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.

PS steals my camera

When I got my new camera, we decided we'd give my old camera to PS for Valentine's Day. Then I forgot and bought her a bunch of chapter books. So, shh, she'll probably get my camera in her Easter basket. She asked the other day if she could borrow my camera. This is what I found when I uploaded the pictures. A bunch are some sort of Webkinz club they created. The other pictures are of Buddy's nature center (we'd just gone on a field trip for music class to the nature center in town).

Picture Collage

Just some pictures from the past couple of weeks.
(Click to enlarge.)

Valentine's Day

I keep forgetting to post our Valentine's Day pictures. When we were kids, my mom would buy us Valentine's balloons and a card and she'd tie the balloons to the railings around the atrium in our house and at the base of the balloon would be the card and some other little gift. I've continued the tradition for my kids, minus the atrium. This year Buddy got a Bulldog Webkinz, ($8 from Borders with a coupon) which he's been asking for since PS got two Webkinz for Christmas and he got Lightning McQueen crocs (which he's also wanted) (on clearance at Target for $2.48). Yea for good deals. PS got a stack of chapter books which she's almost done with. Baby X got a race car. They all got some conversational hearts and a little snack bag of Mother's pink and white animal cookies. I got B season one of Arrested Development on dvd and he got me some new glasses for our kitchen (since I've slowly broken all the old ones, replaced them, and then broken those as well). And B took us all swimming at the indoor aquatic center. We made Rhodes Rolls into cinnamon knots shapepd like hearts (sort of).

The artwork was my project from music class. We read The Kissing Hand and made racoons out of hearts (PS and Buddy both did an excellent job gluing and following instructions). We also traced our hands and made a hand signing I LOVE YOU. The other artwork is PS's own Valentine creation. The close up of Baby X is him eating his first animal cookie. He got ahold of one before I'd broken it into littler pieces for him.

A Duck Says Quack

Reupholstery

One of our chair cushions sprung a leak, so we finally replaced the hideous fabric that once was.

BEFORE



AFTER




NOTE: Two chairs are 100% done. One chair cushion just needs to be reattached to the chair frame. Five chairs have had nothing done to them at all.

How Baby X "talks"

This is how Baby X "talks." It's a bit reminiscent of Buddy, who had delayed speech and just grunted for a long time. But Baby X also says a lot of voiced sounds, so hopefully he's not headed down the delayed speech path.






*video is from a week before Baby X turned one. I've just had trouble uploading videos.

Baby X this week

As you can see... Baby X's tongue still prefers to be out of his mouth.





I hate that the best smiles are always with food all over, or perhaps in the mouth.



PS placed Baby X in a regular chair at the table this morning and gave him a pile of Cheerios and a book. Then she sat by him to make sure he didn't fall. They both thought it was pretty cool.

Baby X Loves Being Chased

Baby X's new thing is that he loves being chased. We discovered it because he started trying to run away from us when he had something he wasn't supposed to have and we tried to get it from him.

Dancing Baby X

I've gotten videos from my new digital camera to upload onto our blog, but I've been trying to upload a video of Baby X "talking" for a couple of weeks now and I can't get it to work. But then this one of him dancing worked... so, maybe I'll try again. Here's Baby X dancing. Grandma and Grandpa M sent a musical card to him that sang "Celebrate Good Times" when you opened it. The older kids loved this and insisted on having a "Celebrate Good Times" party, but wanted the whole song, not just the few lines the cared would keep repeating. So we listened to it on cd (B had it) and we danced. Then we noticed that Baby X was "dancing" as well. What a cutie! And when he stares at the screen... it's just blue. Our dvd player is playing a cd but the screen is blank, yet he's still enthralled by it. :)

Superbowl

B was born in Pittsburgh, PA and spent the first few years of his life there. His parents were both born and raise there, so when it comes to a Steeler's Superbowl, things were exciting around here. We don't watch TV (other than churchy videos for the kids) on Sunday, not even sports. But we did watch a the end of the Superbowl this year. Yea Steelers!

When the score got close at the end, I insisted that B go gather up all of his Steeler stuff (which only consisted of a sweatshirt and a beanie) and he dressed the kids in them.

Trailer Trash Truffles

I usually only share recipes on my other blog... but I've already shared this recipe there and I finally actually made them (as opposed to just eating ones that other people had made) and took a picture.

Trailer Trash Truffles aka Oreo Truffles (or as my kids call them, Oreo balls)

Here's how easy this is...

Ingredients:
1 box Oreos
8 oz. cream cheese softened
chocolate for dipping
white chocolate for decorating (optional)

Directions:
Crush Oreos into fine crumbs. Mix with cream cheese (I used a mixer, some use their hands). Roll into about a one inch ball. Freeze for 15 minutes. Melt chocolate, dip to cover and lay on wax paper. Decorate with melted white chocolate if your heart so desires.

AND, you can mix this up with mint Oreos, etc.

Three New Haircuts

B finally cut his hair (and shaved off the mustache!!!!) a week ago. Hooray!



My hair had gotten pretty long (I forgot a before shot) and had gotten to the point where I was just wearing it up every day... which means goodbye long hair.



Baby X got his first real haircut with the clippers and all (before we've just trimmed him with scissors). He looks like a completely different kid to me. I'm not sure if I like it yet or not.

Here are some before, during and after shots. He was super cute afterward... B turned on the clippers to clean them and he came over and had B pick him up and then leaned his head toward B and held really still.

Dogs play Frisbee

Buddy has been pretty obsessed with dogs for the last bit. Not real ones, although he says he wants a dog the kind of dog he wants is one that stays a puppy forever. He's got a collection of stuffed animal dogs that travel around with us frequently and he enjoys playing like he's a dog. B overheard this conversation the other day between Buddy and Princess Sparkley:

Buddy: People don't play frisbee. Dogs play frisbee.

Which prompted B to explain how two people can play frisbee, not just a person and a dog. He's a funny kid.