Crazy Busy

Wow, what a busy week it's been! Sunday was Mother's Day and although Paul had to work all day, my Mom and I went out to brunch with the girls and a few friends. These aren't the best pictures, but it shows off the girls dresses that their Grandma made and they proudly wore. The top one is taken at the restaurant we were at with the Iowa River in the background right outside our window. Brunch was very yummy and it was nice to indulge in all the wonderful delicacies on Mommy's day.The rest of the day was cool and windy but we were able to walk down to our favorite ice cream shop with our neighbors and their kids at the end of the night for free sundaes for Moms. Lots of treats in one day!

Monday brought more fun and excitement. After school was out we headed up to the Girl Scout store to pick up badges, picked up the girls flower girl dresses for my cousin's wedding that the girls get to be in this fall, and then...grand finale...hit Chuck E. Cheese's for hours of fun and excitement. We all had a great time, I think I have as much fun there as they do. Of course I don't get to do the climber and slide, but my Mom and I took turns who watched the girls so we could give some games our full attention. Grandma is a skee-ball champ!

Tuesday was our last Girl Scout troop meeting of the year. This is our first year of Brownies, second year as a troop, and it's been a combination of stress, fun, exhaustion, and definitely an awesome learning experience as I've gotten to see this group of girls interact and hopefully learn things from each other and my co-leader and I.

Tonight was gymnastics for Gussie and Winky was on the verge of a meltdown the whole time. She spent most of the time sitting under my seat eating crackers or yelling at me. My best consolation was rocking her while singing Christmas carols, but that only bought me about 15 minutes of peace. She went to bed soon after we got home. Thank goodness!!! Not so fun being out in public with a crabby kid.

The week should be winding down soon and I'm hoping for a peaceful weekend. I was shocked to realize all my shows are airing season finales this week and next. Where has the time gone???

Picnicing

Spring weather is finally here in Iowa and we had a great time on our picnic yesterday. The girls loved being outside and we're going to attempt a goal of exploring our local parks. I think we can get out the maps and guidebook and try to figure out the best playgrounds available! We need the weather to give us a break before we can go to some of the bigger parks. The Iowa River is still out of it's banks and we need a dry spell to help things along.

Of course we had to end the night with a trip to our favorite ice cream hang-out. Hubby likes to take nightly walks down there during the summer. Yum, yum.

Saturday was the girls gymnastics showcase day and we have a couple of pics from that to share. I have to add that Gussie's event took an hour, it went event by event, started on time, and we expected Winky's to be similar. I dropped her off 10 minutes early, went to get a seat and go to the bathroom, came back....and she was almost done. I was ticked! The presentation wasn't even supposed to have started yet and I got to see 10 seconds of her routine. I pretended to be a mature grown up and didn't throw a fit (it was hard) but I really wanted to beg, plead, stomp my feet....to make them let her go again since I missed it, but I figured we've got next year. No potty breaks next time!

This is a major achievement for Gussie. She loves gymnastics...but hates the beam. She fell once in practice but even before that she's been afraid to move across the beam. We were very proud of her that she did her whole routine up there. She did awesome on every event that day. And...I got to see them. ;)