Swimmin' and jumpin'

Day 2 without cable. So far, so good. Again today, no TV, not even a DVD and no one even asked for a cartoon. The kids played together, apart, got on each others nerves, got on my nerves and we were fine. To be honest, I don't really miss it during the day. After all, who really wants to watch the same episode of Wonder Pets or Dora the Explorer. The only time they watched any TV was at my parents' house and not for long. Last night I did start having a little withdrawal though and turned on the bedroom set to see if we could get any channels at all. And voila! We get VH-1, MTV, BET, style network and telemundo. Hooray, all the channels I watch! I think I'll get a digital convertor box to see if we can at least get one local station (abc, please). Enough about TV.

We went over to my parents house for dinner and a swim. You can't beat that. Lucas has no patience when it comes to getting in the pool. He sees it and he's in it. A little scary.
Playing on the steps. Would you like tea with your dive sticks? I know it looks like they are sitting there precariously while their careless mother is snapping away on her camera, but my dad was right there (he just got cropped out, sorry dad).
Getting ready for the big jump. This is for serious jumpers only. 1, 2, 3......
Jump....
and close your eyes and pray to god that someone is going to catch you. No worries Grandma hasn't dropped one yet.Now, it's Lucas's turn. Monkey see, monkey do. 1, 2, 3, jump......

and put your hand in your mouth.....
because that's the cute thing to do.
Grace in her floatie. She gets around really well in her float. Hopefully she doesn't become as dependent on it as I was once.
Enjoying the water feature in the jacuzzi.
Okay, I had to include this picture. How could I not? Hopefully Steve will forget he saw this on the national (international) internet. At least it's a side view with his hand in just the right place a la Austin Powers. I have a front and back view that are just as cute, but I'm not going to push it.
Enjoying a post swim treat with sprinkles (of course!).
Grace feeding her brother her ice cream, actually it's his ice cream cup. Grace ate all of the sprinkles off her cup and realized that Lucas still had some on his so she "traded" with him and then ate his sprinkles too. At least she let him eat the ice cream. One of the few perks of being a big sister (I wouldn't know anything about that).
The reason we had to get out of the pool earlier than anticipated. A storm with thunder but very little rain. Grace took this picture. A fun evening that wore out my kids who are now sound asleep. Yay!

Day one without cable

Today was the day, the day. The cable is gone and our television is......no more. I knew this day was coming because after all I was the one who turned in our cable box and told the lady to cancel it. But still. I don't think I've ever gone without cable television, make that television with the exception of my Kuwait deployment. I thought they'd cut the switch today because Steve left for Germany today and that would be just perfect. It happened right in the middle of a story on GMA about a migrant farmer who became an astronaut. At least it didn't happen while the kids were watching a cartoon---that's just too horrible to imagine. Are we being a little dramatic? What else were we going to do? THERE'S NO TV!!!!!!At least one person in this house was not affected (besides Steve but he doesn't count as a full fledged TV watcher). He's just happy as ever. Silly Bubby.Overall, the day went well. I explained to Grace during breakfast that we could no longer watch cartoons on television because cable was too expensive and we watched way too much of it. She took it much better than I did (am). The only screen time they got today was in the car on the way to the airport and later on the way to Target. I think we had more fun, spending the day playing cards, Hi ho cherry-o, putting together puzzles and just keeping busy. Of course now everyone's asleep and it's very, very quiet in this big old house. Better finish up this post so I can hit hulu.

I am being just a tad bit dramatic because if you noticed in the picture we still have a dvd player which works along with about a zillion kids' dvd's, but alas no nightline......

Countdown to preschool

Grace will be starting preschool soon (11 days to be exact). I made her this countdown calendar to help her quantify how many more days until she starts. Not sure that it helps but it sure is fun! Plus it gets her excited about school. She gets to poke through one cup each day to reveal a small treat.

Here she is breaking through the tissue.

And of course she shared the treat (m&m's) with her brother. We didn't even have to force her. He was certainly happy to share.

We are all excited for preschool to start. We'll find out if all of our preparations help her get over the initial anxieties about being by herself in a new place. Just this morning she was explaining to me how I was going to leave her at school but that I would come back later to pick her up. She seemed pretty matter of fact about the whole thing. We'll see......

Just wanted to show a picture of Lucas with his circus light that we bought him yesterday. I still feel a little guilty about not taking him but not as guilty as I would've felt if we had taken him and been forced to leave him at the circus to live with the circus people. For certainly if we'd taken him he would have started shrieking or running off or something and I would have had no other choice but to leave him there. And this is the reason that we also do not take him anywhere near a fire station----too tempting. I'm only kidding, really. I love this little boy no matter how crazy he drives me.

See what I mean? And that is truly a mother's dilemma.

Oh by the way, sorry for the retarded formatting of this post. Steve was trying to improve my blogging experience by updating something or other. It only confused me and the pictures got all mixed up and lets just say you really can't teach an old dog new tricks, for goodness sake. Especially if said person who is trying to make the improvements is not around to help me figure it out but rather is on a plane to Germany (convenient, don't you think?).I just had to leave everything the way it was and work around it. Back to my old ways for the next post though.