Ah, to be a kid...

The kids may grow up to remember their childhood filled with their mean, cranky mother yelling at them (according to my own parents, I've been cranky for about four years.... what might have triggered this sudden mood change, I wonder...), but at least I'll have some photographic evidence that it wasn't all bad. In fact, sometimes it is quite good...

We had a great, great week with the Behroozis -- biking, boot shopping, eating tacos, wading, rodeo-going. I don't know what it is, but one of the absolute best and most gratifying thing to me about having children is watching them play with the children of people I love. Its so frickin' CUTE! I'm glad I still get to pick Rosemary's friends for her. She was really in seventh heaven with Henry all week -- best quote of the week -- Rosemary: "Henry I love you!" Henry: "Eww gross! Mom, she said a bad word!" (Rosemary was totally unphased)

Henry and Rosemary asleep!
The creeks are FULL! So much awesome wading and rock climbing (Henry is very brave... he climbed so high ... he looked down and calmly told me he was too scared to come down, so we all had to talk him through it).
"The highest point" on the walk to art camp

Before art camp...
Going on the airplane ride at the rodeo, wearing crowns made in art camp that day. That's Louis and I in the back -- he LOVED it. Rosemary and Henry giggled the whole time.


A spring crab feast... Dungeoness from the Chinese grocery store...

Another of Louis's pretty awesome installations...

Port Aransas!

We won four days in a "surf shack" in Port Aransas at St. Mark's Fiesta silent auction, and so we took a trip with the kids over President's Day weekend (which, although seldom celebrated, is a four day weekend at St. Mark's!). It is about a four hour drive from Austin to the Gulf, and we had no idea what cool adventures awaited us there. Rosemary -- somewhat predictably I suppose -- as so excited to go to Port Aransas that you would have thought we were going on the Concord to Paris. She couldn't sleep the night before. Fortunately, this did not really dampen our style, and we headed down after school on Wednesday afternoon.

As Rosemary was/is starting to have some real separation anxiety/resistance to school/babysitters, it was a nice break from routine -- which had started to become daily screaming and crying at drop-off, which, without fail, makes me feel about as bad as anything. Not to diverge too much, but, as I write this, I think we've turned a corner. Its funny, Rosemary has always been relatively independent, so this "separation anxiety" (not a very accurate term for what I think she's feeling) seemed to come out of the blue. But I think she was just starting to really be aware of some big concepts -- she told James the other day that Louis is worried about him dying (doubtful), and, along the same vein, I think she's aware of the fact that we may have other things we do/think about than her! I'd say most of the stress she has been feeling has been an understandable feeling of not being in control. As James points out -- its pretty reasonable to feel scared of not being in control -- how do any of us sleep at night?!? Anyway -- we've been trying to make her feel more in control w/ calendars, making schedules of what will happen and what she'd like to do during the day, and alarm clocks (which she carried around for two days like the most interesting toy in the world), and it seems to be working.

OK back to vacation. The highlight was the first day, when we drove to the Aransas National Wildlife refuge and saw the highly endangered whooping cranes, roseate spoonbills, wild turkeys, armadillos, and alligators! More exciting, we took a sixteen mile bike ride through the park, with Rosemary riding the bike train, and the kids lasted -- cheerfully -- the whole time. It was really liberating, we felt like we were really coming back from a long hiatus of not being able to do much w/ little babies, and on to an exciting new era of adventure.

A family of whooping cranes
Louis wading through oyster shells
The largest live oak in Texas -- over 1,000 years old!

Riding through a several-mile-long boardwalk over a saltwater marsh
The house came with helmets, one of Louis's favorite words/objects

It would not be a Spindler family vacation without awesome feasts. We ate our weight in shrimp every day!




James somewhat stupidly picking up a jellyfish

January and Christmas recovery

I think part of me is STILL recovering from Christmas, but we did our best to relax and get back to normal in January. This picture above has to be one of the best pictures of the kids I've taken! It was on a haunted bridge on a hike north of Austin.

Below is James and Jordan in matching smoking jackets at their "home sweet home" themed housewarming party.

More Happy Hikers...
Flora came back this year, I think I've mentioned and actually stayed until about a week or so ago. At one point she was out of her box sitting on the bay tree. It was amazing!