Toothless

Ella lost two teeth in the last couple of weeks. One on each side of her front left tooth. I happen to think that the snaggle tooth look is a great look for her, but she is very excited for this last (loose) tooth to come out.

So this happened:

I mean, it didn't happen to us, but we saw it while we were driving and Paul insisted on pulling over. ("How many times in your life are you going to get to watch a van on fire?!")

And then after we pulled over we got to watch this:

We pulled in about the same time as the fire truck, and it must have been a pretty persistent fire, because it took them a good ten minutes spraying to get the fire completely out. 

In other news today was Ella's first swim meet. She swam backstroke, and she would have competed in freestyle, too, but the event was projected to go until 4pm and freestyle was the second to last event. So we stopped at backstroke. Next time maybe. 

We had two birthday parties today also, so it was a busy, but enjoyable day. 

Beaching again.

Brownsville

We came to Brownsville last year for vacation, and when the chance to come again this year (mostly sans Paul) came up, we took it. Our friends joined us, and we have had a lovely time. 

Today we visited their zoo, which is surprisingly large for a town this small. It was a long full day, and I fully expect my children to collapse in their beds any minute. 

Beachy

So, I checked out my photos because I was sure I must have taken a few good photos while at the beach for the last few days... But apparently not.

Photos or no, we have had a lovely time on South Padre Island. Paul, Jeff, and Susan have been with us since Saturday, but everyone just left, and now it is just me and the kids until next Saturday. 

So, I am sure we will continue having fun, but it is different without lots of other grown ups. Charlotte cried for, literally, twenty minutes when she realized that Grandpa and Sudie were not coming back. She loved jumping the waves with them. 

She really nailed this selfie.

Max loves babies.

Spring is Finally Here.

White Sands National Monument

This was the most incredible park ever. Besides being breathtakingly beautiful, with some 300 square miles of white sand dunes, they actually sell sleds at the gift shop and encourage you to slide down the dunes. It was a blast. You never really get going fast enough to risk injury (besides, um, you just land in the sand) but it is definitely fast enough to be totally fun.  The kids had a blast, sledding and building sand castles and just generally frolicking.

Ella made a friend and they spent most of their time going down on a sled together. Which was more than fine with us since that meant we got more turns on our sleds. (Her friends family had one sled per person, but we, of course, are far too cheap to invest in sleds for all. Two sleds between the six of us. We were only going to buy one, but someone gave us one for free when they were done.)

The best part about the day, well, another great part of the day, was the way our children just flopped into bed and went right to sleep.

Snow Day

We are just about 45 minutes from a ski resort here in New Mexico, so we dressed for the cold and headed up there for some snow frolicking.