A day at the races

On Saturday Jory and I took the kids to Nelson Ledges Road Course over in NE Ohio. My friend Cathy and her dad were both driving so we went to watch, and hang out with the pit crew. The girls had fun playing with Cathy’s kids (Hope and Ben) Alex actually watched quite a bit of the racing, and Jory made himself right at home with Cathy’s family and crew – playing with all the kids and “helping” the pit crew. So we had a very fun time and we can definitely see ourselves at more races in the future.
Jory “helping” the crew

The smile says it all…

New Room

The girls new room is coming along nicely. My mom and I sat down this week with her fabric bins and pulled out this color palette that is loosely based on some artwork that I had. We found the perfect fabric at JoAnn’s to make their new bedding with. All that’s left now is curtains, and we’re good.

The parachute pics

So we managed to get out yesterday and play with the parachute I borrowed from the church. I was worried that it wouldn't be that fun with only 4 of us. Clearly I was wrong.

Enjoy!

Ps. I snapped a pic of the girls in their new room, so you could savor the pink-ness. Sadly my photo editing program won't let me resize it. Oh well. You'll just have to tune in later to see if I managed to sweet talk Adobe into fixing my photo for me...

More insane summer adventures

It wouldn’t be summer without its share of insanity now would it? So here’s a peak inside this weeks insanity.
My mom’s cherry tree has put out a bumper crop of cherries again this year. So we’ve made several excuses to go visit so we can steal some – I mean, help with the harvest. I have enough cherries in my freezer to last all winter, but sadly am contemplating my next date with the tree. It also means I have enough to share. Let me know if you want some.
So I mentioned that we bought bunk beds for the girls. Which means that I’m sucked into this process called “make the room look great in anticipation for the new bed”. Starting with new paint. Pink - melted strawberry ice cream meets pepto bismal – pink. Jory hates it. (I can’t honestly say that I’m surprised, being raised with 2 brothers, he’s just not that crazy about all things girly). Anyway. Since I have a while until the beds actually arrive, I have time to think about what else to do with the room. New curtains, new pics for the walls, bedding. Sigh. Trying to think of something cute but not too in-your-face-little-girl-ish. No Strawberry Shortcake (sorry Louisa) or Barbie or princess (gag). Thinking about pairing the pink with something sandy colored, ecru, maybe a touch of cool blue… Maybe a little bit of vintage fabrics… I have time to think.
I got to baby sit over the weekend. Okay Eva’s pushing 2 ½ so she’s not exactly a baby, but she was still cute. She followed the big kids around, and they watched over her. So sweet. So fun to remember “being little” and appreciate how far we have come. So glad to give her back when the day was done. Yes, my friends as much fun as it is to snuggle cute sleepy little ones, I am so glad to be through with that stage. Independence is a marvelous thing.
P.S - I finally managed to track down a parachute for the photo wall project that I’ve been working on at the church. I even managed to bring it home with me so I could get in some “extra practice”. So watch out for pics of happy kids with a big parachute that might make their way over here if I ever get my act together.

So much fun

The last few days have been rather packed in our house. Let’s see if I can remember all things fun.
Louisa has returned from her first camping trip with Grandma. She went with my mom to southern Ohio to camp in the Hocking Hills region, then continued on to my grandmother’s house in West Virginia for a little visit and a bridal shower. She apparently had a great time, because she keeps spouting random memories and rules about camping.
While she was gone, Jory and I took the other two to Ann Arbor, MI for a little shopping. We picked out some new bunk beds for the girls at the Ethan Allen gallery, then hit up the Archiver’s (scrapbooking), Motor City Harley Davidson, and of course the Ikea. It was slightly odd to have a fun family outing without Louisa. Hopefully she’ll like the beds we picked out.
Yesterday I took the kids to Columbus to visit my college pal Cathy and her kids. We hadn’t gotten together since college, so it was wonderful to catch up while our kids played. We had so much fun. The kids got along famously (big surprise) and we chatted about anything and everything. We already planned our next two play dates – one of Cathy’s car races in late June and of course a joint birthday party for Hope and Alex at the lake.

It’s summer!

Summer has officially arrived in our neck of the woods. 2 weeks ago it was in the mid 60’s. Today it is currently around 90. It’s about time! We’re ready to start enjoying our favorite summer time activities.
I had a nice little girl’s weekend this weekend. My mom and I met some of our scrapbooking buddies at the lake (with NO KIDS) and we plugged away on our scrapbooks. Mine is sadly out of date and one of my goals for the summer is to be caught up through February by the time I have to start school again.
We’re still working on our garden. My first big project for the summer is nearly complete. I turned a “problem area” of my yard – an area that had a few flowers and a bunch of weeds that were hard to mow - into a proper garden with a brick divider, mulch, a few new plants and best of all – no weeds! I’m still waiting on some lamb’s ear that my mom promised me in order to pronounce the area “done for now”. One of these days I’ll go out and take some pictures.
Last Friday was Alex’s end of the year program with his group of friends from Capable Kids. It was fun to see the fruits of all their hard work. We got to see a slide show with pictures from all the little classes, and see some of their little art projects. Then each class preformed a few songs.
Oh and I almost forgot. I have a new nephew. Jason, Vangie, and Levi are thrilled to welcome little Victor Lance into their family. He was born on Saturday, and is apparently doing just fine.

Stuff and a kid funny.

First off before I forget, happy anniversary to my sweet husband! Today is our 7 year anniversary. I love you!
Anyway. We had a good weekend. We went to the lake and visited with our dear friend Cathy, who was in from Illinois. It was not quite warm enough to be outside, so we kept our selves entertained with the normal lake games (aka beanie baby fights), and a trip to the outlet mall (which was dangerous as always).
The girls have had their eyes on the garden this spring. They have taken a particular interest in all things blooming, and what is about to bloom. Every time we step out into the yard, they always run to check on the progress on the buds of our irises and the roses (which finally sprung forth this morning – yippee!).
I may have mentioned the diaper issue before, but our girls have had the worst luck with staying dry at night. Nearly 20 months after they gave up diapers during the day neither girl could stay dry for more than 2 nights in a row. Not sure what’s up with that. Anyway. Louisa has finally managed to break free. She has completed 10 dry nights in a row, which means that she gets to go camping with Grandma. Even though I think she may have had an accident in the night. Annie on the other hand has not had more than one or two since we got back from vacation 2 weeks ago.
Something kind of cool. Last week I got an email from a friend at church who needed photographs of happy kids wearing cheerful clothes to decorate the new children’s ministry wing at church. She asked if I could snap off a few of my kids to hang up. I plan to try and get a few shots of some of our little (and big) friends from church to round out the collection. Hopefully I can share those when we’ve figured out which ones will go up. (If not, I suppose you’ll just have to go in and see them yourself!)
And I almost forgot the funny. When talking to Cathy about our garden, I was trying to get the girls to tell her what we had growing. I prompted the girls with “it starts with an I…”(meaning iris). Annie pipes up “I know Mommy! An Ipod!”

Outings

Well it wasn’t New Orleans, but we had a pretty fun outing over the weekend. We took the kids to Maumee Bay State Park to play at the beach. Even though the temperature was only in the lower 70’s, the kids still had fun getting wet and sandy. We had fun watching (and shivering).

This time with photos...

As you can see, I managed to find the camera.
Too many good ones to pick from, so I’ll just throw out a few. I might get to more later, we’ll just have to see.
So here’s Louisa climbing Grandma Peterson’s tree.

A lucky shot of Annie playing ball with her brother.

And this one of Alex was his idea.

Home again, home again

Our great adventure is over, and we are home safely (if not reluctantly). We had so many fun adventures together as a family, it’s hard to remember everything. I’m sure Jory will have to chime in and add parts of the story that I left out.
So here goes. Our adventure started last Tuesday with us leaving early and driving all day to get to Joplin MO in time to eat dinner. We spent some time hanging out with Uncle Jake, and went swimming in the hotel pool. We completed our journey on Wednesday, arriving at the Peterson ranch in time for dinner. Thursday – Sunday we spent hanging around the ranch. The kids went swimming (in a livestock feeding bin), played with Papa’s cars, and just ran themselves ragged while we kicked back and relaxed.
Our real adventure started on Monday, we drove to Las Cruces, NM to visit Jory’s favorite authentic Mexican restaurant (YUM!), and let the kids run off some steam on the campus of NMSU. It was really hot and windy, so we retired to our hotel rather early.
Tuesday we made a long trek from Las Cruces to right outside of San Antonio, TX. We had planned on going to Big Bend Nat’l Park, until we realized it was 6 hours out of the way.
Wednesday we went in to San Antonio. We went to the Alamo – which was amazing and beautiful. We were pleasantly surprised to find out the Alamo is not set in a dry dusty wasteland (like in the John Wayne movie) but rather in a beautiful (and humid) garden with trees and flowers and fountains. We also went down to the river walk area, which was also a pleasant surprise. Lots of fountains, 3 levels of shops and restaurants, and of course lots of trees and flowers. It was absolutely beautiful. We had lunch at the Hard Rock Café on the walk, which was definitely a highlight.
Thursday we found ourselves in the Houston area, looking for Johnson space center. Which we found, but it was closed and we didn’t want to wait for it to open. So we drove south to Galveston Island and got out to look at the gulf, we could have spent a lot of time there, but we had to get going. From there we drove along coastal Texas to Louisiana (a new state for me!), where we continued our trek along the gulf. We took a scenic highway through swamps and marshes. We saw lots of hurricane / storm damage and a few alligators.
Friday we drove into New Orleans. After a fiasco that surrounded a certain Harley store, we wandered into the French quarter, which was awesome. We ate lunch at a restaurant with a history dating back to 1788 – the food was to die for. Then we took a carriage ride through the city and learned lots of local history. It was really hard to tear ourselves away, but we had lots of miles left to go. So we got back in the car and drove ourselves to Mississippi.
Saturday was spent mostly watching the world go by. We did have a brief adventure at a park in Mississippi, but mostly we just put miles under our belt. We stopped outside of Chattanooga, TN for the night.
Sunday we completed our journey, arriving home in time for dinner. We passed the miles by thinking back over the fun adventures we’d had and plotting out future family road trips (Maine is totally calling…).
So it was a long trip, but we totally could have spent another week exploring the Mississippi – Ohio corridor that we neglected in the interest of time. The kids did awesome. It was good. Real life is such a let down.
(Don’t worry, pictures to come. I have to find the camera first.)

Updating

Pushing the pause button on life to give a little update.
Nothing real exciting happening in these parts.
Going to New Mexico to visit with Grandma and Papa. Should be fun. Looking forward to some time to just goof off with my kids and Jory. Take lots of pictures, maybe do some hiking, and lots of playing. Holy cow does it take a lot of work to get my family ready to take a long vacation.
The last few days Jory has been attending a motorcycle class in the evening after work. He’s been really enjoying it. My mom has been hanging out with us while he’s at class to help fill the void and to give me another adult to talk to.
School is good. 18 days left. Planning on having school while we are on vacation. Let me tell you how interesting it was trying to plan a whole bunch of lessons that will travel. I think I did all right though. I guess we’ll see.
The kids are driving me crazy. They are so crazy excited to get in the car and go. Tearing around the house. Impersonating Tasmanian devils. Screaming. Needing to be outside. Mama busy with details and lists. Trying to ignore mayhem.

Beautiful babies

What can I say. My kids are cute.

The one of Annie, well... like mother like daughter right?

Crazy times

I totally need to be working on “more important” things right now, but screw it. Sometimes you just need to make unimportant things a priority right? That’s me right now. Screw the schoolwork, I’m blogging.
So what’s new. Lots. It is warm and springy in our neighborhood. We have been spending as much time outdoors as we possibly can. Last week it was all about running errands and visiting all our favorite parks. This week it has been all about the garden. I summoned the courage to go and “relocate” (aka steal) some of the mulch that someone dumped on abandoned lot next to us. Then with my mom’s help we also relocated some irises and daffodils (since mine apparently became someone’s lunch) from that lot.
Okay, I have a question. Does anyone know about cardinals? We have a male that has continuously been attacking our sliding door for well over a week now. I’ve seen him with a female, so I’m wondering if they have a nest somewhere (probably in the big oak behind my house) that he feels he needs to defend. So here’s the question. Short of posting Louisa on the porch to scare him away every time he comes over, what can I do to get this bird to leave us alone? Mom suggested putting a picture of an owl up, which I haven’t tried yet. Other suggestions?
In other news, school is going well. We’re getting close to the end of the year. Close enough that I circled our last day on our number chart and we are counting down. Still counting by 10’s until we reach it, but getting closer. The end is in sight. This week we are learning about money – different ways to make certain quantities and such. Also talking about plants – an obvious choice as we are out in the garden this week.

Happenings

I can’t believe it’s been 2 weeks since my last post. I’m lame, I know. Don’t remind me.
Life here in these parts is typical. The weather has warmed up nicely. It’s been in the low 70’s for the last few days. Which has been really nice. We spent most of Saturday outside cleaning up the yard, and splashing through all the standing water in the corner of our yard.
But now Annie and I have the flu. Achy, runny nose, coughing 100+ temperatures, the whole works. We’ve watched enough PBS to last us for years. I’m hoping we can shake this thing soon. I keep trying to give it to Alex, but he doesn’t seem to want it.
Speaking of Alex, he’s still hard at work on his planet project. We have the whole solar system hanging from his ceiling. I think that he wanted to make the correct number of moons to hang with each planet, until he found out that Jupiter has something like 47. But he’s learned an amazing amount of information during this project, which has been really cool.

Easter

Despite the fact that we had 6 inches of snow this weekend, we managed to have a happy Easter. We decorated a bunch of eggs, then I hid them outside (in the snow!) for the kids to find – which of course was a blast (but would have been better if it wasn’t freezing). Of course we had to take a bunch of pictures of the eggs before we devoured them (yum!)

My life

At the moment we are in the beginning stages of (hopefully) the last snowstorm for the season. We’re expecting 4-6 inches between now and tomorrow morning. Happy spring, have some snow. The kids are pretty psyched though. As I write this they’re getting bundled up to go out in it (even though there’s less than a half inch – minor details right?) So I’m guessing their “captain fever” is over…
In other news, school is going well. Alex has started doing some independent research projects – on his own time, just for fun type of thing. Right now he’s really interested in space so we made a rocket yesterday from an empty oatmeal container and some cardboard, and now he’s working on some planets. We picked up a book from the library with pictures of all the planets in the solar system, and he’s dutifully copying the pictures onto plastic lids that will hang from his ceiling. All we need are some “space raiders” (which I think are bad guy aliens like the ones on Star Wars) and his space theme will be complete. Maybe. I’m keeping all my empty food containers just in case.
Jory’s motorcycle is back from the shop. They had it for over a month. We’re glad to have Diego back. Even if it is snowing. Jory wants to take pictures of it in the snow. We’ll see.

Stuff

So life is insanely busy right now, but I wanted to take a moment for a quick post.
Despite the fact that it’s 40 degrees outside and we still have a decent layer of snow (after 2 snow storms last week!). My daughters have declared that it is spring, and they should be dressing accordingly. As in shorts and tee shirts. I believe they called it “captain fever”. Yesterday Louisa comes to me decked out in shorts and says “Mommy, why is it so cold in here? Good question kid.
In other news, life is good. Busy, but good. A crazy swirl of church stuff and school stuff all mashed together. Making tough choices about what is really important. I won’t bore you with the details. But I am very excited to be going to a scrapbook party this weekend. I leave on Friday and won’t be back until probably around midnight on Saturday night. Maybe I’ll make some progress on my sadly neglected album.

Celebrating

This weekend we celebrated my 29th birthday. My mom took the kids on Friday and Saturday so Jory and I could have some grown up time. We enjoyed a delicious dinner at Red Lobster, and cruised the mall a little bit (ok, we hung out in the book store the whole time – I was trying not to sound like an old fart). On Saturday I woke up at the crack of 9:30 and we headed out again, this time to the huge down town library where we spent close to 4 hours finding various treasures (with out worrying what the kids were destroying). Saturday evening found us at a local pizza place enjoying the fact that the kids weren’t eating all of my pizza. We went and picked up the kids after dinner and took them home to get ready for Sunday. Sunday was a mixture of church and hanging out with my mom so that Jory could work on taxes. All in all, it was a wonderfully satisfying weekend.

More snow

Earlier in this week our kind Creator saw it fit to dump another 8 inches of snow. Even though some of us were less than thrilled to see it, it was quite possibly the perfect snowfall. Lots of thick heavy packing snow, perfect for playing in. So out we went, all 4 of us. Together we built a snowman, snow angels, snow castles, and we turned the steps off the back porch into a sledding hill (which was a sheer delight to the young ‘uns.) I didn’t get many pictures that day (too busy playing!) but here are a few.


In other news, do you remember a few weeks back when Alex was complaining that his schoolwork was too easy? Well I changed things up a little bit with his reading to make it a little more of a challenge. Now every week he gets a new word list with 20 words, half of them are easy and the other half are a little tougher. The kid is completely devouring everything I throw at him. He can’t get enough. I think it’s safe to say that he’s going to love reading – not sure where he got that from!

Warning: creative minds at work

In case you weren’t quite sure what you are looking at, the top picture is a family of monsters, a mommy, daddy, baby and pet. The girls made this lovely family during our art time. Alex is holding his creation. Not sure weather it is a whale, a car or a flower vase. It sort of evolved as he made it. I think he finally decided it was a vase. If you’re around little ones on a regular basis, I highly recommend throwing them a pile of garbage to see what they’ll do with it.