....well...

Sorry I've been behind posting about the rest of our staycation. I ended up getting sick as well and poor Lucy got the brunt of the illness.

On Wednesday, we had a relaxing day at the spa. Eli was stilling feeling really sick and so the girls and I did our makeup and hair. They also had a big bubble bath. No pictures though, unfortunately.

On Thursday, we were in Mexico. We watched The Emperor's New Groove which is based in South America. We enjoyed taco's for dinner and broke open our pinanta that we had been working on all week.

Friday....? Ummmm.... yeah. Nuthin'. I was too sick.

Here are some photos from when we broke the pinata.

And here's a photo of me making 2nd place in the world on one of the games on Raving Rabbid's TV party. I was pretty darn proud of myself. (Yeah. I'm wearing my PJ's. SO!?!?!)

Hawaii Here We Come

We took a short trip to Hawaii yesterday. We started by making some tropical flowers out of construction paper and we decorated the living room with them.



Then we spent the morning playing "beach games" with balloons. In the afternoon, the girls splashed around in the "ocean," a.k.a. bath.


In the evening, while listening to Hawaiin music, we ate Hawaiin pizza. Then we played Limbo and did some Hula Hoop games.















Today, unfortunately, Eli is feeling even worse. It also appears that Lucy is feeling under the weather too. So we had a relaxing day, just vegging out in our "Hotel." Tomorrow, I think we'll take a swing by Mexico.

Camp out

The kids woke up at Hotel Burch to find breakfast menus hanging on their doorknobs. While they were eating their breakfast, we told them all about our staycation.


Today we went camping. We started out making our living room look like a forest by adding leaves and vines. We spent the morning swimming at a local indoor swimming pool and had a picnic lunch.


















This evening, we roasted hotdogs and marshmellows in our fireplace and watched the episode of PeeWee's Playhouse where he goes camping with Cowboy Curtis. While the kids got into their pj's, Mike and I hung christmas light "stars" and put wilderness noises on the stereo. They all fell asleep in their sleeping bags after telling a few stories.


(If you noticed Eli missing in the photos, it's because he made good on his semi-regular schedule of being sick while we go camping. We can almost bet on it, at this point.)

It's all downhill from here

We went sledding on Sunday. We got all bundled up and when we got outside we realized....most of the snow was melted. *Ahem* I guess we hadn't really spent much time outside in the past few days.

We hit the hill anyway and found it nearly covered in ice. There were a few brave souls there, daring to go down the hill and we joined them. It was a blast! The hill is very big and was VERY slippery. After one trip down with Eli, I found myself under the bumper of a parked car!

Lucy loved sledding and kept asking to go down again and again. Charlotte went down all by herself for the very first time! Here's a video of Mike and Eli going downhill and one of Charlotte going out of control. Mike fell trying to stop her from sliding into the road!

And we're off...

We're going on staycation all this week. Today we're going camping. I'll update later today and every day this week so you can see what we've been doing on our winter family staycation!

(I'll also finally add Charlotte's video from when she called the radio station.)

She's a star

Charlotte was on the radio! We have Sirius/XM and she listens to the Absolutely Mindy Show on Kids Place Live (channel 116). She wanted Mindy to play her favorite song (a Harry Potter Remix).

Mindy was discussing the differences in style between parents and kids and Charlotte talked about Daddy's moose pajamas. It was incredibly sweet and we were all stoked.

Pride

Forgive me because it's time to brag. About my boy.

Today we attended his Parent/Teacher Conference. When showing us his state testing results, she pointed out that he scored with Distinction in every subject and not by just a little. In fact, he achieved a perfect score in Writing and a nearly perfect score (minus 6 points) in Reading. She also showed us a quarterly exam that she's given yearly since she began teaching years ago. Eli scored the only 100% that she's ever graded. She mentioned several opportunities for him to challenge himself outside of school and she mentioned how strongly she felt about the importance of him branching out into advanced learning areas.

She told us how very respectful he is, both to his teachers and his classmates. Most important to me was her mention of how he has a hunger to learn new things. He wants to learn. He's not the student who sits back and earns his good grades just because it comes easy to him. While Eli doesn't have to work hard, he does anyway. I couldn't be more proud of him.