Blarney Blast Soccer

Yesterday Lucas and his soccer team, the Jags, participated in a St. Patrick's day tournament in Bulverde. Bulverde is just north of San Antonio on the way out to Janma and Grandpa's house. Those grandparents were planning to cheer for the Jags at the tourney but Grandpa fell on Thursday and hurt his foot badly enough that he is on mandatory rest and take it easy for a few weeks. Jan is taking good care of him. What a strange opportunity for them at this stage in their life. They are both fiercely independent; this injury just may be a good opportunity for them to learn a new dependence. We sure missed them and the kids are missing them too. They were slated to be child care for the next three days while Kevin and I are out of town. That's an entirely different story. But it is worth saying that the injury took them out and another hero came immediately from New Orleans. Mima did get to see Lucas play two of his three games.
The tournament asked for them to enter a name contest so just for yesterday, the Jags were called the GreenGos. Get it, Get it...
So these tournaments are best of the best and so far our boys are winless in all of their tournaments. You should know that the entries in their age group are always very limited so in order for them to play their promised 3 games they have to play up in age. Most of the boys have been playing together for a few years and this year they are really clicking together. It really seems like years of practice and skills drills just started to be apparent in the game play. I can't wait now for the next game.
They did , btw, lose all games yesterday. They lost them better than they have in the past. Maybe next tourney they will get a win. Kevin said the first game was the closest but Lucas blocked several shots with his body so it could have been more of a blowout. Dad, you got to get to San Antonio and see him play before we have to start buying tickets for his games. OK, I am kidding about that but get here as soon as you can. It is time to see it.

Colored Rice and Candy Mustaches

Monday Rock n Bowl

I don't know which brilliant Prewitt found the Rock n Bowl. The place was empty when we arrived. It was nice to bowl with our kids without a crowd to lose them in. Sometimes though I wished the lanes were not so sophisticated to lower the bumpers when it was my turn. All the kids did well enough that they had a great time. This is definitely a date I want to repeat when we get to bring the daddies with us. If you are ever here I recommend the Bloody Mary and the fried pickles.

Tuesday Zoo Day!

Fun fun day at Audubon Zoo. Mima had a zoo pass that included admission for all the grand kids. I am writing that down as good planning for impromptu spoiling. That is something I will definitely do too. The Audubon Zoo is so so pretty. Oh all the animals were pretty awesome too! By the way, they all asked for you. The landscape was lush. We had no problem finding natural and artificial scrapes for our own monkeys to climb. Probably my favorite were the arangatangs and the two headed snake.

Sunday after Church, part 1

We made 6 individual servings of fake snow for play in the back yard. The kids all where so impressed as their tiny bit of flaky powder turned into a cup full of snow for throwing. The dry stuff was the same stuff that is in disposable diapers and changes to gel when wet. We got the little snow present from Jenny and Nate a couple of Christmas's ago and have been holding into it for a fun with the kids day. Sunday was the perfect timing. It starts with sodium polyacrylate. Check out this link to make your own backyard snow: http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryhowtoguide/ht/fakesnow.htm
After our backyard fun including snow
we brought the kids in for a short wind down period of popcorn and a movie. They watched Alice in Wonderland, the one with Johnny Depp. Then a walk to Audubon Park with my bigs and niece Zoe. Of course I trekked it through Loyola. The rest of the crew met us there. I Love that Mima is only a short walk from the park.

Spring Break in NOLA, First Morning

The kids, the ones in public school, have spring break for the week March 11-15. As soon as the new year started, Amy began mapping out her trips for the year including plans for this week. She proposed this trip for us from Texas and just hoped that there was a possibility that Jenny in Florida could make it with her munchkin, Zoe. Jennifer, Jenny, didn't bite on the invite and we didn't expect she was going to be able to get here from so far with extra budget constraints (expecting new baby and starting military ministry).
What a trip! Oh my word, the drive from Texas to NOLA always has a 70% chance of getting very irritating as soon as we cross the state line. This was one of those trips. It took us 3 hours and two movies to move 45 miles. Ugh!!!! Crazy enough our kids were fantastically patient during this delay. Amy and I on the other hand had a hard time keeping our cool. And we were hungry. You would think knowing the likelihood for traffic we would know to eat early. I don't know, we had plenty of snacks. I just was craving a horse, I mean a burger.
Best part of day 1 was the fantastic patience of our kids on a torturous 12 hour trip that should have been 8. Close second and maybe actually tied for first was getting to stop and meet up with my friend of 20 years, Kari. 20 years!!!!! 20 years pass so fast. We had an awesome visit and meal but we did have to cut it shorter than I would have liked based on the ticking time bombs that were our kids. The littlest girls were asleep in the van within minutes of getting back on the road.
And then again also tied for first was getting to Mima's however late to find out that Jenny was there with Zoe after all!!!! Great surprise!
So we all celebrated, unpacked and crashed for the evening exhausted. We did change clocks and set alarms for church in the morning. Mom and dad haven't settled into a church here yet and mom brought us to one they had tried once. Cool thing, it is pretty much named the same as our home church that we love. We went to Journey Christian Church. We totally loved it and I hope mom and dad do too. The kids went to Sunday School after praise and worship and the message delivered was focused on doing life in community. Read Proverbs 20 verse 13. Toward the end of service I had to run to the ladies room and found a wall hanging with one of my favorite, perhaps THE favorite, scriptures on it. Great morning at church.