Spring Break Road Trip 2009

White Sands...3/19

Driving through the desert, you never imagine to see this...

We stopped at the visitor's center, bought some "sand disks" and headed to the dunes!! What an amazing experience!!! It seriously looked like we were driving into snow with our "saucers" to do some sledding, nope, we were dressed in shorts and t-shirts and actually got some sun!!! The kids loved sliding down...trudging back up was another experience, but the ride down was worth the effort exerted to get up. The kids made "sand" angels, rolled, slid, crashed down the hill anyway they could and always kept coming back for more, even despite a few moments of swallowing sand. Seriously, at one point Mr D took such a dive, that J and I were laughing too hard to even respond to his dramatic plunge. Hilarious!!! What an awesome day!!! White Sands, New Mexico totally exceeded all of our expectations!

Skiing Ruidoso...3/20

What a cool little ski town!!! Not quite the snow I grew up with in Utah, but when you're 4, snow is snow!!! After "gearing" up, we hit the chair lift. The kids got on great and LOVED looking around. We had an hour with the kids before their private lesson started so we got a few runs in beforehand. Being able to "teach" them the basics first was so much fun. Little Miss A had great foot control...I don't think she fell once. She was a little bit more cautious than her 3 minute younger counterpart though. D was all over the place. I lost track of how many times he fell down, but he kept getting back up and at it!!! The boy was on his own by the end of the day. Little Miss A did great too, she was more confident holding hands that at least by the end of the day she was skiing next to me rather than in between my legs.

Roswell...3/21

Another pit stop along the way...how could we pass and not check it out? As we pulled in, we told the kids to be on the lookout for aliens and spaceships. They saw them everywhere!!! Wow, this town had alien and UFO memorabilia all over the place!!! Even their lamp posts were aliens! The kids loved it! The museum was a little over the kids' heads, so we kept it super simple. It was a great pit stop. :)

Carlsbad Caverns...3/21
One word...WOW!!!! We will never "see" our Texas caves and caverns the same EVER again! This was GORGEOUS!!! We took the scenic entrance which was a 1.2 mile hike down 750 feet! The kids both did great. Before heading into the "big room" we stopped for a bite to eat. What other cave has a restaurant inside? We used our imaginations to figure out what all the formations were...let me just say there were A LOT of princess castles and Jabba the Huts in the Big Room. The Big Room spans the length of FOURTEEN football fields...CRAZY!!!! It was awesome, we could have spent so much longer than we did. We were a little rushed since we didn't get there until 1:00 and had to still make the 7 hour drive home after we left.

The Caswell Monkeys at the Zoo...

We met our bffs for a St. Patrick's Day trip to the zoo!!! Little Miss A and Mr D both LOVED it!!! Just as our experience at Sea World, D was our time-keeper for the day making sure that we didn't stay at one exhibit for too long. A loved checking out the map and was constantly asking where we were going next. The play area was a blast...I think they could have stayed and played with their friends all day!!! (We don't get together anywhere near often enough anymore.) We saw every animal the zoo had to offer and the consensus upon leaving was that the monkeys were both the kids' favorite...surprise, surprise. :)

Weekend in Review with Grandma and Grandpa!

Grandma and Grandpa Brown joined us for the kickoff of Spring Break!!!

Chuck E. Cheese

It started off to be a really rainy weekend, so as promised we went to Chuck E Cheese Saturday afternoon. I had been promising the kids a return trip from their birthday (we still had tokens to spend) the first rainy weekend we had. The kids had so much fun playing. The place was a mad house, but even still, this was seriously the first time I wasn't a nervous wreck watching them like a hawk. We handed them a few tokens at a time so they had to check back often. Sadly, we have even more tokens and tickets to spend so a return trip is in our future AGAIN!

Sea World

With promising weather for Sunday, we headed to Sea World!!! The kids have been dying to go back. Since we had a season pass break from the place last year we thought we'd check it out again this year. Though the shows are still the same, but the impact on A & D is so much bigger this year than it ever was before!

As customary for us, we headed straight for the dolphin exhibit first. We missed the feeding times, but the dolphins were VERY lively jumping all over the place. Too fun, but our time-keeper, Mr D, insisted that we keep moving! So it was on the shark house. Our stay focused, Little Miss A, was adamant that we went into the building for sharks, so she skipped the jelly fish, octopus and sting rays and headed straight for the shark tank. The entire day was filled with these little things...hilarious!!!! The experience at Shamu's adventure land was awesome!!! The rides were still the same and with season passes to Six Flags last year, I think the kids were good on rides, so we only went on one. I think the kids could have played on the ropes, in the tunnels and slides all day and on their own. Although, A was constantly watching for D, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I guess we'd better work on that. :)

What an amazing day! We didn't get to see everything, but we'll be back!!!

Night and Day

To "illustrate" the difference between A & D, I thought I'd share a few moments today that just made me smile.

It was library day today...always a hit for the Caswell kids! They were both SOOOO excited to show me what books they checked out today. Little Miss A pulls out "Little Horse" (pictured with sweet ponies on the front.) Mr D shows me "Arthur's Underwear" (with a hilarious picture of Arthur in his undies and lots of inset pictures around the page with laughing kids.) Could they be more different?

After inspecting the library books, we proceed to leave school. When "hopping" into the car, I notice the plethora of toys on the floorboard below each of their carseats. (A very common occurrence these days, something I swore I would never do.) Anyway, Mr D's collection contains a fire truck, a buzz light year blaster and lots of twigs which he rounds up every day on the playground at recess. Little Miss A's treasures include a baby, bear, zebra and tigress.

(Note to self...new rule...all stowaways need to disembark upon returning home!)

Nighttime Antics

We've gotten into a little bit of a bedtime rut lately trying to A & D to go to bed on their own. (They used to be totally fine...what happened?) Anyway, in order to accomplish this sometimes INSANE task, we allow the kids to take "treasures" to bed with them to help them fall asleep. Well, the "treasures" have gotten out of control. Let the nighttime escapades begin...

Exhibit A:


A's room is a baby wonderland. I truly "wonder" what she was doing with all them since there are also dish washing agents and scrubbers in bed with her from her kitchen as well. My imaginative little angel LOVES her babies, lions, tigers, puppies, etc. She takes such good care of them too! There were blankets, and bottles in bed as well. So no doubt, she was feeding them and keeping them warm. Perhaps she felt the "babies" needed a bath, so the kitchen sink was the bathtub complete with all the soap and scrubbers necessary to do the job! :)

Exhibit D, I mean B:

D's bed is filled with the artillery to protect and entire army from an overnight attack. Complete with sleeping bag, which BTW, has become a staple bedtime supply. In line right behind the so-soft blankey he has loved from birth! The insane thing is, when this little man escapes his bunker in the middle of the night, his ENTIRE supply comes with him into our room. How does he manage it all in one trip you ask, that's where the sleeping bag comes in...he stuffs it all in and drags the bag across the house. Resourceful that one, I tell ya!!!

Arts and Crafts Continued...

Okay, so my classroom is like arts and crafts central...I love it! The days Little Miss A and Mr D get to come upstairs to "my room" they immediately begin pulling out all the buttons, beads, feathers, pom poms, etc. Since we had to skip the classroom, they went to the craft closet when we got home and BOTH the kids got into it. Mr D usually looses interest once we get home and only Little Miss A continues creating. They went into their own little worlds creating side by side without a single argument. Enjoy the silence!!! (You have to Depeche Mode sing that BTW!) It was awesome...I could have watched them for hours!!!!

Gymnastics

Mr D has officially switched extra curricular activities with his first "real" gymnastics class. The terminology that they use and the activities they do with the kids is so amazing...compared to our last gymnastics experience a year ago. WOW!!! He is learning so much already and has only been to 2 classes.

Computer Time

Little Miss A and Mr D are CONSTANTLY wanting to go to my classroom and play on the computers. From behind they could have been some of my kindergarten students. SCARY!!!

Zilker Kite Festival

Another tradition!!! We've been going to the Zilker Kite Festival for years. Many of you may remember from the "early" years with my email updates the incident with Drew and the Frisbee at 4 months old. That was the kite festival. We've had a super cool kite that the kids found at Costco a few months ago for the kite festival. (Of course, we've flown it a few times since then...A & D both just love it. I think they would choose to fly kites everyday.)

Well, the wind yesterday was CRAZY and would have flown kites with no problem at all, but the weather today was a little more difficult for flying. It was gorgeous, but there wasn't a constant steady stream of wind. After a lot of team work between the two of them and not much success, we decided to take a walk around the park and look at the kites that were flying. While we were gone, Daddy and Mr. B managed to get the kites up and flying, but by the time we got back with the kids, they had apparently taken out almost every kite in the area and Daddy was untying a pretty good sized knot in the string of our kite.

Follow the kite flying attempt with a great lunch and awesome friends...what an amazing day!!!!

A Starry Night

Ever since we left Florida at Thanksgiving with a telescope from Grandpa, the kids have been in LOVE with the moon, stars and planets. They were studying space in school, my second graders are actually studying it as well, so we took a field trip Saturday night with my students and their families to the UT planetarium. Okay, so it's not so much a planetarium as it is just a giant telescope to view the stars. The kids LOVED it!!! We saw Venus, Orion's nebula and even Saturn and it's rings...so cool! What a fun evening!!!

SOLD!

Well, we did it!!! We finally have a lot in progress and are building a house. Once Daddy staked the sign into the ground of what will eventually be our front yard, A & D got to put the "SOLD" sticker on the sign.
A foreign concept, somewhat abstract, they kids have both been asking where the house is and why we aren't moving yet. Hopefully as they see it "coming together" things will be more clear. :)