Saint Patrick's Day

St Paddy's Day. The biggest holiday in my family next to Christmas. We're not even Irish; we're Welsh! How's that for a funny? But it doesn't matter who you are, everyone is Irish on St Paddy's Day (even the Welsh and especially the Snyder/Thomison/Bazemore/Davila/Lastovica Clans). We love getting silly and covered in as much green as we can. Aunt Val was kind enough to drive out to McKinney to pick up Derek Friday afternoon and keep him all night. WOO! I had a chance to go out on a Girl's Night with some friends in the ward and Mitchell played Xbox with Austin and some of his friends. We slept in the next morning til sometime between 9 and 10 am!! WOW!! Loved it. Thanks so much to my family for keeping him! Mitchell had his GRE Saturday afternoon, but I drove the van out to Keller for some extra hang out time. I feel great when I'm the one driving, but heaven forbid I'm in the passenger seat! I end up hanging out the window trying not to... well, you get the idea. Mitchell joined us later that afternoon - he feels like he did well on his test which is always an awesome feeling! I love you honey!

Derek wasn't overjoyed to see me... more like, "Oh hey, you're here too." He wanted me to see his new Lightning McQueen boots that Nana (my mom) had gotten for him. He LOVES those boots. I had a hard time convincing him to wear normal shoes to church today! I love how he can slip them off and on by himself, even if he's still struggling with left shoe-left foot, right shoe-right foot.

Unfortunately, the only pictures I got were from the park excursion while we were waiting for the rest of the party to arrive. I was sequestered upstairs in the bathroom for much of the night paying homage to the porcelain god. Ugh. We had a lot of fun at the park though!

Tickling Aunt Amy - he says "tick-a-tick-a-tick!" while he tickles you

He loves slides. He doesn't want to do anything else at the park until he's gone down the slide.

Aunt Bella teaching him how to go down face first

He needed Nana's help jumping off the end of the slide at first (both hands)

Then he only needed one hand...

Then it was leap...

...after leap!

Derek did pretty well with these little half hoop steps

But he insisted on climbing through these much bigger metal hoops, so Nana and Aunt Bella (Kelly) helped

Derek was having a blast!

My wacky sisters

The start of it all...

Amy was having fun

Valerie had the right idea

Amy was quite proficient after a few tries

And then Derek joined the fun

He jumped about 3 inches off the ground and slide down on his own

Aunt Val gave him a boost and he wasn't too thrilled with the new vantage point

He slid down all by himself though!

So proud of himself

Kelly gets some coaching from Val

Her hands hurt after sliding down the pole

My mom slid down too

Like I said, my sisters are wacky. Amy insisted I get a video of her roundoff