Love My Life...

Jolly Holly

bundschuhclan — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 21:20:10 +0000

Holly is still up to her tricks. This week she hung the kids underwear on the tree, and to my surprise this was not a very big hit. She also had a tea party, got tangled trying to hang Christmas lights, left a trail of popcorn to where she was enjoying a drive in movie, made reindeer cookies, painted the kids noses while they were asleep, and hid inside a glass in the cabinet.

Holly’s Tricks

bundschuhclan — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 18:35:42 +0000

This week Holly read our Christmas books, built a Lego house and listened to the Lego mini figures’ Christmas wishes, drew on the kid’s Christmas picture, had a marshmallow hot tub (Crock pot) party with miscellaneous Barbies, plastered the living room with Post-it notes, and wrote a Christmas message in Cheerios.

Christmas is Coming

bundschuhclan — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:38:47 +0000

On Thursday are beloved Holiday Elf, Holly, arrived. Which immediately launched my children into Christmas mode. This year our elf has decided to kick it up a notch and be a little mischievous. So far she has made a flour angel, turned our milk green, and eaten some cookies. Stay tuned to see what she does next.

Start of the Year

bundschuhclan — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 01:36:13 +0000

Where to start…..

The kids are back to school. They both seem to love their teachers and so far they are really enjoying being back. It’s hard to believe we have a 3^rd and 1^st grader. Aidan has started guitar lessons this year, and now he thinks he is a total rock star. He’ll have a recital in November, and will be playing Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns and Roses. I told him I actually saw them in concert, 2^nd row thank you very much, and earned some cool points.

On Labor Day weekend Aaron competed in is first triathlon, and did very well. He finished in the middle of the pack in his age group with a time of 1:51:00. He said he under estimated the swim and transitioning from biking to running, and already has a new goal for the next one. Aidan has a year-long social studies project called the Museum Project. Every 9 weeks he has to go to someplace historical whether it is a museum, a statue, or some place significant where someone made a difference in their community, which brings us to the cows. Austin’s downtown area has about one hundred ceramic cows – all painted or decorated by local artists. Later this year they will be auctioned off, and all the money will go to the Dell Children’s Hospital. Each cow is supposed to bring in $10,000 or more. I thought this fit Aidan’s criteria so this morning the Bundschuh family set off for downtown with a map and names of the cows. We ended up seeing a little over 20 cows. You can check out the back to school pictures and the entire cow parade here.

A Little Review

bundschuhclan — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 19:12:03 +0000

A couple of weekends ago the Bundschuh Family headed to Bandera to see my Dad. We were just planning on chilling out at the cabin, but what we got was oh so much more. Bandera was holding their annual Wild Hog Explosion Festival. We pull up expecting to see tons of motorcycles or “hogs”, but we we got was a festival that embraced the art of tackling and bagging actual wild hogs. Men, women and children were encouraged to enter a ring and touch or tackle-and-bag pigs of various sizes. I almost had Aaron convinced to give it a try until he saw the event. Those pigs were big and sometimes mean, plus you needed a partner and there was no way in hell I was getting in a dirt filled ring to catch a huge, smelly pig. It was really fun to watch. After all the excitement of the festival, we headed back to the cabin where Aaron set up our tent, yes that’s right the Bundschuh Family was spending the night in a tent. Of course we had not planned on the tornado size winds that night, and after enduring a couple of hours of unbearable nylon on nylon scraping, we abandoned the tent and headed for the unfinished pod. The pod has everything done except the windows and doors so it was quite warm and most of all very quiet. The next morning we woke up to Aidan looking outside the pod and screaming “Oh my gosh! The tent blew down!”

Then last weekend it was hot enough to get the Cervenka’s huge blow up water slide out which kept the kids busy for about 3 hours. With the start of warmer weather the kids are already asking when we are going to the pool. I tried to remind them that last year by the end of summer neither one of them wanted to go to the pool anymore and neither one of them believed me.

On Monday Aidan did the Pledge of Allegiance in front of the whole school. He was very nervous, but managed to do a great job.

Now the grand finale of our weekend, the Lego Space Shuttle. Aaron and Aidan spent two Saturdays putting this beast together. This Lego is designed for 16 and older so Daddie had to assist, but Aidan is so good at building these things Daddie only had to do minor assistance. Basically Daddie was there to keep Aidan focused on this mammoth project. You can check out all photos on Flickr.

Austin Rodeo

bundschuhclan — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:31:08 +0000

Yesterday the kids and I headed out to the Austin Rodeo. We got there before any of the shows started so we headed over to Kid Town for pony rides and the petting zoo. Now taking a pony ride was something Lauren REALLY wanted to do. All morning she kept asking if there was going to be pony rides and how she wanted to ride one, so $6.00 later Lauren was on her pony, and was she excited. Then the pony started to walk, and Lauren became less enthusiastic, and with every step Lauren became more anxious until she was crying to get off. After drying her tears we then moved on to the petting zoo. Let me just state how much I hate these things! Smelly (probably bug infested), aggressive animals slobbering on you to get food is not my idea of a good time. But the kids always want to do this – in theory, but they always get in there with their food, and the animals come running, and my kids freak out, and I end up feeding the animals while being a human shield. This time was no exception, and since Lauren’s emotions were right on the surface after the pony ride she began to cry again and wanted to leave. It was turning out to be a great morning. But Mom rallied the troops and explained that “We are having fun and we are having it right now!” I gave out more hugs and Kleenex and we headed to our first show, the Chuck Wagon Show. The kids did not appreciate the history lesson, but did like the biscuits that were handed out at the end of the show. Then we bought some popcorn and chocolate milk and headed to Mom’s favorite part of the day – the Pig Races. This show is pretty self explanatory. Your section of seats is assigned a pig, and if that pig wins, the cheerleader (a kid picked out of the crowd) for your section wins a prize. Both Aidan and Lauren were picked to be cheerleaders, but neither one of their pigs one, but they had fun screaming for their pigs to win. Then it was onto a puppet show, and then on to the deathtraps that the kids call rides. We spent about two hours riding the kiddie rides, because I bought the kids these wristbands that let them ride as many times as they wanted. There were a couple of rides like the big slide and the fun houses that they just kept doing over and over again. Then we took a small break for lunch, and then it was Mommies turn to pick something. So we were off to see a Western Shoot Out and a Horse Show. Aidan ended up buying something at the rodeo with his own money. It was his name written in fancy letters – he put it on a Super Mario background which I hated, but since it wasn’t my money I didn’t have a say. It is proudly hanging in his room as I type this blog. It was then back to the rides. By now Mommy was getting tired, and seeing no end in sight to the numerous rides my children were willing to ride, and not wanting to hear any whining, I did what any desperate parent would do…I bribed them with ice cream. The conversation went something like this:

MOM: “You guys about ready to go?”

KIDS: “NO, NO, NOOOOO NOT YET!”

MOM: “If we leave right now we can get ice cream on the way out.”

KIDS: “OK, let’s go!”

So what started out a little rocky turned into a great day. You can check out of the pictures on Flickr.

On a side note, my good friend, Michelle, had her baby on Monday. A beautiful baby girl, Audrey Elaine. Aidan has already held her.

Spring Break_2010

bundschuhclan — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 02:12:19 +0000

Spring Break has begun and Lauren kicked it off Friday with Kindergarten Rodeo. She has been learning some Texas history this month, and you can’t learn about Texas without learning about Cowboys. So Friday morning all the Kindergartners dressed like cowboys and roped (toy) horses, galloped with stick horses, ate beans and cornbread, square danced and made Bolo Ties(the “official” tie of Texas). You can check out all the pictures on Flickr.

On Saturday the Stones drove down for a visit and we all went to a UT baseball game. It was a double header and the kids watched the first game and half of the second. Now when I say “watch” I use that term lightly; more like ate hot dogs, nachos, peanuts, and ice cream. We didn’t catch any foul balls, but we did catch a T-shirt.

Sunday we headed to Salt Lick BBQ for an early dinner. This is one of the best BBQ places in Austin, and with ‘bring your own beer’ and live music you just can’t go wrong.

Lauren Turns 6

bundschuhclan — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 03:25:49 +0000

Today my beautiful, funny, and somewhat dark daughter turned 6. She started out the morning by saying “I can have whatever I want today, because it’s my birthday!” After I agreed she proceeded to tell me she wanted Fruit Loops for breakfast. She knows this cereal is only for Saturday morning, but as she had stated – she gets whatever she wants. Of course, if she was thinking, she would have asked for chocolate milk as well – another Saturday only treat.

We then moved on to the dressing part of our morning. For the last several weeks she has been wanting to wear her very fancy Christmas dress to school, and I have been telling her “No it’s too fancy and it’s NOT Christmas.” So I’m sure by now you have guessed what dress she pulled out of the closest this morning, and to top off the look she wanted to wear her new pink converse tennis shoes. I tried to reason with her about how the tennis shoes don’t match, and Lauren proceeded to tell me they match her pink Birthday ribbon that is pinned to her dress. With that I thought “what the hell” and off she went to school in a taffeta red dress with light pink converse.

At lunch time I was off to Burger King to buy the birthday girl a special lunch, but not before I was reminded it was her birthday so she wanted french fries and not apples. After school Aidan had a play date with his girlfriend Lily so Lauren and I had something special planned. We were off to Build A Bear Workshop to make a stuffed animal. Later Lauren stood by the window anxiously awaiting the arrival of Aaron, not because she was missing him terribly, but because I told her she wasn’t allowed to open her presents until he got home. He arrived home early with flowers, one of Lauren’s favorite things, and she proceeded to tear into her presents. Her big gift was a Nintendo DS just like her brother’s, except her’s was pink! After dinner we sang her Happy Birthday one more time and she devoured a giant cupcake. She went to bed a happy girl. You can see more pictures is Lauren’s 6th Birthday.

Birthday Party’s Times 3.

bundschuhclan — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 23:54:34 +0000

Lauren doesn’t turn 6 until Thursday but due to Spring Break we had to have her party on Saturday. She decided she wanted to have a costume tea party. Afternoon tea started at 1:30pm with tasty treats and an arts and craft activity. Aaron did a lovely job of serving the girls their chocolate milk from a tea pot while I helped them with the arts and craft project. While we were having tea the face painter was supposed to show up, but due to a mix up (the face painter being an idiot!) she never showed. Luckily we had an artist in our midst and Michelle ran home, grabbed her face paints and her Mom, and went to work. We then moved on to the Flower Walk which is a fancy way of saying old fashioned cake walk. This is where the girls walk in a circle on numbered flowers and when the music stops we draw a number from a hat and that number wins a prize. The girls thought is was amazing how every girl won and no one won twice, what can I say I’m still smart enough to fool a bunch of 6 year olds.

At this point in the festivities Aaron had to leave with Aidan so Aidan could go to a Putt Putt birthday party for his friend Sam. We then moved on to Pin the Bow on the Bunny, more fancy speak for Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Cupcakes and juices followed, with the Scavenger Hunt as the grand finale. All in all it was another successfull birthday party.

Today Lauren’s best friend Kylie had her birthday party at Main Event. This place has bowling, rock climbing, games, a restaurant and more. Kylie’s party was a rock climbing party. The girls rock climbed for an hour. Lauren definitely has the athletic ability to make it to the top, but she’s not crazy about being up so high so she always stopped half way up and drifted down. She even climbed a shorter wall without the cable and made it to the top on that one. Then it was more cake and ice cream. My children will be going through sugar detox later this evening.

After the party the Bundschuh Family headed to the Circle C park so Daddie could take a run. The kids and I tagged along so we could enjoy the weather and take a walk. Then we stopped at the park to let the kids play for a little while. You can check out all the pictures on flickr.

Happy President’s Day

bundschuhclan — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 19:36:31 +0000