Ready or not, here comes 2013!

Building Lego cars at the SACM

It was hard to compete with all the fun we had the first week of winter break, but our second week lived up to the challenge.

Last Saturday, we gave Dad a break so he could go watch basketball and football, and the rest of us headed to San Antonio.

We spent most of the day at the San Antonio Children’s Museum, one of our favorite places. We started out in the grocery section and stayed there for a while before moving on to the airplane and little house upstairs.

We then went to the ground floor for a while, where we spent a long time in the ball section. We all collected balls – even Turner helped -- and put them in tubes that carried the balls to a container at the ceiling that dumped them whenever it got full. Hazel and I loved standing under it. We yelled that it was raining balls whenever they dumped.

Here come the balls!

Turner watched the fish tanks while Hazel and I played in the bubble room, then we headed to a room full of different kinds of blocks, where I found a racetrack for Lego cars. Mom was pretty impressed because instead of just adding blocks to one Lego car, I connected two of the cars with some blocks. It was really cool. “Good thinking,” Mom said.

We ended with more time in the grocery section before leaving. On the way out of town, we hit some traffic, which we didn’t understand until we noticed tons of people walking around with burnt orange UT shirts on and realized they were walking to a football game. Hazel yelled, “Hook ‘em horns!” out the window and made the Longhorn sign with her hand. Mom was proud.

Muffinmaking

Our next stop was dinner at EZ’s, which Turner screamed through. Mom didn’t like her food either, so she was pretty grumpy by the end of that. We cheered her up by taking her across the street to Trader Joe’s, where she stocked up on great food.

Sunday and Monday, we all came down with a tummy bug and it was cold and rainy outside, so we hunkered down and got ready for New Year’s.

Happy New Year! from Hazel

On New Year’s Eve, we made blueberry muffins and braced ourselves for a visit from Irving and Muktuk, two muffin-loving polar bears who are no better than they should be, and definitely not to be trusted. 

We celebrated New Year’s Eve (a few hours early) with muffins, “Auld Lang Syne,” sparkling cranberry juice (which Turner definitely didn’t like), hats, masks, horns and clackers. Mom said it was one of her best New Year’s Eves ever. 

Men in hats

Sadly, New Year's Day was Dad's last day of vacation. He had to go back to work Wednesday, and we were sad to see him go.

Another highlight from the week was Thursday morning, when we went to Mayfield Park, home to a bunch of peafowl. I wanted to go because I had checked out a school library book about peafowl. Turner was kind of mesmerized by the birds.We liked how they jumped on top of their shed and in and out of the trees.

Happy New Year! from Mitch

When we first got there, one of the peacocks started following us around. It came really close to us, especially me. Mom took a quick photo, then said we needed to get away because he was coming close enough that it freaked her out. 

The peacock followed us until we walked past a building that’s close to the front of the park, and left us alone once we passed it. Mom said it must have been protecting something there, maybe a stash of blueberry muffins.

Happy New Year! from Turner

The rest of the week we kind of took it easy. A cool owl that lives in our neighbors' owl box has been keeping us company, and Mom had fun taking photos of it. 

We’re still playing with all our Hanukkah toys and games, and we cooked and baked a lot with Mom, including cut-out cookies we made with some Hello Kitty cookie cutters and stamps Hazel ordered from Amazon.We also had swimming Wednesday and Friday, and Friday Hazel and I both did especially great.

I wrapped up my toy room sleepover Friday night. I spent Saturday and Sunday night in my room to ease back into my regular routine, since I go back to school and normalcy Monday.

Mitch and his friend

I spent some time running errands with Mom Saturday and Sunday, which sounds boring, but we both enjoyed the one-on-one time together. Sunday evening while we were out, we ran into my teacher at the grocery. She said she’s excited for school to start again tomorrow. So am I!

For our first photos of the year, click here!