Last weekend Ian and I had tons of fun with the Newcom kids, as they stayed with us for the weekend while Kelly and Ryan partied it up in Houston.  I was a little nervous about X & E {first initials} staying the night with us, mainly because of the dogs – our dogs are slobbery, hairy, and in-your-face, so E tends to be a little scared of them.  And anyone that has met X knows that she does not like slobber or any substance that resembles slobber.  Except maybe hair gel.  And ketchup.  But X & E eased into accepting that they were spending the weekend with my hairy kids, and after a while they were even playing together.  Kids can’t resist dogs – they just some time to build a little trust.

It was a decent day outside, so we decided to take the kids to the San Antonio Zoo.  Like I mentioned before, Ian and I are members and donors to the zoo, because we feel that our zoo needs help and support.  The animals usually look so depressed, and for whatever reason we really want our city to have a nice zoo.  So we go there often and like to support the animals and the venue when we can.  X & E were pretty excited!  And it was a fantastic day – all the animals were moving instead of laying on the ground as though they were about to suffer from heat stroke.  Normally, the lions and tigers are just laying there and they look dead, because it gets up to like 350 degrees outside here in the summer.

These lions were even roaring and screaming really loud, and then we watched them make out for a while.  Seriously, it was awesome.  Their voices sounded like thunder, and I was so thrilled to see that the lions actually were able to move and not just show us how to ‘play dead.’

If I were a bird, this is the bird I would be.  I don’t really know why, all I know is this bird cracks me up and I would want to be the bird that makes everyone laugh and feel better about themselves.

Towards the end of the day, we ended up in the aviary enclosure where Ian was able to coax a lorikeet onto his should for X & E.  E was less than thrilled, and was pretty terrified of the bird.  It does sort of look like it wants to eat E’s eye for lunch…but instead, it actually ended up pooping all over Ian and X’s pants.  I’m so excited that I get to talk about poop now.  Poop.  Poop.  Poop.

As we were leaving the zoo, we spotted a zookeeper that was feeding a bunch of pelicans {from my previous 365 picture}.  We decided to walk up to her and see if we could watch, and she offered X & E some fish to feed the birds themselves!  Yes, both kids LOVED feeding the pelicans, and for some reason E thought it was funny to act like he was going to eat the fish himself.  Every time he picked up a fish, he would hold it up to his mouth and say ahhhhh or yummy!!  Everyone thought it was adorable, and I was very happy that I was able to act like this was my smart, creative, cute little boy and take all the credit for his adorableness.  It was super.

Finally, we left the zoo and got a few candid shots by some statues.  X is too beautiful, isn’t she?

That night we watched movies, the Olympics, and had homemade pizza.  E even said, “This is pretty good pizza Aunt Kara.”  I thought that was a cute thing for him to say.  It was a great night and everything was going smoothly…until 5:00 am when E decided to wake up.  Booo.  I forgot that about kids.

So, it was a slow start to the morning, with some tv, greens eggs and pancakes, and cuddle time with the dogs.  X adores the dogs now.  I don’t see any dogs in her future, so this at least gives her a reason to come to our house

E could care less about the dogs.  He just wants trains, as usual.

The weekend was over so fast, and we had such a good time with the kids.  But I think E got a little tired of all the pictures I was taking – he only slipped and called me mom once, and it was when he said, “No mommy, no more pictures!”  I think that is a testament to the magnitude of pictures that Kelly takes of X & E every day, as he associates the camera with his mom.  You can’t see it here, but I tried my best to fix E’s hair in a faux hawk, and I told him all morning not to mess up his hair {like a three-year old is capable of complying with that request}.  So he even looked at me and said “no more picture, I mess up my hair!”  Here’s his no more pictures pout.  Which of course, made me take pictures of him.  Silly boy.

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I’m not happy about the freezing temperatures that suddenly arrived in South Texas.  Last weekend I went to the nursery to try and beat the huge Spring rush and bought some knock-out roses.  Three days later, fake Texas snow attempts to fall to the ground, and I had to move all my new plants inside so they wouldn’t die.  In case you are wondering, that pretty multi-colored bokeh you see in the picture is the strand of Christmas lights that I leave up all year in my kitchen.  Because I can.

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I don’t think I post very many pictures of food, you know, other than the coffee that we already talked about.  But I wanted to let you know that Ian is suddenly eating fish.  You might not think this is such a big deal, but this is something I have been working on with him ever since we met.  He has insisted, over and over, that he hates fish.  Well, now we eat tilapia once a week together, and I enjoy it again on the two nights that Ian is in class during the week.  We both love the local farmers markets, and we get our tilapia there from local aquaponics farms.  Aquaponics farming is cool stuff – herbs and veggies are grown on top of a large water tank, where the fish eat the algae and yummy nutrients from the roots of the herbs.  And of course, the fish poop in the water, which serves as plant food.  It’s this perfect symbiotic relationship that is really tasty, you know, once you cook the fish.  And I don’t really have to use ketchup, but sometimes I do.

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Going to Mario and Ginger’s house for lunch completely defeats the purpose of my new personal goal to dramatically reduce the amount of meat in my diet.  But it was a tasty, tasty feeling of defeat.  With ketchup.

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Ian and I had the best day at the zoo today (more on that later with a blog post).  Ian and I are donors to the San Antonio Zoo, so we have been to there A LOT.  Normally, I leave to zoo thinking that it needs help because the animals all act like they are eternally depressed (hence why we donate).  But today was so much fun – all the animals very active and looked so healthy, and a bird even pooped all over Ian’s pants.  That was, of course, the highlight of my day.

We got to feed these pelicans and after a while I kind of feared for my life, because they are intense birds, especially when they are hungry.  I am fascinated by birds and hope to have one for a pet/lifetime animal companion someday (an eclectus parrot, to be exact, and they live for about 70 years), but these guys freak me out because I always feel like they are going to jump out of the water and poke my eyes out for a fish.  And perhaps that would have been payback for laughing hysterically when the lorikeet pooped on Ian’s pants.

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Another picture of coffee.  While this looks like an especially awesome cafe mocha, I am really tired of posting pics of coffee at least once a week.  I post so many bland pics of coffee because this project 365 thing is getting really hard!  It is especially hard during the week – my routine most week nights is to battle the traffic home, have dinner, get some things done around the house, hit the gym, and then read until I fall asleep.  Needless to say, that general routine doesn’t leave a lot of room for creative pictures.  Hence, all the pics of coffee and my dogs.  I’m going to attempt to step things up a little and force myself to see the world around me differently.  I know there is beauty all around me, I just have to find it.

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Just a few days after I get all excited about Spring…..

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