Spring Break

Kelly and I both like the book The Lorax so we thought it would be fun to take the boys to see the movie. They both finally sat through a full movie a few weeks earlier at home so we figured they would do well in the theater. We read the book a few times that week before we went so they would be familiar with the story.



They both loved the movie, we all did actually. I'm sure it helped that we bought popcorn and candy to munch on.



I just love this picture, it cracks me up. Leaving the theater that day.



We had planned for months to go to Austin during Cason's spring break because Kelly had vacation that week. It was just a mini-vacation, Wednesday morning through Friday afternoon. We picked Austin because Cason talked about caves a lot last fall and he loves bats so we wanted to go to the Inner Space Caverns just north of Austin. That was pretty much the only must do activity we had so the rest of our trip ended up revolving around food. Austin has tons of great restaurants and places to eat. I spent hours searching Yelp and I made an itinerary of everywhere we were going to eat and what meal.

It turned out that Austin traffic is always crazy but spring break makes it worse. Then add the South by Southwest music festival on top of that and it made us pretty much want to avoid downtown. We had planned on hitting up Tenderland, a food truck serving some awesome pork tenderloins (outside of Iowa???) for lunch the first day but the food truck was gone. I checked their facebook page and they were downtown for the festival. Strike 1. So we went to Torchy's Tacos instead. Ehhh. Kelly liked it but the kids and I were not fans.



Next up was one of the cupcake bakeries I had picked out. I chose peanut butter cup, Cason wanted mint chocolate chip, Kelly got carrot, and Bryce loves anything with sprinkles. The cupcakes were much better than lunch.



That night we went to Salt Lick BBQ. Kelly and I had been here last October after we ran the Tough Mudder and wanted to go back. It was just as good as the first time and well worth the drive. This place has been featured on Man Vs Food and definitely lives up to the hype.



Thursday morning we hit up Round Rock Donuts, another Man Vs Food locale. We also ate here last October and told the boys about it. Bryce had talked about going to Austin to get donuts daily for over a month before our trip. I thought they were the best donuts (creme filled bismarks to be exact) that I've ever had.





After donuts on Thursday, we went to the long awaited cave. It was really cool. I was only disappointed in the bats. I thought the bats would be bigger, these were the size of chicken nuggets and barely noticeable. They were also loner bats instead of hanging out in a colony. The cave itself went on for quite a ways, I think we were in there for about an hour on our tour.







The camera on the iphone fogged up because at the end of the cave, it was 98% humidity.



Thursday night we were supposed to go eat Detroit style pizza and see the bats fly out from under the bridge on Congress Ave. But we realized that the bats might still be hibernating in March and couldn't find anything online that would tell us for sure. We didn't want to drive downtown and fight traffic if the bats were still hibernating. The pizza got canceled for similar reasons. Strike 2 and 3. The boys didn't mind though. They mostly went to Austin for the donuts.

Financial Peace Jr

Last fall, our boys started asking for toys constantly. This is back when Cason was obsessed with Imaginext (wow, kids go through obsessions so quickly!) and he would want to look at Imaginext toys on my computer every day. He would look for all of the things he didn't have and ask us to buy him any he didn't have. So Kelly and I decided that it would be a good time to start him on an allowance. We figured Bryce was probably a little young but we didn't want him to feel left out so we wanted to include him too. Kelly and I follow a lot of the Dave Ramsey ways so we thought Financial Peace Jr would be a good way to go with the boys.

The first week of January, we sat down with the boys and explained everything. We gave them each three chores to do each day. At the end of each day, we pay them for the chores they did that day and they divide up the money between "Give", "Save", and "Spend" envelopes. They caught on quickly and it has gone very well the past three months. The boys are good at putting money in their Give envelopes and then taking the money to church on Sundays. The money they give at church goes to help Josue and Isaac, two little boys in Honduras that have Cerebral Palsy. Our boys always talk about taking their money to give to Isaac and Josue, it's so sweet.

When their other envelopes start to fill up, we will take them to the store with us and they can pick out a new toy. We have done this 3-4 times since we started this system and the boys love picking out something new. They have mostly stopped asking us for toys, they know they just need to save up their money. And they are also learning that they need to work to get paid. They now have a better understanding of why Kelly goes to work, so he can make money to pay for all of our things.

This is one of the times they got to spend their money at Target. Cason picked out a small Lego set.



Bryce picked out an ambulance (complete with lights and siren of course!)