Park Visits / Nanny Visit / Met "Buddy" from "Dinosaur Train" at the Museum / Visit with A's Biological Father / Eisenhower State Park Fun / Epilepsy Stroll at the Dallas Zoo
March 3 - We all went out to the park today. The kids enjoyed the playground and we brought some bread and crackers to feed the ducks. We see these ducks all the time, but until today, we always forgot to bring something for them.
March 12 - We had a visit with Nanny. Always a fun time. We were going to visit the farm and Jack's parents, but Jack's father was sick with the flu. We will catch them on the next run down south.
March 16 - X and A had a blast at the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science (where we are members). As part of our membership, we got invited to a member-only event with "Buddy" from the PBS kids, 3-D animated show, "Dinosaur Train." You might have read way back in October that Anthony was dressed at Buddy and Xavier as Dawn for Halloween. We are all big Dinosaur Train fans in our house, so it was awesome to get to take pictures with Buddy. Both kids even dressed up in their old Halloween costumes. Interestingly enough we saw another pair of kids in the exact same costumes. Of course we did all the museum things that we love to do and then had a nice picnic out on the grounds at Fair Park.
March 17 - Today was the first day that the kids visited with A's biological father since seeing him in December. Via the open adoption mediated settlement agreed upon in November of last year when he terminated his parental rights, we now have regular visits 4 times a year for two hours each visit. This is also the first visit with the kids outside of the CPS office in 2 1/2 years for him.
We met, per his suggestion, at Chucky Cheese restaurant. The kids had a great time playing games and eating pizza while Melinda and Jack slowly ate their pizza at a nearby table. The visit went almost three hours (which was just too long in that one place), but the kids had fun. X and A were asleep almost as soon as our car left the parking lot.
March 24 - Another fun play ground visit followed by our first swim in our backyard pool since October of last year. It was a little bit cool, but the kids enjoyed it for over an hour and had a blast.
March 25 - Back to hiking. Due to our busy schedule (and a little bit of illness), we have not hiked at a State Park since late February. We were all anxious to get going again. This time we visited Eisenhower State Park just north of us about an hour. In preparation, we bought one CamelBak hydrating backpack to see if we liked it. It was a huge hit and we decided to order one for each of us for our future hikes. Still learning from our experiences, we determined that we need to be prepared to get into the water at any State Park. We hiked down to the tiny beachfront area and there were people in the water there having fun. X and A had on jeans and tennis shoes and hiking boots. We had them take off their shoes/boots and let them wade in. We already knew what was going to happen. Needless to say, they ended up soaking wet from top to bottom and we did not have a change of clothes. They had so much fun that they did not care. We rang out their shirts and put on their dry socks and shoes and continued to hike. It was warm enough that their pants dried pretty quickly. We also found our very first geocache in a State Park. It took awhile (since Jack is still learning the ropes on the GPS on his iPhone), but at least we found it. We signed the log, took pictures and even exchanged some small treasure (which is the protocol for geocaching). The kids love to do this "treasure hunting" and it gives them the extra motivation to go a little further. The two boys slept hard on the way back after an awesome day of geocaching, hiking, picnicking and beach play.
Also at this park visit, we bought an annual Texas State Park pass, some very cool floppy hats and two geocache medallions to attach to our brand new custom-made, customized (with each person's initials and a dinosaur track wood-burned in), hickory walking sticks. We had just got the sticks in the day before and were anxious to try them out. They worked great once A figured out how to really use it.
March 31 - If this month was not already packed with enough fun, we made it to our annual "Stroll of Epilepsy at the Dallas Zoo" like last year. We spent a lot of time in the children's playground area this visit to the zoo and even found one of the geocaches there (it was a tough one and we almost gave up). We picnicked at the zoo using dry ice (a trick Jack read about for keeping food cold all day). It worked great. We got to try out two more CamelBak hydrating backpacks (A's is due to come in a few days later). Of course we saw lots of animals and fed the koi, ducks and giraffes (for that we brought in some very cool romaine lettuce instead of buying it there).
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