Bluebonnet Beatdown

You should know the drill by now...or at least I should.

1. I get this idea in my head that I THINK will be fun.
2. It usually involves LOTS of preparation in order to pull off the idea.
3. The idea is a total DISASTER and usually involves meltdowns from all family members.
4. Only bonus of the entire thing...the idea almost always ends with pictures that "look" like we had a good time.

When will I ever learn? Of all the FFF outings this has to be in the Top 5 for sure. I love bluebonnets. Some years they are gorgeous and everywhere. Other times they are more or less "mildflowers." Unfortunately for them, I decided to bring victims along on this FFF outing. My best friend, Angi, and her husband Chris came along with their precious twins.

First mistake of the night, we had no idea where bluebonnets were so we just went "looking" for them. BAD idea! We ended up driving for an hour. I was practicing every bit of deep breathing in the car to tune out Campbell fussing. We finally end up in my old stomping ground of Crowley and find more-or-less 20 bluebonnets. After all that trouble that we went through, I WAS going to take bluebonnet pictures darnit!

We get out of the car and Nolan begins his fear of the wind bit that he does...screaming, panicking, wanting to hold me. I broke every rule of what my pediatrician told me to do to get him to work through this phobia. I'm supposed to validate the fear and tell him how brave he's being. What do I do? Tell him he better suck it up and smile! Poor kid, the things I make him do.

Meanwhile, all of the babies are fussy (and understandably so!) but we just keep making them take bluebonnets pictures and feed them yogurt melts like they're dog treats or something. Meanwhile there's this random kid who's just wandering around and apparently wants part of the bluebonnet action and keeps getting in our pictures!

We finally decide enough damage has been done for the night and go to dinner with all the kids. Reese, Angi's little girl, spills water all over Angi. I think she was really trying to get back at us for the very terrible ordeal and putting her through that. In the end we all had a really good laugh about what a crazy night it was just for some dumb pictures...but those dumb pictures sure did turn out cute, huh?

FFF- Kite style

Just when I thought the Forced Family Fun was over...not so fast. We bought Nolan a kite about a month ago but the weather hasn't been very cooperative and we kept telling him that it needs to be windy in order to fly a kite. Well on Monday he went outside and realized that it was windy so we went. Little did we know how windy it was and that it was a HORRIBLE day to "blow kites" as Nolan says. When we went out to the field there was dust flying everywhere and Nolan completely had a meltdown about it. We tried to convince him it would be fun. Meanwhile, Campbell is on a blanket in the field and the blanket keeps blowing over his head and he starts crying because he's being strangled by the blanket. There were brief moments of no wind and in those few seconds Nolan seemed to have fun. This first photo pretty much sums up what he thought of the whole thing. Our kite flying lasted about 15 minutes before we packed up in the car again and he said, "I want to give my kite to someone else." Hopefully, he's not traumatized forever and will fly a kite someday.

This picture below is worth the click to enlarge to see sweet Campbell watching the kite