb on, where as Kate doesn't care about that as much. Kate wants to run and play and dig, but Brett doesn't like to get super-dirty. Brett does NOT want any park that involves him being forced to walk in sand with his tennis shoes on (and it wasn't so warm that he could go barefoot). These are all very important things to consider. Finally, we agreed on the Landfill Park. If you haven't checked it out yet, you should! There are plenty of things for the preschool crowd to do without needing so much help, yet it is also challenging enough that they don't get bored. There are paved paths and unpaved trails and all sorts of things to go exploring. I think we spent almost 3 hours there that afternoon! The kids had a blast and have already asked to go back!

Kate is very proud of her climbing skills!

Brett pretending to be a transformer, I'm sure!

Notice the silver "climbing" shoes!

On top of the big slide together

Balance skills required!

This kid LOVES to climb!

Kate likes to hang and swing on anything now, thanks to gymnastics. She started, then the kid to her right tried to pull her off, and before long she had most of the kids on the playground hanging this way. My little leader!

I see you, Mom! Check out that GORGEOUS Carolina blue sky!!!

Boom, boom, boom!

Kate can't be excluded...

Random little bridge

A view of the park from one of the trails - you can sort of see it on the side of the hill, through the trees. There is a little creek in between there too!

I don't know why, but bridges are always fun.

Vroom, Vroom!

For the past few years (since Brett was less than a year old), we've gone to the Auto Show. Anyone that has been around Brett ever knows about this kid's fascination with all things cars - any type of car, but his tastes have progressed. He now likes expensive cars. I can't imagine where he gets this from...

This year, the car show came early. Todd and I were planning on going out of town for Valentine's Day weekend (for the Marquette vs. Georgetown game, not because of Valentine's Day). In order to make it all work, the big boys took a half day from work and went to the car show on Friday afternoon. Brett loved being the center of attention between Poppy, Grandpa, and Daddy, and he loved checking out all of the cars. These pictures are courtesy of Mat's Mac.

One of my favorite pictures of two of my favorite boys!

It's hard to lose these two in their MU gold!

How can you not love that smile?! Pure joy.

The Lopez boys - times 3!

Our new ride... no, seriously! We're now the proud owners of two 4Runners and 1 beautiful shiny black fully loaded Sequoia!! Speaking of which, anybody interested in a 12 year old 4Runner with 180k miles?!?! Haha!

Brett and Grandpa taking a breather in the back of the new minivan... as nice as it was (with a much nicer price tag too) we're definitely a SUV family!

Ewww, gross

Ok, this is the last health-related update for a long time, I hope! Kate finally is over her ear infection/sinus infection/ virus, etc. Thank GOD! Brett came down with a virus as well, but fought it off pretty well on his own with the help of some meds that may or may not be FDA-approved in 4 year olds. There are advantages to having a drug dealer as a mother! Then Todd got the virus and it treated him about like it did me - crappy for a few days, better for a few days, but never great. He kept saying that one ear hurt and his throat hurt on that side, but it started to get better, so neither of us thought anything else about it. Fast forward to Vanentine's weekend. Todd and I went up to Washington, DC while his parents stayed with the kids. Todd woke up on Sunday morning saying that his throat and ear hurt again, but we'd been outside in the cold a lot the day before, so again, I didn't think much about it. With some ibuprofen and Sudafed, he seemed fine, so I figured it was just the virus sort of lingering around. Fast forward again to Valentine's Day when I woke up with a miserable sore throat and body aches. And then the fever started. And then the headache and the stomach ache. I've never had strep as an adult, and I don't even remember having it as a kid (although mom swears that I did), but I know the classic signs. I looked in my throat with a flashlight and it was UGLY. I looked in Todd's throat that night and it was even UGLIER. Ewwww, yuck!! We both went to the doctor this morning. My doctor didn't even do a test... he just treated it as strep, given the symptoms, and the fact that I've been in the strep-infested preschool a lot lately. Todd's doctor isn't as nice and actually did the test, which came back as definite strep. Oh well. Drugs are good and our kids are healthy again - two things which we are VERY thankful for!!

Cough, cough...

So, we're still here. Kate got her antibiotic last Tuesday and it was working perfectly, just like we expected. Toward the end of the week, Todd started coming down with a nasty cold, quickly followed by Brett, but neither of them have had a fever or anything else - just the cold. I worked all weekend... mostly uneventful. I got home from work on Monday night just before bedtime and noticed that Kate felt warm. Oh yes, the fever is back, again. After a negative flu test and negative strep test today, we feel like it's just an untimely virus that she now has on top of the ear infection and sinus infection from last week. She also has diarrhea from the lovely antibiotic, despite the Florastor, and an awesome cough. Poor little potater :(

Fever, what fever?!

Yeah, the fever that she had last week when I took her into the pediatrician... and they said that her ear had fluid, but wasn't infected and that her 101 degree fever was just a virus and it would run its course... blah blah blah. Guess what?! It ran its course over the last 5 days - up and down and up and down and all around. And guess what else?! Today it was 102.9, so back we went. The ear is now badly infected and she has a sinus infection on top of it. Awesome. At least I talked them out of amoxicillin... it very literally has never worked on Kate, not even as an infant. Let's hope that our dear friend, Omnicef, works its miracles as usual! I want my sweet, funny, energetic little girl back!

Carry Ons

I got this great insulated cooler/bag from the Lands End clearance sale a few weeks ago, along with some dresses, skirts, and swimsuits for Kate for the summer. I was trying to get Kate to try on the clothes and swimsuits that I bought, but she and the boys were just so fascinated with finding things they could fit into this ginormous bag!

The 29 pounds of Kate was super-easy to wriggle into the bag

She thought it was great and couldn't wait to be "dumped out"

Brett wanted to try too, so he got in. We weren't so sure how well the bag would support his 41 pounds! Kate decided she would help in case he fell out. Very sweet.