keeping up through pictures

Happy Easter.

What to do while we're waiting for dinner...

I can only tell you that my children think that every tree was meant to be climbed. And everytime I think about the Von Trapp children's legs hanging from the trees I have to agree with them. Love these pictures.

Eggs to Dye For

I can hardly believe we have lived near my brother, had children at the same time since their daughter was born 8 years ago and we have never dyed Easter eggs together before. I'm glad we decided to start a "tradition" today! Michelle and I were amazed at how quickly all of the eggs were bright and multi-colored. We reminisced: Michell about making the perfect rainbow colored egg with her brother (I don't think I ever attempted to make a rainbow egg) and I remembered using rubber bands to make multi-colored eggs by wrapping the thick and thin rubber bands around the eggs and then layering the dip on the eggs adding a rubber band with each new layer of dye. It was a lot of fun. I think all of our children just dove in and went for it. I was certainly amazed by the lack of planning on Noah and Brenna's part to make any "art" out of their eggs. They just had complete abandonment and true excitement about dipping the white egg in and having a bright egg coming out of the cup.

I don't need to mention that my daughter must have abandoned rule following the most as she dyed 9 eggs while the others only dyed 5 or 6. Oh well.

Thanks Todd for making us lunch. You make a great tuna sandwich.






Happy Easter and happy Easter activities everyone!

Celebrating Delaney's birthday

We had a great start to our spring break celebrating (our goddaughter) Delaney's birthday. Delaney loves chix parmesan so Katie made that with salad and bread. It was wonderful and Delaney couldn't help but feel like a princess to have the dinner of her choice. Cake and ice cream were the cherry on top of the dinner. We sang happy birthday and then off the kids went.
Lately, with Tobin out of the picture, Delaney, Noah, Jay and Brenna have been choreographing dances to songs that they then want to perform for us!! What courage. This night was no exception. Up the stairs they came to tell us they had something to show us. Down the stairs we went to be a rapt audience. We had a lot of fun watching them. This was their third time and this time it worked like a charm; they did a great job and actually had some really good choreography. I love watching them. Each time I do, I am amazed at their courage because I remember one time as a young girl, spending the night at a friend's house, I got up to "dance" in front of her parents and I hardly moved at all. Inside, I felt like I was, but looking back I saw that, frozen with fear, my movements were a small gesture of what I had practiced for them in the safety of a bedroom. So, I was all applause when they finished. I am so excited for them that they are sure enough to put on a show and make big movements in front of the adults. Now, when we mentioned talent show....they screamed. It was a great night. We missed Tobin though who is at the beach with friends.

Free Play at Gymnastics

We decided to spend an hour at the local gymnastics center. So did everybody else. But I was amazed at how nice everybody was. The most coveted toy was the trampoline; no surprise there. What did surprise me was this: everyone wanted to bounce, jump and twirl on the trampoline and yet the children, all ages, self-monitored their time on the trampoline. I don't think one child spent over three minutes on the trampoline!! Every child decided when their turn was over. I think the shortest turn was 30 seconds. I was completely amazed at how great the children were. Brenna and Noah had a great time. At the end of the hour, Noah said, "Can we do that again tomorrow?" Wow!

Spring Break: the first weekend

We had a great time visiting Washington DC to see the Cherry Blossoms along the tidal basin. There were as many people there as blossoms in the tree, which made parking hard, but we were lucky and found a spot about three blocks from the Washington Monument. We were hoping to go up to the top, but when Andy called early in the morning, they had no tickets available until June 6th! Yep, not on this vacation. (As an aside note, I tried all day on March 25th (?) to get tickets to the Easter Egg roll at the White House and everytime I had them in my cart [which was several times], the site crashed due to high volume! So, I never got my tickets, but they are now available on Craig's list for $500.00. Crazy!!) So, I figured this was our shot to go downtown during this vacation. It was a beautiful day and we had a great time. Well, the kids weren't totally excited to see them, but in the end they were glad they went. We also ate pizza at Armands and it was the best pizza ever as we were all famished from walking around downtown for 2 1/2 hours. It was nice to be together as a family (sans Tobin who is at the beach for the week with friends). We definitely missed Tobin, but it was really fun for Andy and me to each have a hand of a child and know that we were each holding onto everything dear to us in the city. Here are some pictures of our day, but they don't do justice to the cherry blossoms.

You know, it was one of those days where we had fun, talking, holding hands, laughing and being together, but I'm not sure if it was one of those days I'll remember when I'm 90 years old. Nothing extraordinary happened. It got me thinking: what makes a memory one that you'll remember your whole life? Any thoughts?

Also, some of these are taken through the car windshield. Can you tell which ones they are?

Andy's April Fool's Artifice

Every year the focus of April Fool's is not on me, but rather my sister whose birthday is today. Happy Birthday, sis! Yes, she usurped my right to have an April Fool's where my mom could focus on trickery and wiliness, instead she was worried about birthday cake and balloons and the like. But today changed that, thanks Andy. I was fooled for the first time in years!!

Let me explain. I was sitting at my computer at work, working very studiously, I might add when we received a phone call from the main office that the lights were on on my Honda! So, I quickly jumped up, grabbed my keys and headed out the doors to get some fresh air, happy for the little walk I was getting. Now, I will tell you all of the details in order to give you a more complete picture. As I walked to my car I was thinking all kinds of things, but mostly I was focusing on my new way of walking. You see, I have hired a running trainer to teach me how to run again! We met yesterday and for the first 10 minutes we watched children running around at the park. It was amazing to see the principles she was teaching us in action on these small children. It reminds me that everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten. So, I was trying to walk with my stomach tight, my pelvis turned in and my mid-rif stretched as much as I could to be in the right posture. But being new at this, I haven't really opted to show people, especially the people I love what I'm doing, becuase to be perfectly honest, I feel a little silly because it doesn't feel natural anymore. Years of running the wrong way has changed the way my body is positioned so doing it the right way feels funny. But as I was walking to my car, I was practicing. But I really didn't care, because, who was watching?.
So, I walked to where I thought I remembered parking my car, only it wasn't there. My first instinct was to think I had parked there yesterday and simply didn't remember the correct spot for today. Because, let's face it, I have parked all over that parking spot throughout the whole year. So, I looked around, no where did I see my gray, steely-hued crossover peeking at me. Hmm....what to do?

So, I pulled out my keys and pushed the door to lock it because my car makes a sound when it's locked. Only I didn't hear it. I walked a little but up the aisle a litte more to see if I hadn't gone far enough. When that failed, I pushed the panic button all the while trying not to panic. You see, I haven't had great luck with my car recently. It was the victim of a hit and run and so it was in the shop for a few days. Pushing the panic button made nothing happen except hit the on button to my panic. So, I thought that my car must have been stolen!! How??? What was I going to do? How was I going to get home?

Readers, at this point, I must tell you that friends of mine had both of their cars stolen last year, so it wasn't entirely out of the realm of unreal possibility to think this way.

As I was about to cry, Andy must have sensed this, he pulled up in my Honda flashing the lights. As he got closer I saw that he had a balloon in it that read: I got April Fooled and he was laughing hysterically!! Hahaha, April fools!! I haven't been fooled in a long time.

Oh, one more thing. He brought me a piece of cake to sweeten the deal!

I only have one thing to say Mr. Pagley: "fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice shame on me!"