Our last day of "Vaca"

We returned home from our three week trip in New Mexico, 2 days ago.  What a wonderful and exhausting time we had.  I took around 430 pictures so it might be a while before I do a post on that.  I will probably put them in a Facebook album and then just post a few of my favorites here, but that still will be a while.  In the meantime, today was sort of our last day of vacation.  Shawn "officially" goes back to work tomorrow, so we made the most of today together. 

 

We started by exchanging a pair of shoes Shawn got me for my birthday.  (He actually got me these shoes, but there was a little defect on them so we got another pair.)  I L O V E them!!!

We also bit the bullet and went school supply shopping.  Elle will be in 5th grade!

Ava will be in 2nd grade.

Levi is going to attend a 2-day-a-week Mother's Day Out Program.

Their totals....It averaged $50 per child...not bad (not fun to spend either.)

After the craziness and I mean utter craziness, of shopping for three kids school supplies with those three kids, in a state of delirium, I pushed the family to go ahead while we were out shopping and look for the girls' first day of school outfits.  We don't really buy them new clothes for school, but do get them one new thing to start the year off.  As soon as fall arrives, I'm sure we'll be buying more clothes!  Either way, we had success for both girls!  Amazing!  And both the girls and I actually agreed and liked the final choices.  Hallelujah.

It was around 2:30 at this point and we had been out shopping all day in the OPPRESSIVE Texas heat (I got spoiled while in NM).  The van had murdered thousands upon thousands of bugs in our long journey to and from NM so we decided to all wash the car together.

The van Levi....the van.

That's more like it.  Surprisingly, every single child washed this part of the van and it was still filthy when Shawn and I went to do the final inspection.

Washing the tires, as in the tread. 

The windows seemed to be everyone's favorite part to wash....they were washed at least four times each.

Oh my goodness, he is cute no matter what.

Ava was trying so hard to get all the Pine tree sap off the car....we learned a very important lesson about where NOT to park while at camp....we had to eventually use a razor blade to scrape the sap off.

Not exactly the car but it is keeping him preoccupied and sort of cleaning him in the process...double win!

Finally finished!  Looking spiffy.

What better way to get all the sweat off of the family, than going to the neighborhood pool.  It felt awesome!  We played for a long time.

We headed home after the pool and I duplicated a meal we ate at Harry's Roadhouse in Santa Fe while on vacation.  It was a Belgium waffle, with peaches on top, a raspberry puree and whipped cream.  I was very close to right on...and definitely close enough that EVERYONE loved it and we will definitely eat this again!

As we unpacked from camp on Friday, we came across two bottles of Silly String and a fun idea was born....Silly String wars....so while we were out running errands today, we picked up a few more bottles so everyone could have one.  We decided that after dinner, we'd war.  We told the kids that we'd take a self-timer before photo and then would give them the rules. 

But Shawn and I had already decided that we would ambush them while the self timer was taking pictures.  Poor suckers never saw it coming.  It was AWESOME!

One child did not like this at all.  I don't think Levi realized what was about to happen or what it would be like, so he freaked and I mean FREAKED out....for a good hour or so afterwards.  It didn't help that he missed his nap today and we did lots of stuff.  He eventually calmed down but decided that next time, he wouldn't have to be in the war with us. Next time, we definitely need WAY more silly string! 

What a great day of fun for our family.  All the kids sacked out after baths tonight.  We wore them out!  (We're a little bit worn out too....but still on a high from the Silly String Ambush.)