Botanic Gardens

Yesterday we met up with Mom and Dad to celebrate Mother's Day.  We went out to breakfast first and then went to the Botanic Gardens.  There were beautiful colors all over!  I was so amazed by how bright the colors were!

I tried to get some pictures with people but my kids were not the most cooperative.  They were both tired and probably a little warm.  Noah was also hungry even though he ate more than mom at breakfast and maybe as much as me!

We had fun looking at bonsai trees too.  N2 picked which one was their favorite.  They agreed on this one.

May Day and Teacher Appreciation

This past week was really busy because I decided to head up a teacher appreciation week after my kids' preschool.  I sent a letter out to parents the week before of what I had planned.  On Tuesday kids were asked to bring flowers to their teacher, on Wednesday they were asked to write a note and draw a picture and on Thursday we were providing a luncheon.  I decided to make salads in a jar, muffins and a treat.  I also included a water bottle with a drink mix.

I made an Italian Pesto Chicken and Pasta Salad.  It's so yummy!  I also made Carmelitas which are the best bar ever (but I have discovered that they do NOT last in the heat or humidity-all the caramel falls). The muffins are orange lemon poppyseed and they were delicious!  The teachers were SO appreciative!

We don't have many flowers so I had to pick up some flowers for May Day this year.  N2 wanted to give flowers to 13 teachers!  I had enough flowers to make that many, so I made them all plus one more for Natalie's ballet teacher.

Baseball

My kids have been so interested in baseball lately.   They don't want to play t-ball, they want to bat without the tee.  Brian is the one who mainly pitches to them but I have as well.  I'm often critiqued for my bad pitches (obviously my pitches are bad and not that the batters are missing the ball!)  Natalie is insistent that she has to wear a batting helmet but since we don't have one, she wears her bike helmet.  They set up the bases around the house and they have to run all of them after a hit (no matter how small the hit is).  It is NOT OK to run the opposite way of the runner to try to tag the runner out.  That will result in tears.  You must run in the same direction.  We need to work on understanding that being tagged out is part of the game.  While one kid is batting, the other one is often the catcher but I make them stand really far back so they aren't hit by the bat.  They can play baseball for an hour at a time.  I think we need to enroll Noah in a baseball class or on a team-he is a fairly decent batter without the tee.

Fun with Cousins

On Friday N2 were so excited to play with Amelia and Megan!  It was a nice day so the kids played outside for most of the afternoon although Megan wanted to play inside for part of the time while the other kids played outside.  I had never seen my kids do this but apparently this is what they they do all the time and introduced Amelia to their fun.  At first I thought they were going to fly in the street but they go right into the grass and fly off the plasma car into the culvert.

After lunch Brian took the 4 kids to the park while Marcie put Nathaniel down for a nap and then she and I hung out.  From the pictures it looks like the kids had a great time!

 This next picture cracks me up because they are standing in age order front to back and it looks like a funny staged picture and I don't think it was staged.

And here's a picture of Nathaniel so that we don't forget that he was here even though he slept most of the time!

Dying Easter Eggs

On Friday, Marcie brought her kids to our house so we could play.  One of the things we did was dye Easter eggs.  Each kid got 6 eggs to dye and we had 9 colors.  We told the kids that they could draw on their eggs with white crayons before dying them so they started with that.  Natalie wrote "Nat" and then ran out of room on the one side of the egg.  She did fit "Nata" on another egg.  Amelia wrote an A on one egg.  I don't think Noah pushed hard enough with the crayon because nothing showed up on his eggs.  When they started dying the eggs, they started by just putting an egg in and leaving it and asking for another egg.  After a few eggs, we had to introduce dying them in more than one color and that slowed them down.  The kids got bored after all their eggs were sitting in the dye, so they gave up and the adults took over!  We had fun making the eggs brighter, more colorful and in some cases strange colors!

I forgot to take a picture of the eggs at the end.  Oops.  Happy Easter!

New Cousin

Brian's brother and his wife had a baby on Sunday.  They had a little girl named Chloe.  Brian and I have both seen her earlier in the week but N2 got to meet her for the first time yesterday.  She is such a cutie and all we've seen her do is sleep!  Here are some pictures that I took while we were there.

Dress Up Time

My kids LOVE to dress up.  They have a few outfits that are their favorites but sometimes they surprise me with what they come down wearing.  Here are some pictures from the last few months of them dressed up.

 I'm surprised the overalls fit because they were Noah's Halloween costume in 2012.  The hair is actually a grass skirt that has shed ALL over.  But she was adamant that she had to have straw hair. 

They also played Wizard of Oz after Brian's musical.  Here they are the Winkies (the ones who sing o-wee-o-weo-o).

 Here Natalie is the Wicked Witch of the West and Noah is a flying monkey.

Alas we have no Dorothy costume nor any frilly big costume that could pass for Glinda.  Natalie's stuffed dog is named Ham Biscuit Toto Weidner.