Not Such Good Times

The continuation of my spring break stories has been delayed by sickness. Not mine. Skip down to the spring break pictures if you don't want to hear about puke.

Yesterday Bubba suddenly threw up in the family room, on the carpet. And then in the kitchen. All over my feet. Scott kept asking me why I didn't take him into the bathroom. Uh, because there's puke on my feet? We put him in the bath and he slept just fine and was just fine all day today.

Then last night Cakes started complaining about her stomach, but she hadn't eaten much, so I didn't think much of it. She got home from school today and told me she didn't eat any lunch. And she went to the nurse, but the nurse said she didn't have a fever. Funny enough, her school nurse is a den leader for our Cub Scouts and at the last pack meeting we were chatting about how she knows if a kid is really sick or not. She lets them lay down and ignores them. If the kid is really sick, she'll either fall asleep or get worse. If the kid isn't sick she gets bored of laying in the clinic and goes back to class. Makes sense to me. She tried that with Cakes and she went back to class after a few minutes.

Then we took Silly to his gymnastics class. Cakes wanted to stay in the car, and she did for a little bit, but then came into the lobby to sit with me and Bubba. We were about halfway home, which isn't very far, and suddenly she was throwing up in the car. I had to open all the windows so the rest of us didn't get sick too. We got home and I put her in the shower while I cleaned up the mess. I seriously almost puked myself. Blech. I hope my car will smell normal again. And while I was out there cleaning up with the wet/dry vacuum it started to rain. My neighbors must've thought I was weird cleaning out my car in the rain. Oh well.

And I just have to say that I think of my MIL whenever I say "puke" because she can't stand that word. It was always my word of choice before, but I try not to say it too much anymore.

Alright, moving on to the rest of Spring Break.

The in-laws brought the kids back Wednesday morning just before someone was coming to see our house, so we just moved all the kids' stuff from their car to my car and headed back over to the park for a bit. Then we had Chick-fil-a for lunch. Bubba was so exhausted when we got home that he went straight to his room and got in bed. Cakes was pretty much just disappointed that I didn't have the day crammed full of activities from sunrise to sunset like Gummy does.

Thursday was a little on the chilly side and windy, but we went to Norfolk Botanical Garden anyway. We ended up not riding the tram around, which made Silly pretty mad (I forgot that during the week in only comes around once an hour). We walked along the the children's garden with a stop to see the eagles' nest along the way. One of the adults was flying around for a good long while, but I think I was the only one who cared. They did care about all the turtles in the pond though.

 















The turtles kept coming closer and so did the boys. It was making me a little nervous. I have a paranoia when it comes to non-swimmers in water situations, not just paranoia, actual nightmares. So we moved on quickly.



A new miniature barn



And the playhouse. See the blue and white thing on the right? That's the yurt, it's a changing room for the kids who've played in the fountains.

And then, since it was too chilly to play in the water, we played on the hill instead. It was tons of fun. It took Bubba a while to figure out how to roll the right way. He kept trying to roll across the hill instead of down.



 

 

Trying  to get these pictures laid out in any decent manor is a real pain! But - I love, love, love how Silly's shoe is flying off. It is just so Silly! He's such a kook of a kid.

Then we crossed the big bridge to Coronation Court (they crown an azalea queen sometime during the azalea festival) This is also a good viewing area for the eagles' nest, but I only had my little camera with me so I didn't bother trying to take what was sure to be a really lame picture of some trees, one a which contains a nest full of eaglets. While we were there an eaglet feather floated down from the nest. I really wanted to catch it, but I was too far away. One of the photographers who was hanging out there (in camouflage I must add, really? you're not in the wilderness man, and even with your camo camera, I'm pretty sure the eagles know you and all the rest of us are here) caught it and stuck it in his pocket. That was lame. The kids would've taken it home and treasured it but he just stuck it in his pocket. The kids were oblivious to all of that because they were checking out the fountains.

 

We went through the Japanese garden on our way back and saw this cool wind chime I don't remember seeing before, and surely I would've remembered it because the weight at the end of the chime is a big ginkgo leaf. I love ginkgoes.

See? Isn't it cool?

And no visit to NBG is complete without a stop at the airport overlook. I bet your botanical garden doesn't have one of those. Next time we should go there first instead of last and then I wouldn't have to listen to Silly ask me over and over if we're going to look at the airport before we leave. I don't think he even care about the planes, he just wants to see the trucks. You can listen to the air traffic controllers and pilots talk to each other too which is pretty cool.

 

We didn't do anything fun and exciting Friday. I was going to take them to the aquarium, but they said they didn't want to go. They hadn't had a day to just chill out all week. Saturday we colored some eggs. We tried a new method - coloring hard boiled eggs with crayons while the eggs are still hot. Silly chose not to participate, but Cakes thought it was pretty cool and Bubba spent a good long while working on his egg.

 

 Bubba initially refused to hunt for eggs because all he wanted to do was eat the peanut butter egg and mini M&Ms that were already in his basket. When he was done with that he finally collected all the eggs that we'd told Cakes and Silly to leave on the floor.