First and foremost, go cougs. Nate and Jarom went to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the game against Iona last night and decided to leave at half time because it was looking so bleak. Talk about your all-time backfires.
Things have been a little busy with work around here lately. Kenz has been working a lot of shifts at the speech doctor’s office or wherever it is she works, which means that Lix has been logging a lot of hours as the babysitter, which means that Jenna and Kenna have been spending a lot of time together, which they really enjoy. Lix does a pretty good job of keeping them busy and finding stuff to do during the day. The newest craze they found is gymnastics. There is a gym a few minutes from the house that has open hours every week where you can pay a few bucks and go in and run around on the trampolines, jump into the foam pit, leap off of the vault, etc… If you were to systematically design Jenna’s own personal heaven, it would pretty much be this gym with a pool. So she has a pretty good time. Even Bo was enjoying himself. He had a blast army crawling around obstacles and generally getting in other people’s way, and really loves sitting on the trampoline while other people bounce him around. Jenna’s imagination seems to be going crazy these days as she is constantly coming up with stories and scenarios for her menagerie of stuffed animals. She got a new pair of horses this week and decided to name them Soso and Backscratchy, but you have to pronounce Soso more like siew-siew or she will scold you for mispronouncing it. These kids make us all laugh every day.
Lix continues to be quite the social butterfly, spending many of her days at friend’s houses making assorted crafts, like the several wreaths that are now hanging around the house. She also decided that the guest bathroom needed some fancying up so she got some tile from the Depot and glued up a border. Pinterest is her best friend and she goes to a Bachelor viewing party every Monday night, so there’s that. But her friends aren’t all bad influences. Thanks to Loralee we’ve been getting fresh fruit and vegetables from Bountiful Baskets, which is a little coop agriculture thing here. For about $15 you get a whole lot of food, and weird stuff too, which Lix loves because it forces her to try new things in the kitchen. She is now making eggplant parmesan, brussel sprouts, a variety of salads, and all sorts of other things we never had before like kiwi and pears.
Mars has been around a lot lately as his company continues to try and land a contract here in Dallas, and his presence usually means that the amount of golf being played increases. A few weeks ago everyone went to Topgolf on a recommendation from Nate. It is basically a driving range with giant targets out on the grass and little tracker chips in the balls so that you can keep score and play against each other. Jenna and Bo went as well, and actually had a good time. Jenna loves to putt the ball and Bo got to chew on some French fries. Then this past week the adults left the kids with their favorite babysitter Kelsie and braved some chilly weather to play 18 holes, getting to the 17th before it really started pouring. Everyone had fun and Lix came within a few inches of scoring her first career birdie.
Spring is really starting to show up around here, which means the lawn needs to be taken care of. We bought some mulch from the scouts for the front yard, and Jarom brought the lawn mower out of hibernation this week to trim the 25 square feet of grass. Jenna has been playing outside more and more as the weather warms up, and one of her favorite activities out back is pulling up all the weeds that sprout up among the flagstones. And speaking of weeds, Bo seems to get older every day. It appears that he may have the same sort of picky eating habits that Jenna had, but he is as plump as can be and is moving very quickly now and getting into everything. For a few weeks now we have been considering installing the baby gate on the stairs because of his increased speed and range in terms of crawling. But on Sunday Jarom finally broke down and did it. The impetus was a discovery made that afternoon. Bo was in the family room with Lix when she came into the study to see something Jarom was doing on the computer. As she was walking back into the family room she noticed a portly figure about halfway up the staircase. Apparently Bo can climb stairs, and he has found that he very much enjoys it. If you leave him alone anywhere near them he will bolt over and begin his ascent. It’s pretty cute.