May 1 = Neurfibromatosis Awareness Month, First Day

April 4 = Sad Sad Day

So my title's a little dramatic.  The day started off fine.  Here's Malia drinking half of the smoothie I finally brought myself to make.  For weeks I've been planning on making smoothies every morning because I don't always eat the most complete breakfast.  Well I finally made one and Malia consumed a good deal of it.  Which is great- lots of vitamins and minerals for her!

We talked a lot about the color green today.  My objective was for Liam to take the green letters out of our container of magnetic letters and say them before he put them on the whiteboard.  However Malia wanted to play along and added some extra colors to the board.

Malia has been so cranky lately and I suspected it was teething but she doesn't let us look in her mouth.  I wanted to know what was going on in there so I got Zachary to help me pin her down.  Her upper canines have broken through- valid excuse for the crankiness.

The reason the title of today's post is sad sad day is because tonight was the NCAA championship game with my Tar Heels favored to win.  They didn't.  And that's all I'm going to say about that because it's a tad bit embarrassing to admit just how upset I was.

March 17 = St. Patrick's Day/Gramps Birthday

First I'm going to do a little Throwback Thursday and share this gem from 3 years ago:

 

Liam spent most of the day in the CDC today so Malia and I did some shopping.  Here she is in an appropriately colored chair at Barnes and Noble:

 I found these super stretchy hair ties so I decided to try pigtails today since she's grown a little more cooperative:

After we picked Liam up we had dinner at Chickfila.  I'm so proud of myself that this is the only Chickfila trip we've made since Zachary's been gone. 

Also, I had to share this Facebook meme because it's so funny.

And Zachary and his chief and his chief's friend went to a Miami Heat game tonight and he sent me this picture- I was so happy for him that he got to experience it! 

October 14 = Painting Day

I found some little pumpkins and leaves at AC Moore and thought it'd be fun for the kids to paint them.  I tried to stick with just orange for the pumpkins... Malia played along but Liam really wanted some yellow so I obliged.

Then we did the leaves and that was an invitation to use lots of colors.  I squirted red, yellow, orange and green and let the kids mix them all up.

Later, I thought it might be a good idea to have the kids try on their costumes just in case they didn't fit and snapped a quick picture of our little Snoopy!

June 5 = Kilgore Falls Day

Well we have been bitten by the green trees and rocks and trails bug and headed to Kilgore Falls today about an hour and a half away.  We got the double jogging stroller last night for this trip and for walking/running around our house- Liam doesn't look thrilled:

But he cheered up quickly.  Here's the beginning of our trail.  Beautiful!

I ran ahead and turned around to get a picture of Zachary pushing the kiddos:

Liam got a little restless in the stroller so Zachary let him get out and walk a little with a helping hand:

After a lot less walking than we anticipated we got to the waterfall!  Here I am trying to get a good picture of the view from the top:

Here's one of the pictures I got:

And here's a picture of the four of us with the waterfall in the background- we were not on the edge for this picture.  Promise.

  

Right after taking this picture, we walked back across to safety but before doing so, I slipped on a rock, carrying Malia and fell in the water at the top of the waterfall.  Thankfully it wasn't a strong current but momma bear mode kicked in and I fell straight down- Malia barely got wet.  But I did jam my finger.  I was so relieved that we didn't fall down the waterfall and that Malia was okay that I didn't really realize the extent of the pain my finger was in for a few minutes but then I got it loud and clear. 

So even though Zachary and I have been together for quite a while, I still learn new things about him every once in a while.  Standing under a waterfall is something he's always wanted to do.  So we went down a different trail and walked across the stream so that he could have his dream come true!   If you look super, super closely, he's on the very right of the falling water.  I didn't get great pictures because I was holding Malia and trying to keep Liam from moving too much.

 Here's a view of the waterfall from the bottom:

Here I am carrying Malia back across the stream:

On the way back to the car, we found some honeysuckle so I had to share one of my childhood joys with my little ones:

Once we got to where the trail was pretty flat, we let Liam loose again:

Daddy and his little girl:

Doesn't this look like a preloaded Windows background?!

And I just love this picture:

We had so much fun- beautiful sights and wonderful quality time together.  And a dirty pair of shoes...

May 25 = Hiking Day!

Woo-hoo! Today's the day!  I will miss my kids but Zachary and I are overdue for a little alone time.  We headed to Philadelphia mid-morning- we enjoyed car ride conversations- something that only occurs when no kids are in the car.  We casually made pit stops for bathroom breaks, picking up sunscreen and getting snacks.  We made a couple wrong turns but it was okay because we weren't in a huge hurry counting down the minutes until a backseat breakdown. We made it to the park and set out on the closest trail.  Here are some pictures from our 6 mile hike:

We saw a deer!

After the hike, we headed to the hotel to check-in.  We showered, got dressed, and headed to dinner.  We went to Cantina Laredo- one of Zachary's favorite places to eat- there's one in Jacksonville and it's actually the last place we ate out in Jacksonville because it is his favorite so when I was looking for somewhere for dinner and saw this, I was so excited to tell him!  This picture was sneakily taken by my husband after I had consumed a margarita or two...

The restaurant was in a mall so we walked off the tequila and looked around a little bit.  We headed back to the hotel and had a quiet night in.  A great first day of vacation!

Aaaaaand Grandma was very thoughtful and shared pictures of the kids with us- this was my favorite from the day:

April 25 = New Plant Day

Since we don't have enough living things to take care of we decided to take on one more.  I was watching Live with Kelly & Michael yesterday during Liam's appointments and they had someone talking about how good houseplants can be for the air in your home so I talked to Zachary about it and he thought it would be great to take up this empty space we have in our living room.  A quick trip to home gardens and we brought this home: