See: Green!

 

Love this Kayte face :)

Be Green!

I'm just too lazy to coordinate my kids for the annual St. Paddy's day photo today, but let me assure you they are wearing green! It just happens to be green with a maroon apple shirt or blue and yellow basketball shorts, cause it is vacation and I just let them dress themselves (and watch a lot of TV and eat cookies 20 minutes before dinner and all the other no-no things that you don't get to do on a non-vacation day. . .heck, one of my kids may actually still have his pj shirt on - at least it's green!) Anyway, when you have kids, you have to wear green on St. Paddy's day. And it is important that you wear it to bed the night before because they will come flying at you with their pinchers posed at the very first crack of sunlight. Except for me. I was granted an exception cause my eyes are green, says Will. I've always wanted green eyes, but couldn't quite muster up the courage to convince the DMV that they were in fact green, and not hazel, and so I've been stuck with hazel all my life, because when you go in to renew your license they never ask you, are your eyes still hazel? They may make you get on a scale to prove you are in fact the same weight you were at 15, but they never assume your eye-color up and changed. But Will says my eyes are green and so they are! Poor Sara didn't have the same luck. We sent her down to play with the kids (cause they were all up way too early!) and she came weeping back in 5 minutes later because we'd sent her into the lion's den without the proper weapon (green!) and Will was more than happy to teach her that lesson the hard way!
But on the up side, she has the most lovely blue eyes :)
Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Diggin' for Treasure!

 

Daddy's home!!! And he brought toys - yay!!!

Camo-style!

 

Will says to me, "Hey! Look at me! I'm camoflauged!"
"Yeesss. . ." says I.
"See! My gun is yellow and matches here, and my knife is black and kinda matches here!" says he.
"Well, yes that would be camo cause it blends in, the gun and the knife. . .wait a minute! Why do you have your knife on you?" says I. . .
"Well. . ." says he. "It comes in pretty much handy sometimes!"
"But you won't take it out, right???" says I (sternly).
"Well. . .unless a snake bites one of my girls!" says he. "You know, Kayte and Sara. Then I'd get it out and get that snake!"
Hmm. . . That seems fair.

First Pony!

 

Doesn't she look great?

It's official!!!

 

A little excited. . .a little sentimental! But definitely glad to have that painting done!!! Check out our website!

"Take my picture!"

Why not? She's cute!!!
(That's her drum. . .I think she is Mowgli this time. . .Mowgli's a girl. . . cause of his hair of course.)

Big Shoes to Fill

His "cheese" face!

Kissin' his reflection. . .

See how much he weighs. . . .

. . .Lookin' good!
What a goof!

Joe made the Board!

Another really fantastic announcement, long overdue: Joe has been elected to be a permanent board member on the Logos School board! (He's like a Supreme Court Justice, a lifetime member until he retires! :)
He is the first alum to ever be voted on the board, permanent or otherwise, and he is currently the youngest elected member! He holds the seat my dad had back in the 80s and 90s, and I really couldn't be prouder of him!!! We are big fans of Logos and honored to be such an influential part of it's future!
Go Knights! :)

Hi Ho, Hi Ho. . .

We spent many many hours this weekend knocking stuff off our to-do list. . .including painting, tiling, and installing new hardware on the kitchen cabinets. The place is starting to look pretty fantastic, and the better it starts to look, the more sentimental Joe and I get about the place. . .when the backyard starts to bloom, we are going to be in serious trouble! But on Sunday, Joe took me for a little Jeep-ride (YES! the first of the season!) out to our land and we walked around a bit and checked out the views and talked about where we would plant that one tree with the Adirondack chairs underneath so we could see the sunset when we are 80, and it helped knock things back into perspective. It is so hard to work towards something that doesn't even exist yet (our dream home on our dream property) when we have a pretty fantastic little spread here already, and lots and lots of memories too! Being out there reminded me what we are doing all this for. . .but loving my own home helps me stay content whatever should come our way in the next several weeks. There is no doubt it is going to be an adventure!

Buh-bye linoleum!

Will is really good at this actually!!!

Scraping windows!

My new hardware! That was my favorite little bit so far!

Sara:

"Mooommmm! I need a Kleenex!!!" she yells from the bedroom that I've baby-gated her and Ben into.

"Ok! Just a sec!" says I. . . .

"Never mind!!!" she hollers back. . .

Umm. . . .frankly, I'm just too busy to care where that snot might have ended up!

The Girl Got a Ribbon!!!

This is long overdue, but a couple of weeks ago, the first graders competed in their very first spelling bee! Kayte spent weeks studying the words and practicing the format, but from the very beginning she had said, "I bet Madeline is going to win, cause she's the best reader!" Sure enough, the little James walked off with the prize, but our Kayte landed 3rd place! We were so excited for her!!! And the best part for Kayte was that she made it to the round with the 2nd grade words and she got one of those right (and she hadn't even studied them!) Sweet victory!

I sold my soul for some salmon. . .

Under all that divine citrus is a very petite salmon fillet. I have to say, and I'm not just bragging here, it's just the facts: it turned out to be quite tasty!
Problem is, I got this outlaw fish at Costco, not at the nearby river. Some might say that there just hasn't been enough opportunity for fishing. . .others would say their luck is just a bit low. But Costco was having a sale on salmon and I just had to have some (even though this family has very strict regulations on purchasing fish!)
Kayte came home and says to me, "Did Dad go fishing?"
"Nope," says I, seeing very well where this was going. . .
"Why does it smell like fish in here?" says she.
"Because I'm making fish for dinner."
"Hmpfh." she says indignantly.
Yep, she's definitely on her dad's side on this one. . .

First Day at the Park, 2010!

Will's birthday was in the low 50s so we took advantage of the sun and headed to the park! I don't think he will get such luck on many of his birthdays, so I hope he remembers this one!

Whew. . .

I can't believe it's March!!! And not just March, but March fourth already!!!

I've been very busy with some spring-cleaning and general junk-purging and then all of a sudden Joe and I decided to go ahead and put our house on the market and try to get set to build this summer and that threw me into a whole new kind of spring-cleaning which includes painting (blech!) and trips to Home Depot for cabinet hardware and tile to spruce up our look a bit! On the side, I'm trying to keep up with laundry and cleaning and homework and dinners, and I'm very serious about squeezing in as many workouts as possible! But I wouldn't dare complain because then I'm sure we'd get hit with the plague and then all my plans would be out the window anyway! So I'm just mentioning it here, so it is clear why I've been AWOL this past week! (The one thing I do love to complain about - even at risk of the plague - is that awful painting. . .I just don't like it!!! But I've done a bit lately and I have to say if I didn't hate it so much, it would almost be worth the trouble! Thankfully we have a resident painter on staff - he's just out-of-town this week!)

Anywho. Keep your eyes out for my house-selling blogspot (because yes, crazy of all crazies, we are selling it ourselves) and please send any prospective buyers our way! I remain optimistic because Joe and I adore this house and our beautiful yard, and we would be hard-pressed to believe that anyone could find anything wrong with it!

But that's just our humble opinion :)

One more thing. . .

I don't think my previous blogpost properly expressed my enthusiasm for the impending birth of my new niece or nephew: and there is only one in there - I made sure!

When we were little, Kelly would actually search out the baby section of a department store and browse (for fun!). Babies always naturally loved her - I think the first time she babysat was age 5 (yes, the mom was in the house the whole time - but Kelly was there for the sole purpose of caring for the baby!) She's was always a babydoll girl (well. . .you all know Ava!) Kelly is just a natural mother, and I'm just so thrilled that she gets another round at it!

(And we all know that I'm just as thrilled to get another newborn - I feel like she is just giving me a gift :)

K - I'm still in for those sleepless nights too! You've got it in writing now :)

YAY!

Guess what?

Just what I wanted for Christmas this year!
Congrats K & E!

Will's Birthday. . .

A photo gallery of our weekend-long celebration of our favorite Buddy!

Decorating the army-man cake. . .much more fun than eating it!

. . .effort properly appreciated by our cousin Jack!

3 birthdays! 3 cakes!

Robin Hood gear!

Will was too excited to eat cake at the party and had to wait until he got home and settled down a bit!

Two friends for lunch and a movie on Sunday. . .

Cupcakes at Grandma Annie's (Cinderella's helping out!)

Kids mashing their face with cupcakes: one of my favorite photo ops!

Pizza Hut with Jack on Monday!

More cake! This one features a blue man getting attacked by backyard creatures!

Lots of Buzz!

This kid was on a high all weekend!!!

Basketball camp!

Will went to his first basketball camp on Saturday! His buddy Kenny went along too - just one more year till he can play for real!

Purging!

I've been tearing through the house the last week or two, trying to tidy up the messy places. This basket in particular hadn't been touched in probably a year! It was full of blankets and toys and books for Ben, but I would always just throw the diaper stuff right on top where I could grab it easily. Let me preface by saying that throwing things away makes me happy! I loaded up two garbage cans full of broken toys and missing parts and random papers out of Ben and Sara's room and all the toy boxes. None of it was even worth saving to donate or give away! But in the midst of all my tossing I came across some stuff that was much harder to sort. Little teeny booties and newborn diapers, a blanket I'd swaddled the babies in, brand-new shoes that Ben never even had a chance to wear before he grew out of them. . .just writing about it makes me teary-eyed! This would be the time in the usual progression of things that I would be getting ready to have another baby, or even already in the midst of midnight feedings. There are moments (like this basket) where I have a really hard time letting that period go. . .but on we fly to the next phase in our lives, elementary school plays and soccer games!
One more baby rite-of-passage: potty training! I'm actually looking forward to it! One more jumbo-pack of diapers and we're good to go!