Where's the Beef?

The other day, Bryan tagged me in this picture on FB:

No, I did not road trip over the holiday weekend with my brother.  I gave him this shirt for his birthday.  There is a story behind it.  While we lived in Florida, our summer vacation was a long trip to northern Minnesota to see our grandparents.  It usually happened around the Fourth of July, and usually most of our cousins were there at least part of the time we were there.  In 1984 (I only figured out the year because I just saw online what year the commercial is from), there happened to be a large group of us, and someone had the wise idea to go out to the only restaurant on the lake in town.  We had a loooong table (or two) off to one side, and naturally it took longer than usual to get our food.  When the waitress checked in on us, Bryan (age 3) chimed in, "Where's the Beef?" and had every adult in the room in stitches.  Here is the commercial if you need to refresh your memory.  Bryan, I'm glad you like the shirt, and the best part about it is, part of the purchase went to an adoption charity!

back in the pool...

On Monday, I signed Seth up for swim team.  It's super cheap, so even if our house does sell sometime soon (send us some good vibes, people!), we'll get our money's worth out of it.  He was very excited to get back in the pool, but the coach's instructions still seem to go in one ear and out the other.  The baby pool is open during practice, so Amelia and her buddies are already causing all sorts of mayhem every afternoon.  The pool officially opens today, and we'll be headed there shortly.  Thankfully Nathan isn't afraid of cold water, because I'm more than happy just to put my feet in until we've had several 90+ degree days in a row.  Plus, my turn will come once school is out and I'm the only mommy sitting on a noodle playing lifeguard for diving board jumps!

ladies love lil' Seth

 

Sweet Charlotte has been in Seth's class the past two years.  I love that girl!  She will barrel me over with a hug if I'm not ready for her!  Seth was invited to her party last Sunday at Build-A-Bear in the mall.  He was the only boy there, but he didn't mind hanging out with his lady friends.  He built a cute monkey and named it Banana Splits.  Then they walked over to the carousel, where Seth and Ella-Brooke rode together on a bench, because he could "see the rest of those girls in class tomorrow."  Afterwards, I got this picture of the lovebirds acting nutty.  

preschool picnic

Last Friday was Amelia's class picnic at a local park.  The weather was much cooler than we are accustomed to having end-of-year picnics in!  Amelia loves her little class, and the kids had a great time playing all morning.  Amelia has been begging to do water balloons lately, and then last thing I want to do right now is spend an hour filling up balloons for five minutes of fun, only to have balloon litter all over our yard, so I volunteered to bring water balloons to her party.  I spent almost an hour filling them up, and they lasted about three minutes, but the kids had fun, and then we made a big game of cleaning up all the pieces. (That is skinny-minnie in her teeny-'kini in the front.  I swear my kids eat.  A lot.) 

At the picnic, we celebrated the summer birthdays.  Amelia and several of her friends made faux-candles in their cupcakes using pretzel sticks.

The teachers made a wonderful book of pictures and artwork from this past year.  It is so fun to see how she is at school.  Only two more days of school for her; this year her summer starts almost two weeks before Seth's!

surprises

When I was a kid, my dad would come home a day early from a long business trip unexpectedly (I fell for it every time!) or my grandparents (who lived between 425 and 2000 miles away) would --surprise-- be in the audience of a school function.  I am a planner, so nowadays I would much rather have a concrete plan than to be surprised (trying really hard to be patient this spring...)

This past weekend, my parents were headed for a getaway in the mountains.  At last minute, they decided to leave a day early and have a sleepover here, which was fine, because the house is (almost) always clean right now.  I didn't tell the kids, I just asked Seth to open up the garage door.  They were so excited about their surprise visitors!  It was a quick visit, with my parents leaving the same time we left for preschool.  But after seeing the kids' reactions, it makes me VERY excited for next month, because Nathan and I have a big surprise up our sleeves for the kids!

puddle jumpers

It started raining Sunday night, and it rained, and rained, and rained on Monday morning.  I picked up the girls after lunch bunch and we went over to Kim's house for a little playdate.  Kim lives at the end of a long gravel drive which was full of mud puddles.  The girls had a ball splashing in them, until they realized that they weren't just wet, they were filthy!

We stripped them down to their undies and everyone wore one of Carley's sundresses, and then they gave themselves mani/pedis.  So cute!

Jogging for Jonah

Last Saturday I ran in my first 5k of the year, Jogging for Jonah, yes, the same Jonah from Jonah's EB Auction that I participate in every year.  To make it extra special, our friends Tim and Tiff came up for an overnight trip, and Tiff ran her very first 5k.  It was pretty incredible how much they had going on for a first-time event.  In addition to the 5k and fun run, there were bounce houses, fire trucks, a raffle, and butterflies you could sign (good job, Seth):

You can read Patrice's post about the day here.  Tanglewood constructed a new paved trail last fall, and the route selected was about as kind as you can be inside the park (or anywhere around here, for that matter).  Tiff killed it, and beat me by about 40 seconds.  We both had mommy-brains and forgot our watches, but downloaded an app on our phones to track our race.  I accidentally deleted mine two seconds after crossing the finish line, but Tiff says hers charted the race as 3.4 miles.

I don't know if you can read our shirts, but they say "Rockstar Mom".  They were sold at our local running store for Mother's Day.  It's a perfect shirt for pilates too, I washed it and wore it again on Monday!

camping

The boys went camping...in the backyard.  I think Nathan's picture fulling picks up on the hilarity of the situation:

But, it didn't rain, and it was a beautiful evening, and it was fun to sit down in the tent and read while the kids watched movies. I didn't have any chocolate for s'mores, so we improved by using Chips Ahoy cookies to sandwich the (microwaved) marshmallows.  Based on the fact that I threw away an empty cookie container the next morning, I think you could call the treat a hit!  I read a bedtime book and then headed upstairs for an evening to myself (which unfortunately involved cleaning the bottom of the oven because dinner had cooked over).  By 9:45 I was joined by a little girl who couldn't fall asleep outside.  At 6:45 the boys headed in, ready for breakfast!

Amelia photography

 

Amelia has wanted to take pictures lately.  Here are some from my parents' deck.

 
 This one makes me laugh!

And a few from my phone from last Saturday (she actually took over 130 pictures, many of which were deleted later that day...)

 

 

partying with Pops

We went to Cary on the quatro de mayo to take Pops out to a Japanese steakhouse for his birthday.  The kids have been planning this since we went to one at Myrtle Beach back in August.  We had a tattooed, Caucasian cook who flirted shamelessly with Amelia.  Seth had a perma-grin on his face the entire meal and started scavenging off Pops's plate after he ate all the good stuff off his own.  Bryan ordered a ginormous bottle of Japanese beer and I had a girlie drink in a Buddha glass that Bryan took home.  It was fun.  Back at the house, we enjoyed Gram and Pops's new deck furniture while Pops opened his presents.  Thanks to pinterest, I found this fun idea of taping dollar bills end to end and rolling them up in a tissue box.  (A big thanks to my friend, Kim, for helping me one afternoon while our girls were playing.)  We personalized the gift by using a CARS 2 tissue box.  Now Pops has some spare cash for all the technology purchases he's so fond of.  :)

for no reason

Here are my first "for no reason" flowers...don't tell the kids, but I like Nathan's taste in flowers a lot better than theirs!

what the duck?

The last Saturday morning of April, we were getting ready to go to some community events when Nathan noticed we had some unusual ground feeders under our bird feeder:

The ducks hung around for most of the day and were unperturbed by Colette's attempts to run them off.  (She even ruffled the mallard's tail feathers once and they still came back.)  Sunday morning the boys were outside playing when the ducks came waddling up the outside of the fence, through the open gate, and down to the feeders to scavenge again.  Sunday night they came up under the deck at the smell of the grill.  I had posted a picture of them on FB, and found out that they had been making their way up the street.  And then we didn't see them for a few days, so we thought the gypsy-ducks had moved on.  One really hot afternoon mid-week, I let the kids put on bathing suits and play with water squirters after school.  Look who came back for a visit!

The mallard was content to take a siesta in the backyard, but the female kept coming onto the driveway.  She even came over and investigated their bucket!  Colette made one attempt to chase them off, then went to the top of the deck and stared at the ducks in disgust the rest of the afternoon.  I saw them one more time in the front yard, but we haven't seen them again in over a week.

spring pictures

We're back in action, folks!  Mid-April I took the kids to get an updated picture of the two of them.  The kids were very cooperative, but our photographer wasn't very good, so I didn't buy a lot of pictures because of shadows, overexposure, etc.  In fact, I only bought these two poses, Amelia in her pretty dress from her Aunt Marie and a good one of the kids together.

The very next day, Seth's school had spring pictures.  They superimposed his picture on several backgrounds.  I wasn't planning to buy any, but with a smile like that, how could I resist?

pardon the interruption...

I was creating a post on Sunday, and it told me I have used up all my free photo storage (after five-plus years, I guess I can't complain).  Sure, I could delete photos, but I feel they tell part of the story.  So then it was a matter of remembering to bring a credit card to the computer, and we've had a busy start to the week.  Now I have quintupled my storage space, but apparently it may take up to 24 hours for it to become effective.  Stay tuned...

one sick little girl

Amelia and I came across this picture taken April 13, 1980 the last time we were at my parents' house.  This is me.  I was in the PICU very sick with epiglottitis.  The story goes that this was not how I looked when they left the hospital the night before, but I pulled the breathing tube out more than once and ended up with Pringles cans and a sandbag as makeshift restraits, as well as the most ridiculous taping of a breathing tube that I have ever seen.  Thank goodness I was too young to remember this.  Torture!  Evidently they didn't believe in Versed or any of the other sleepy drugs thirty years ago!