Spikey Hair on Baby X

I gave him "spikey hair," sort of to match Buddy's one day. Doesn't he look older? Especially in the picture where you can see him sitting on the chair.

More Easter shots of Baby X

Baby X eating his first Easter Peep (a blue one).
Cutie.
Desperate for cookies he knows are cooling on the counter.
Cutie again.
Pointing at me.
Hunting for Easter eggs... he really got into it after awhile.
Finally eating the cookie he wanted.
A funny shot of him... if you enlarge it, you can see his tongue is out.
Gathering eggs.




He SOOO wants those cookies. :)
I posted Easter pictures last week while Baby X was taking his afternoon nap. Here are some fun shots from the rest of the night...

Easter Baskets

All Matchy for Easter

Baby X


Handsome Buddy



Beautiful Princess Sparkley



All three.











Just the Boys
Don't they look like they are making the same goofy face?

Dying Eggs

Baby X was napping for part of the Easter egg dying. Then he just played with the little circle cut outs from the dye box. I saw a friend had her little boy paint the eggs with dye with a paint brush. I'll have to remember to do this next year with Baby X, I think he'll enjoy it.


sorry, I don't know why this one is blurry.






Don't you love these colors!!

Easter Egg Hunt

It seems like almost every year our music class Easter Egg Hunt has to be indoors due to rain or cold weather. This was the case this year as well, and there are only so many places to hide eggs in the hallways of the church. And definitely no great photo ops. :)



Buddy



Princess Sparkley



All my munchkins.

Random April Pictures

The only pictures that need explanation are:

The top row has a drawing PS did at school in art class... it's her self portrait.

The bottom row has a green witch holding a tiny, Little Pet Shop monkey witch. PS has taped little green witch masks on herself on the monkey.

Easter Bunny Crafts

find instructions here
Princess Sparkley's is on the left.
Buddy's is on the right.

The kids made this at music class the other day. Very cute! And they are sort of a basket or bowl to be filled with candy.

April Fools

B and I aren't big pranksters, so April Fool's Day goes by pretty much unnoticed at our house. A day or two after April Fool's Day, Princess Sparkley was reading my Family Fun magazine (the girl reads anything she can get her hands on these days) and saw all the fun April Fools ideas. So, we tricked daddy a couple days late.


We told Daddy that we were doing April Fool's Day, and the trick was we were having dessert for dinner and dinner for dessert. The real trick was that this cupcake is actually meatloaf and mashed potatoes (and possibly the yummiest meatloaf I've ever had).


Our new neon colored food dye was especially helpful in turning our mashed potatoes into cupcake frosting.



He wasn't especially fooled by the cupcakes. BUT, the drink really fooled him. He assumed it was colored water. It was Jell-O!!


For dessert, we had a "dinner" of sushi. Our sushi was really rice krispy treats, gummy worms and fruit by the foot.

Moving on...

Sorry about the lack of posts. B's decided on George Mason (in Fairfax, VA) as his PhD. program of choice, so my life has been taken over by moving truck reservations, trying to find somewhere to live, etc. Plus, it's like we're waiting for Christmas, something big is coming soon. As sad as I am to leave Kansas and our friends here, I'm excited to be somewhere new. I'm seeing things by big milestones... Buddy turns 5 at the end of this month and B and I celebrate our 8 year wedding anniversary. In May B graduates . In June is my birthday. At the end of June we leave for a family vacation to Utah where we'll get to see my family (whom we've seen very little since moving to Kansas). In July we pack up (ahh... I'm not looking forward to this part) and move.

Bath Time and more

I've just reached the point where every once in awhile I let Baby X get in the bath with one of the older kids. This time everyone wanted in so PS was in with Baby X, and just before she got out, Buddy got in as well. So they sort of time shared the Baby X bath time experience.

Also included is a picture of Buddy throwing a fit (what's with him lately???) while hugging tightly a deflated Valentine balloon refusing to let me throw it away.

And, Buddy and PS posing with a Jayhawk cookie I bought them at the store to celebrate the Jayhawks having a basketball game (which they ended up losing).

And that bottom, foggy picture... that's from the ice storm. It's a picture looking out our kitchen window, all the water (freezing rain) is frozen onto our screen.

Last Week

Left to Right
Top to Bottom
ish

Pretty PS.
Baby X's tongue still out a lot.
Buddy and PS on their "Hawaiian Vacation."
This is Buddy's big smile he gives to all little babies now to make them smile at him.
Buddy wearing his bike helmet throwing a fit... he's been doing that a lot lately.
A Strawberry Cheesecake Pie I made... so yummy and pretty.
Baby X throwing kisses (not really, he won't to that... probably shoving food in his mouth).
PS in disguise as a redheaded girl with pigtails.
My finished reupholstered chairs at the table.
Cute Baby X.
PS holding up a picture of this mysterious redheaded, ponytail girl and warning me that I should watch out for her.

Coming Home

Here are pictures from in the car on the way home from Spring Break in St. Louis and B is such a nice dad that we stopped at a second Fritz's Railroad restaurant(this one in KC, KS) for dinner on our way home.

Buddy and Baby X are always the first asleep on car trips. PS is never ever ever the first asleep... anywhere. The picture of her with the TV is at Grandma and Grandpa's watching What Not To Wear (as do we). She loves that show.

I have a video of the train delivering our food, but can't get it to upload right now. I'll try again later.

Spring Break: Chicago

We went to St. Louis for part of Spring Break, left the kids there and B and I headed up to Chicago for two days to check out the city in case he ends up at University of Illinois at Chicago (where he's been admitted to the PhD program, still no word on funding).

We showed up Monday after lunch (having taken the long way from St. Louis to get counties for B). We visited UIC first.

We found Jane Addams's Hull-House on UIC's campus. I taught PS about this as part of her Kindergarten History lesson last year. I had no idea it was at UIC, nor did I even remember it was in Chicago.

Then we drove around neighborhoods marking up a map for safe looking areas, etc. B would like to ride his bike to school, or have a short commute by train/bus, and we want to live somewhere safe, but cheap.

In our travels, we passed Wrigley Field.

We checked into our hotel.

We stayed here. It's the one with the greenish roof.
The hotel was super fancy and has quite an exciting history.

And then went to Little Italy, near the UIC campus, for dinner. We wandered into this great little restaurant called Tuscany (that B's since looked up online and usually requires reservations). It was super yummy, not too pricey, and our waiter was truly Italian. I had eggplant parmigian... mmmmm.

The next day B and I walked around downtown Chicago and I took tons of pictures for the kids.

The L Train (for Buddy)

The Chicago River, green for St. Patrick's Day.

I promised PS I'd take a picture since we were there on St. Patrick's Day and she'd just learned in school about them dying the river. Then we woke up that morning and B read that they'd dyed it March 14. Argh. It still looked a bit green, which a native Chicagoan friend tells me is just how it looks, algae and all. So it must have been greener when they dyed it, but this satisfied PS.

Skyscrapers. Our hotel had really cool black and white photos like this
(only a thousand times cooler) up in the hallways.

Me in front of Lake Michigan. I don't think I've ever seen a Lake this huge.

We stopped at a Fannie May candy shop downtown and I got some Mint Meltaways since I'd just heard about them and wanted to taste how yummy they were. Before we left town, we had lunch at Al's #1 Italian Beef... apparently a famous Italian Beef sandwich place (Kristi might be able to back me up on this). Then we headed back to St. Louis (the normal way, no new counties).

Baby X Peekaboos

Screaming with Happiness

The kids

Here's my cute baby. He's been cracking up lately at all of us (I'll try to post video later). And tonight he added something that sounds like "doggy" to his other words: mama, dada and something that sounds like quack.



During a thunderstorm the other night we let PS and Buddy fall asleep in our bed so they wouldn't be so scared.



PS and Baby X.

Homeschooling

This year with the virtual school PS gets to meet in a virtual classroom with her education adviser and sometimes a small group of other students. This morning I talked to her education specialist and then told PS it was her turn to talk and get on the computer. She said to me, "I'm glad no one can see me on the computer, I'm in my pajamas." Here she is at the computer, in her PJS, with my phone's ear piece taped to her ear.

School Music Concert

Sorry for the horrible picture, this was the only one we got. That's PS in the light pink dress, front left. This was her classes music concert (2 first grade classes and 1 or 2 second grade classes... there are more kids I cut out of the picture).


They sang:
Puff the Magic Dragon
Chickery Chick
Baby Beluga
What a Wonderful World
Come Little Donkey

Dr. Seuss Week

*

It was Dr. Seuss week last week at Princess Sparkley's school. On Monday she had to wear something green. On Tuesday crazy socks. On Wednesday, wacky hair or clothes. On Thursday something with an animal on it, or an animal print. And on Friday, she had to wear red, black and white.

Since Princess Sparkley is homeschooled, but attends our neighborhood elementary school for the last part of the day, she sometimes misses out on fun activities that her class does in the morning. So at home we did some fun Seuss crafts from this website, and we had green eggs and ham for dinner on Monday night.


*So technically, it's not ham, and it's not green. To make up for that we had green milk and green, homemade, english muffins.