PIRATE AND PRINCESS ADVENTURE!

After the Children's Museum, we headed over to see the Disney Junior Live: Pirate and Princess Adventure show. The only reason I was able to keep the day's activities a surprise from them is because I didn't have it planned long (and thus didn't have to keep the secret for much more than a week). The kids changed into pirate and Sophia the First costumes in the parking lot, then we stood in line for a long while (good practice for DisneyWorld, I told them!) before making it inside to find our seats and get ready for the show!

Always with the ballet poses :-)

I dressed up too - can't you tell that I'm a pirate princess? Cora took this "selfie" for us.

This was James being angry that I didn't get us seats on the floor so we could be in the "smoke"...

In my opinion, Jake was far more entertaining than Sophia. The pirates had a flying Peter Pan, pixie dust, and a crawling Tic Toc Croc.

The volcano erupted in treasure. Again, James was a little peeved that we didn't have floor seats, so he could catch some treasure. Luckily, when I told him it was just yellow paper, he agreed that our seats were cool because nobody blocked our view.

When we were standing in line, James told me we'd see Mickey and Minnie. I told him there was no guarantee of that, so when they came on stage (at the beginning and the end, and during intermission), he was very much "I told you so mama!"

We met up with the Kennedy's after the show, took some photos and played "near" the fountains while the traffic cleared out a bit, then headed off to dinner at "the apples and bees place".

He read all of "Green Eggs and Ham" to me in the car on the way to Monroe, then again at dinner. He needed help with "house" and "mouse", and "here" and "there", and "anywhere", but the rest went smoothly. It's pretty fun having a little reader in the house, and Cora is getting closer every day (and you would melt from the cuteness of James trying to teach her and help her sound words out - seriously, they are too much awesome).

Cora opted to leave her Kindle at home, in solidarity. I thought that was pretty sweet of her.

NORTHEAST LOUISIANA CHILDREN'S MUSEUM

AKA, the greatest place on earth. According to our kids, anyway.

We're going on a "SURPRISE!" adventure!

 Cora served me many cups of coffee. James gave me one refill, then brought me a beer...

 3 hours later (2 before lunch, 1 after), and they still cried when it was time to go. Even with the finally revealed surprise of going to see Jake and Sophia! If you have young kids, take them to this little gem in Monroe, I promise it's worth the drive!

BUBBLE BUNNIES

The kids had their Easter parties and egg hunts at school today, so when they got home all they wanted to do was play with bubble wands and eat candy. Not the best pre-soccer practice fuel and energy usage, but oh well. They're kids, they're adaptable...

GAMES OFF

James has been having a rough week... not paying attention to his teacher (or listening to instructions from us, at all), not focusing, not participating - just not trying very hard. He's not sick and nothing is going on at school that we need to worry about (we checked), so we're assuming he's just tired and overwhelmed from his very big month of March. Fingers crossed things get better for him next week, but until then, no Kindle or Playstation (or LeapPad). Bummer it has to happen over his 4-day Easter weekend when we've planned two adventures that require 2-3 hours of driving each, but oh well. We said we'd take them away if things didn't improve, and here we are on a Wednesday with extra notes home and texts from the teacher. Parenting isn't always fun, but we have to stick to the consequences we threaten or they won't take us seriously. Hopefully next time, he'll take us seriously.

Doing homework in the van while Cora was in dance class. MAJOR BUMMER for him because he always looks forward to Wednesdays due to seeing Adler and having an entire hour of Kindle time...



ART BY JAMES