Cole MMIV

COLE Family MMIV

This is the whole Cole fam... Elise is hiding behind my mom's hair.

In 2006, my mom & dad decided to use some of the money they usually spend on Christmas for a family vacation. Mom decided an appropriate name would be "Cole Family Making Memories Vacation." Of course, all of us gave her a hard time over the name, but it stuck. Each year one of us siblings (and the parents are included in the rotation) plans a family vacation. So far, it has been adults only. But this year (Making Memories 4 - {MMIV}), the whole Cole fam decided to come to TX! My bro Chris was the Party Planner. And it was a PARTY!!! The hardest part is the scheduling... its a lot of work to get everyone's crazy schedules to work out. We almost missed out on Benji... he's a good pitcher for his high school baseball team and a big game was rescheduled (due to snow) to be made-up during the vacation. I know family is most important, but when you are in HS, its tough. He didn't want to let the team down. So he decided to stay. We did everything we could to get his flight rescheduled to Sat morning, but not wanting to spend a fortune, nothing worked out. However, late Wed night, we looked at the weather forecast and it said 60% chance of rain & thunder ALL DAY LONG. So at the last minute, he joined the fam, thinking the game would be canceled. Well, the Cowboys played Friday and there were many prayers from San Antonio that they would be victorious. And they were. We were so glad he came... wouldn't have been the same without him and most likely he'll miss out on the next couple (probably will be serving a church mission).

So... with that LONG intro... here's a recap on our vacation. My camera broke so I downloaded everyone else's photos before they left. Note to family: click on the pics (& collages) to make them bigger.

Day 1 - Thursday afternoon

We had to do one activity "Adults only" so we went to the Alamo, had dinner on the Riverwalk and did a boat tour. We had to have Boudro's famous guacamole. YUM! Lucky Austin got to join in on the fun, but the rest of the kiddo's stayed with tenders.

Day 2 - Friday (Sea World)

The party planner bought us these great shirts (MMIV on the front, Cole on the back). Since the plan was to visit Sea World and they matched Shamu, we decided to wear them on Friday. I must say it was a great tool to keep track each other. I think the shirts were the reason our fam made it on the jumbo screen at the Shamu show as well. We also got a LOT of questions as to what the letters stood for. I liked it best when people ventured a guess... like one guy said to me, "So, what happened to you guys in 2004?" We made up a few alternate sayings such as "Mormons Moving in Vans" and "Muscle Men in Venice".

Where am I? Look about 10 rows up... near the aisle. Yep. I blamed it on not wanting to get Austin wet.

My dad got totally SOAKED in the Shamu show. Everyone else got kind of WET.

Same story after the "Journey to Atlantis" ride. My dad was DRIPPING with water. He even jumped in front of Benji to get a different seat (thinking he wouldn't get as wet). The rest of us were a little wet, but it was tough to find the dry patches on dad. It was a great day for Sea World... no lines for rides makes it so much more enjoyable.

Feeding the dolphins... my favorite part here were the squeals (by the humans, not the dolphins).

Day 3 - Saturday

We started the day with breakfast at the Guenther house. No one remembered it was the King William parade (for San Antonio's 11 day party - Fiesta) at the exact same time. So we had a big wait. Notice the "sleeping" children above.

The second half of the day was spent at Sea World waterpark. The weather wasn't really warm for TX, but it was certainly warmer than UT weather!

Halle Cecilia's birthday - 2 years old!

Day 4 - Sunday

After church, we ate a big meal (of course) and drove up by the San Antonio temple. A Cole party would not be the same without Sunday games, but this time they were more lively. The Tew's brought nerf guns and they were a BIG hit! Geo said this could not be played outside because the bullets would get lost for good. So our house turned into the war zone. I think that was one of Geo's favorite times (well, that and the game of Poison ball Friday evening... you can see the "jump start" in the collage below.) We did play a board game later, but one thing we forgot is to have some sort of dip/salsa with cream cheese. I bought five bricks to make sure I had enough for this crew... I think its our first party ever without cream cheese. Don't worry though, they won't go to waste. I'll use them up in about a week.

We also had an "ugly face" contest with Chris's camera while he was upstairs. The winner... its a toss up! These pictures are keepers for sure! :)

Day 5 - Monday

Geo and the Tew's left Sunday, but the rest of the crew left Monday afternoon. We had to stop at Chacho's for lunch but sadly the humongous playground was being repaired. It cracked me up that this airport run was similar to the last one I did with Greg and Chris (minus the drive-thru)... Chacho's was a MUST stop and that meant they cut it close to making their flights. But they did. My house seems so quiet now and I miss them all.

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES FAM!

All vacations must come to an end or we'd look like this every night...

Exotic Animal Training

My bro-in-law Jake sent me another interesting link. How do you find these things, Jake? This article is from the NY times. I read it last night. Basically, it is a well-written article on how to train your spouse to do (or not do) things. Its based on animal training methods and since Shamu's name was in the title, I was very interested. The author had a lot of good ideas that are worth experimenting with, but since my husband is still in Kileen (only a few more days to go... yippee!), I decided to try it out on Lucy. I love my little darling, but she is a bit of a cry-baby. I try to be a sympathetic mom, but I think it has backfired. She has learned that crying gets results. She is a pro at turning on the tears for a boo-boo or if someone is bugging her or whatever. Now, I realize there are some legit reasons for tears and as girls, sometimes we need a good cry, but like I said... its out of control. So today I decided to try the LRS (Least Reinforcing Syndrome) method on Lucy. The basic idea is not to give ANY response to the behavior you are trying to stop (positive or negative). So, I was sitting by her and she hit her finger on something. Obviously it was not a hard hit. She burst into tears and I sat there and continued reading. She repeated over and over, "Mommy, my finger!" and then... as quick as the tears came, they left. Usually I would have said something like, "Its okay, you didn't hit it that hard." or "No tears" or kiss her finger. But this worked much better. Now, the problem with all of this came later when her friends were over playing. One of them took something from her and Lucy burst into tears. I was sitting there watching the whole event and didn't do a thing. Well, her friend immediately consoled her and gave her what she wanted. Later she burst into tears when she didn't get to "sit in her seat" at the table. So, what do I do in those cases? Its hard to ignore when she is being a little stink to her friends. I'm not expecting an immediate transformation of my daughter, but I am wondering if she will learn tears don't work at home, but they do work with her friends (if I ignore her crying during play dates). Obviously, that's not what I want... this "training" needs some more thought.

I must document a success (I think). It is not related to the article, but a strategy my friend recommended. I've had a problem with trusting what Lucy tells me. Kids are smart... they know if they say the right thing, they'll get praise and vise versa. I was really struggling how to punish the behavior as well as the lying and show that lying is the more serious of the two, but had no luck. My friend told me she washes her son's mouth out with soap (since lying is a verbal thing). So I tried it. And it worked great. After a couple times of me rubbing the bar on her teeth (it really was sad... I had to fight back my tears), she has become a more truthful child. Not perfect, but better. I caught her doing something tonight, she told me she "didn't" and I asked what happens to girls that don't tell the truth. She changed her story right away.

This parenthood thing can sure be tricky and I'm sure I don't know the half of it ...

One more thing... this time a strategy SHE taught me. Today, I was sitting in the room next to the bedroom, listening to the girls play while rocking my two babies (they aren't feeling so great). I heard one girl ask Lucy what the matter was. She said: "Oh. I'm just pretending to be dead so my handsome prince will come kiss me on the LIPS!" Ha, ha, ha! Maybe I'll try that one...

Dead

Sad news... my camera and my internet service died on Thursday. The internet was revived today (modem had to be replaced), but the camera is gone for good I think. Its been dropped one too many times. We've had a Canon camera and are thinking of going with the same thing, but if anyone has any suggestions, please share... The sad part is that it died the day my whole fam came to San Antonio. :(

Here are a few posts with pics taken just before its untimely death...

Pool vs. Backyard

Last week we had beautiful weather. Since my mom was around, I decided to brave my first trip to the pool with all of the children. How do you think it went?

In case you are wondering, Lucy DID finally let go of me, but didn't last long in the pool.

And Elise was fine... as long as I held her in my arms. Austin... well... he'd rather sit on the side with grandma. We were planning on going to the pool the following day, but decided to let Austin sleep while the girls played in the backyard. This time we got better results...
Here is Lucy's Riverdancing...

And pretending to be Shamu...

Easter Blue

If you remember, Lucy was sick on Easter so none of the kids made it to church. This is what they looked liked the following weekend. Before I could get the camera out and get the little ones posed, Lucy had changed into her playclothes and quickly changed her hairstyle as well, so you'll just have to imagine her in a cute dark and light blue polka-dot dress. It took a lot of persuading just to get her to join the picture, so I wasn't about to fight the "change your clothes" battle...

Drive-Thru

My brother-in-law Jake shared this video with me. I laughed my head off.... for a few reasons. One was I thought the lyrics were quite good. Another was that I love(d) Taco Bell so hearing their menu items was kind of nostalgic for me. Now I am a fan of Taco Cabana... much better food for just as cheap. Plus they have a fresh salsa bar. However, when the day comes that I have to leave TX, I'll go back to the Bell. And I hope this guy will be the one to take my order...



But the last reason for the giggles was that it reminded me of an experience we had when we had only officially lived in San Antonio for one day. Two of my brothers graciously drove with us from Omaha to SA to help us move. On the way to take them to the airport, Greg says he MUST stop at Chacho's & Chalucci's .... this Mexican restaurant he saw from the 410... "just an exit or two past the airport". It ended up being more than a few exits, but even though he was getting close to missing his flight, he was determined. This place is huge. It has a four-story playland thing for the kiddos and four lanes of drive thru. Obviously from the name, you know this is a Mexican food place, but it also serves pizza and has a bakery. I am very leery of restaurants that try to multi-specialize their food. I think they should stick to the type they cook best, but the mexican food is actually pretty good. I've never tried the pizza. Anyway... we pull through one of the drive-thru lanes and Geo is repeating everyone's orders into the speakers while trying to listen simultaneously to the worker (of course there were a few order changes and indecisiveness). He orders himself a burrito. The worker says "Anything else?" and somehow Geo thinks he asked what he wanted on the burrito so G says, "everything."
worker: "What?"
G: "Everything. I want everything."
W: "What?"
G: long and slow, "EV-ER-Y-THING. I want it all"
LONG, LONG PAUSE.
Note: I am trying to compose myself so I can tell Geo that the worker thinks he is ordering the entire menu, but it was sort of difficult...Greg & I were rolling with laughter and Geo & Chris could not figure out what was so funny.
W: (with a big sigh) "Ok. Let's start over... "
...
Even if he had some training from the bionic-ears-worker at Taco Bell in the video, it would not have helped this situation. If you know Geo well, he is not a "ruffle people's feathers" type guy and was getting more flustered as the conversation progressed, which made it even funnier. Now here is the great part. Greg and Chris are coming to visit in one week. And I am sure we will make a stop at Chacho's. But this time, I think we'll order inside.

Easter traditions and things that should be

***I was blogging on the computer this morning and I could hear Lucy singing "Its a Hard Knock Life" while washing the walls and furniture. Ha, ha, ha! I guess I live the life of leisure... ***

Sharing some of our Easter fun

Geo is technically in Ft. Hood, but got to come home for Easter Sunday... yay!

It is tradition around here to get a "bunny-rabbit ears" photo. As usual, photography with three young children is quite funny. It is also tradition to get a picture in our nice Sunday clothes, but Lucy threw-up through the Saturday night/Sunday morning, so Geo and I took turns going to an hour of church. All three kids were left home to sleep/eat. I guess we'll get the "Easter best" photo next week.
We always make Jell-O eggs for Easter. Sadly, only the girls in the family LOVE this tradition. This year we made a batch of creamy eggs as well to see if it would win some points with the boys. Sadly, both boys have not developed a love for jell-o, in fact the older of the two thinks plain jell-o is one of the worst things to eat. Yet... the tradition lives on...
This is not an Easter tradition, but if the Cain girls were going to stick around SA, it might become one. They made peanut butter krispie nests. They turned out cute, but the real highlight for the girls was eating the eggs... little snakes! :)

I wish this could be a tradition too... its a real nest with four little eggs. If that doesn't say "Spring", I don't know what does. The sad part is that the birds built the nest on my wreath on my front door, so we were concerned for their survival since their home would be swinging/slamming quite a bit. We decided to move the wreath about two feet forward on the flag pole hanger thing. I hope they make it...
Since we first began dating, George always gets me an Easter Lily. I love this tradition! Here is this year's version... When it dies, it will join the rest of the lilies in the garden. I bet they'll bloom in about 2-3 weeks.
I've kind of struggled with what our Easter basket tradition should be at this stage of life. For me growing up we found our eggs and an Easter outfit hidden around the house. The baskets were always hidden in harder places (one year I had to cross the street to an old field and the basket was inside a burned car in an old garage... no clues were given until we'd given our best efforts to look). They were always full of good stuff, plus it was fun to have bragging rights as to who found their basket first. As we grew up, the "bunny" couldn't motivate us to go out to look for the eggs (they were left to rot), so she started putting money in plastic eggs. The jackpot eggs were $20, $10, and $5. That was motivation enough!

In our little family, we really don't need the motivation (money really means nothing except a chocking hazard). However, we decided not to hide any candy eggs or clothes and instead put those items in their baskets. We also decided that mom and dad buy the stuff for the basket and the "bunny" hides it. This was a necessity because Lucy was with me when I bought 90% of the stuff. Geo bought the other 10%. Since Lucy was sick the baskets didn't get hidden until the afternoon and it seemed sort of strange to say, "the bunny hid your basket while you were watching a movie." So, we didn't say anything really. I can't figure out why I have a hard time explaining the Easter Bunny...

The only eggs we hid were associated with a little treasure hunt for Lucy to find all the kids baskets. We hid little eggs around with pictures of the next hiding place. Lucy LOVED this and I loved chasing her around to get her reactions! I think this will become part of our Easter basket tradition. The only downer was that when she actually found the baskets, she wasn't that thrilled. She just wanted to find more eggs with pictures. The "hunting" was definitely the best part. It says something that she was running from egg to egg rather than eating the candy inside. Today as we were playing, she said, "I know! Let's pretend its Easter and we can find eggs with pictures inside them... like of the closet and my doll cradle. Let's do that!" I must say, it was a welcome break from pretending to be one of the princesses.

This year I decided to grow our own Easter grass for the baskets. I think I am going to do this every year. It was really fun to see it grow. Lucy ran to the deck to check on it every day. I knew whatever I used for "Easter grass" was going to get eaten, so this seemed like the healthiest option. Note to myself for next year: I think the optimum time to plant is around 10-11 days.

This is one of my favorite Easter traditions...I wake up at sunrise and read a couple chapters in the gospel of John on the atonement and resurrection of the Savior. This year, it was stormy and raining when I got up. But when the sun finally peeked out from the clouds, it was a beautiful, calm, and peaceful morning. How grateful I am for the LIVING CHRIST!

Today was Austin's first day of eating solid foods. He was not impressed at first,

but by the end, he was crying for more.

Austin's 4 1/2 mo stats:

Weight: 13lbs, 12oz (42%)

Height: 24.6 in (53%)

Head: 42cm (54%)

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Elise doesn't do a lot of talking, just grunts in different tones. She can say "ma, ma" when she sees me, but her other babblings don't match her surroundings. Its funny to see Lucy try to teach her to say "sister." Um... might take a while. Here she is "answering" the phone....

Elise's 10 1/2 mo stats:

Weight: 16 lbs, 12 oz (5%)

Height: 26.5 in (6%)

Head: 44 cm

Music class Egg Hunt

We attended our music class Easter Egg hunt on Monday. It was pretty chilly for April in San Antonio, but we had a great time.

Elise - the egg thief

She definitely liked the orange egg the best.

Elise was my best photographing subject. She had the most interest in the eggs. Lucy had a great time running around finding eggs. But when she found her allotted 12, she handed the basket over to me and ran promptly to the playground. Who can blame her? My friend Kristine's backyard is kid paradise. You can see the playground part of the yard in this little video.




And what did Austin do during this whole thing? Well...

some of this...

... but mostly this.

What a good kid!