And CHEER Again!

Hello there.  I haven't forgotten about you.  Spring Break was K-razy (fun) and then I needed a week to recover.  Not the kind of fun I would have needed recovering from twenty years ago...but still.  I love me some Spring Break!

And the fun never ends for the Nockinbirds.  Little Miss had cheer competition at Cowboy Stadium this past Saturday.  That's always some good people watching!

Including watching my people.  The sparkly stars were a new addition to the makeup line up.  I'm still washing stray glitter out of my clothes.

Molly stopped by to enjoy the show on her way back from the McKinney Bandy's.

Loverboy took this one as we awaited the cheering. 

There they are!

And they got to have a picture made with a REAL (parts of her anyway) Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader!!!  Her name just happened to be the very same as Little Miss's!  They both seemed excited about that.  I think Little Miss would sleep with her trophy if we let her; she made sure it was her picture.

And Molly caved in and shelled out for a cheerleader dog, custom outfitted to "match" Little Miss.

The happy attitude was waning as we left.  We were all a tad drained, not the least because there was a two-year-old little girl that went missing for two hours while we were there.  It occured to me that not only is this cheer thing only a step away from "Toddlers and Tiaras" but also a child molester's dream.  Ick.  Thank God the little girl was found safe and sound.

For some reason, walking backwards to the car cheered her up.

And we were all quite cheery over dinner at El Fenix.  The "gingerbread man" sopapillas really brought smiles.

I'll be back with true stories of Spring Break.

Cheer!

Saturday, the gym had a practice performance along with a "show off" by the tumbling team.  Holy cow.  Those kids must have springs in their feet.  Little Miss is the second one (the one to the right of the girl in front).  Of course, my battery gave out after the first 27 seonds..but enjoy.

I'm glad I wasn't in charge of sweeping the glitter eye makeup off the floor.  I don't know how this ended up more labor intensive for me when it wasn't even an actual competiton, but it did.  I was put in charge of wrangling the mini team when they weren't on the floor.  Lot of energy in that group.  It started at 1:30 for makeup (better than our last competiton when we had to be in Garland at 7:00 in the morning!) but we were there until 6:00.  This is sounding really whiny.  It was fun and ALL the kids got a chance to "show off"--Little Miss was, of course, first in line to run the mat and she nailed her cartwheel--for the first time...and in front of a crowd.  Each of them also got an award.  Hers was "most improved."  My favorite was "prettiest in pink."  Very creative coaches.

Scary smile.

They also got goody-bags, a picture frame, and a megaphone sign with their name on it.  I contributed nothing to this effort, so I feel like a total slacker parent--maybe that's how I pulled wrangling duty.  Good trade.

In case you were wondering, I do have a matching spirit shirt.

Sunday we enjoyed just being at home.  Little Miss was put out with the "messy birds" who knocked feed out of the feeder and onto the patio, so she was sweeping it up.

And seeing if she could reach the top of the whirly-thingy.  She could.

We took our daily walk around the yard, appreciating the flowers and flowering trees.  We noticed a low level buzzing sound when we were under the redbud.  When a bee almost flew up my nose, I realized it was coming from the pear tree--and the bazillion bees making happy among the white flowers.  We decided to avoid the pear tree until the sun is setting and the bees have called it a night.

In the front yard, those two were making a lot of noise for such small birds.

This guy, look for the yellow at the bottom of the tail in the middle of the frame, was one of a hundred that were enjoying the day among the red berries, which, by the way, are completely gone from this tree as of today.  I need a bird guide and a zoom lens.

I'm looking forward to day light savings time...more time to enjoy being outside.

March, in like a lamb

Even after the beating that was the TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) day today, or maybe because of it, I really needed to get outside and enjoy the glorious weather we've been having. I won't elaborate on the beating except to say, one down, three more to go at the end of April...except that my school has decided to proceed with the next two days as if we were taking the math and science TAKS tests and use those results as benchmarks for the April (real) exam.  Note that social studies is left out of the fun.  We had to give up two days of our class time last week to give our benchmark, now we lose two more days instructional time to give math and science benchmarks...bitter much?  Eight school days until spring break!  Now back to the delights of March...

The whole yard needs a lot of work, but I decided that weeding the front flower beds would be a nice way to spend an hour after we got home.  Little Miss was very excited to help...

if helping was running around chasing the dog with her repurposed Walmart/weed collection bag.  I got about 1/3 of the left side of the bed done when my bag was full.  LOTS more to do.

Then we took a flower finding tour of the back yard.  Individual daffodils are popping up in very odd places.  Do bulbs migrate?  How?  The picture above is of the big tree in our back yard.  I had been leaning towards believing it was an ornamental pear tree, but I'm not sure.  It's full of white flower buds right now.  We'll see.

Molly identified this one as a red bud tree.  But it looks quite a bit different from the one in the front yard that she thought was a red bud...I'm going to need some reference books...or the internet.  Yea for spring!