Up, Up, and Away!

You are looking at a family that is ready to see the spring!! We are generally outdoors kind of folks. . but I'll tell you, we haven't been out much this winter at all!! I am ALWAYS out by the end of January looking for life. . . and I found myself surprised on Friday to find daffodils with buds on them already! Shameful! Yesterday the boys and I were at the garden show (yes we had a GREAT time--the pictures will be up in the next couple days!) and the temperature was near 70 here with no wind. Today wasn't as nice--temp near 60, but breezy and cloudy. However, the boys had the afternoon planned working on the rockets we bought at Hobby Lobby yesterday.

Because of the breeze, you will notice that the first thing that happened was a little kite flying. Being the hopeless romantic gift giver that I am (NOT) the photo above is the Valentine gift that I blessed my husband with! Yes, it IS a Woody and Buzz Lightyear kite. The man has a love of flying kites. . .so when I saw them, I knew he would like that better than most anything else I would come up with. So I got that one and then a couple 1$ kites. . .Cinderella and a lizard if you want to be exact! So of course D and Cami were all about those too.

I didn't realize how much the big boys would want to fly kites!! Poor Tristan worked for an hour to make one out of a paperbag. . .you know, like they USED to do before they went to their friendly Walmart store weekly! The thing never did fly very well, but it was a good exercise for him. All it needed, according to the kite-flying guru, was a bigger tail. Hmmm, maybe next weekend.

They enjoyed flying them in the breeze for about an hour. After warming up inside for a bit, the wind died down, and Tristan had repaired the rocket he got for Christmas LAST year and never flew. . .because we never had time! So of course, we had to shoot that sucker off!!

D and G are both in rocketry this year as a 4-H project. D chose a small snap together rocket that is SO cute. It is together and they found some engines that would work from last Christmas--no kidding, we have a BOX of spare rocket parts! We didn't shoot it off today, but it is ready to go! They must shoot it off once before they can take it to the fair. We think we should do this early, in case one doesn't survive! G had to get one to put together himself. So he and his dad worked on that for a while today too. It is currently getting it's glue dried balanced on my paper towel holder standing on my bedroom dresser! He's already decided that he didn't glue the fin on quite right, so he may be making another one too! I have to confess now that these rockets can be costly if not found on sale. So I printed off the weekly internet coupon for Hobby Lobby four times. It was 40% off one regular price item. Since a customer can only use one coupon per day, I sent each child through the line with a rocket, money and a coupon. I was NOT embarrassed!

And there she goes!! Mom learned a few things about her camera at the camera classes too. . . like how to use continous shooting!