The zoo

We went to Brookfield zoo over spring break with Grace.  The animals were quite active!  The grizzly bears were so active swimming in the water.  It was very cool to see!  The addaxes were busy head butting each other. The penguins were squawking at each.  It seemed like some of them were mad at another penguin that was in his/her nest.  The wild dogs (which I don't think I have ever seen do anything but sleep) were running around and chasing each other.  We watched them for a long time!  We got a nice close view of the Okapi and the giraffes.  It was a good day to go to the zoo!  Here are a couple people pictures from the zoo.

T-ball

N2 got a t-ball set for Christmas and it was so nice and warm in March that we broke out the set.  Noah LOVED playing t-ball.  He actually is quite an accomplished hitter.  He can hit the ball clear across our yard and sometimes across the street!  It'll come in handy when he plays for the Cubs (ha, ha!).    Natalie also liked to hit the ball but she got frustrated when she couldn't hit it off the top of the tee.  She often hit the tee instead of   the ball.

 How do you like Noah's follow through here?  Quite unique!

 Maybe I see the problem with Natalie's swing!  She needs to use 2 hands.

Interview with Noah

I had asked N2 some interview questions not that long ago but I never scrapped them.  Well, I finished my interview kit (and I love it!) so I decided to ask Noah questions.  We were laying on the floor coloring together on his big coloring book and I just started asking him questions.  He was answering them so nicely that I decided to jot them down on his coloring book (luckily he did not mind).  I asked him the rest of the questions during dinner.  Since then I have been working on making a layout with his answers.  I think I'm done tweaking it finally!

Since you can't read his answers here they are.
Best Friend: Mama (although later at dinner he said Jersey.  I chose to keep it mama)
What's your favorite thing about Natalie: Matching her (they were so excited that they both were wearing striped shirts on this day).
If  you could have any animal as a pet, what would it be?  A panda bear.  Two big panda bears!
When I grow up I want to be: a doctor
What was the happiest thing you've ever done?  Go to daddy's band concert.
Favorite song: Down By The Station
Favorite place to go: go to swim lessons and jump in the pool
Favorite animal: a bear
What I like to do with mom: Sleep with her and give her nice kisses.
What I like to do with dad: Give him nice kisses too.
Favorite game: The Owl Game (Hoot Owl Hoot).  I like to get the owls in the nest so the sun can come up.
Favorite toy: drills
Favorite book: Good Night Moon
What is your favorite thing to do with your family?  Play with the school bus.
Favorite food: cereal
Favorite dessert: suckers
If you could have any food for your birthday dinner, what would you have?  Macaroni and Cheese
What are you really good at?  Doing exercises
What are you not really good at?  Getting on people's backs.
Favorite holiday: Easter day and birthdays
If you could go anywhere on vacation, where would you go?  Amelia's house
Favorite color: blue, orange and white
Favorite thing to do: color
Favorite thing about school: do projects
What makes me happy: my bear
What makes me sad: spiders
What are you afraid of?  spiders
What is your least favorite food?  Fish
Favorite movie: Toy Story 2
Favorite character: Buzz Lightyear
Favorite tv show: Curious George
Favorite clothes: Snow plow shirt and firetruck pajamas
What is your favorite restaurant?  Walker Brothers

Easter Decor

(Can I just start by saying how much I don't like the new blogger format?)  I like to set a nice fancy table and I don't get to do that very often.  Can't imagine why not!  I wanted to make a nice centerpiece but then I found these really nice tulips at Trader Joe.  I had wanted to make these Easter lily handprints I found on Pinterest.  I don't think mine turned out as cute-they didn't look like lilies.

Easter

I finally have sorted through all my Easter pictures!  N2 were very excited about Easter this year-about the Easter bunny coming and about hunting eggs.  The Easter bunny came during church and brought them their Easter baskets and hid eggs.  N2 were not happy that the Easter bunny waited to come until then!  They really enjoyed all their goodies and I have to say that the biggest hit for them was magnet notepad (like the ones I use for my grocery list).  They LOVE having their own notepad and they write grocery lists and they also like to cut the paper up.

Anyhow, back to Easter.  Here are some pictures of our egg hunt.  Luckily the weather was nice so that we could have the egg hunt outside.  The Easter bunny was a little trickier this year and hid some in our water garden (which is not the best idea as the eggs are not watertight).  

Here they are with their Easter baskets while hunting eggs.  They really didn't want to stop to show me their baskets.  That would have taken time away from finding more eggs!

Here's a picture of my two little Easter bunnies.  I didn't have them in the right light.  I need to figure out what would have been better!  But I edited the photo and I think it looks much better!

Riding Tricycles

N2 love to ride their tricycles!  I hadn't seen this before but Brian said he has done it before.  He draws a path on the driveway and has N2 follow it.  I was amazed by how well they can follow the tight curves that he made! Noah did this with his scooter before I grabbed my camera.

Family Movie Night

I decided that we would start a monthly (or more often if we wanted) family movie night where we would eat dinner and watch a movie together.  I also decided we would have a family game night but we haven't started that yet.  Our first family movie night was kind of disastrous!  We had planned on watching Tangled which we had saved on our DVR and for backup Brian thought it was on Netflix.  Brian and N2 went to Jewel to get chicken for dinner.  We were starting a little later than we wanted.  I was getting everything ready at home.  I was going to use our picnic tablecloth on the floor and pulled it out to discover it had bleach spots and holes in it (I used it anyways).  I made veggies and then I was going to get the movie set up.  Well, it had been deleted from our DVR!  Went to Netflix, it wasn't there.  Nor did Netflix have any good children's movies (it is such a waste of money in my opinion!)  So right when Brian got back, I went to Redbox.  When to Jewel and the guy in front of me took forever selecting a movie.  Got up there and they were out of all their children's movies.  Went to Walgreens.  They were out of almost everything but did get Gnomio and Juliet.  We started the movie after 6. N2 loved eating on the floor and paid attention to the movie while eating.  After they were done eating, they weren't so interested in the movie anymore.  We'll try again later and plan ahead better for the movie.

Parking lot

N2 have quite the collection of things to ride outside.  They each have a cozy coupe, a scooter, a tricycle and then we have a tractor and a small bike.  For some reason they like to ride them to a designated spot (that they both determine) and park all the vehicles there.  Sometimes it's in the garage (if one of the cars is not there) or on the grass alongside the driveway.  One day I totally forgot about it when we went in and so Brian couldn't park his car in the garage because all of N2's vehicles were taking up space.

Helping

One of N2's very favorite thing to do in the kitchen is spin lettuce in the salad spinner.  Every time I have the salad spinner out, I have to let N2 use it.  One morning I was making my salad before school and Noah had gotten up early and came downstairs, he spun the lettuce for me while I made the rest of my lunch.  That was a nice help!  They also like to snack on lettuce after spinning it.  I'm OK with that!

Microphones

Again, this picture does not do the thing that happened justice!  This was really cute but does not turn out well in pictures!  Noah has recently fallen in love with microphones.  He knows you sing into microphones.  I think they have a couple fake ones at school.  We have a couple of inflatable ones but apparently those are not good enough because he never uses those!  The other day I caught him using some cable as a microphone (I can't for the life of me remember what he was using other than it was a cable that would have plugged into a computer or other electronic device).  This morning while I was making breakfast, I heard Noah singing.  He was huddled up in front of the stereo and under further investigation I realized he was using Brian's cables that hang out between the components of the stereo.  There are 2 plugs on the cables.  Noah plugged one into the front of the stereo (into the right hole, I might add-don't you love how technical my language is!) and then held the other one up for him to sing into.  The cable wasn't very long between the two plugs so he had to lean forward.  And he just sang and sang and sang.  I got my camera out and he stopped.  But luckily he started again.  Too bad I didn't have the video camera handy!

Concert

Talking about concerts has become a regular occurrence in our house.  N2 really want to have another concert that we come to.  Daddy has more than one concert a year so why shouldn't N2?  So the other day Noah starts setting up chairs and Natalie drags the piano over.  We couldn't start right away though even though the audience was in place and so was the pianist.  Obviously something must have been wrong with the set.  So glad stage manager Noah is there to save the day with his tools! 

 Now we're ready!

 At first the concert was just a solo. 

But then it turned into a duet.  Noah played the drum first and then the recorder.  I think the concert ended up turning into a marching band.

Coloring

Natalie must have decided that the forsythia needed more colors than just yellow!  And she really did manage to color some of the petals blue!  I wouldn't have thought that they chalk would color on the petal but it did!

Dying Easter Eggs

We dyed Easter eggs at Marcie's house but I wanted some more for Easter dinner.  I figured we would have time on Good Friday since everyone was off school.  N2 were thrilled to dye more Easter eggs!  I got a box of egg dye that had bonus neon colors and I have to say that the blue and green are quite pretty but the pink has hardly any color in it.  I actually put 2 tablets in the pink dye and still there wasn't much color!  For some reason my box came with 2 bonus packs!  Natalie was quite over exuberant with her eggs and kept banging them on the table so several of her eggs cracked!  Oh well, they probably all wouldn't have been eaten anyway.  There was a cracked one after boiling them but I let them dye that one anyways.  This time around we didn't end up with any really "pretty" eggs like the one Natalie made at Marcie's house that she dyed in blue and green and yellow and red.  I'll have to get those pictures from Marcie after she gets back.

 Natalie's eggs:

 Noah's eggs:

Easter Egg Hunt

We took N2 to an Easter egg hunt on Friday.  We didn't manage to go to one last year because we were busy for all the ones I knew about and the one we could go to happened to fall on a day that was rainy!  So this year I was determined to go to one.  We met up with my friend Steph and her boys.  I've never really been to an Easter egg hunt so I didn't know what to expect.  It was CHAOS!  And it was frigidly cold!  We needed winter coats and hats which we did not have (I did not realize how cold it was when we left-I just got in the car and didn't walk outside).

We got there and there was a huge bunch of people around a circle where there were eggs scattered all around.  The 1's and 2's go to go first.  Then they threw out another huge amount of eggs for the 3's and 4's.  They were supposed to blog a whistle to indicate the start but some kids just started going so then everyone went!  I pulled Noah into the group and showed him eggs but he wouldn't pick any up.  Some kids came and swooped them up so we moved onto another clump which he didn't pick up.  Finally he decided picking up eggs was OK and he managed to get 4 eggs.  Natalie was the same way and got 4 eggs.  The whole thing was over in less than a minute!  CRAZINESS!  I don't think I will attempt that Easter egg hunt again!

The 5's and 6's were funny because they "hid" the eggs on the hill so it was like a little army charging up the hill.  There were a couple smart kids that made a beeline for the top of the hill to gather all the eggs up there before anyone else got up there since so many kids went for the first eggs they saw.  Quite interesting!

We did meet the Easter bunny and they each got an egg that way.  Natalie would not go near the Easter bunny except to grab the egg.  Noah did pose with the bunny. As we were sitting look at our eggs, a mom and her son came over and said they got too many eggs so they wanted to share with us!  N2 each got 2 more eggs.  That was so nice!  One of my friend's Steph's boys managed to get the 1st place Easter egg and won a cute Easter basket!  Nice!  These are all the pictures I managed to get!

Huh?

When do you suppose this could have happened?  And who could have done it?

If you said that during nap time, Natalie crept out into the hallway, opened the linen closet and lined up Kleenex, you would be right!  Natalie is obsessed with the linen closet and what is inside.  She constantly sneaks out of her room during nap time and plays in the linen closet.  Often times she does this for a while before we hear her.

Sweet Treats

Marcie and I baked 2 different things while we were in Madison and they were both quite yummy!  We found the recipes on Pinterest.  I don't think we got pictures of them!  I guess we'll have to make them again.

I made S'more Bars for a meeting at school.  They were yummy but messy.  I used parchment paper for the blondies and that was a mistake.  There was barely enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan so the parchment paper didn't stay in the pan and it made the batter go up on the sides and burn a little.  I'm also wondering if you need more blondie-maybe 1.5 times the recipe.  I also would suggest putting the marshmallows on first and then the graham crackers and chocolate chips.  I did the graham crackers first and that didn't stick to the blondie!

I made a modified version of Oreo Stuffed Brownies.  I did not have ice cream, so I used the water that the brownie mix called for.  I wanted to put caramel in between brownie layers so I baked half of the batter for 10 minutes and then put melted caramels on top and then put the rest of the batter.  Basically the brownie batter and caramel just mixed together.  You can taste it but it wasn't what I was looking for.  These are yummy but I don't think the Oreos are necessary.  Also the caramel kind of burned around the edges and so they are really chewy.  I need to rethink this idea!

Sledding in the Leaves

These pictures are from the beginning of March but better late than never!  N2 got out the sled when there was no snow and they insisted on going sledding.  There were quite a few leaves on the ground so we were able to pull them down the hill a bit.  They didn't go very far or fast but they seemed to have fun!

More Food

Here are so more food pictures that I made.  First up, Crock Pot Lasanga.  This was very yummy but I'm not sure using the crock pot is worth it except that you don't need to cook the noodles.  I may try this recipe just in the oven.  The pain about the crock pot was trying to get the noodles to fit which is why I was thinking I would try the recipe in a 9x13 in pan.  I also added 2 vegetable purees to the sauce mixture.  I think I added a broccoli and cauliflower puree.  The lasagna was pretty liquidy but still very yummy.  (Sorry it's not the most appetizing plate)

I made Crunchy Baked Pork.  I skipped step 1.  I also didn't have fresh herbs so I used dried.  I did not have Dijon must so I used a different kind (I think I had honey mustard) and I just used a little bit of it.  Mine took MUCH longer to cook.  I think this was a good recipe but I can't remember as it was a while ago that I made it.

I made another pork chop dish and this was not as successful.  It may not look too appealing either.  I'm not ready to throw out the recipe though.  It had good flavor but was not crispy at all.  I'm not sure why you needed to add the liquid when you move the pork chop to the oven.  This recipe is called Buttermilk Soaked Baked Parmesan Pork Chop.  I did not have Panko breadcrumbs so maybe that would have helped.

I made Chicken, Pancetta, Asparagus over Couscous.  I substituted bacon for pancetta.  This recipe was kind of bland.  I don't think I will make it again.

I'll show you some sweet recipes soon.